The Marqués de Gelves: Viceroy of New Spain

Abstract

Don Diego Carrillo de Mendoza y Pimentel, Marques de Gelves, Conde de Priego, and Viceroy of New Spain, was a member of the Spanish nobility who pursued a military and administrative career during the latter part of the sixteenth and first quarter of the seventeenth centuries. He served the Spanish crown for more than fifty-five years during the reigns of Philip II, Philip III, and Philip IV. He promoted outstanding reform programs in Milan and Aragon as a military executive, but failed as viceroy to alter corrupt ion in New Spain. The life of the Marques de Gelves can be divided into three distinct phases. From 1580 until 1599 he participated in combat operations against Portugal, England, and the Dutch in the Low Countries. As camp master of the Sicily tercio in the Spanish Armada and later as a member of the Council of War to the Duke of Parma in the Netherlands, his fame became renown in military circles. Because of his service as a special ambassador in Germany and the political influence of his uncle, Don Pedro Enriquez de Acevedo, Conde de Fuentes, he secured his first administrative position. The second period of his career was primarily that of a military administrator. From 1601 until 1614 he was stationed in Milan where he was Lord of the Castle and commander of the Final company. In 1614 he was transferred to Spain as the new viceroy of Aragon. Because of his talent for reform and excellence in governing he was selected for the higher position as viceroy of New Spain in 1621. His administration in the colonial viceroyalty, however, was a traumatic experience plagued by corruption, petty jealousy, resistance to change, and a serious dispute concerning the privilege of ecclesiastical sanctuary for a criminal. The result was the tumult of 1624 and the overthrow of Gelves as viceroy. The latter years of his life were dedicated to exonerating the charges against him and his rule in Mexico. He continued to serve in the court of Philip IV, in the Spanish Guard, and on the war council. He died in 1636 in Madrid at the advanced age of seventy-nine, a devoted subject, soldier, and administrator to the Spanish Crown. Material for this dissertation was obtained from government documents, original manuscripts, and general resource materials. Unfortunately considerable material has either been destroyed during the four centuries since Gelves' death or scattered and uncatalogued in European archives. Much of the primary documentation comes from Spanish archives and from the Garcia Collection at the University of Texas at Austin.