Márquez, Leonardo (1820–1913)

Leonardo Márquez (b. 1820; d. 1913), Mexican general. His military career began in the 1830s in the Texas campaign. During the War of the Reform (1858–1860), he fought on the side of the Conservatives and later to support the monarchy of Maximilian during the period of the French Intervention (1862–1867). He is best known for three episodes: his order to execute captured Liberal officers and some doctors and medical students after the battle of Tacubaya (11 April 1859), an act that earned him the nickname of "Tiger of Tacubaya"; his 1861 orders to execute Melchor Ocampo, leading Liberal statesman, and General Leandro Valle; and his role in the mid-1867 siege of Querétaro, where he left Maximilian to find reinforcements and never returned, thus leaving the emperor to his fate. After the fall of the empire, Márquez went into exile in Cuba. He returned to Mexico in the 1890s, but upon the ouster of Porfirio Díaz, he went back to Havana, where he died three years later.

See alsoMexico, Wars and Revolutions: The Reform .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jesús De León Toral, Historia militar: la intervención francesa en México (1962).

Leonardo Márquez, Manifiestos (el imperio y los imperiales) (1904).

Additional Bibliography

Hamnett, Brian R. Juárez. New York: Longman, 1994.

Rodríguez O, Jaime E. The Divine Charter: Constitutionalism and Liberalism in Nineteenth-century Mexico. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005.

                                  Charles R. Berry