Carlos Martínez de Irujo, 1st Marquess of Casa Irujo
Narciso Fernández de Heredia | |
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Personal details | |
Born | Carlos Martínez de Irujo y Tacón 4 December 1763 Cartagena, Murcia, Spain |
Died | 17 January 1824 (aged 58) Madrid, Spain |
Spouse | Sarah McKean |
Carlos Martínez de Irujo y Tacón, 1st Marquess of Casa Irujo (4 December 1763, in Cartagena – 17 January 1824, in Madrid), was a Spanish prime minister and diplomat, Knight of the Order of Charles III and public official. He was appointed the Spanish chief diplomat to the United States on 25 August 1796.
Biography
His father was Manuel Martinez de Irujo y de Erice and his mother Narcisa Tacón y Gamiz (born Beriain, Navarre, 1740). He had two siblings, Narcisa Martínez de Irujo y Tacón and María Rafaela Martínez de Irujo y Tacón.
Casa Irujo (often spelled Yrujo) was the Spanish
He was Secretary of state (Prime Minister) of Spain (ministro de estado) three times, first in 1812, then in an interim capacity from 1818 to 1819, and finally for a few weeks from December 1823 until his death in January 1824.
In 1794 while an attaché at the Spanish embassy in London he had an illegitimate daughter named Lavinia de Irujo. Lavinia herself later gave birth to two daughters Fredericka and Frances out of wedlock, the father being Major Charles Jones (father of Ernest Charles Jones, a poet, dramatist and novelist.) There are several drawings of Lavinia by the artist Henry Fuseli (1741-1825).
In 1798 Don Carlos married Sarah McKean, the daughter of Pennsylvania governor
Character
"He was an obstinate, impetuous and rather vain little person with reddish hair; enormously wealthy, endlessly touchy, extremely intelligent and vastly attractive … he liked America, he understood it and enjoyed it; he was tremendously popular at
— from Aaron Burr, Samuel H. Wandell, Meade Minnigerode, 1925.
Yrujo was doubly and trebly attached to the Administration. Proud as a typical Spaniard should be, and mingling and infusion of vanity with his pride; irascible, headstrong, indiscreet as was possible for a diplomatist, and afraid of no prince or president; young, able, quick, and aggressive; devoted to his King and country; a flighty and dangerous friend, but a most troublesome enemy; always in difficulties, but in spite of fantastic outbursts always respectable,—Yrujo needed only the contrast of characters such as those of Pickering or Madison to make him the most entertaining figure in Washington politics. He loved the rough-and-tumble of democratic habits, and remembered his diplomatic dignity only when he could use it as a weapon against a secretary of state. If he thought the Government to need assistance or warning, he wrote communications to the newspapers in a style which long experience had made familiar to the public and irritating to the Government whose acts he criticized.
- from The First Administration of Thomas Jefferson, Part I, Chapter 17