Diego García de Paredes

For his son, the conquistador, see Diego García de Paredes (conquistador).

Diego García de Paredes
Nickname(s)	El Sansón de Extremadura ("The Extremaduran Samson") El Hércules de España ("The Spanish Hercules")
Born	30 March 1468 Trujillo, Spain
Died	15 February 1533 (aged 64) Bolonia, Holy Roman Empire
Allegiance	Spain
Years of service	1485–1533
Rank	Maestre de campo
Battles/wars	Granada War 3rd Turkish-Venetian War Kefalonia (1500) 2nd Italian War Ruvo (1503) Cerignola (1503) Garigliano (1503) War of League of Cambrai Battle of Ravenna (1512) Battle of La Motta (1513) Italian War of 1521–1526 Battle of Noáin (1521)
Awards	Order of the Golden Spur
Other work	Marquis of Colonetta (1504–1507)

Diego García de Paredes (1468–1533) was a Spanish soldier, mercenary and duelist. He played a distinguished role in the Spanish armies during the Italian Wars, the Mediterranean conflicts against the Ottoman Empire and the early wars of Emperor Charles V. Known as the "Extremaduran Samson" and the "Spanish Hercules", he was celebrated by his great strength, battle feats and long history of duels, eventually becoming a figure of legend in the Spanish and Italian armies.

Biography

He was born in Trujillo, Extremadura, which lies between Badajoz and Madrid. It produced many of the most noted conquistadores of America, including the Pizarro family. Information is scarce about his upbringing, but he it is known he learned to read and write and was trained in military arts by his father, in which he proved so strong and talented that he routinely defeated all of his training partners. He might have served as a teenager in the Granada War, but even if it was the case, the conquest of the last Muslim stronghold and the end of hostilities in Spain drove him and his half-brother Álvaro to start a career abroad as mercenaries. Before this, he might have had killed a relation of his own, Ruy Sanchez de Vargas, in a street fight arising out of a quarrel about a horse.

Mercenary in Italy

They landed in 1496 in Naples, where, according to Paredes himself, they temporally survived by challenging street thugs to duels and stealing their belongings after besting them. Eventually, they contacted their relative, Cardinal Bernardino López de Carvajal, a favorite of Pope Alexander VI who was in conflict with the barons of the Romagna and took Diego and Álvaro into his service. The brothers were later promoted to Papal troops, reportedly after the Pope heard of a street brawl where Diego and Álvaro, along with Gonzalo Pizarro Sr. and four other Spaniards, defeated an entire squad of Papal soldiers, "killing five, mauling ten, and leaving all the rest well battered and knocked out", with Diego not wielding a sword, but a heavy iron bar used in a weight throw game called tirar la barra. The Pope's son Cesare Borgia recruited García to drown a revolt in Montefiascone, in which the Spaniard infiltrated the citadel by night and pried off the gate's locks with his enormous strength, letting the rest of the army in to take the castle easily.

In 1500, in midst of a war between the Borgias and Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, García was expelled from the Papal army after dueling and killing the Italian captain Cesare Romano, who had insulted Garcia for shouting the name of Spain during a battle. As Paredes himself admits in a brief autobiography, Romano had openly surrendered, but the Spaniard pretended not to hear his pleas and killed him. Paredes was imprisoned, but he broke out of his cell and killed multiple guards with a stolen halberd before escaping. He pledged his loyalty to the Duke of Urbino, advising him on how to defeat the Papal army. Paredes performed a ruse in which he disguised himself and 1,000 arquebusiers as Venetian soldiers coming to reinforce the Papal camp, thanks to which they entered freely, captured easily the camp, and ambushed the real Venetian reinforcements after changing disguises. He then offered his services to the Colonna family, serving briefly under Prospero Colonna before reuniting with the Spanish army under the "Great Captain", Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba.

Cephalonia and return to Rome

As part of Córdoba's army, Paredes fought in the 1500 campaign to retake the Venetian island of Cephalonia from the Ottoman Empire. During the subsequent siege of the Castle of Saint George, the Turks used an especially designed crane to hoist enemy soldiers and capture them or let them fall to their death, and Paredes was one of the men caught by the engine. However, he held on to the hook and let himself be taken to the enemy wall, and once there he attacked fiercely the Ottoman defenders, repealing the castle's garrison during three entire days and killing many of them until being finally captured by exhaustion and hunger. Paredes capitalized on his imprisonment in the fortress to recover, and as soon as he heard the Spaniards assaulting the walls again, he broke his chains, seized weapons and started fighting the Turks from the inside, eventually helping the rest of the army take the castle.

Paredes' role in the battle increased his fame until becoming a legend in his time. It was claimed that he had killed as many enemies in Cephalonia as the rest of the army did put together, and he was granted the nicknames of El Sansón de Extremadura ("The Extremaduran Samson") and El Hércules de España ("The Spanish Hercules") for his incredible strength and battle prowess. After returning to the Spanish home base of Sicily, García found himself inactive again, so he went back to work as a mercenary in mainland Italy. Despite his earlier betrayal, he was welcomed by Cesare Borgia due to his newfound renown, being appointed colonel of his armies and undertaking campaigns in Rimini, Fosara and Faenza. However, this stint was short-lived, as Spanish army called him back with the outbreak of the Third Italian War.

Naples War

The war between Ferdinand V of Castile and Louis XII of France saw García being drafted again to the armies of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba in 1502. The Spaniards were initially pushed back, and Córdoba ordered the army to make the city Barletta their quarters while waiting reinforcements. In the meanwhile, diplomacy with the French led to a knightly contest in September, which granted Paredes a new chance to show his abilities. The enemy contingent included the famed Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard.

The challenge, which came to be known as the Challenge of Barletta (not to be confused with the following's year Challenge of Barletta), took place on September 20 and pitted eleven French men-at-arms led by Pierre Terrail against eleven Spanish soldiers led by Diego de Vera, all fighting on horse. During its course, despite their lesser familiarity with the knighly rules, the Iberians eventually got the advantage in the five-hour battle, killing the French horses and one of their men, and pressing them to the point of forcing the knights to use the dead animals as an improvised wall. As the Spaniards failed at penetrating their defenses, the judges proposed to end the contest as a draw, but Paredes refused and stated that only by death he would leave the battlefield. Having broken both his lance and sword, he seized the field's heavy boundary stones and started pelting the French knights with them, making them abandon their positions and run away from the field themselves. Still, the judges decreed a draw, praising the Spaniards for their skill and the French for their resistance.

Paredes further distinguished himself in their grand victory over the French in the Battle of Cerignola, and shortly after, in the months previous to the more instrumental Battle of the Garigliano, he found himself starring in yet another memorable showing.

During the impasse between the Spanish and French armies at both sides of the Garigliano river, he advised Córdoba to engage in action, but the general, being ill and waiting for reinforcements, disagreed with his approach. His rebuttal offended Paredes, who promptly went alone to the river and, arming himself with a zweihänder and placing himself in a narrow bridge, challenged the French camp to come at him. Paredes began effectively fighting alone the entire French army, whose infantry flocked to the bridge to reach him yet were continuously cut down by the Spaniard, who capitalized on the passage's narrowness to prevent them from swarming him. The brawl became out of control and summoned both armies to the river, with the French artillery being brought against them, after which Paredes' comrades managed to drag him back to the safety of their lines. They left behind around 500 French soldiers either killed by his hand or drowned in the river in the attempt to escape from him.

Either real or exaggerated, the anecdote only added to Paredes' legend. Chronicler Hernán Pérez del Pulgar, a contemporaneous to Gonzalo de Córdoba, described it as, "...with the two-handed longsword he got himself among them, and fighting like a brave lion he started making such proof of his might that it was never surpassed by Hector and Julius Caesar, nor Alexander the Great and other ancient brave captains, looking truthfully like another Horatius in his effort and spirit." Still, Córdoba scolded Paredes for his insubordination and recklessness, and the fact that García got out of the stunt almost unhurt was considered a miracle.

This and his role in the Battle of the Garigliano led the French to call García Le Grand Diable ("The Great Devil"). It was first given to him by Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, an ally to the French, who barely missed being struck down by Paredes' halberd during the battle and was forced to flee on horse. The war concluded in Spanish victory in the 1505 Treaty of Lyon.

Later career

Córdoba had given Paredes the Marquisate of Colonnetta after their victory in 1504, which he retained during his role in the capture of Mers-el-Kébir and other battles in Africa, but he would lose it three years later when Córdoba fell out of favor in Ferdinand's court. Disappointed by the treatment given to Córdoba and himself, Paredes left the army and became a pirate with the secret support of another of their war comrades, the admiral Juan de Lezcano. He attacked ships and ports of any nationality, including Spanish, which got a bounty placed on him, although he especially focused on French and Muslim prey. With the death of Ferdinand, he was pardoned and welcomed back to service, partaking in the conquest of Oran commanded by another of Córdoba's underlings, Pedro Navarro.

Paredes balanced his participation in the Spanish conquests in Northern Africa with a more international role, being handpicked by Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor to captain a portion of the forces of the League of Cambrai, and later by Pope Julius II for his 1511 Holy League.

He might have fought in the ill-fated Battle of Ravenna, where his brother Álvaro García was killed. In any case, Paredes was later captured in a subsequent French ambush after receiving three musket wounds, but he escaped by throwing himself off a bridge along with the four knights that were needed to drag him, swimming away while they drowned. He reached the safety of Prospero Colonna's allied camp, where he recovered, but two months later he was challenged by a Spanish captain, Bartolomé Palomino, who blamed him for the death of many of his comrades while solely he escaped. The two dueled, and although Paredes was wounded early in an arm, his own strike in response amputated Palomino's limb. The latter refused to surrender and wielded the sword with his other hand, but García took him down and was ready to behead him before the judges intervened to grant Paredes the victory.

In 1513, García took part in another knightly battle, which now included his old partner Gonzalo Pizarro and an Alvarado (identified as a relative to future conquistador Pedro de Alvarado). The Spaniards won again, with Paredes personally killing two French knights who happened to be brothers, leading later to a third brother challenging Paredes to a singles duel. Being the receptor of the challenge, García required the duel to be fought with two large iron maces he produced. The Frenchman discovered he could not properly lift his mace and instead attacked Paredes illegally with his sword, wounding him in the hip, but Paredes could easily swing around his own mace and quickly struck the knight in the head, killing him. Only a few days later, the Battle of La Motta gave Paredes and the Spaniards victory over the French.

Last days and death

In 1520, Paredes was drafted into the guard of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, and fought in the Battle of Noáin and a skirmish against the Ottomans on the Danube, among others. Poet Luis Zapata de Chaves claimed García fought in the Battle of Pavia, after which he would have been tasked with watching over the captured King Francis I of France, although this is unproven. He might or might not also have been present in the Siege of Vienna against the Ottomans.

García died in Bologna in 1534 by a fall while engaged in a game of kicking a stick placed on a high wall with some of the younger officers of the army. His body was carried to his native town Trujillo, and buried in the church of Santa María la Mayor in 1545.

He never commanded an army or rose to the position of a general, but he was a notable figure in the wars of the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century, when personal prowess had still a considerable share in deciding combat. His strength, daring, and activity fitted him to shine in operations largely composed of night marches, escalades, surprises and hand-to-hand combat. He was also reputed to be undisputed in over 300 singles duels. In the Brief Summary of his life and deeds attributed to him during his deathbed, and printed at the end of the Chronicle of the Great Captain, published in 1584 at Alcalá de Henares, Paredes modestly lays no claim to having done more than was open to a very athletic man.

He had a son, also named Diego García de Paredes, who became a conquistador and founded several cities in Venezuela.

In literature

In Don Quixote, the curate holds Diego up as an example of a real hero about whom one should read rather than about the lies in the tales of chivalry (Part I Chapter XXXII).

References

• Fernández, Alonso (1627). Historia y Anales de la ciudad y obispado de Plasencia. Juan González.
• García de Paredes, Diego (1586). Breve suma de la vida y hechos de Diego García de Paredes. Hernán Ramírez.
• Pérez del Pulgar, Hernán (1527). Breve parte de las hazañas del excelente nombrado Gran Capitán. Jacobo Cromberger.
• Rodríguez Villa, Antonio (1908). Crónicas del Gran Capitán. Bailly.
• Tamayo de Vargas, Tomás (1621). Diego García de Paredes y relación breve de su tiempo al rey católico Felipe IV.
• Zurita, Jerónimo (1580). Historia del rey Don Fernando el Católico. De las empresas, y ligas de Italia.