This is a synopsis of a book that Andrew Steen is writing about a famous group of Arabian horses obtained and imported to Spain in 1850 on behalf of Queen Isabel II. 

Fernando Muñoz

Among the eminent figures of the Royal Court was Fernando Muñoz, a dashing former palace guard who became Isabel’s step-father in 1833, less than three months after the death of her father, Spain’s last absolute monarch King Fernando VII.      Following his secret marriage to Maria Cristina, (which despite half-a-dozen children that were born in the interim, was not disclosed or officially acknowledged until 1845) Muñoz was given the title of Duke of Riánsares by young Queen Isabel.       Muñoz became one of (financial titan) José Salamanca’s partners and until 1868 when he and Maria Cristina were forced into exile in France, had amassed quite a large fortune on his own by speculating in railroads, mines, and real-estate.  He was so prominent, in fact, that a reporter for the London Times (none other than Carl Marx) once referred to the Regent-Queen as “Fernando Muñoz’ wife.” At one time they even offered the Crown of Ecuador to him, following its liberation from Spain, when that country was toying with the idea of becoming a monarchy.

     The Duke’s personal financial empire was derived in part from being the nation’s second largest private breeder of horses. He owned well over 100 broodmares. In 1846, Muñoz decided to purchase three Arabian stallions and a like number of mares directly from the Syrian Desert. Undoubtedly he had been motivated by the sound advice offered by Francisco Laiglesia, a gifted equestrian and author, who had grown up in London and translated several equestrian books written by the Duke of Newcastle. 
     In 1846 Muñoz was the President of the ‘Cria-Caballar del Reino’ (the Horse Breeders Society of the Kingdom); therefore, he deserves the credit for setting the importation’s wheels to spinning.  It is known that just prior to that time, on May 11, 1847, Isabel had asked Daniel Weisweiller to purchase two Thoroughbreds in England. However, she abruptly changed her capricious mind eighteen days later and ordered that ‘three or four Arabians from Alexandria’ be bought instead. In the same May 29 edict, scribbled in her almost unintelligible penmanship, she asked that the horses requisitioned through the Rothschild Bank be canceled.  It is not clear if her instructions arrived in time to invalidate Weisweiller’s order or not.
     In any event, Isabel’s whim to own a few “dapple grey saddle horses of the finest Nejed and Anazeh casts” took on a life of its own. Almost spontaneously, Muñoz’ importation scheme snowballed into a major effort that was closely monitored by the Prime Minister and his staff at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
     The Rothschild Bank in Paris was authorized to liberate 120,000 francs that were transferred to the account of Antonio de Cordoba, who for nearly twenty years had faithfully served Spain’s interests before the Sublime Porte. 
     He consulted his Consuls in Alexandria, Aleppo, Damascus, and Beirut, and by September 29, 1846, they had each replied recommending the same individual, a man who had “repeatedly journeyed to those regions for the purpose of buying Arabian horses”.  Such was the prestige that Nicolás Gliocho enjoyed throughout the Ottoman Empire at that time
     The career diplomat also arranged for the necessary Firman (or Irade as the edict was also called) from Abdül Mecid I (1823-1861), who had enjoyed his rank as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire since the age of sixteen, having been elevated to his lofty position with the blessing of the European Powers immediately after the Battle of Nizip (June 1839) against Muhammad Ali. 
     In return for Europe’s intervention to resolve Turkey’s troubles with the bloodthirsty Viceroy of Egypt, the young Sovereign granted numerous concessions, especially to England and Austria. He promulgated special laws to protect the rights of all Christians and allowed them to establish and operate missions within the confines of his Empire. 
     Gliocho’s scheduled departure from Constantinople was delayed for several months because of an outbreak of deadly Cholera, an epidemic that had originated in Damascus with a caravan returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca. It had quickly spread across all of the Arabian Peninsula, into Turkey, Persia, and parts of the Caucasia region of Russia, leaving thousands dead in its wake. Among its victims had been the First Secretary of the British Embassy, who died three days after his arrival in the capital by ship. The pestilence was carefully monitored and graphically described in the dispatches sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by Gerado de Souza, the Crown’s new envoy to Constantinople who had replaced Antonio de Cordoba.
     Consequently, it was not until November 26, 1847, that Gliocho departed by steamship to the Black Sea port of Samson and from there by Post-horse rode south to Mosul. 
     By coincidence or destiny, he and Layard were both present at the same location, in the same time. From the correspondence it is known that the Greek had dealings with all of the other principle characters of that celebrated discovery: Paul-Emile Botta, C. A. Rassam, Col. Rawlinson and Henry Ross.
     While in that city, Gliocho carried out a special mission without compensation as a personal favor to Antonio de Cordoba.  He journeyed to the nearby ruins of Nineveh and acquired three bas-reliefs, each measuring about 60 centimeters and weighing roughly 60 lbs. The magnificent sculptures are the only Assyrian relics to ever arrive in Spain. Since 1851 they have been housed in the museum at the Royal Academy of History in Madrid. Although they are not as massive as the ‘Winged Lion and Bull’ owned by the British Museum, they are nevertheless exceptionally beautiful, and of incalculable cultural and intrinsic value.
 

The stone reads: "Palace of Sennacherib/ Great King/ Universal King/  King of Asiria (Spanish spelling)/ Powerful Hero / Lord of all Princes". The words translated by J.F. Riaño.

     To transport the stones, he had bought a Persian stallion of the Kavajan cast, an animal that eventually arrived along with the purebred Arabians at the Royal Farm and became quite a famous sire of coach horses. The intricate details about the acquisition of the bas-reliefs from the Palace of Sennacherib and the knowledge that it was Gliocho who was responsible for obtaining them, resolved a long-standing mystery at that illustrious institution.  That account is just one of many extremely interesting aspects of this saga.
     After buying eight horses, Gliocho left them in Mosul with Rassam, and then vanished into the desert in the company of a Sheik of the Fedhan Shammar tribe and an entourage of Bedouin warriors.
     For the next eleven months not a word was received from him by either his wife or de Souza. Then suddenly, on October 25, 1848, Gliocho wrote from Baghdad, explaining that he had acquired not ten but, a total of twenty-seven Arabians (ten mares and sixteen stallions) of “the purest blood and finest quality.” Adding that he was about to commence his long march towards home.
     Other letters trickled-in over the next several months filled with astonishing accounts of attacks by Arab bandits trying to steal his horses and dramatic meteorological conditions, rivers in flood, and scorching desert heat. They also relate his rapidly deteriorating health, exacerbated by the punishing journey. An extract from Gliocho’s June 25, 1849, letter to his wife written from Mosul states:

“Although for some days I have felt better in these parts, I am not yet recovered; I always have pains in my chest and I tire at the slightest effort. In spite of that I have decided to renew the journey as soon as it is possible to do so. Which I hope will be next week- just as soon as it is possible to cross the new bridge over the Tigris, because if I attempt to transport the horses by boat they might possibly injure themselves. It is as difficult to find grooms as it is to find feed, I have resorted to using country peasants to lead the horses by hand. 
What an ordeal it has been to reach Diarbekir! 
The heat is intolerable; in my room with all of the doors and windows closed the temperature at this moment is 27 degrees Reaumur and its only ten o’clock in the morning. My sores are almost healed. Now, just looking at the scars you can figure how much I have suffered.
If you see Mr. Souza tell him my illness has made it impossible for me to correspond with him, that all of the stallions and mares are well, and that before setting out from here I will write him very extensively.
I was abandoned to myself and if I had not known how to cure my wounds on my own, things would have ended badly. Today I attached leaches, which I hope will put me in condition for the suffering of the journey that I am about to undertake. Upon my arrival at Diarbekir, I shall do the remainder of the trek on horseback.”

The agents of the Queen, looking out for their own interests, did their patriotic duty and arranged to ship all forty stallions and mares away, instead of the twenty-seven that Gliocho had bought with the Queen’s money.  They abandoned the Greek’s widowed wife and orphaned progeny to fend for themselves, then ordered that the horses be placed (in two groups of eight and two groups of fourteen) on the open decks of four Pacquet-Vapors which sailed at regular intervals every ten days from Constantinople to France.       During the voyage one of the mares died and Gorge Frifile was robbed of three thousand francs belonging to the Queen, and then falsely accused of the crime. Upon arrival to Marseilles each ship was subjected to a five-day quarantine, due to yet another outbreak of Cholera at Malta.

Francisco de Asis, husband of Queen Isabel II

     On September 9, 1850, with all of the horses on European soil, they began their march across the lovely southern French countryside. Almost every step of the remainder of their journey is beautifully documented, including detailed descriptions about the sickness of two of the horses, which were subsequently left behind. One caught-up at Naborron, having traveled on a train from Méze; the other was collected at Bayonne by one of Isabel’s most detrimental and notorious lovers, the Marquis de Bedmar.
     By way of Narbonne, Toulouse, Pau, and Bayonne, the horses and their escorts made their way through more inclement weather all the way across France to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to the Spanish frontier at Irun. Traversing the hills and rich green valleys of the Basque country they were led through the streets of Victoria and past the gothic cathedral of Burgos, then over the Jarama Mountains. Finally, on November 21, 1850, the cavalcade proudly marched through the neo-classical streets of Madrid and into the Royal Caballerizas. Although the local press ignored the horses, the city’s newspapers commented upon the variegated clothing worn by the thirty Arab, Persian, Turkish, Greek, Italian, French, and Spanish grooms, some of whom had come all the way from Baghdad.

     The second smaller painting owned by the Prado but on permanent display in the Museo Romántico is without a doubt the finest likeness ever done of the Queen. It portrays Isabel II, her husband Francisco de Asis, and the eight most important Spanish Generals of that era, (Castaños, Echagüe, Espartero, O’Donnell, Narváez, etc.) each mounted on one of the magnificent Arabian horses that had cost Gliocho his life. 

Copyright © 2004 by the Spanish Arabian Horse Society. 
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