Antonio Zayas y Potau, Marquis de Zayas

Antonio de Zayas y Potau, II marqués de Zayas (1766–1837)

Antonio de Zayas y Potau was a Spanish professional officer of noble rank who rose to teniente general. In the period of the Napoleonic Wars he appears both in field command and in senior provincial responsibilities, including service as gobernador in Salamanca and later as comandante en armas of Toledo.

Born at Mora (Toledo) on 20 October 1766, Zayas entered the Spanish Army as a cadet and followed a long, conventional career of promotion through the late Bourbon and Revolutionary/Napoleonic era. By the time of the Peninsular War he is consistently styled by title as the marqués de Zayas, and he is attested in command appointments that imply general-officer standing.

In Salamanca, Zayas is documented as the city’s military governor in the years immediately preceding the 1808 uprising. Contemporary and near-contemporary narratives place him in the civic-military interface: he acted in an official capacity during late-1806 ceremonial business in the Plaza Mayor, and in May 1808 he issued public-order measures affecting the University, including directing closure of the academic course and requiring non-resident students to depart within a short period after news from Madrid inflamed local tensions. During the June 1808 unrest in the city, accounts describe the governor taking refuge under ecclesiastical protection amid threats from crowds in the Plaza Mayor.

In active operations during the early campaigning of 1808, Zayas is named among senior Spanish commanders moving through Salamanca in the wake of the defeat at Medina de Rioseco. By the 1809 campaign, he is explicitly listed among the commanders of Cuesta’s Spanish formations at Talavera, where the allied Anglo-Spanish army faced the French in late July 1809; in the contemporary order-of-battle style narratives he appears as “the marqués de Zayas” in command of one of the Spanish infantry divisions within Cuesta’s line.

After the principal fighting of the Peninsular War, Zayas continued in senior rank. Biographical reference notices identify him as a teniente general and associate him with the post of comandante en armas of Toledo. He died in 1837.

Sources

• Real Academia de la Historia (Historia Hispánica): “Antonio Zayas y Potau”
• Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa: “Zayas y Potau, Antonio de, Marqués de Zayas, 1766–1837”
• Emilio Martín Serna: “Salamanca, una ciudad expoliada, destruida y ocupada en las Guerras Peninsulares 1808–1813” (PDF)
• Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes: “Godoy y Meléndez Valdés en la Salamanca de 1805–1808”
• The Napoleon Series: “The Spanish at Talavera (28-7-1809)”
• Conde de Toreno (Project Gutenberg): Historia del levantamiento, guerra y revolución de España