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General (Brig. Gen.) Rafael de Nogales Méndez (1877-1937) with Ottoman Empire military uniform, selected awards and wearing the Ottoman-style 'kalpak' [Photograph by Lt. Jesús Ramón Blanco, 1918. Published 1934 by Ana Mercedes Pérez (1910-1994)].
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'De l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace - Boldness, and again boldness, and always boldness!’ (Danton, speech to the French Legislative Committee of General Defense, Paris, 1792).
'Always do what you are afraid to do' (Old and well-known saying popularized by R. W. Emerson in his Essay 'Heroism', 1841).
Written by Samir A. Sánchez (2016)
Photographs by Jesús R. Blanco, Rafael de Nogales, A. Arenas, Santiago X. Sánchez and Samir A. Sánchez
The Life of Action: General Rafael de Nogales Méndez
Sir Winston Churchill once wrote that "A man's life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action" (The Story of my Early Life - A Roving Commission, Charles Scribner's Book, New York, 1951, p. 113). General Rafael de Nogales Méndez's choice was clearly the active life. Driven by a spirit of adventure and a reliance on fortune, his vibrant life made him one of Táchira's most internationally renowned figures. He was known for his intrepidity, bravery, and mastery of his chosen professions: adventure and warfare.
Eighty years after his death, his exploits remain largely unknown, even though they are integral to his personal history. A thorough review of his life reveals a new descriptor for his personality: "The Wadi of the Desert." For nearly eighty years, he has been viewed as "unconventional" by many Tachirans and Venezuelans, and as a "mercenary" by many Western readers. This may explain my motivation to contribute to the understanding of his memoirs, adventures, and military exploits. However, a comprehensive critical biography is still needed. We, the people of Táchira, await a biography that meets rigorous scholarly standards.
A historical figure can be studied in numerous ways. One effective approach to understanding General Rafael de Nogales Méndez is to examine the key events that shaped his global adventures. As American essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) wrote, "There is properly no history; only biography. Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself.... Similarly, all public facts should be individualized, and all private facts generalized. Then, history becomes fluid and true, and biography profound and sublime." (Essays: First Series, 1841, Essay I, History)
This essay, intended as a comprehensive learning experience, provides an overview of his life, times, and endeavors, echoing Lacotte's sentiment, "les petites histoires font la grande Histoire." (Les Petites Histoires de la grande Histoire, Paris, 2009)
General Rafael de Nogales Méndez was born in San Cristóbal, Táchira State, Venezuela, on October 14, 1877, on "Calle de la Libertad" (present-day 3rd Street). Born within earshot of San Cristóbal's Cathedral bells, he became a military officer, adventurer, rebel, journalist (war correspondent), traveler, fighter against dictatorships, and author. He was baptized Pedro Rafael Inchauspe Méndez on March 19, 1878, in the Roman Catholic Church. His maternal grandparents, Luis María Méndez and Ana María Brito de Méndez, were his godparents.
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The General Rafael de Nogales Méndez's birthplace and childhood house, seen here, lies in the centre of the picture (house with dark walls, it was demolished cir. 1950). He was brought up in this house in San Cristóbal, Táchira State, in 1877. (Photograph by A. Arenas, 1920. He showed in picture the particular instant the play starts when the pitcher throws the ball toward the batter, a player on the Los Andes Baseball team. Early 20-century Baseball was extremely popular in San Cristóbal City) |
The question arises: who was Nogales? He provided a direct answer: "I am a caballero andante (knight-errant), a knight who seeks adventure... I consider myself a citizen of the world wherever something is being undertaken" (Memoirs of a Soldier of Fortune: General Rafael de Nogales, 1932). In modern terms, his youthful literary pursuits likely included "The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha" and tales of chivalry.
He was the first of four children of General Pedro Felipe Inchauspe Cordero (b. 1840 - d. December 25, 1890) [the scion of a wealthy family from the Spanish Colonial Period] and his wife, María Josefa Méndez Brito de Inchauspe (b. 1851 - d. 1893), married on May 6, 1875. The other siblings were Juana Josefa (b. June 7, 1880), Magdalena (b. November 19, 1881), and Ana María (b. September 2, 1883).
Pedro Rafael Inchauspe Méndez changed his original Basque paternal family name ("Inchauspe," Walnut trees) to its Spanish equivalent (de Nogales), and used only his first name. The change from "Inchauspe" to "de Nogales," and from Pedro to Rafael, during his time in Europe, was not only a deliberate Castilianization of his Basque family name, but also a symbol of his desire to make a name for himself.
Admitted to the German-speaking school in San Cristóbal, run by Theodor Messerschmidt (from Hamburg), he received his initial European primary education. Similarly, it was a tradition among the Táchira State elite to send their children abroad for education, away from the Andean village described by Fr. Pedro de Aguado OFM (16th-century) as "de alegre cielo y apacible temple" (cheerful sky and peaceful atmosphere).
Thus, Nogales identified himself as a person trained and disciplined in the strict and dominant Prussian education system of the late 19th-century ("Zeitgeist"), having lived in Germany since April 1886. He studied in Europe and attended Military Academies and Universities in Germany, Belgium, Spain, and later the Ottoman Army War College ("Erkân-ı Harbiye Mektebi"), and spoke Spanish, French, English, German, Turkish, and Italian fluently.
What surprised him was the position of difficulty; where there was a challenge, risk, or the need to take a calculated risk, he saw a potential personal challenge, perhaps because he "never lost sight of the forest among countless trees."
This idea was his philosophy of life: "Untying the Gordian knot, that's what I like most of all" (referring to situations where a difficult problem is solved by quick and decisive action), he wrote (Memoirs of a Soldier of Fortune: General Rafael de Nogales, 1932). Presumably, he agreed with Shakespeare's apothegm, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." (Shakespeare, Hamlet, act I, scene V)
A Spartan warrior and modern military officer, he fought for Spain against the Americans in the Spanish-American War (Cuba, 1898), though he was too young for a historic war. He received his "baptism of fire" at the Battle of San Juan Hill. He fought for Spain with intelligence and unwavering obstinacy. Like the British infantry in defense, he never gave in. Second Lieutenant Nogales Méndez was awarded the "Cruz al Mérito Militar" (Spanish Military Cross) for his prompt and effective action during the war. He witnessed the end of Spain's colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific, and the rise of the United States as a superpower, while the British Empire was still the world's greatest power, imbued with Victorian imperial grandeur.
After returning home to Venezuela, he traveled through Caracas, the Andes Mountains, and the vast areas of the Llanos. However, Nogales continued to be unpredictable. Dissatisfied with the governments of Generals Cipriano Castro and Juan Vicente Gómez, he formed underground groups that plotted to overthrow the Venezuelan dictatorial regimes (1900-1901 and 1911-1914). Consequently, Castro and Gómez exiled him from Venezuela until 1935.
At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Nogales joined the Ottoman Empire Army in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople). He served as an officer in the Expeditionary Persian Forces and the Ottoman Empire Army (as Mensil Comandane or Ottoman Military Governor of the Sinai Peninsula), and as an official of the German Empire and Prussia.
He also participated in the Mexican Revolution (1906) and the Nicaraguan Revolution (1927) with Sandino against "Dollar diplomacy" and the United States interventions in the Caribbean and Central America, aimed at safeguarding American financial interests in the region.
Thus, Nogales foresaw the dichotomy between "Estados ordenados" (industrialized or advanced countries) and "Estados desordenados" (non-developed or emerging countries), and provided a vivid and accessible portrait of the world and wars of the early 20th-century.
As a result of his participation in these wars, he received the title of Knight Commander of the Ottoman Order of the Medjidie, the Ottoman War Medal ("Harp Madalyası") or the Gallipoli Star, The Ottoman Order of Osmanieh, the Ottoman Imtiyaz Distinction Medal ("Nişan-ı İmtiyaz"), Ottoman Liyakat Medal in silver with swords and Sinai campaign clasp, the Military Merit Cross with Golden Swords (Austria-Hungary), Knight of the Order of the Crescent of the Ottoman Empire, Commander of the Elite Personal Army of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V Reşâd (1917-1918), and was awarded the Iron Cross (First Class and Second Class) by Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Nogales was the first Ottoman Military Governor over the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem ("Kudüs-i Şerif Mutasarrıflığı"), Nablus, Sinai, Gaza, and Acre. He visited the holy sites for Christians, Samaritans, Jews, and Muslims (The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Church of the Nativity, Mount Tabor, Church of the Annunciation, the Western Wall, Cave of the Patriarchs, the Dome of the Rock, and the Tomb of Lazarus), and these visits were chronicled in his memoirs (Four Years Beneath the Crescent, 1926).
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Second Gaza Battle and the Wadi of Desert. 'The Author' is written in Nogales' own handwriting. Nogales was General Officer Commanding of Third Division of Ottoman Empire Cavalry (Brigadier-general or Tuğgeneral of the Ottoman Empire Army), April 19, 1917 (Sinai and Palestine Campaign) [Photograph by Four Years Beneath the Crescent (1991, facsimile of the edition 1936)]. |
Furthermore, his skill in riding, his precise control over his horse while riding it, soberly uniformed and impetuous, similar in appearance to 'wadi of desert'*, earned his the affection of the soldiers, Bedouin, and officers, the nickname and Ottoman title of respect 'Nogales-Bey'**, however, he saw the extermination and deportations of Armenians (Siege of Van, 1915. Nogales Méndez, after the siege, wrote one of the best accounts of the battle and its consequences), and he had perceived and been at the decline of the Ottoman Empire (31 October 1918, the Armistice of Mudros), an ending in accordance with the Anatolian proverb, 'the fish begins to stink at the head.' Defeat in World War I (1914-1918) sealed the empire's fate.
Moreover, Nogales faced the Russians on the Liaodong Peninsula in the Qing Empire (China) during the Russo-Japanese War (1904), where he was wounded. Similarly, during his adventures in the West Indies, he was imprisoned in the Citadelle Laferrière fortress near Cap-Haïtien, Haiti, and sentenced to death by firing squad. However, he escaped his captors and fled to Santo Domingo city.
All his warhorses and mares were named with Spanish words, reflecting a longing for his distant Venezuelan Andean homeland, specifically his native Táchira. These names included ‘Zamuro’ (American Black Vulture), ‘Proscrito’ (Outlaw), ‘Cristalina’ (Crystalline), and ‘Dulcita’ (Sweetie).
With his boundless spirit of adventure, Nogales crossed countless boundaries and frontiers. He hunted wild beasts in Sumatra and the Sunda Islands, the antipodes of his native Táchira. He traveled through the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco, Portuguese West Africa, French Equatorial Africa (Congo), the Khedivate of Egypt, British India, Afghanistan, the British Province of Baluchistan (a region in southwestern Pakistan and southeastern Iran), Yemen Vilayet and Hejaz Vilayet (Ottoman Arabia), British Hong Kong and Macau Free Port, Italy, Switzerland, Britain, Ireland, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, the Lesser Antilles (Curaçao, Saba, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Martinique, Saint Lucia, Grenada, Trinidad), and Canada. He participated in the Alaskan Gold Rush, worked in the Nevada Second Mining Boom, was a cowboy in Texas and Arizona, and a whale fisherman in Alaska. He was also found in Hollywood, California, in early 1936, where he received a letter of thanks from Kaiser Wilhelm and his wife Empress Hermine, Princess of Schönaich-Carolath.
A legend recounts that during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, he came face-to-face with T. E. Lawrence on the frontier. They exchanged a look and parted without a word. Nogales has been compared to T. E. Lawrence due to their activities in Arabia, despite their different uniforms.
Whether true or embellished—relata refero—a Prussian World War I storyteller reported that British Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby, sent an officer to demand the surrender of the legendary Tachiran commander Rafael de Nogales Méndez. Undaunted, Nogales responded, 'I have no reply to make to your general except from the mouths of my cannons and by gunshots.' Apparently, Nogales Méndez echoed the words of the French commander Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, to English forces in Quebec in the winter of 1690.
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Brig. Gen. Nogales Méndez and the Third Division of Ottoman Empire Cavalry (with Lancers squadron in order of battle), he had organized the flanking attack and guard against Australians (7th Light Horse Regiment). Nogales and his cavalry, and his Bedouins, had drive them back. Sheik-Zowaüd (Egypt), 1917 (Sinai and Palestine Campaign) [Photograph by Four Years Beneath the Crescent (1991, facsimile of the edition 1936)]. |
He was the only Latin American soldier who fought in World War I—one of the most violent and destructive wars in European history—with the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria) without swearing an oath of loyalty to their flag, relinquishing his Venezuelan citizenship, or obtaining leave. He served solely on his Parole d'Honneur (word of honor).
As previously mentioned, Nogales Méndez, a highly educated man, was also a member of the American Geographical Society, the oldest geographical society in the Western Hemisphere; the Royal Geographical Society (United Kingdom); and Die Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin (the Geographical Society of Berlin).
‘Out, out, brief candle! / Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player.’
In his final journey, the warrior returned to his birthplace, San Cristóbal, Táchira State, during the second half of March 1936. He came to his own land, but his own people did not recognize him. Those days, a visit to his homeland and familiar domains, were a nostalgic journey down memory lane for the dauntless and noble General.
General Nogales Méndez died from a post-surgical infection in Panama City on July 10, 1937, at the age of 59. In that moment, as he faced the inexorable return to dust, he may have recalled Shakespeare’s tragedies: ‘The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! / Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more: it is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing’ (Shakespeare, Macbeth, act V, scene V).
He was in Panama on an official Venezuelan mission. Nogales's body was brought back to Venezuela, and his funeral took place on Monday, August 2, at the Cementerio General del Sur (South General Cemetery of Caracas). He was largely forgotten and denied a military funeral and full burial honors befitting his rank of Brigadier-General ('Tuğgeneral' of the Ottoman Empire Army).
On August 30, 1937, Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor (or former Kaiser), his friend, sent a bronze wreath to the cemetery in Caracas. This was delivered by Captain Max Friedrich Graf Westerholt Gysenberg, the husband of Ana María Inchauspe Méndez and brother-in-law of General Nogales. The wreath bore an embossed German inscription, translated as, 'To Rafael de Nogales Méndez, Generalissimo in the Great War, one of the most courageous and noble knights that ever I have known.'
In an attempt to understand the lasting legacy of this extraordinary individual...
General Rafael de Nogales Méndez has become a Táchira legend, his name spoken with respect, reminiscent of Harold Glen Borland's words: 'When the legends die, the dreams end. / When the dreams end, there is no more greatness' (When the Legends Die, Philadelphia, 1963).
Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852-1936) wrote, 'He is the D'Artagnan of this century' (early 20th century), and Peter Englund, Swedish author and historian, stated, 'If anyone deserves the title “international adventurer”, he does' (The Beauty and the Sorrow, An Intimate History of the First World War, translated by Peter Graves, New York, 2011).
On the whole, General Rafael de Nogales Méndez wrote several books about his experiences:
Four Years Beneath the Crescent (1926, original in Spanish).
A Brave Enemy, now a Trusty Friend (1924, prologued by British Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby, his former brave enemy. Original in English).
The Looting of Nicaragua (1928, original in Spanish).Memoirs of a Soldier of Fortune: General Rafael de Nogales (1932-1934, and announced by Lowell Thomas, U.S. traveler, writer, broadcaster and best known as the man who made Lawrence of Arabia famous. The prologue to the English edition was written by Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, Scottish politician, writer, journalist and adventurer, the first-ever socialist member of Parliament of the United Kingdom. Original in English).Silk Hat and Spurs (1934, original in English).
* Wadi: Semitic-speaking peoples term, traditionally referring to a dry (ephemeral) riverbed desert or steep-sided watercourse, in dry regions of North Africa through which water flows -a flood-, only after heavy rainfalls.
** Bey: Governor or Prince, a title and respectful form of address used for various high-ranking officials in the Ottoman Empire, especially the governor of a province distinguished by his own flag (sancak).
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Monument aux morts de la Grande Guerre - Memorial Park Grande Guerre, Hendaye (France) [Photograph by Samir A. Sánchez, Boulevard du Général De Gaulle, Hendaye, 2013]. |
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On the wall of ‘Edificio Santa Cecilia’ (the Saint Cecilia Building, this place was the birthplace and early boyhood home of General Nogales Méndez), in San Cristóbal Downtown, you read this inscription: ‘General Rafael de Nogales Méndez /the Most Universal Tachiran of all Times//He was born in this place on 14 October 1877/Died in Panama City on 10 July 1937/The Government of State of Táchira/San Cristóbal, 14 October 1997’ (Photograph by Santiago X. Sánchez, 2016). |