Morillo y Pérez del Villar, Aníbal. Count of Cartagena. Madrid, 23.III.1865 - Lausanne (Switzerland), 25. Diplomat and philanthropist. Son of Pablo Morillo y Villar, II Count of Cartagena, and María de las Mercedes Pérez y García de la Prada. He was the grandson of Pablo Morillo, the famous general who defended Spanish sovereignty in the South American territories. He succeeded his older brother, Pablo Morillo y Pérez, in the merits of Count of Cartagena and Marquis of La Puerta, which his grandfather had won in America. A bachelor with a large fortune, discreet in conduct and with friends in the diplomatic world, Alfonso XIII entrusted him with a difficult mission: to re-establish (in 1912) relations with the dictatorial Venezuela of General Juan Vicente Gómez, with whom Morillo met in his capacity as envoy (ambassador) extraordinary. In 1913 he decided to undertake an extensive tour of the Balkan countries, which had just recovered from two bitter battles. As a result of Morillo's risky journey - as well as the political impressions he was able to convey to Alfonso XIII - the monarch decided to recommend him for a post of the utmost importance: ambassador to Saint Petersburg. On 16 March 1914 Morillo presented his credentials to Tsar Nicholas II at the Tsarkoie Selo Palace. The scale of the first clashes between the Russian and German armies - the battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes (August-September 1914) - together with the Austrian disasters on the Dvina and Danube fronts, showed Morillo the seriousness of 

an aid problem that, within a few months, seemed intractable: The aid to 150,000 Russian prisoners, in addition to the information requested by his colleague Castro in Vienna on the fate of half a million Austro-Hungarian captives interned in camps on the eastern slopes of the Urals. After the severe Tsarist defeats in the winter of 1915, the number of Russian prisoners in Austro-German concentration camps approached one million. Morillo was confronted with the impassivity of the Tsarist governments and with the rudeness of Polo de Bernabé in Berlin, on whom he depended to expedite his burdensome humanitarian work. The two ambassadors did not see eye to eye, although Morillo always maintained (in his correspondence with the heads of the Ministry of State) respectful treatment of Polo de Bernabé, who did not reciprocate in his letters to the former. Morillo held on to his post while Dato was at the head of the Government (until December 1915). The arrival to power of Romanones' liberals put an end to his mission in St Petersburg, from which he was relieved in April 1916 by the Marquis of Villasinda, Luis Valera y Delavat, previously ambassador to Lisbon. Villasinda's management was woefully ineffective for the Spanish welfare cause; all the more so when, months later, the Russian contingents held captive in Germany reached the overwhelming figure of three and a half million men, a third of whom were seriously ill or crippled and the rest impoverished, with the exception of the bulk of the officer corps. When Morillo left, he entrusted his guardianship to the first secretary, Justo Garrido, who took over the embassy when the Bolshevik Revolution triumphed. On his return from Russia, no diplomatic assignment awaited the Count of Cartagena, which was as ungrateful for him as it was sterile for Spanish foreign policy, given his probity and generosity, as yet unrecognised. He resigned on 19 March 1917, the day before the García Prieto government replaced that of Romanones. Had the liberal executives renewed their confidence in him and provided him with greater resources, the political neutralism that Morillo represented would have prevailed in the decadent tsarist world and, in combination with his British colleague James Buchanan and his French colleague Maurice Paleologue, might have prevented the tragic end of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, held hostage by the most exalted Bolsheviks and executed by them despite the efforts of Alfonso XIII (in the presence of the British Royal Family).