General Joachin Vara Del Rey, The Cavalry History, Collectable Figurine, Horseman Figurine The Cavalry History, a reproduction of riders from different eras to trace the evolution and history, reproduced in standard 1/30th, or 54mm, a collection of Del Prado. The figurines are made in a stable alloy of lead and zinc, with a remarkable finish, both in terms of casting, as paint. Hand painted. Joaquin Vara de Rey y Rubio was a Spanish military officer, born on the Balearic island of Ibiza on August 14, 1841. He graduated second from the Colegio General, reaching the rank of first lieutenant in 1862. During the 1870s he fought cantonalist uprisings in Cartagena and Valencia and against the Carlists in the Third Carlist War. He requested a transfer to the Philippines in 1884 and remained there until 1890, serving as military political governor of the Mariana Islands and Zamboanga. In 1891 he was promoted to colonel and returned to Spain, where he was given command of the Avila garrison. In 1895, Vara de Rey volunteered for service in Cuba. He commanded the Spanish forces in Bayamo and led his regiment to victory at the Battle of Loma del Gato in which the Spanish killed revolutionary general José Maceo Grajales, brother of Antonio Maceo Grajales. On July 1, 1898, during the Spanish-American War, Vara de Rey, then a brigadier general, with only 550 men and two 80 mm mountain guns under his command, heroically defended the village of El Caney for ten hours against the some seven thousand-strong 2nd Divisions of the United States Army under the command of Brigadier General Henry Ware Lawton. Its well-placed defenses were centered around small, well-covered blockhouses arranged so that an enemy attack on an individual blockhouse would draw supporting fire from several others. Vara de Rey lost both a brother and a nephew in the battle and was himself mortally wounded in the fighting; only 84 Spanish soldiers survived and retreated to Santiago de Cuba. Impressed by his rank of general, American troops buried Vara de Rey with full military honors. American accounts of the campaign praised the "magnificent courage" of Vara de Rey's soldiers and described the man as "an incomparable leader, a heroic soul." The remains of Vara de Rey were repatriated to Spain in November 1898 with American cooperation. He was posthumously awarded the Laureate Cross of St. Ferdinand, Spain's highest military decoration. Weight 266gr