President of Peru. He received a place in history after becoming the first constitutional civilian President in the Republic of Peru from 1872 to 1876. Prior to that position, he was the mayor of the capital city of Lima, Peru from 1869 to 1870. His father was the noted political author Felipe Prado y Aliaga. While his father was exiled in Chile, he attended local schools there before going to Lima in 1848 to study, then graduated with honors from University of Barcelona in Spain majoring in economics, and later studied literature in Paris, France. Upon returning from Paris in 1865, he was appointed the Minister of Finance serving Mariano Ignacio Prado, who served Peru as a Dictator, Provisional President, and Constitutional President. He left that appointment after a short time to devote himself to his family's villa. He moved to Jauja when his health declined in 1859. At this point he published an essay which opened the doors to his political life. He had developed an ideology similar to the decades-old one of his father's. During the next few years, he worked on various trade agreements between Great Britain and Peru as the head of the Guano Consignment Company, had land dealings in northern Peru, and director of the South American Company of Maritime Insurance and Fire. He was elected director of the Society of Public Welfare in Lima in 1868. As the mayor of Lima starting in 1869, he built a state-controlled hospital and established a bank. On April 24, 1871 he started the political Civil Party to represent the aristocratic population, then became a candidate for the presidency, and won the election in 1872 after the coup and 4-day term of Colonel Thomas Gutierrez, the self-proclaimed “Supreme Leader of the Republic.” During the unrest of the coup, he took refuge in the Brazilian embassy. Upon coming to office on August 2, 1872, he found the country had a dire fiscal deficit and attempted to remedy this situation with a tax increase and a review of the international contracts for the sale of the fertilizer, guanco. The situation grew worst and Peru was on the verge of bankruptcy. He also signed the Treaty of Defensive with Bolivia in 1873 making the countries allies in the case of war. The treaty later serve as a reason for Chile to declare the Pacific War. He started reforms in public education and supported intellectual culture, such as the National Club. He supported immigration and received 3,000 Europeans in a year to settle in an underpopulated areas. During his presidential term an attempted assassination was made. Pardo managed to fulfill his presidential term to 1876 and handed the office to his chosen successor General Mariano Ignacio Prado, who had held the office earlier. On June 4, 1877, there was an unrest at a fort where he was staying resulting in him escaping to France then being exile to Chile. While in Chile, he was elected to the Peruvian Congress. After being appointed president of the Senate, he was assassinated by a bullet in the back at the hands of, Melchor Montoya, a young sergeant major in the Peruvian army, who was standing armed guard in the Congress. With several physicians at his side, he bled to death within thirty minutes but not before he forgave the man who shot him. It has been said that Peru lost one of its most important leaders, only one month before the most disastrous event in the republic's history, the Pacific War with Chile. He married Maria Ignacio Josefa de Barrenda Y Osma, the daughter of a wealthy business man. The couple had ten children with the third son becoming President of the Republic of Peru twice in the 20th century.