Francisco de Miranda
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| Francisco de Miranda | |
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| March 28, 1750 – July 14, 1816 | |
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| Nickname | El Precursor El Primer Venezolano Universal |
| Place of birth |  Caracas, Venezuela |
| Place of death |  Cádiz, Spain |
| Allegiance | Spain France Venezuela United States |
| Years of service | 1773 - 1812 |
| Rank | Generalissimo |
| Battles/wars | American Revolutionary War French Revolution Venezuelan War of Independence |
Sebastián Francisco de Miranda y Rodríguez (Caracas, March 28, 1750 – in prison, Arsenal de la Carraca, Cadiz, July 14, 1816), commonly known as Francisco de Miranda, was a Venezuelan revolutionary. Although his own plans for the independence of the Spanish American colonies failed, he is regarded as a forerunner of Simón Bolívar, who during the Hispanic American wars of independence successfully liberated a vast portion of South America. Miranda led a romantic and adventurous life. An idealist, he developed a visionary plan to liberate and unify all of Spanish America. His military initiatives failed in 1812, and he was handed over to his enemies, dying four years later in a Spanish prison dungeon. Within fourteen years of his death, most of Spanish America was independent.
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[edit] Early Life
Sebastian Francisco de Miranda was born on March 28th, 1750 in Caracas, Venezuela. His father, Sebastian de Miranda Ravelo, was wealthy merchant from the Canary Islands, and his mother, Francisca Antonia Rodríguez de Espinoza, was wealthy Venezuelan. Growing up, Miranda enjoyed a wealthy upbringing, attending the finest private schools, while being slightly discriminated against for his roots. Miranda was not necessarily a member of high society growing up, as his heritage was continually put into question by the Criollo Aristocracy. As a result of this, Miranda grew up very conceited (At one point tracing his ancestry back to the Dukes of Miranda in Spain, and finding his family seal) and arrogant. This would eventually hurt him, as it resulted in insubordination, while in the Army.
[edit] United States and France
In the American Revolutionary War, he commanded Spanish troops aiding American insurgents in Florida and Mississippi. While in the United States, he met with, among others, George Washington, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson. He had a home in London, where he married a British lady and had two children. During this time he met Colonel William S. Smith, secretary to John Adams's American Legation.
[edit] Stages in England, Prusia, Turkey and Russia during the period 1786 - 1790.
[edit] Miranda during the French Revolutionary Period
From 1791, Miranda took an active part in the French Revolution. In Paris, he befriended the Girondists Jacques Pierre Brissot and Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, and he briefly served as a general in the section of the French Revolutionary Army commanded by Charles François Dumouriez, fighting in the 1792 campaign in the Low Countries.
Miranda was first arrested in April 1793 on the orders of Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville, Chief Prosecutor of the Revolution, and accused of conspiring against the republic with Charles François Dumouriez, the renegade general. Though indicted before the Revolutionary Tribunal – and under attack in Jean-Paul Marat's L'Ami du peuple – he conducted his defence with such calm eloquence that he was declared innocent. Even so, the campaign of Marat and rest of the Jacobins against him did not weaken. He was arrested again in July 1793, when he was incarcerated in La Force prison, effectively one of the ante-chambers of death during the prevailing Reign of Terror. Appearing again before the tribunal, and mustering all his soldierly courage, he accused the Committee of Public Safety of tyranny, in disregarding his previous acquittal.
Miranda seems to have survived by a combination of good luck and political expediency: the revolutionary government simply could not agree what to do with him. He remained in La Force even after the fall of Robespierre in July 1794, and was not finally released until the January of the following year. Now convinced that the whole direction taken by the Revolution had been wrong, he started to conspire with the moderate royalists against the Directory, and was even named as the possible leader of a military coup. He was arrested and ordered out of the country, only to escape and go into hiding.
He reappeared after being given permission to remain in France, though that did not stop his involvement in yet another monarchist plot in September 1797. The police were ordered to arrest the "Peruvian general", as the said general submerged himself yet again in the underground. With no more illusions about France, or the Revolution, he left for England in Danish boat, arriving in Dover in January 1798. His name remains engraved on the Arc de Triomphe, which was built during the First Empire.
[edit] South America ,(1806 -1812)
He is mostly known for his contribution in the struggle for independence of the colonies in Latin America. Miranda envisioned an independent empire consisting of all the territories that had been under Spanish and Portuguese rule, stretching from the Mississippi River to Cape Horn. This empire was to be under the leadership of a hereditary emperor called the "Inca", to appease the Native Americans, and would have a bicameral legislature. He conceived the name "Gran Colombia" for this empire, after the explorer Christopher Columbus.
In November 1805 Miranda travelled to New York, where he rekindled his acquaintance with Colonel William S. Smith, who introduced him to merchant Samuel G. Ogden, the owner of a ship called the Leander. Miranda then went to Washington for private meetings with President Thomas Jefferson and his Secretary of State James Madison. This set in motion the first filibuster trial in America, a violation of the Neutrality Act of 1794 when the Leander, its crew, and a force of soldiers of fortune were captured on their way to fight the Spanish in Venezuela.[1]
With British help, Miranda led an attempted invasion of Venezuela in 1806. He landed at the port of La Vela de Coro, where the tricolour Venezuelan flag, which was made in the Haitian city of Jacmel, was raised for the first time. Among the volunteers who served under him in this revolt was David G. Burnet of the United States, who would later serve as interim president of the Republic of Texas after its secession from Mexico in 1836.
After Venezuela achieved de facto independence on April 19, 1810, Simón Bolívar persuaded Miranda to return to his native land, where he was made a general in the revolutionary army. When the country formally declared independence on July 5, 1811, he assumed dictatorial powers.
The Spanish forces counterattacked (see Venezuelan War of Independence); and Miranda, fearing a brutal and hopeless defeat, signed an armistice with them on July 5,1812. Bolívar and other revolutionaries regarded his surrender as treasonous; they thwarted Miranda's attempt to escape, and (in one of Bolívar's most morally dubious acts) he handed him over to the Spanish Royal Army. Miranda never saw freedom again. He was spared execution, but died in a prison cell in Cádiz, Spain, in 1816.
An oil painting by the Venezuelan artist Arturo Michelena titled, Miranda en la Carraca (1896), which portrays the hero in the Spanish jail where he died, has become a graphic symbol of Venezuelan history, and has immortalized the image of Miranda for generations of Venezuelans.
[edit] Quotes
Daniel Florencio O'Leary, aide-de-camp to Simón Bolívar, said of Miranda's death:
- "Miranda was a man of the eighteenth century whose genius lay in raising the consciousness and confidence of his fellow Americans. Although he prided himself on being a soldier, his greatest battles were fought with his pen".
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. It cites the following references:
- History of Miranda's Attempt in South America, Biggs, (London, 1809)
- El General Miranda, Marqués de Rojas, (Paris, 1884)
- Miranda dans la révolution française, Marqués de Rojas, (Carácas, 1889)
- Francisco de Miranda and the Revolutionizing of Spanish America, W. S. Robertson, (Washington, 1909)
[edit] References
- ^ Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860
[edit] External links
- History Text Archive: Francisco de Miranda
- Another statue: by Lorenzo Gonzalez (1977) in Philadelphia
- An 1860 account of the Leander affair http://www.fullbooks.com/Atlantic-Monthly-Vol-5-No-31-May-18603.html
