Francisco Miranda Biography

From this very day, he begins to record the events taking place in his life and collect every letter or document directly or indirectly related to his personality or his projects, which will further launch this priceless archive, which will eventually amount to 63 volumes called Colombeia. He goes from Cadiz to Madrid, where he begins to study French, English and Italian, as well as mathematics, geometry, geography and other related ones from military science, and in the meantime, the moment of its entry into the royal army is approaching, which happens two years later.

Knowledge of several foreign languages, as well as Latin and Greek, will allow him to read in the original both classic authors and works of contemporaries. His passion for books will turn him into one of the most enlightened people of his time and the owner of one of the most unusual libraries in England, and possibly in Europe. Miranda served for ten years under the Spanish flag first in the Spanish possessions in North Africa and on the peninsula, and then in America.

During his service as a Spanish soldier in America, he participated in several campaigns, three of which deserve special attention: the capture of Pencesacola in May in support of the Americans in their war for independence against England; The surrender of the British on the Bahamas of the year and the development of an agreement on the exchange of prisoners with the British Yamaika; which will lead to serious accusations against him and will become a reason for new arrests, which will ultimately force him to desert from Spanish from the army on June 1 to save his life and implement his projects.

Six months after his arrival in the United States, the time during which he turned into the best connoisseur of the battles of the British colonies in order to achieve independence, Miranda begins to talk about the urgent need to free the whole Spanish America and create a huge new independent country: Colombia. He spends a year and a half in the United States, but the persecution of the Spanish crown and his desire to go around the whole world in order to “supplement his education”, studying the Great Book of the Universe, as well as his interest in the cradle of liberal thought, force him to sit on a ship in London, where he arrives on February 1.

Now his thoughts are occupied by another large project, which consists in finding financial and military assistance to fulfill his dreams of liberation. With the help of friends, whom he acquired thanks to his mind and charisma, Miranda is justified in London. Six months later, he begins a long journey, which lasts four years, along almost the entire European continent and part of Asia, with the Spanish crown advancing on his heels.

His travel notes are the best demonstration of this stormy and rich adventure experience, as the most important result of which it is worth noting the extraordinary popularization of both Spanish America and the slave conditions in which they lived there and his emancipation project. He became the first representative of South America to visit the unknown Russia and other incredibly distant places.

Kings, princes, queens, sages and artists first heard about the immense wealth of America, about the mind of its inhabitants and about the unfair situation, which did not allow them to take a worthy place in the world they deserved from the mouth of this person. But if it is true that this trip forced many to abandon the idea of ​​the indisputable dominance of Spain over its overseas territories, it is also true that it served as a project by Miranda’s personality at the international level as a person who can break this dominance.

The proof of this is the fact that the Spanish government itself strengthened the persecution of Miranda and sent orders to its representatives around the world to tighten the surveillance and its immediate seizure.

Fortunately, friends acquired along the way, protect him, they provide him with safe movement or get passports with fictional names, and also warn him many times about impending raids. All these events, reflected even in the press of that time, undoubtedly, contributed to the fact that the image of Miranda acquire a slightly mythical character and become a prototype of the conspirator.

By the last decade of the 18th century, his resistance against Spanish power turned him into a symbol of freedom and for those who in America also began to think about the independence of the Spanish American colonies, Miranda became a role model and the teacher to whom they listened. At the end of the travel period and upon returning to London, he begins with determination what he himself called “negotiations” with the British government in order to organize an armed campaign against Spanish domination in America.

Negotiations with England were long, contradictory and unsuccessful.In exchange for financial and military support, Miranda offers England trade preferences, participation in the operation of American wealth and the possibility of building a shipping channel in the Panama Isthmus. Although by that time other Americans were already addressing to England in search of support against the atrocities of Spanish officials or in the liberation of any region or province, it was Miranda who became the first to declare colonialism as such and made an attempt to finally end the global oppression system established by Spain in America.

To do this, he will not only draw up strategic plans that make it possible to achieve his goals by a military way, but first of all will bring the theoretical foundation to the urgent need for such actions, which in turn will first reveal the existence of the clear consciousness of America as a full -fledged subject in search of his complete independence. Miranda’s relationship with England develops for two different periods.

The first period lasts from February to March, when Miranda, disappointed with Pitt's inconsistency, leaves London to propose his project of revolutionary France. The second begins in the year when he returns to London, disappointed and pursued by the revolutionary France, to look for help from Pitt again. This second period, during which Miranda becomes the center of conspiratorial activity directed against Spain, lasts up to a year, with a break of two years, when he goes to the United States in order to equip the first liberation expedition in America.

In the period between and the beginning of the year, he is in France, playing a leading role in the revolutionary transformations that occur there. Miranda enters the ranks of the French army in exchange for a promise for assistance in the subsequent implementation of the project for the liberation of the Spanish colonies in America. First, he will be appointed Field Marshal, and then the general of the patriotic French army.

He will take an active part in the political life of the country, and later will become a victim of persecution, which, due to instability of the authorities, at that time awaited everyone who advocated or against, directly or indirectly, the revolutionary process. Unjustly accused of treason due to defeat under Nervinden on March 18, as a result of which the French will be forced to leave Belgium, he goes to prison and appears to be court.

The brilliant protection of his actions on the battlefield and his innocence very soon leads to his release to the applause of the French people. Nevertheless, due to the fall of the Girondins, who sympathized with Miranda, he again went to prison in July, this time for eighteen months. Ironically, he will be declared an agent of Spain and accuse him of conspiracy in order to restore the monarchy.

The fall of Robespierre in July, marked the end of the so -called "period of terror", saves him from guillotine. Nevertheless, he remains in imprisonment until January G. after liberation, he immediately includes France’s political life and spends another three years in this country. In July, Miranda publishes a brochure in Paris, in which he expresses his opinion on the situation in France and develops “some principles regarding the civil and political freedom of peoples”, as well as some economic ideas; In addition, he formulates in it the main postulates of the republican government.

Two and a half years later, at the end of the year, before leaving the Galls land in order to avoid another imprisonment, he writes the so -called Parisian instruction or an act - a document in which he sets out his ideas about American integration and the role that such a united America could play in the world. In the year, when the new Prime Minister of Great Britain Henry Eddington would finally support his idea of ​​liberation, he develops a project of the Provisional Government and the draft federal government, and also writes his “appeal to the peoples of the Continent Columbus”, in other words, Spanish America, which is an extraordinary set of arguments in favor of American independence.

Having ended up any support, Miranda decides to look for other ways to implement her liberation project. Having laid down his own library and securing the letters of credit granted by English friends, he decides to organize the long -awaited liberation expedition on his own and, for this purpose, September 2, despite the fact that his attempts to enlist the support of the US government are ending, he still manages to equip the Leander brig and with his help to begin his goal, but nevertheless did not reach his goal, but nevertheless did not reach his goal, but less She showed the Americans and the whole world that the Spanish Empire is not monolithic or impregnable.During the time he carried out in England, his political activity was closely connected with the activities of other Americans, both through personal communication with those who arrived in the Old World and through the letters that Miranda sent to different capital of American provinces, thus creating a kind of network of patriots, which extends on both sides of the Atlantic, which will try to speed up the process of liberation perceived by some as inexplicable.

However, it is important not only to list the names, but to emphasize the persistence of Miranda in combining the efforts of all American patriots and its confidence that the liberation movement should act in a consonant and in unison, since "partial movement can damage the entire mass." As a way of contributing to this global movement and in the interests of deepening the revolutionary consciousness of Miranda in London, after the failure of his expedition to the banks of Venezuela B and seeing the approach of the right moment to rise against Spain, which could no longer act as before due to the struggle with Napoleon, trying to convince her compatriots in all possible ways that the time had come to make a decisive one.

Step on the way to freedom. To achieve this goal, it use various methods. Including, he sends numerous letters to members of the Soviets of the most important cities of South America, urging them once and for all about independence. He does the same work with his agents in South America, whom he asks to start organizing people without delay and insist on independence. In addition to this intensive epistolary activity, Miranda simultaneously begins a public campaign using the press and print, to accelerate the transition to independence.

In the course of this campaign, the El Colombiano newspaper, the first of the published in Europe, but intended to spread newspapers in the spirit of independence in America, aimed at ending hard censorship, demonstrating the illegality of the motorcies and convincing the Americans that the only alternative is the proclamation of independence. After the appearance of the first movements fighting for autonomy, in Karakas and Buenos Aires in the year, Miranda, full of enthusiasm, begins to prepare for his return to America.

In July, Bolivar, accompanied by Luis Lopez Mendes and Andres Belo, arrives in London with the diplomatic mission of the new government in search of support for the UK. He is given instructions to stay away from Miranda, this adventurer and heretic, whom four years ago aristocrats in Karakas wanted to see turned into dust because of his attempts to end the "sweet yoke of obedience to the king." For several months, Bolivar and Miranda have been spending in England and it is easy to guess that there was not a single question that they would not affect, and not a single topic that they would not discuss.

Many of the ideas of Miranda were adopted by Bolivar and many others. In December, forty years after leaving for Cadiz, despite the objections of the junta regarding his return, Miranda lands in Guayra. Aristocrats consider him a Jacobin, an English agent, an atheist, a vicious person and a traitor to the king of Spain, to whom the junta vowed in fidelity.

But not everyone thinks so. A group of young people, including Bolivar, share the republican ideals that have come from France and the United States, and advocate the proclamation of absolute independence. The presence of Miranda stimulates these new forces that carry new trends until they gain sufficient power to completely destroy the old order. A patriotic society will become an instrument that will allow them to achieve this goal, and it is there that Miranda will find a political platform in which Creole refuses it.

Neither his ideas, nor his plans for the government, nor his constitutional projects seem to be interested in the Creole elite. Worse, they are treated with mockery and contempt. His political experience, accumulated over so many years of court life, his vast knowledge, his countless efforts and constant sacrifices for the sake of already changes, - all this seems to have no importance for those who took over the leadership of the future of the Captain General of Venezuela.

Despite this in June, he manages to enter the Constituent Congress as a deputy from the province of Barcelona. His presence in the Congress and pressure from the patriotic society became decisive factors forcing deputies to proclaim, finally, independence on July 5. You can imagine the feelings that Miranda experienced that day. Five months later, the first Constitution of the Republic of Venezuela was adopted, which also became the first in America occupied by the Spaniards.

Perhaps, against the will of some, it can already be seen in it that the ideas that Miranda originated will ripen and begin to germinate, in particular, his idea of ​​moving to complete independence of Spanish America and the construction of a single homeland: Columbia. What followed him cannot be blamed.This first republic, which historians described as unfit, was nothing more than a platform on which all the contradictions that were previously restrained by colonial domination resulted in.

It would be too long to analyze the reasons for this first experience to failure here, although some of them explain Bolivar in the “Manifesto from Cartagena”. In general, the consequences of the earthquake of the year, which destroyed most of the patriotic forces, the lack of funds, class contradictions, the struggle for power, distrust and betrayal strengthened the realistic reaction.

The fact is that, in conditions of proximity, possible defeat and general unwillingness to take on the command of patriotic troops, aristocrats are forced to resort to Miranda’s military experience. Endowed with all powers, first in the rank of Generalissimo, and then the dictator, Miranda begins to organize a unified army to confront the royal forces under the command of Monteverda.

The set task seems to be practically impossible against the background of the only existing experience of local militias and isolated provinces, which seemed to take care of only their interests. On the other hand, the unwillingness to fulfill his orders by virtue of hostility, which many still experienced in his address, the uprising of the black slaves and, finally, the loss of the Puerto-Kabelo fortress, the defense of which was led by the young Bolivar, forced Miranda to sign in July the surrender in front of Monteverda.

After the surrender of Miranda and several officers go to the La Guipa port, intending to sail to neighboring islands or in the nearest countries in order to reorganize and resume the struggle. But on the night of July 30, under the still unclear circumstances, Miranda was arrested by a group of young officers, including Simon Bolivar and transferred to the Spaniards.

A few days later he is transferred to the Puerto-Kabelo fortress, where they are kept in the shackles and in inhuman conditions. Then he will be transported to Puerto Rico and, finally, to the La-Carrac fortress near Kadis, where he has a blow on March 25 on the eve of the already planned escape, and on July 18 of the same year he dies at the age of sixty six years. Nevertheless, even in prison, this person did not stop fighting for justice and freedom.

During this time, he prepared a number of documents to various Spanish authorities, including Cortes, and King Fernando VII itself after his return to power. In them, he condemns crimes committed by Monteverd against the Venezuelan population; Requires on the basis of the equality of the rights of Americans and the Spaniards, proclaimed by the emerging liberal constitution, the liberation of prisoners.

At the same time, there were times when he felt defeated, and then he called to the reconciliation of the Spanish nation and the return of the Americans to his homeland. But even these moments of despondency could not break his fighting spirit. The escape plan was always in his thoughts while the dream of a free and independent homeland still lived in his heart, which, with such a difficult and unfair ending of life, he gave his pain: “I patiently experience this disgusting injustice, because it should turn to the benefit of my homeland, whose interests were always so dear to me”