Francisco de Miranda, Part 2

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No purchase needed. Code valve for new users on void were prohibited by law. 18+ terms and conditions apply. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History class. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And I'm Holly Fry. This is the second part of our episode on Francesco de Miranda. Where we left off. He had been convicted of desertion and sentenced to exile from Spain, and then had spent about a year and a half touring the newly established United States. So if you're thinking I should probably find out what that was all about, because I didn't listen to part one, go do that first. From there, after touring the United States, he set off for London, and that would become his primary home for a big chunk of his adult life. Francesco de Miranda left the United States on December 15, 1784, arriving in England on February 1st of the following year. He reconnected with people he had known during his earlier time in Europe, including the merchant John Turnbull, who he had previously met in Gibraltar. Turnbull became something of a patron to Miranda, helping to finance his life in exile. Miranda also introduced himself to the Spanish ambassador in London, Bernardo del Campo y Perez de la Cerna, to explain himself for his actions back in the Caribbean. But the ambassador had already heard from Jose Moninho, the first count of Florida Blanca, Chief Minister to King Carlos III of Spain. Chief Minister had already told the ambassador to be on the lookout for Miranda, and if Miranda arrived in London, the ambassador was expected to try to gain his trust with the goal of eventually capturing him. I think there were legal and diplomatic reasons not to just shut the door behind him when he came into the office and say you're captured now. But I don't have the specifics of what those reasons were. One of Miranda's core character traits, which we mentioned in the first part, really seems to have been hubris. And with Bernardo del Campo's help and encouragement, he wrote a letter to the king, not only asking to be released from his military service, but also asking to be paid wages that he had never collected for that service, as well as repayment of his purchase of his commission. Whew, he does not lack for bravado. The ambassador intercepted this letter and other letters that Miranda sent to friends and family asking for money, as he tried to put together a plan to try to take him into custody. Not knowing that the ambassador had orders to try to capture him. 34-year-old Miranda also let him know, hopefully, that he was leaving London. He embarked on a European tour, much like the grand tours of the continent that were commonly undertaken by upper-class young men in Europe in the 17th through about the 19th centuries. He traveled for a time with Colonel William Steven Smith, who had been an officer in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, and was George Washington's aide-de-camp during the Battle of Yorktown. In London, Smith also started courting Abigail Amelia Adams, known as Nabby, daughter of John and Abigail Adams. Miranda and Smith traveled first to Prussia, making their way there through Holland. This was fortunate for Miranda, since the Spanish had been expecting him to travel through France and had been working on a plan to capture him on route. As he'd done while traveling through the United States, Miranda observed how different governments worked and how their rulers and leaders did things. He and Smith also toured a lot of historical, religious, and cultural sites, as well as educational institutions. In a lot of ways, this tour was more like an intentional study and learning experience than a casual sightseeing trip. Smith went back to London in September of 1785, where he took up formal duties as secretary to the American legation, and he married Nabby Adams there on June 11th, 1786. Not long after Smith returned to London, Miranda had an encounter with Marijosef Poliw's Rochkielberg de Montier, Marquita Lafayette, while observing military maneuvers by the Prussian Army. Lafayette had been instrumental in the Revolutionary War, serving on George Washington's staff, working with Benjamin Franklin's delegation to secure aid from France and commanding an army at Yorktown. Lafayette both offered his services, should Miranda ever visit Paris, and also asked him whether he thought there might be a similar uprising in the Spanish colonies. Miranda does not seem to have liked or trusted Lafayette for reasons that aren't fully clear. He suspected that Lafayette had been involved in one of the many capture attempts, though. So in this one case, Miranda was uncharacteristically evasive. He told Lafayette that he had heard of no such revolutionary activity in Spanish America, even though he himself was thinking about this a lot. Miranda was a wanted man, but he was also charming and resourceful. And with some exceptions, like the Marquita Lafayette, he had no trouble finding friends to help him out or to make introductions to people that he wanted to meet. He spent roughly four years traveling through Europe learning and exploring and trying to get support for his plan to start. That aforementioned, but denied to Lafayette revolution in Spanish America. He wanted to liberate all of the territory that Spain was holding in the Americas, which was from Cape Horn at the far southern tip of Chile, all the way north to the 45th parallel. For context, the 45th parallel north forms much of the border between Montana and Wyoming. From west to east, this liberated empire would stretch from the Pacific Ocean to the borders of Guyana and Brazil in South America. Those were under the control of Britain and Portugal. And in North America, it would extend to the Mississippi River. Miranda had written a constitution for this massive empire he envisioned, which he wanted to call Columbia. He said this would be founded under the principles of freedom and independence. In the words of an early English language biography of him, quote, "the executive power in this vast state was to be vested in an Inca who was to be styled emperor. His power was to be hereditary. The legislative power was to be placed in a bicameral legislature. The upper house or senate was to be composed of a fixed number of senators or key cheeks who were to be chosen by the Inca for life from citizens who had honorably occupied the first offices of the empire, such as general, admiral, chief justice, and questor. The members of the lower house or chamber of communes were to be chosen by all the citizens. They were to hold office for five years, and their persons were declared to be inviolable for that period, except in case of capital crimes. Re-election was possible. The members of the judiciary were to be chosen by the Inca from the most distinguished members of the judicial corps. These federal judges were to hold office for life and less deprived of their positions by a judgment of forfeiture. They were the only officers mentioned in the Constitution regarding whom it was specified that they were to receive a salary. So the role of Inca here is terminology that he was appropriating from the Inca empire that had flourished in South America in the 15th and 16th centuries. He was not necessarily envisioning installing someone from one of the catch-on-speaking peoples still living in this region of the world in this hereditary office. Tracy, who did the research on this, honestly found this sort of very foggy regarding who exactly he thought should step into this hereditary new role. I also think he was conceiving this nomenclature as honorific. This adds to the things that he just hasn't thought about very clearly. What it means to liberate and use this title for the people who really were descendants of that empire but are maybe not going to be part of the ruling elite of this newly liberated organizational place. This was one of several frameworks that Miranda envisioned or a liberated Spanish America over the course of his lifetime. And he drafted and revised other proposed constitutions in addition to this one. Some of them were closer to like a constitutional monarchy. Some of them were closer to a republic. All of them though were focused on ideals like liberty and freedom. Although, as we said in part one and a few moments ago, I think without really wrestling with how that would be achieved given the context of colonization and enslavement and genocide in these places that he wanted to liberate. I have a theory. We'll discuss about this on Friday. One of the people Miranda spent the most time and effort trying to win over to his plan was the Empress of Russia Catherine the Great. He spent almost two years in Russian territory making his case and trying to gain her support. There were rumors that the two of them were lovers. It is known that Miranda had a lot of lovers during his lifetime, but there's no substantiation for this particular relationship. Although Miranda couldn't get Catherine to commit to backing his revolution, she did give him some money and she ordered Russian embassies to assist him where they could. Being under the Empress's protection also helped him evade yet more attempts to take him into Spanish custody. Miranda returned to London in 1789. When he had first arrived there four years before he had not found much support for his revolutionary ideas, this was really not surprising since Britain had just been through the Revolutionary War. But in 1790 he thought he might be able to take advantage of an international dispute over the Newtia Sound off Vancouver Island. Britain and Spain were both claiming to control this sound. Miranda hoped to convince the British that a revolution in Spanish territory would work out in their favor in this dispute. They had at least two meetings with the British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger about these plans. Much to Miranda's frustration, though, Pitt was a lot more focused on Spain, not on like a hypothetical situation involving Spain's colonies in the Americas. In June of 1789, Miranda also followed up with Spain's ambassador to Britain, Bernardo del Campo, pointing out that he had never heard anything back about that letter that he'd sent to King Carlos III, explaining why it was totally reasonable for him to have deserted the Spanish army, and also asking for back pay and a refund on the money he paid for his commission. The ambassador had never sent the letter after intercepting it, but said that he'd had no idea where Miranda was for the last four years. He thought he'd just settled this situation with Spain himself. So Miranda wrote to Count Florida Blanca, minister to the King, saying that he had been offered all kinds of positions with other governments and had to refuse them because he was still tied to Spain. He again wrote directly to the King, which was now King Carlos IV, who had come to the throne after his father's death in 1788. Miranda seems to have been holding out hope for some kind of reconciliation with the Spanish crown, one which somehow would involve the crown coming to agree with him that Spanish America deserved to be independent. Bernardo del Campo eventually did send a letter on his behalf that requested he be given safe conduct to Madrid so that he could vindicate his honor. Instead, though, Miranda was ordered to just return to Spain so that he could face trial. Miranda knew that if he returned to Spanish territory after this, he would immediately be imprisoned. So in April of 1790, he wrote another letter to the King, in which he said that he must, quote, "renounce the pleasant society of my parents and other relatives in order to seek a country that would at least treat me with justice and assure me civil tranquility." His next move after this was to France and we'll have more after a sponsor break. First thought is like, "Wow, how are we going to do all this?" Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Into It Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, green, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T Fiber and 5G, defining the fans' experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible. It was good arrival. Anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page. 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It's a simple but powerful platform built for small business owners and designed to make managing your business finances easier from day one. Join five million customers worldwide who use Zero to manage their finances. Learn more at zero.com. We set up at the top of part one of the episode that Francisco de Miranda had fought in three revolutions. We already talked about the Revolutionary War. Now we have reached the second of them after renouncing his ties to Spain. He spent a couple of years in London and then decided to visit France. He set sail on March 19, 1792 in the timeline of the French Revolution. I'm laughing because I'm just like this just seems like a time to decide that you're going to go to France. This was after the storming of the Bastille. It was before the monarchy was abolished and France was proclaimed to be a republic. So Louis XVI still king. But under the French constitution of 1791, he was sharing power with the legislative assembly. Although Miranda had an obvious affinity for the French Revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, he didn't immediately join up with the Revolutionary movement. He spent some time basically sightseeing around Paris while also meeting various officials and political leaders. This included members of the Revolutionary's year-on-down faction, but even then his focus was on revolution in Spanish America, not in France. But then came the French Revolutionary Wars. That's the series of wars between France and other European nations that started in 1792, eventually morphing into the Napoleonic wars after Napoleon's rise to power. The first phase of these wars became known as the War of the First Coalition, and the French national anthem La Marseille was written as a rallying cry during its initial stages when things were not going all that well for France. When the war started, France was dealing with an economic crisis, food riots, and all the social and political upheaval connected with the French Revolution. Other European monarchies saw the revolutionary events in France as alarming, and considered whether to intervene to protect King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, or to try to prevent similar revolutions within their own kingdoms and empires. Some monarchs wanted to put down the Revolution entirely, while others were more focused on keeping it confined just to France. So in April of 1792, King Louis's ministry was made up primarily of Jérône d'A, who were advising him to go to war with Austria, where they believed that French nationals were planning a counter-revolution. And then various factions within France all thought that a war would work out to their benefit for a range of reasons. Like the revolutionary thought that it would make it obvious that the King was not acting in good faith. While the royalists and supporters of the constitutional monarchy that had been established in 1791 thought that a war could help solidify the King's power. But this quickly spiraled away from what most people had anticipated or hoped for, with Prussia declaring more on France, the King dismissing his Jérône d'Aministers and installing a more moderate faction, and other nations threatening to declare war as well if the French monarchs came to any harm. Tensions escalated between the King in the legislative assembly and on August. 10th 1792, revolutionary storm Touliris Palace, killing the King's Swiss guard. The royal family was arrested and the monarch he was suspended. Trying to figure out a way to sum all that up in this amount of space was one of the big challenges at this episode. The French Revolution is always a big challenge. As all this was happening on August 11th, the mayor of Paris asked Francisco de Miranda why he had not joined the army to fight for France. Miranda pointed out that he had seen foreign soldiers being treated pretty poorly during the Revolutionary War and that had made him reluctant. But on August 22nd, he was offered the rank of major general in the French Revolutionary Army. He ultimately accepted this under the conditions that after the war, he would be given a position that would provide him enough income to live comfortably in France, and that his project for the liberation of Spanish America would be given due consideration. Not long after he got a letter from Jerome Petion de Villeneuve, president of the National Convention, who expressed his pleasure at hearing that Miranda had joined and said that his service would ensure the triumph of liberty in France and the liberty of the entire world. Miranda was assigned progressively more responsibility over the next several months, ultimately winding up with the army of the north under General Shao Flasois Demourier. At various points, he talked to high-ranking officers about how France could benefit in the Caribbean by supporting a revolution on islands that were under Spanish control, or that war in parts of Europe could be winnable only if a revolution started among the people there. In February of 1793, Demourier had divided his army with a plan to take several forts and then ultimately to march on Amsterdam. Miranda's force of about 30,000 men was to besiege the city of Maestricht. The city was well fortified, but the force defending it was pretty small, so Miranda was expecting to be able to take the city fairly quickly. But on March 2nd, an Austrian force attacked a detachment that was covering this siege. This attack came by surprise, and it involved an army that had been moved into the area without the French knowing about it. So Miranda thought that he had no choice but to lift the siege and withdraw. After this, French detachments combined to face the Austrian army at Niervinden, a village in what's now Belgium, on March 18th. This battle stretched through most of the day, with Miranda's force attacking a well-defended Austrian line led by Archduke Charles of Austria. Miranda's army faced huge losses before being attacked by Austrian cavalry, which ultimately drove Miranda's forces across the Muse River. This played a key role in France's defeat in the battle. The Austrians continued to press the French until late March, and Demourier met with them to try to negotiate a retreat. By this point, King Louis XVI had been executed, and Demourier was apparently very alarmed by the way that the revolution had progressed in France. So he proposed not just a retreat, but a return to Paris to overthrow the revolutionaries and restore the monarchy. Miranda heard about this and left his unit to return to Paris ahead of the rest of the army and tried to raise the alarm, ultimately rather than rallying the army to march on Paris, Demourier and some of his supporters wound up defecting to the Austrian side. But Miranda was blamed for the French defeat at Niervinden and called up before the Revolutionary Tribunal. He argued that he was the victim of character assassination by Demourier, who at that point was a known traitor. The prosecution's evidence was contradictory, and a number of high-profile witnesses spoke in Miranda's defense, including people like Thomas Payne. The Tribunal ultimately cleared Miranda on all charges. France considered Miranda's military service to be over, as of June 1st, 1793. But since now he was a former officer in the French army, and France was at war with the Britain, he could not just go back to London. He remained in Paris, and he wrote an account of his trial, and spent some time hanging out with some notable people, including Thomas Payne. But this was during the period when the French Revolution was evolving toward the reign of terror, and in July the Committee of Public Safety ordered Miranda's arrest. He was incarcerated at La Force Prison on suspicion of being part of a royalist plot, or perhaps a spy for British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger. His previous association with the Gérardin was also a strike against him. They had been succeeded by more radical factions, and many were executed in a purge. Maximilian Robespierre, a central figure in the reign of terror, also apparently just did not like him. This was obviously a horrific time for France and for Miranda. In addition to being imprisoned, he watched as his friends that he made or reacquainted with in prison were either taken to the guillotine or took their own lives. But he avoided execution and was finally released in 1795 after the reign of terror had ended, and French politician Jean-Paulet had argued for his release on the grounds that he was a friend of liberty and an enemy of slavery. After being released, he wrote to Henry Knox, saying, "I take up the pen only to tell you that I live and that my sentiments for our dear Columbia, as well as for all my friends in that part of the world, have not changed in the least, in spite of the events which are bound to ruin France." And much like he had done in regards to his service in Spain, he wrote to the committee for public safety, asking for unpaid wages for his service in the French Revolutionary Army, as well as reimbursement for various property that had been confiscated and other money that he felt he was owed. This went better than his letter to the King of Spain had. The committee did agree to reimburse him, although he alleged that this matter was never fully settled. I think he might have continued to allege it up until his will. At some point, while living in France, Miranda joined the Freemasons. He also continued to advocate for revolution in Spanish America, and he published all kinds of pamphlets detailing what he saw as threats to France's status as a free nation. He was again arrested in 1795, after being accused of conspiring against the expansion of France. He was released, but after this just continued to face suspicion. And so, for reasons I don't totally understand, he was still in France. By the time the coup of 18th Fruchtador happened, that was on September 4, 1797. After this coup, his name was included on a list of royalists and counter revolutionaries that were to be deported to Guiana. It seems like this is what finally prompted him to leave France, and he departed in secret in January of 1798. And when he left France, he returned to England, and we will get into that after we pause for a sponsor break. That's X-E-R-O. 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To that end, he made connections with Rufus King, U.S. Minister to London. He continued his ongoing correspondence with Alexander Hamilton. In late 1800, he made a trip to France with the hope of securing some support there, based on his earlier service to the French army. Honestly, this seems like a real weird decision to me considering how he had left France. state of his status there, then he was arrested when he got there, but he was released and he went back to England. He tried to take advantage of just the continually shifting international situation at this point. The French Revolutionary Wars gave way to the Napoleonic Wars. So France, Spain, and England were variously at war with each other at some points and not at others. And he just was trying to work this to his advantage, like finding the people who would most be benefited by a revolution to make that case. And somewhere along the way, he met and married an English woman named Sarah Andrews. Their first child together, a son named Leandro, was born in 1803. He continued to have affairs with other women after his marriage, including writer and adventure lady Hester Lucy Stanhope in a relationship that lasted about a year. Long going wars and Miranda's status as a Spanish expatriate and also that time in France meant that he was not able to get permission to leave England until 1805. He drew up a will before his departure, leaving much of his property to his son, Leandro, and specifying that his personal papers related to his revolutionary activity, which were extensive, were to be returned to the city of his birth at such time that it was part of an independent nation. With the help of Rufus King, he got passage to New York. He also carried a letter of credit for 800 pounds sterling from a fictitious George Martin. And once in the US, he tried to get additional aid. As he had done in his earlier time in the US, he met a number of high profile people, including physician Benjamin Rush, who was impressed enough with him that he wrote a letter of introduction to Secretary of State James Madison. The US reluctant to get into a big international revolution situation and a lot of Americans were reluctant as well to give Miranda any kind of visible support. This was in part due to the Neutrality Act of 1794. This law had roots in the French Revolution and disputes between figures like Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton about whether to aid the revolutionaries, as well as the activities of French minister Edmund Charles Gine, who had tried to support revolutionary efforts in France from his position in the United States. This act was tried to cut down on people getting involved in foreign wars under the Neutrality Act. It was illegal for US citizens to participate in a war against nations that the US itself was not at war with. So Miranda used his personal library as collateral to get a loan for $2,000. He rallied a force of 200 men, boarded a ship, and set sail from New York to Venezuela in 1806. They chartered two more ships in the Caribbean and then continued on to Venezuela to start a revolution. As has come up at other points in the episode, Miranda often was not very discreet when he talked about his revolutionary goals or really any other military thing he was doing. So the Spanish knew that he was coming and due to illnesses and deaths along the way, by the time he got to Venezuela, he only had about 150 men. In April of 1806, they tried to make landfall near Puerto Caballo, which is on the coast north of Valencia and in the ensuing battle, he lost two of his ships and about 60 of his men. Miranda and some of his officers fled, others were captured and imprisoned. Ten of his officers were sentenced to death by hanging and those who were executed were then beheaded with their heads placed on pikes. Many of the rest who were captured were sentenced to prison terms of between eight and sixteen years. Miranda went to Barbados where he was able to rally a somewhat larger fleet of ten ships and about 500 men. They returned to Venezuela this time landing north of the city of Coro. While they managed to take the city, they weren't able to rally the support of the local people and when they were attacked by the militia, Miranda's force retreated. Remember William Stephen Smith, who Miranda had traveled with during his tour of Europe? He was caught up in all of this, including helping Miranda to raise funds for it and his son, William Stubin Smith, was one of the men who had sailed from New York with Miranda. After this failed expedition, William Stephen Smith was stripped of his position as surveyor of customs for the port of New York and charged with violating the New Traility Act, but he was ultimately acquitted. William Stubin Smith was ultimately released and returned home in 1807, although all of this reportedly caused, quote, "great grief" for his grandfather, John Adams. Miranda left to go back to England again in 1807, arriving on New Year's Day 1808. After returning home, he met his second son, Francisco, who had been born while he was away. His home in London, this is already the case before, but it increasingly hosted people from Spanish America who were dissatisfied with Spain's colonial rule. For a time, he also focused on publishing a lot more material, calling for the liberation of South America, including starting a pro-revolution journal called Il Colomiano that outraged Spanish authorities, and he established a Masonic lodge specifically for Spanish Americans. In the continuing international chaos of the Napoleonic Wars, in 1808, Spanish King Fernando VII was forced to abdicate the throne and Napoleon imprisoned him. A governing body called the Supreme Central Junta had been established to govern Spain and its colonies in the King's absence. This was a crisis in Spain and in its colonies, and on April 19, 1810, revolutionaries in Caracas overthrew the colonial government and proclaimed Venezuela to be a republic. Within weeks, word of this had reached Miranda in London, and he started trying to make plans to go and help with a revolution. In July of that year, a party of revolutionaries from Venezuela arrived in London to seek support for their efforts and try to get an alliance with the King. One of them was Simón Bolivar. Of course, officials in London were in a difficult position with this. England and Spain were allied against France at this point in the Napoleonic Wars, but if France were a victorious in those wars, it would probably start claiming Spanish territory in the Americas for itself. So independence for Spanish America could mean that that territory would not fall into the hands of the French in the case of a French victory. At the same time, though, encouraging a revolution in the Americas at that moment would draw the ire of Spain while Spain and Britain were both engaged in fighting a common enemy. So in the end, the British took an official policy of neutrality. And it also seems like they took some steps to just try to keep France's go to Miranda from meeting this Venezuelan delegation. That didn't work out, though, and Miranda met with Bolivar to both talk about his own ambitions for an independent Spanish America and to suggest strategies for dealing with British officials based on his many years of experience with that. Miranda also tried to secure passage and assistance for them to get back to Venezuela, making it clear that he intended to go to something British authorities actively tried to prevent. The Venezuelan delegation left England in September, carrying volumes of Miranda's papers with them. In October of 1810, Miranda updated his will again, and he and his secretary left for Venezuela. When Miranda arrived there, he got a generally warm welcome. On December 21, the Caracas Gazette published an article that called him, quote, "a citizen of Venezuela whom the deserved distinctions and honors contributed by impartial Europe to his merit had not caused to forget his native land. For those whose happiness he has made very frequent and efficacious attempt." I mean, it's also Florida, who the hell knows what it means. Yeah, I don't know what it actually said that it sounded good. On July 1st, 1811, the Venezuelan National Congress issued the Declaration of the Rights of the People and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Society, and then declared its independence on July 5th. But this was not met with immediate or unanimous support. People had seen what had happened after the monarchy was abolished in France, and there were concerns that the same thing could happen in Venezuela. There were also people who were dissatisfied that much of the emphasis was on how Spain's attention had been focused elsewhere due to the Napoleonic Wars, and not on Spain's treatment of the colony for centuries before that. Soon, a counter revolution was developing with royalist forces taking up arms against the revolutionaries. In March of 1812, a massive earthquake struck Caracas in the surrounding area. At least 10,000 people were killed in the capital alone. Many clergy in the Catholic Church were royalists and saw this earthquake as divine punishment for the revolution. Others simply the royalists as more. likely to be the people who would keep the country together in the face of such a devastating natural disaster. So large numbers of revolutionaries started to desert and join the royalists side and the royalists also saw a flood of new recruits. In April, Miranda was appointed Generalissimo of the remaining Venezuelan army, with full power to take whatever steps he thought necessary to save the nation and its independence. In other words, he was given dictatorial powers. Miranda's diaries frame this situation as temporary but necessary as a step toward achieving the independence Spanish America, something he'd been talking about for literal decades. But by this point, he was in his early 60s. He had left Venezuela at the age of 21 and aside from his ill-fated 1806 efforts had not been back in decades, and he had lived in London longer than he had lived in South America. He has been characterized as out of touch and as too stringent in how he disciplined the men under his command, with some of his decisions just causing unnecessary bloodshed. In a manifesto that he issued after he was given these dictatorial powers, Miranda said he would be fighting for liberty and independence, and that the immense power he had been given increased his responsibility by the same proportion. He tried to recruit more men into the army to fight off the royalists' advances and he wrote letters to all of his contacts in England and the United States to try to get some international assistance. But in late June, while the commanding officer was away, a lieutenant at one of the forts being held by the revolutionaries released royalist prisoners and sided with them, raising the Spanish flag over the fort. This had a cascading effect, with more officers at more forts doing the same. Some of the freed royalists soldiers attacked Porto Caveo, which was being held by Simone Bolivar, who had previously asked Miranda for reinforcements and bended nine. Bolivar eventually retreated, quote, "abandoned by all the world and followed only by eight officers." After all of this happened, Miranda concluded that the only possible option was to sign an armistice with the royalists, one that he thought would avoid further bloodshed, with terms that specifically protected the lives and property of the revolutionaries. He signed this armistice with Domingo de Monteverde, the leader of the royalist forces on July 25, 1812, and that date is marked as the end of the first Republic of Venezuela. Many of the revolutionaries deeply disagreed with this course of action, which was made worse by the fact that the royalists did not stick to those terms of protecting the revolutionaries' lives and property. Miranda started preparing to return to London, expecting to live out the rest of his days there, having failed in his lifelong mission to free the Americas from Spain. But some of his detractors considered his signing of the armistice to be treasonous, and they kept him from leaving, making sure that he was instead taken into Spanish custody. One of those detractors was Simone Bolivar, who later described Miranda as, quote, "possessed by ambition and violent passions, who either did not realize the risk or who wished to sacrifice the liberty of his native land." Miranda was imprisoned in Puerto Rico for a time before being sent to Cadiz, Spain, where he spent the rest of his life in La Caraca prison. He tried to negotiate his own release, arguing, among other things, that the terms of that armistice meant he should not have been arrested in the first place. He faced a series of chronic illnesses and health issues toward the end of his life, and in kind of a romantic coincidence, he died on July 14, 1816, which is Bastille Day. He's the only person known to have fought in the American French and Spanish-American revolutions. During his lifetime, Miranda got a lot of comparisons to Miguel Desarventi's fictional character Don Quixote, including by both Napoleon and John Adams. Today, he's sometimes called El Precursor, or the Great Procursor, because while his efforts to liberate Spanish America were unsuccessful, they did help set the stage for later revolutions, and eventually independence for Venezuela and other former Spanish colonies. Venezuelan independence day is marked on July 5. The day independence was declared in 1811, but Venezuela's war for independence did not end until 1823. There is a portrait of Francisco de Miranda in Versailles in France, and he's the only Hispanic American person whose name is inscribed in the arch de Triumph. The tri-color part of the Venezuelan flag is patterned after Miranda's 1811 flag design, and the flags of Ecuador and Colombia both also have similar bars of yellow, blue, and red. Miranda's exact burial place is not known because his remains were moved to a mass grave when La Caraca prison was torn down, but there is an empty tomb for him at the National Pantheon of Venezuela, with its lid held slightly open for him by an eagle. In 1981, a plaque to his wife Sarah Andrews was unveiled by the Venezuelan ambassador to the UK at Market Wheaton, All Saints Church, which is where she was baptized. She lived until 1847. Both of her sons with Francisco later went to South America, Leandro, with a letter of recommendation to Simone Boulevard, written by Jeremy Bentham. Leandro had a long career in military and foreign service, and he died in 1886. His younger brother, Francisco, seems to have had his father's temper, but not his charm, and he got into a number of fights, and at least one duel before dying in combat in 1831 at the very young age of 25. Miranda left an extensive diary and personal library. I have some curiosity about how some of the volumes of that library were retained in all of his various needing to flee and escape over the years. A lot of this library was scattered after his death, but the works in Greek and Latin were given to the University of Caracas. His diaries were eventually digitized about 100 years after his death. I'm serious. This collection of diaries and personal papers is huge. A total of 63 volumes, totaling more than 9,000 documents and more than 30,000 pages. These were digitized by the government of Venezuela in 2011. I find him complicated and fascinating. Yes, indeed. Do you have listener mail to take us out? I do. This is from Bob and Pat who wrote to say, "Dear Tracy and Holly, stuff you missed in history classes, the only podcast my wife listens to." She discovered it on a long drive while searching the list of podcasts on my phone. I now save the podcasts for drives with her. Your podcast on Gertrude Geekle spoke to our avid gardening hearts, but it was the development of cultivars that really struck home. On our screen porch table sits two plants that provide a room of therapy, a rosemary plant for me, and a monstead lavender for Pat. The Gertrude Geekle gardens at the Gleab house are currently under renovation, but it's only an hour away, and we will visit next spring. Thank you for another amazing podcast. As a pet tax, we offer a picture of one of the many bunnies who frolic in our yard in exchange for keeping our fenced vegetable gardens. We employ feeding stations to keep them happy and nearby. Look closely, this bunny is tiny yours, Bob and Pat. Thank you so much, Bob and Pat. Bunnies! Let me see if I can get the bunny picture to download. Does not want to download for me at this specific moment, but I'm just going to guess that it is a teeny, teeny cute bunny based on the description. I just love that somebody's got the monstead lavender at their home. I'm sure lots of people do, but that made me happy. I also think I forgot to mention in the episode that there's gardens at the Gleab house, which is the only remaining Gertrude Geekle garden in the United States. They are being renovated. I don't know how extensive that renovation is, whether parts of the gardens are still open with that renovation going on or not. If you're in that area and you want to go check it out, just check into that beforehand. If you'd like to send us a note, we're a history podcast at iHeartRadio.com. If you have not subscribed, maybe somebody just downloaded this on a long drive for you, and you've never heard it before, you can subscribe on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. Stuff you missed in history class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Guaranteed Human.