Francisco de Miranda
Sebastián Francisco de Miranda Rodríguez (born March 28, 1750 in Caracas , † July 14, 1816 in Cádiz ) was an officer and revolutionary. He campaigned for the independence and unification of the Spanish colonies in America. His lifelong dream was a unified Latin American state called Colombia , named after Christopher Columbus . According to his ideas, it should be headed by an emperor elected by the people, who should bear the title Inca , based on the rulers of the Indian Inca . The Inca should in turn be controlled by a bicameral parliament based on the US model. Although his own efforts were unsuccessful, Miranda is considered to be the pioneer of Simón Bolívar , who ultimately ended Spanish rule in South America .
Life
parents house
Miranda was born on March 28, 1750 in Caracas and grew up there. His mother was Doña Francisca Antonia Rodríguez de Espinosa. His father Don Sebastián Miranda came from the Canary Islands , part of European Spain . Like most Spaniards who had left their homeland not so long ago, he was not a landowner, but organized trade between the Creoles resident in Caracas, the Spanish-born upper class who had lived in the country for generations, and the Spanish motherland. Miranda had a younger brother who drowned long before Miranda's death.
education
He learned Latin, mathematics, languages and warfare at the Royal University of Caracas. At the age of 21 he left Caracas and went to Madrid . There he completed his studies and then entered the military.
Military career
Morocco
On December 9, 1774, Spain declared war on Morocco . Miranda was transferred to Morocco and was supposed to stay there for six years and gain combat experience. He twice asked for a transfer to his home country; however, his request was not granted until after the end of the war in 1780.
American War of Independence
In the final phase of the American War of Independence , the Spanish intervened in the war. In 1783 they succeeded in snatching Pensácola in Florida and the Bahamas from the English .
At the beginning of 1782 he received mail from his native Venezuela . Miranda was 32 years old at the time and had a good reputation in Venezuela, especially because of his military skills in the conquest of the British-held fortress Pensácola. Therefore, on February 24, 1782, three Venezuelan elites signed an appeal to Miranda, in which they offered him the leadership role of an uprising movement supported by the Creole class. Sections of the upper class were no longer willing to allow representatives of the crown to restrict their freedom of action.
However, Miranda must have taken note of this concern with mixed feelings at best, as he had a bad opinion of two signatories because of a family feud. One of them was Simón Bolívar's father. So he remained loyal to the Spanish crown for the time being, although he betrayed the crown through dark trading ventures as well as through dubious agreements with the English.
Miranda becomes a revolutionary
Travel through the United States
At the end of 1783 he ended his service in the military. He started a trip across the United States . There he met with George Washington , Thomas Paine and Alexander Hamilton , among others . His vision of a unified Hispano-America emerged on his journey. He made some contacts but didn't get the support he was hoping for.
European Time
Miranda documented in detail in his diaries the trips he made across Europe from 1783 to 1792. In 1785, for example, he visited the Netherlands, Kur-Hannover, Braunschweig, Prussia, Saxony, Bohemia, Austria and Hungary. Between 1785 and 1786 he visited Italy, Greece and Turkey. He then spent a long time at the court of Catherine the Great . When he was not given sufficient support for his liberation plans there, he tried it at the Italian court. In 1787 he traveled through Scandinavia. In 1787 and 1788 he stayed in Denmark, where he worked to improve the situation in the prisons. In 1788 he visited different regions of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, northern Italy and France. In 1789 and 1790 he stayed in England again.
Revolutionary General
Finally he reached France in 1792, where he joined the Revolutionary Army on September 11th. After the successful defense of a Prussian contingent by the cannonade of Valmy on September 20, he was promoted to general, but soon afterwards clashed with his superior over strategic issues and was imprisoned. It was not until 1795 that he was released and went to England, where he hoped for support for his plans for a coup.
His services were later recognized by France. His name is immortalized on the triumphal arch in Paris in the 4th column. He is the only American whose name is mentioned there.
Wait in England
He spent many years of his life in London , during which time he married an English woman. They had two children.
The Kingdom of Great Britain promoted at that time South American independence movement , because it is thus hoped a strengthening of British trade in this part of the world. This was possibly also because British troops and resources were tied up in Ireland . The British government set those revolutionaries who it considered fit in England in order to be able to use them at the appropriate moment. This was also Miranda's fate.
That is why “revolutionary petitioners” from the new world always found an open ear, but for a long time no solid support. During his time in London, de Miranda met the Jesuit writer and pioneer for Latin American independence Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán (1748–1798), whose important texts he translated.
He was in close contact with British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger , received a pension of 1,000 pounds per year and was able to influence events in his home country of Venezuela through British Governor Picton in Trinidad . For a long time, however, he was not granted exit or even logistical or military support.
This made him so bitter that he obtained the right to travel to Napoleon's France through his former French friends . However, his request for assistance was refused. He himself was expelled from France, probably because his liberal views no longer conformed to the ideas of Napoleonic France.
Back in London , he intensified his efforts, but realized in August 1801 that it had only served as a tool to secure the conclusion of the Amiens Peace . He wrote in his diary:
“So here we are at the mercy of England, who will hand us over to Spain or France, whatever suits its interests best. But when I arrived I had made it a condition that, if England couldn't help us, we should go to our homeland to do what we could ... Good heavens, what unfaithfulness! Poor Americans, how is your destiny being pushed around in the world! "
He had to wait until 1805, when the time seemed propitious for British diplomacy to isolate Spain and wrest the South American colonies from Spanish hegemony .
First liberation company
Since the Kingdom of Britain did not want to be directly identified with Miranda's campaign at the time, Miranda sent it to the United States with £ 8,000 to find men and weapons for battle. At the same time the invasion of Buenos Aires was secretly prepared, which later failed due to the resistance of the inhabitants.
Miranda hoped to find official support in the United States. However, this hope was disappointed; he could only organize a few volunteers. He set out with three ships and 150 men. Some of them were reliable freedom fighters, but many were adventurers with poor training and no combat experience. The men were poorly armed. The company also built on being able to use the crew of the ships as soldiers. However, this could only be done with the permission of the captain; It was precisely with this that Miranda often clashed, which is why he was also denied this support.
After a stay in Trinidad , the expedition landed on the Venezuelan coast on the night of April 27, not far from Puerto Cabello . The attempt failed, two ships were lost and sixty men were killed or captured. Miranda withdrew to Grenada , UK .
Second liberation company
In the meantime, British Prime Minister Pitt had died. His successor, William Wyndham Grenville , believed that a general uprising in South America was likely and instructed the governor to support a second invasion.
On the morning of August 3, 1806, a battalion of 500 men landed close to La Vela de Coro on the open coast. The soldiers took Coro the following day . During the five days that Miranda stayed in Coro, he tried to rally his countrymen under the banner of freedom. However, the attempt failed. Miranda was driven out not by Spain's power but by his own compatriots. Possibly that was because he no longer had an emotional connection with the life of his home country, which he seems to have recognized even in insightful moments. On the other hand, the UK official, William D. Robinson, notes:
“Miranda secretly enjoys the warm support of every righteous Creole in the province as soon as he appears with a force that inspires confidence. His friends are disappointed that he did not appear with two to three thousand men, which would have been more than enough to put him in possession of the capital. "
Miranda suffered personal defeat, but remained stubborn. He settled on an island and waited for British support from 13,000 soldiers who had become free in Ireland and were supposed to be available for his operations. Immediately he went back to London.
To Miranda's bad luck, the European situation changed fundamentally. France had occupied Portugal in alliance with Spain . French troops were in every Spanish city. The betrayal of the ally was secretly planned. On May 10, 1808, the king and his heir were forced to abdicate . This sparked a general uprising among the Spaniards. The British saw a chance to fight their adversary Napoleon and sent the 13,000 men not to Venezuela as planned, but to Spain. As a result, Miranda initially saw no more opportunity to continue the company and stayed in London.
Participation in Venezuela's War of Independence
The events in Spain were to prove useful to Miranda's endeavors, since they led to further independence movements in many Spanish colonies and largely restricted the military sphere of action of the Spanish government to mainland Europe.
Solidarity with Ferdinand VII.
With the exception of a few members of the upper class, the Spaniards and people of Spanish origin on both sides of the Atlantic did not agree with Napoleon's brother Joseph Bonaparte as the new king. Juntas were spontaneously founded to fight for the reinstatement of Ferdinand VII . In the meantime, sovereignty should pass to the people.
In the following years, two effects led to the movement, which was actually aimed at the unity of the kingdom and the empire, turning into a separatist movement. On the one hand, several Juntas were founded in Spain, each claiming to represent all Spaniards. As a result, however, the individual representatives could no longer be taken seriously. On the other hand, the conditions on the battlefield developed unfavorably for the Spaniards and the juntas lost their acceptance. A reinstatement of Ferdinand VII seemed increasingly unlikely. The radicals, with the legitimation of the French occupation of Spain, gained more and more the upper hand in the colonies. After Bolívar's lecture on July 4, 1811 as advocate of the Sociedad Patriotica before the junta , which had been transformed into a national assembly, the junta proclaimed the first Venezuelan republic and thus Venezuelan independence on July 5, 1811.
Simón Bolívar had always pursued radical plans. His name was to be indelibly imprinted on the continent's memory and become a symbol of its independence and its own identity. Bolívar was the future liberator of South America. The lives of the two officers have been closely linked ever since. In addition to their military and political ambitions, Miranda and Bolívar shared a deep friendship from then on. However, since Bolívar had no military capabilities at the time, he decided to bring the expert Miranda to Venezuela and traveled to London as the official representative of the new government .
Miranda returned to Venezuela with him. He entered his homeland in the uniform of a French revolutionary general. However, this initially brought him more opponents than allies, as many thought he was a radical Jacobin . The younger Creoles in particular took him to their hearts as the true leader of the true revolution against Spain and as a visionary of a new, equal and free world; the more thoughtful men, on the other hand, felt uneasy about the foreign, Jacobean inclinations of a man who did not even know his country. It took him some time to reintegrate in his homeland, accompanied by painful neglect in elections or the allocation of posts, but finally on June 28, 1811, precisely because of his vision for all of America, he was admitted as a member of El Pao .
As a result of serious military difficulties, he was appointed dictator with the title of generalissimo on April 24, 1812 .
All provinces had never joined the independent Venezuelan confederation. Since the beginning of independence, the economic situation had deteriorated dramatically, similar to that during the French Revolution . Murder and arbitrariness against apparent enemies had taken hold. The new state lacked the means to maintain troops and no one wanted to fight for it anymore.
Even before Miranda's rise to dictator, General Monteverde, loyal to Spain, had begun a campaign of reconquest. As a result of tactical errors, however, he found himself in a militarily unfavorable position. Loyalists came to his aid, however, by stealing the most important port for the Federation, Puerto Cabello , which was also of great importance as an ammunition depot, from Simón Bolívar's hand.
Miranda saw no point in continuing the fighting; he also hoped for a mild peace, since at that time Spain had adopted the most liberal, most progressive and best constitution that Europe had ever seen.
His bad luck was that he did not surrender to the Spanish Cortes , but to Monteverde. He also did not think of giving Venezuela back to Spain, but made himself ruler, following the Napoleonic model.
Treason and imprisonment
Like many radicals in July 1812, Miranda only had to flee. His and Bolívar's luggage was already stowed on ships when Miranda was arrested by his friend Bolívar and two others and turned over to the authorities. Miranda had been extradited to the Spanish authorities of Casas, Peña and Bolívar under circumstances that led Monteverde to believe that the three men deserved a reward. Casas and Peña were allowed to stay in Venezuela, Bolívar received a passport to allow them to leave the country.
Miranda was interned in Cádiz until his death on July 14, 1816.
literature
- Francisco de Miranda: Diario de Viajes . Monte Ávila Editores. 1992, ISBN 980-01-0644-8 .
- John Maher (Ed.): Francisco de Miranda: Exile and Enlightenment. Institute for the Study of the Americas, London 2006, ISBN 978-1-900039-54-3 .
- Michael Zeuske: Francisco de Miranda and the discovery of Europe: A biography. Lit-Verlag, Hamburg & Münster 1995, ISBN 3-89473-860-X .
- Michael Zeuske: Francisco de Miranda y la modernidad en América. Prisma histórico Vol. 2, Madrid: Fundación Mapfre Tavera; Aranjuez: Ediciones Doce Calles; Secretaría de Cooperación Iberoaméricana, 2004, ISBN 84-8479-047-9 .
- Michael Zeuske: Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816): América, Europe and the globalization of the first decolonization. In: Bernd Hausberger (Ed.): Global CVs. People as actors in world history. Mandelbaum, Vienna 2006, pp. 117–142, ISBN 3-85476-197-X .
- Giovanni Meza Dorta: Miranda y Bolívar: dos visiones. Comala, Caracas 2007, ISBN 980-390160-5 .
- VS Naipaul : Farewell to Eldorado: A Colonial Story. Claassen-Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-546-00313-6 (Contains a comprehensive description of Miranda's stay in Trinidad )
Individual evidence
- ^ Francisco de Miranda: Diario de Viajes . Monte Ávila Editores. 1992, ISBN 980-01-0644-8 .
- ↑ On Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán see Nicolas De Ribas: Le jésuite péruvien Viscardo y Guzmán (1748–1798). Modèles littéraires et écritures de la révolution de “l'acteur precurseur” des indépendances hispano-américaines . In: America. Cahiers du Center de recherches inter-universitaires sur les champs culturels en Amérique latine (CRICCAL) , ISSN 2427-9048 , vol. 41 (2012), pp. 19–32.
Web links
- Literature by and about Francisco de Miranda in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin
- Digital collection, Spanish
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Miranda, Francisco de |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sebastian Francisco de Miranda Rodríguez |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Venezuelan freedom fighter against the Spanish |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 28, 1750 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Caracas |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 14, 1816 |
| Place of death | Cadiz |