The Life of Miranda • by William Spence Robertson

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The Life of Miranda

by
William Spence Robertson

[image ALT: An engraved oval head-and‑shoulders portrait of a man in early middle age, wearing early‑19c clothing: a jacket with a rising collar, a ruffled shirt. He is Francisco de Miranda, Venezuelan adventurer and patriot.]

Francisco de Miranda. From a crayon portrait drawn in 1788, presumably by Heinrich Lips von Kloten. In the Lavater collection of portraits, National Bibliotek, Vienna, Austria.

The Author and the Book

William Spence Robertson (b. Glasgow, Scotland, October 7, 1872; d. Urbana, Illinois, October 24, 1955) was one of the founders of the Hispanic American Historical Review; and remains to this day one of the chief experts on the life of Miranda and the history of Venezuela in Miranda's time.

The book before you was the first English-language biography of the revolutionary figure; much of its value is due to the author's having tracked down Miranda's voluminous papers, which had long been thought lost. That said, scholarship does continue, and the serious student will find it rewarding to consult this updated bibliography offsite.

The work is inscribed,

To
The Memory of
Edward Gaylord Bourne

	Preface	ix
I	Ancestry and Early Life	1
II	Following the Spanish Flag	11
III	Tour of the United States	34
IV	Adventures in Europe	59
V	Miranda Renounces the Spanish King	90
VI	In the French Military Service	120
VII	Experiences in France, 1793‑1797	142
VIII	Relations with England and the United States, 1797‑1799	161
IX	New Affiliations and Fresh Financiering	188
X	Miranda's Last Visit to France	212
XI	Formulation of Plans for the Addington Ministry	221
XII	Hopes and Fears	244
XIII	Last Transactions with Pitt	266
XIV	Miranda's Attempt to Revolutionize Venezuela in 1806	293
XV	A Climax in English Policy	1
XVI	Activities as a Propagandist	28
XVII	Essays in Journalism	47
XVIII	The Return of the Exile	281
XIX	Venezuela's Declaration of Independence	102
XX	Problems of the New Nation	125
XXI	The First Dictator of Venezuela	145
XXII	The Fateful Capitulation of San Mateo	167
XXIII	Captivity in Spanish Dungeons	196
XXIV	The Man and His Rôle in History	216
	Bibliography	257

Illustrations

Volume I
Francisco de Miranda. From a crayon portrait drawn in 1788, presumably by Heinrich Lips von Kloten. In the Lavater collection of portraits, National Bibliotek, Vienna, Austria	Frontispiece
House of Sebastián de Miranda in Caracas, Venezuela. From a recent photograph. Reproduced by courtesy of senor Vicente Dávila	4
Juan Manuel de Cagigal. Portrait in the Miranda Manuscripts. With an inscription in Miranda's handwriting. In the Academia Nacional de la Historia, Caracas	20
Map Illustrating Miranda's Tour of the United States, 1783‑1784. From The Diary of Francisco de Miranda, edited by W. S. Robertson. Reproduced by courtesy of the Hispanic Society of America	34
The "Tryon Palace," Newbern, North Carolina, from a wash drawing. Reproduced by courtesy of Marshall DeLancey Haywood	36
Reduced facsimiles of cards which Miranda fastened between the leaves of his Diary. From the Miranda Manuscripts	38
George Washington. Painting by Charles W. Peale. In the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia	56
Colonel William S. Smith. Portrait by Gilbert Stuart. Reproduced by courtesy of Mr. Herbert L. Pratt	64
Marquis de Lafayette, as a General of the Old Régime. Lavachez mezzotint. Reproduced by courtesy of Goodspeed's Book Shop, Boston, Massachusetts	66
Empress Catherine II. Anonymous portrait in the Musée de Versailles	72
Map of Spanish America near the end of the Eighteenth Century	90
Thomas Pownall. From Pownall's Thomas Pownall. Reproduced by courtesy of Henry Steven S., Son, and Stiles	96
William Pitt. Painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence. In the National Gallery, London. Mezzotint by G. Turner. In the collection of the British Museum.	100
Map illustrating Miranda's Career in the Military Service of France	126
Francisco de Miranda. Painting by Jean Lebarbier. Engraving by Charles E. Gaucher. In the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris	132
Maximilien Robespierre. Painting by Pierre Danloux in the Musée de Versailles	142
Napoleon Bonaparte as a General of the French Revolution. Drawing by Jean Guérin. Engraving by Tapinois. In the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris	150
Empress Catherine II. Portrait by an unknown artist. Lithograph by A. Grevedore. In the collection of the British Museum, London	164
"Consequences of a Successfull French Invasion." Cartoon by James Gillray. From Wright, The Works of James Gillray	172
Alexander Hamilton. Painting by John Trumbull. In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston	180
Bernardo O'Higgins as Supreme Dictator of Chile. Reproduced by courtesy of the Chilean Legation at Washington	196
Miranda as a General of the French Republic. Engraving by François Bonneville. In the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris	216
Nicholas Vansittart. Portrait by William Owen. In the collection at Christ Church, Oxford University	222
Lord Melville. Painting by Sir Thomas laws, Plane. R. A., in the National Gallery, London. Mezzotint by E. McInnes. In the collection of the British Museum	268
Map of the Captaincy General of Venezuela with the Guianas, 1807. From François de Pons, Voyage à la partie orientalº de la Terra-ferme	294
Henry Knox. Painting by Gilbert Stuart. In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston	296
"General Miranda. An accurate Likeness taken at Barbadoes," June, 1806. from a print in the Ibero-American Library of the late Senhor Manoel de Oliveira Lima, Washington, D. C.	308

Volume II
General Francisco de Miranda. Portrait by an unknown artist. In the Suárez-Costa-Miranda Collection. Villa Selva e Guasto, Florence, Italy. Reproduced by courtesy of Signor Diego Suárez Costa y Miranda	Frontispiece
Sir Arthur Wellesley. Portrait by John Hoppner, R. A., in the National Gallery, London. Mezzotint by W. W. Barney. In the collection of the British Museum	10
"The Spanish Bull Fight, or the Corsican Matador in Danger." Cartoon by James Gillray. From Wright, The Works of James Gillray	24
Simón Bolívar in 1810. Portrait by Charles Gill. From Mancini, Bolívar et l'émancipation des colonies espagnoles." Reproduced by courtesy of Perrin et Cie., Paris	82
Francisco de Miranda. A lithograph. In Marqués de Rojas, El General Miranda. Reproduced by courtesy of Garnier Frères, Paris	102
Design of the union on the flag hoisted by vessels of Venezuela soon after the Declaration of Independence was signed. From a colored sketch sent by Manuel Sanz to Governor Hodgson of Curaçao. In the Public Record Office, London	116
The Signing of the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence. Painting by Martín Tovar y Tovar. In the Palacio de Justicia, Caracas. Engraving by George Profit in El Cojo Ilustrado, July 1, 1911	124
Map illustrating Miranda's Activities in Venezuela	146
Miranda in the prison of La Caracca. Painting by Arturo Michelena. In the Museo Indígena, Caracas. From Ô'Kelly de Galway, Francisco de Miranda. Reproduced by courtesy of Honoré Champion, Paris	208
Antonio José de Sucre. Portrait by Martín Tovar y Tovar. In the Palacio Federal, Caracas. Reproduced by courtesy of Señor Vicente Lecuna	248
Bolívar the Liberator. Portrait by an unknown artist. In the Suárez-Costa-Miranda Collection, Villa Selva e Guasto, Florence, Italy. Reproduced by courtesy of Signor Diego Suárez Costa y Miranda	254

Technical Details

Edition Used

The edition transcribed here was the first, © 1929 by The University of North Carolina Press. That copyright, however, was not renewed in 1956 or 1957 as then required by law in order to be maintained. The work is thus in the public domain: details here on the copyright law involved.

Illustrations

The book's illustrations are generally tipped in to accompany the text, with a few exceptions, which I've sometimes moved a little. Their original placement is given in the table above; the links are of course to their actual location in my Web transcription.

Pagination and Local Links

For citation and indexing purposes, the pagination is shown in the right margin of the text at the page turns (like at the end of this line); p57 these are also local anchors. Sticklers for total accuracy will of course find the anchor at its exact place in the sourcecode.

In addition, I've inserted a number of other local anchors: whatever links might be required to accommodate the author's own cross-references, as well as a few others for my own purposes. If in turn you have a website and would like to target a link to some specific passage of the text, please let me know: I'll be glad to insert a local anchor there as well.

Proofreading

As almost always, I retyped the text by hand rather than scanning it — not only to minimize errors prior to proofreading, but as an opportunity for me to become intimately familiar with the work, an exercise which I heartily recommend: Qui scribit, bis legit. (Well-meaning attempts to get me to scan text, if successful, would merely turn me into some kind of machine: gambit declined.)

My transcription has been minutely proofread. In the table of contents above, the sections are shown on blue backgrounds, indicating that I believe the text of them to be completely errorfree; a red background would mean that the page had not been proofread. As elsewhere onsite, the header bar at the top of each chapter's webpage will remind you with the same color scheme.

The printed book was adequately proofread. The inevitable typographical errors are all trivial; I've marked them with a dotted underscore like this: as elsewhere on my site, glide your cursor over the bullet or the underscored words to read the variant. Similarly, bullets before measurements provide conversions to metric, e.g., •10 miles.

A number of odd spellings, curious turns of phrase, etc. have been marked <!‑‑ sic in the sourcecode, just to confirm that they were checked.

Any overlooked mistakes, please drop me a line, of course: especially if you have a copy of the printed book in front of you.

The icon I use to indicate this subsite is the frontispiece portrait of Miranda, colorized to the colors of the Venezuelan flag.

Images with borders lead to more information.
The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)

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The Life of Miranda by William Spence Robertson

The Author and the Book

Table of Contents

Illustrations

Technical Details

Edition Used

Illustrations

Pagination and Local Links

Proofreading

The Life of Miranda

by
William Spence Robertson