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Francisco de Miranda
March 28, 1750 – July 14, 1816
Place of birth	Caracas, Venezuela
Place of death	Cádiz, Spain
Rank	Generalissimo

Sebastián Francisco de Miranda y Rodríguez (commonly known as Francisco de Miranda March 28, 1750 – July 14, 1816) was a Venezuelan revolutionary whose own plan for the independence of the Spanish American colonies failed, but he is regarded as a forerunner of Simón Bolívar, who during the South American wars of independence that followed 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 end was the one of a tragic figure: his own military initiatives on behalf of an independent Spanish America failed in 1812, he was handed over to his enemies, and four years later he died in a lonely prison dungeon in Spain. Within fourteen years of his death, however, most of Spanish America was independent.

Born and raised in Caracas, Miranda was the son of a wealthy merchant from the Canary Islands, a region of Spain. He traveled throughout Europe, becoming a social sensation and garnering support for the independence of Spanish America. He had made friends with many important leaders and political figures throughout Europe, such as British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, and Catherine the Great of Russia with whom supposedly he had an affair (most historians do not give much credence to the affair story).

As a general in the Spanish Army, Miranda took part in military operations on four continents – Africa, Europe, and North and South America – and played an important role in some of the great historical events of the time.

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.

Statue of Francisco de Miranda in Fitzroy Street, London.

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 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.

Arrested several times during the Reign of Terror, Miranda was threatened with deportation after the new crackdown of the Directory on Royalists and Girondists. His name remains engraved on the Arc de Triomphe that was built during the First Empire.

His greatest contribution was probably in the independence struggle for the liberation of the colonies in Spanish America. Miranda envisioned an independent empire consisting of all the territories which had been under Spanish and Portuguese rule, stretching from the Mississippi River to Cape Horn. This empire would be under the leadership of a hereditary emperor called "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.

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 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.

Miranda en La Carraca, Arturo Michelena's depiction of Miranda's last days, imprisoned in Cádiz, Spain. (Venezuela, 1896: Oil on canvas – 196.6 x 245.5 cm. Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela.)

The Spanish forces counterattacked (see Venezuelan War of Independence), and Miranda, fearing a brutal and hopeless defeat, signed an armistice with them in July 1812. Bolivar and other revolutionaries believed his surrender was treasonous; they thwarted Miranda's attempt to escape, and in one of Bolivar'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.

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".

• 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)

• History Text Archive: Francisco de Miranda
• Another statue: by Lorenzo Gonzalez (1977) in Philadelphia