Франсиско де Миранда: Жизнь революционера.

Venezuelan military leader (1750–1816)
the film of his life

Sebastián Francisco de Miranda y Rodríguez de Espinoza (28 March 1750 – 14 July 1816), commonly known as Francisco de Miranda , was a Venezuelan military leader and revolutionary who fought in the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolution and the Spanish American wars of independence. He is regarded as a precursor of South America's liberation from the Spanish Empire, and remains known as the "First Universal Venezuelan" and the "Great Universal American". Born in Caracas in the Viceroyalty of New Granada into a wealthy family, Miranda left to pursue an education in Madrid in 1771 and subsequently enlisted in the Spanish army. In 1780, following Spain's entry into the American Revolutionary War, he was sent to Cuba and fought the British at Pensacola. Accused of espionage and smuggling, he fled to the United States in 1783. Miranda returned to Europe in 1785 and travelled through the continent, gradually formulating his plans for Spanish American independence. From 1791 on, he took an active part in the French Revolution, serving as a general during the Battle of Valmy and the Flanders campaign. An associate of the Girondins, he became disillusioned by the Revolution and was forced to leave for Britain. In 1806, Miranda launched an unsuccessful expedition to liberate Venezuela with volunteers from the United States. He returned to Caracas following the outbreak of the Venezuelan War of Independence in 1810 and was granted dictatorial powers after the establishment of the First Republic. In 1812, the republic collapsed and Miranda was forced to finalize an armistice with Spanish royalists. Other revolutionary leaders including Simón Bolívar considered his capitulation treasonous, and allowed his arrest by the Spanish authorities. He was taken to a prison in Cádiz, where he died four years later.

Miranda was born in Caracas, Venezuela Province, in the Spanish colonial Viceroyalty of New Granada, and baptized on 5 April 1750. His father, Sebastián de Miranda Ravelo, was a Spanish immigrant from the Canary Islands who had become a successful and wealthy merchant, and his mother, Francisca Antonia Rodríguez de Espinoza, was a wealthy Venezuelan. Growing up, Miranda enjoyed a wealthy upbringing and attended the finest private schools. However, he was not necessarily a member of high society; his father faced some discrimination from rivals due to his Canarian roots.

Miranda's father, Sebastián, always strove to improve the situation of the family, and in addition to accumulating wealth and attaining important positions, he ensured his children an advanced education. Miranda was first tutored by Jesuits, Jorge Lindo and Juan Santaella, before entering the Academy of Santa Rosa. In 1770, Sebastián proved his family's rights through an official patent, signed by Charles III, which confirmed Sebastián's title and societal standing. The court ruling, however, created an irreconcilable enmity with the aristocratic elite, who never forgot the conflict nor forgave the challenge, which inevitably influenced subsequent decisions by Miranda. The efficiency demonstrated by Miranda in the Bahamas led Cagigal to recommend that Miranda be promoted to colonel under the command of the General Commander of the Spanish forces in Cuba, Bernardo de Gálvez, in St. Domingue, which the Spanish American authorities referred to Guarico. This should not be confused with the current Guárico State located today in central Venezuela. At that time, the Spaniards were preparing a joint action with the French to invade Jamaica, which was a major British stronghold in the region, and Guárico was the ideal place to plan these operations, being close to the island and providing easy access for troops and commanders. Miranda was seen as the right person to plan operations because he had firsthand knowledge of the disposition of the troops and fortifications in Jamaica. However, the Royal Navy decisively defeated the French fleet at the Battle of the Saintes, so the invasion did not materialise and Miranda remained in Guarico.

With the failure of the invasion of Jamaica, priorities for the Spanish authorities changed, and the process of the Inquisition against Miranda gained momentum. The authorities sent Miranda to Havana to be arrested and sent to Spain. In February 1783, Minister of the Indies José de Gálvez sent the Captain General of Havana, Don Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga to arrest him. The information of his impending arrest reached Miranda in advance. Aware that he would not be given a fair trial in Spain, Miranda managed, with the help of Cajigal and the American James Seagrove, to slip away on a ship bound for the United States, arriving at New Bern, North Carolina on 10 July 1783. During his time in the United States, Miranda made a critical study of its military defenses, demonstrating extensive knowledge of the development of American conflict and circumstances. While there, Miranda prepared and fixed a correspondence technique, used for the rest of his journey: he would meet people through the gift or loan of books, and examine the culture and customs of the places through which he passed in a methodical way. Passing through Charleston, Philadelphia, and Boston, he dealt with different characters in American society. In New York City he met the prominent and politically connected Livingston family. Apparently Miranda had a romantic relationship with Susan Livingston, daughter of Chancellor Livingston. Although Miranda wrote to her for years, he never saw her again after leaving New York. During his time in the United States, Miranda met with many important people. He was personally acquainted with George Washington in Philadelphia. He also met General Henry Knox, He did not win support for his cause, but he later published excerpts from his journal about his experiences in Sweden. When visiting Gothenburg he had an affair with Christina Hall, the wife of one of the wealthiest merchants of Gothenburg John Hall. He also visited the family's country retreat, Gunnebo House, on the outskirts of the city. Then Miranda made his way to Norway and arrived in Denmark in 1787. But in the Danish press he was accused of being a spy for the Empress of Russia. There is talk of extradition to Spain. But the King of Denmark assures him of his support. Francisco Miranda is bored at the Court of Denmark. He decides to go to Germany. Seeing the canal that connects the Baltic to the North Sea, he imagines the possibility of digging one in Panama that would join the Atlantic and the Pacific. He then traveled to Belgium and Switzerland and, on 24 May 1789, Francisco Miranda arrived in Paris.

Miranda then travelled throughout Europe, including present day Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Greece and Italy, where he remained for over a year. After passing through Constantinople, Turkey, he visited the court of Catherine the Great, Now convinced that the whole direction taken by the Revolution had been wrong, he started to conspire with the moderate royalists against the Directory, and was even named as the possible leader of a military coup. He was arrested and ordered out of the country, only to escape and go into hiding. He reappeared after being given permission to remain in France, though that did not stop his involvement in yet another monarchist plot in September 1797. The police were ordered to arrest the "Peruvian general", as the said general submerged himself yet again in the underground. With no more illusions about France or the Revolution, he left for England in a Danish boat, arriving in Dover in January 1798.

In 1804 with informal British help, Miranda presented a military plan to liberate the Captaincy General of Venezuela from Spanish rule. In the aftermath of the failed expedition, the Marquis Casa de Irujo, Spanish minister in Washington, denounced the United States support given to General Miranda to invade Venezuela in violation of the Neutrality Act of 1794. The Municipal Council of Caracas indicted Miranda in absence charged him as pirate and traitor condemned to death penalty. The Colonel Smith and Ogden were indicted by a federal grand jury in New York for piracy and violating the Neutrality Act of 1794. Put on trial Colonel Smith claimed his orders came from President Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of State James Madison, who refused to appear in court. Both Colonel Smith and Ogden stood trial and were found not guilty. In these dire circumstances Miranda was given broad political powers by his government.

Bolívar lost control of San Felipe Castle of Puerto Cabello along with its ammunition stores on 30 June 1812. Deciding that the situation was lost, Bolívar effectively abandoned his post and retreated to his estate in San Mateo. By mid July Monteverde had taken Valencia and Miranda also saw the republican cause as lost. He started negotiations with royalists that finalised an armistice on 25 July 1812, signed in San Mateo. Then Colonel Bolívar and other revolutionary officers claimed his actions as treasonous.

Bolívar and others arrested Miranda and handed him over to the Spanish Royal Army in La Guaira port. For his apparent services to the royalist cause, Monteverde granted Bolívar a passport, and Bolívar left for Curaçao on 27 August. Miranda went to the port of La Guaira intending to leave on a British ship before the royalists arrived, although under the armistice there was an amnesty for political offenses. Bolívar claimed afterwards that he wanted to shoot Miranda as a traitor but was restrained by the others; Bolívar's reasoning was that, "if Miranda believed the Spaniards would observe the treaty, he should have remained to keep them to their word; if he did not, he was a traitor to have sacrificed his army to it." By handing over Miranda to the Spanish, Bolívar assured himself a passport from the Spanish authorities (passports which, nevertheless, had been guaranteed to all republicans who requested them by the terms of the armistice), which allowed him to leave Venezuela unmolested, and Miranda thought that the situation was hopeless.

Miranda never saw freedom again. His case was still being processed when he died in a prison cell at the Penal de las Cuatro Torres at the Arsenal de la Carraca, outside Cádiz, aged 66, on 14 July 1816. He was buried in a mass grave, making it impossible to identify his remains, so an empty tomb has been left for him in the National Pantheon of Venezuela.

Miranda has long been associated with the struggle of the Spanish colonies in Latin America for independence. He envisioned an independent empire consisting of all the territories that had been under Spanish and Portuguese rule, stretching from the Mississippi River to Cape Horn. This empire was to be under the leadership of a hereditary emperor called the "Inca", in honor of the great Inca Empire, and would have a bicameral legislature. He conceived the name Colombia for this empire, after the explorer Christopher Columbus.

Similarly to some others in the history of American Independence (George Washington, José de San Martín, Bernardo O'Higgins and Simón Bolívar), Miranda was a Freemason. In London he founded the lodge "The Great American Reunion".

After fighting for Revolutionary France, Miranda finally made his home in London, where he had two children, Leandro (1803 – Paris, 1886) and Francisco (1806 – Cerinza, Colombia, 1831), with his housekeeper, Sarah Andrews, whom he later married. He had a friendship with the painter James Barry, the uncle of the surgeon James Barry; Miranda helped to keep the secret that the latter was biologically female. According to historian Linda de Pauw, "Miranda was an ardent feminist, named women as his literary executors, and published an impassioned plea for female education a year before Mary Wollstonecraft published her famous Vindication of the Rights of Women." Miranda's library was sold at auction by R. H. Evans. The first part was sold on 22 July 1828 (and two following days) in London and a copy of the catalogue is at Cambridge University Library (shelfmark Munby. c.132(12)).

An oil painting by the Venezuelan artist Arturo Michelena, 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. In France, the name of Miranda remains engraved on the Arc de Triomphe of Paris, which was built during the First Empire, and his portrait is in the Palace of Versailles. His statue is in the Square de l'Amérique Latine in the 17th arrondissement. Miranda's name has been honored several times, including in the name of the Venezuelan state, Miranda (created in 1889), a Venezuelan harbour, Puerto Miranda, a subway station and an important main avenue in Caracas, as well as a number of Venezuelan municipalities named "Miranda" or "Francisco de Miranda". Both Caracas airbase and a Caracas park are named after him. The Order of Francisco de Miranda was established in 1939 destined to reward the services done to science, to the progress of the country and to outstanding merit. In 2006, Venezuela's Flag Day was moved to 3 August, in honor of Miranda's 1806 disembarkation at La Vela de Coro. One of the Bolivarian missions, Mission Miranda, is named after him. Miranda's life was portrayed in the Venezuelan film Francisco de Miranda (2006), as well as in the unrelated film Miranda regresa (2007). José Antonio Calcaño, Venezuelan composer his best known work is the ballet Miranda en Rusia. Pensacola, Florida, has a square named after him. There are statues of Miranda in Ankara, Bogotá, Caracas, Cadiz (Spain), Havana, London, Paris, Patras (Greece), Pensacola (USA), Philadelphia, Funchal, São Paulo (Brazil), St. Petersburg (Russia), Puerto de La Cruz (Spain), and Valmy (France). The house where Miranda lived in London, 27 Grafton Street (now 58 Grafton Way), Bloomsbury, has a blue plaque that bears his name, and functions today as the Consulate of Venezuela in the United Kingdom. The Miranda archive called Colombeia rests in the Archivo General de la Nación de Venezuela. In 2007, the UNESCO included this collection in the Memory of the World
Register. In 2016 the Municipal Council of Caracas agreed to pardon Miranda by acquitting him of charges of treason, piracy, including the death penalty, imposed by the colonial councilors in 1806 after the failed attempt to liberate Venezuela from Spanish rule. At the commemoration of the bicentennial anniversary of his death, the Executive posthumously conferred on him the title of Chief Admiral. The Venezuelan Remote Sensing Satellite 1 (VRSS 1), launched in 2012, was named after him.