The Big Rock On The Side Of The Road
Hello and welcome to Revolutions. The Battle of Boyaca was, for once, an indisputable and permanent triumph for Simón Bolívar. He had been a professional revolutionary for nearly a decade now, and he had spent most of it trapped in a revolving door. He was exiled, and then returned, and then exiled and returned again. […]
Over the Mountains
Hello and welcome to Revolutions. We left off last time with Simón Bolívar convening the Congress of Angostura in February 1819 and setting it to work drafting a constitution for what they all called the Republic of Colombia. A republic that they claimed covered all of the old Viceroyalty of New Granada. And for the […]
The Centaur of the Plains
Hello and welcome to Revolutions. The cause of Spanish American independence was going quite well in the fall of 1817. José de San Martín had just led his army on a remarkable push through the Andes mountains, and after a brilliant campaign, had liberated Chile, and Bernardo O’Higgins had now been installed as dictator of […]
El Jefe Supremo
Hello and welcome to Revolutions. Last week, I buried you under an onslaught of information about the course of events in the Río de la Plata and Chile from 1810 to 1815, the principal upshot being that José de San Martín and Bernardo O’Higgins are currently sitting on the east side of the Andes Mountains […]
The Letter from Jamaica
Hello and welcome to Revolutions. In September 1815, Simón Bolívar sat down to compose a letter. At this point, he was still living in Kingston, Jamaica, renting from a landlady he would soon find intolerable, setting the stage for his lucky escape from the assassin’s knife just a few months hence. During the course of […]
The Desired One
Hello and welcome to Revolutions. As you may have noticed, we are in the annual revolving door phase of Simón Bolívar’s revolutionary career. He was forced into exile in 1812. Then he staged a triumphant re-entry into Venezuela in 1813. But then we ended last week with Bolívar heading back into exile in 1814. This […]
The Legions of Hell
Hello and welcome to Revolutions. In August 1813, Simón Bolívar had done the impossible. Less than one year earlier, he had been a miserable exile in Curaçao without any rational hope of a happy ending to his life. But instead of giving up, he instead imagined himself marching triumphantly back into Venezuela at the head […]
War to the Death
Hello and welcome to Revolutions. The first Venezuelan Republic fell in the summer of 1812 when Francisco de Miranda surrendered the patriot army to the royalist general, Domingo de Monteverde. Now Monteverde made extravagant promises about respecting patriot lives and property, but in the aftermath of Miranda’s surrender and the capture of Caracas, Monteverde dropped […]
God’s Divine Wrath
Hello and welcome to Revolutions. On July 5, 1811, Venezuela declared independence from Spain. Well, at least part of Venezuela declared independence from Spain. The Congress that had convened in Caracas lacked representatives from most of the western half of the province, as no other major city wanted to be ruled by Caracas. And then […]
The Patriotic Society For The Development of Agriculture and Livestock
Hello and welcome to Revolutions. So, last time we took Venezuela up to the coup of April 19, 1810, and the establishment of an independent criollo-dominated Caracas Junta. And then we wrapped up in June of 1810 with the departure of a little three-man embassy to London to try to win British support for the […]