By-Ways of War: The Story of the Filibusters

by James Jeffrey Roche

To her buccaneers England owes the birth of her great navy, whose first fame was won in the rout of the Spanish Armada. They were buccaneers who first sailed around the world; they founded the East India Company, and were Britain's sword and shield for the defence of her nascent colonies. Neglect and indifference rewarded their deeds, until they had grown strong enough to protect themselves. Spain had her paid servants in the very cabinets of England and France, a policy which she has not forgotten how to employ in other lands and later days.

Because of a growing respect for the law of nations, filibusterism, during the grave changes of the eighteenth century and the lull before the storm of the American revolutions, slumbered once again.

The American revolution meant the people defending its rights; the French revolution meant the people avenging its wrongs. Each was successful; both taught an undying lesson to humanity. Free America, with wise selfishness, aimed to assure and bequeath her liberty; Republican France, with loftier if less practical aims, sought to carry the gospel of freedom to all nations. She failed only when she yielded her dearly won liberty to the seduction of martial glory. Napoleon, the child of the people, became a parricide, and usurped the place of the fallen trinity—Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

Among the ardent friends of liberty who rallied around the flag of the Directory was Don Francisco Miranda, a native of Venezuela, of which province his grandfather had been governor. He was well educated, and owned a large private fortune. On account of his revolutionary sentiments he was forced to fly his native country and the military service of Spain, in which he had gained the rank of colonel. The bulk of his property was made forfeit. With what he could save from the wreck he fled to the United States in 1783. He afterwards visited several European countries. The French revolution found him in Russia, whence he at once set out to offer his sword to the Directory. He held a command under Dumourier in the Holland campaign of 1783, in which he won a brave name but no serviceable laurels. The campaign was a failure. Dumourier deserted the cause, and Miranda was arrested and tried for treason. Although undoubtedly innocent, his political intrigues had aroused against him powerful enemies who procured his banishment from France. He removed to England, a country whose ministry he interested in his lifelong scheme for the revolution of his native land. New York was chosen as the point of departure. With bills of exchange on London he bought there the ship Leander, with a formidable armament. On the 2nd of February, 1805, the first filibustering expedition from the United States, consisting of about two hundred men, "some of them gentlemen and persons of good standing in society, though mostly of crooked fortunes," set sail for Venezuela on a crusade of liberty. When eleven days at sea they were brought to by H.B.M. ship Cleopatre, and nineteen of the adventurers were impressed, in the ungracious fashion of the British navy of the period. The Leander was detained, notwithstanding her American clearance, until General Miranda produced some private papers, at sight of which the British captain not only allowed her to proceed unmolested, but also gave her a "protection paper," forbidding all other English cruisers to detain or search her. Apart from the Leander's questionable mission, this remarkable permit to travel on the high seas throws a striking light upon the construction of international law at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Miranda received material aid and comfort from Admiral Cochrane, commanding the British squadron on the West India station, but although his force was swelled by two small vessels, it was, from its first advent on the Spanish Main, a wretched failure. Differences among the invaders, aggravated by the wayward temper of the leader, together with a total apathy or active hostility on the part of the very Venezuelans whom the filibusters had come so far to deliver, brought all their fond hopes to nought. Such of the adventurers as were not captured by the Spaniards surrendered to an English frigate and were carried to the West Indies, whence they made the best of their way home.

Whilst lacking in the heroism and splendid audacity of kindred later crusades, Miranda's expedition was a painful prototype in its ill fortune for subsequent ventures. The inevitable defeat, with its ghastly epilogue of butchery or lingering captivity; the rescue of the wretched survivors by a pitying English or American vessel of war; the world's merciless verdict upon the failure: such has been the dismal tragedy as acted on different stages, from the days of Miranda to that "last appearance" in Santiago de Cuba.

Of the prisoners taken, ten were hanged; some fifty others were condemned to terms of imprisonment varying from eight to ten years. Among the latter was Major Jeremiah Powell, whose father visited Spain in a vain effort to procure his release. Returning, in despair, by way of London, he bethought him of a novel expedient. It was that of getting a letter of introduction to the Spanish monarch from the great Doctor Jenner. Armed with this he returned to Madrid and presented himself before the Court. The student of Spanish, and notably of Spanish-American history, will find few instances of generous or tender instinct in its bloody annals. Let it be written, as a bright line on the dark page of Spanish cruelty, that the appeal of humanity's benefactor was not made in vain. Major Powell was at once set free. The conquest of deadly pestilence was hardly a greater victory than that won over the heart of a merciless despot. Two half-pay officers of the British army, an ex-colonel of the United States service, a chevalier of the Austrian Empire, and several adventurous young men of good families in the United States formed the circle from which Miranda chose his officers. Among the latter was a youth named Smith, grandson of President Adams. It was rumoured that he was among the prisoners taken at Caracas. The Spanish minister at Washington, the Marquis de Casa Yrujo, fancying that he saw a good chance of serving his government, and, at the same time, getting credit for an humane act, wrote to a friend of young Smith's father at New York, offering to interest himself on behalf of the prisoner, who otherwise would probably be condemned to die with his companions. Respect for the exalted character of Mr. Adams, he said, prompted this step, but he must nevertheless stipulate that Colonel Smith should impart to him full and complete information about the plans of Miranda, and a list of the Spanish subjects who were concerned in them. The father, yet ignorant of the fact that his son was not among the unfortunate prisoners, at once replied thanking the noble Marquis for the interest he had shown, but adding with a dignity and fortitude worthy of a Roman: "Do me the favour, my friend, to inform the Marquis, that were I in my son's place I would not comply with his proposals to save my life; and I will not cast so great an indignity on that son, my family, and myself, as to shelter him under the shield of disgrace."

What sympathy, if any, was given to the undertaking by the administration of President Jefferson, it is hard to determine. Miranda always claimed to have been in the confidence of the American Government, as he undoubtedly was in that of Great Britain. It is certain that the people of the United States already looked with brotherly feelings upon the misgoverned peoples of Spanish America. Some of the leaders were tried before the United States courts upon their return, but, defended with burning eloquence by Thomas Addis Emmett, himself an exiled patriot, they were promptly acquitted.

Failing in his attempt to free Venezuela from without, Miranda returned to the country in December, 1810, and was favourably received by the semi-independent colonial government. Obtaining a seat in the republican congress he soon rose to the vice-presidency of that body, and organized a more formidable scheme of revolution. On the 5th of July, 1811, he signed the act of independence, and was appointed commander-in-chief of the forces. On his staff was Simon Bolivar, who was destined to play a more fortunate part than that of his chief in the destinies of South America. For a time Miranda was successful in the field, but reverses were soon followed by treachery, and when, in pursuance of the authority of Congress, he signed the treaty of Victoria, restoring Venezuela to Spanish rule, on July 25, 1812, he was denounced as a traitor by his fellow revolutionists, who, with little consistency, delivered him up to the enemy in whose interest they pretended he had acted. His after fate sufficiently establishes his innocence of treason to the revolutionary cause. The Spaniards sent him a prisoner to Cadiz, where he lingered for four years, dying in a dungeon, with a chain around his neck.

Of all his deeds fame has preserved but one enduring memento, his name, carved with those of the other great soldiers of the Directory, on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.