Francisco de Miranda

Francisco de Miranda was a Venezuelan soldier, traveller and revolutionary whose career connected the American, French and Spanish Atlantic worlds. He served in the Spanish army, supported the American Revolution, became a general during the French Revolution and spent years seeking foreign support for Spanish American independence. His 1806 expedition to Venezuela failed, but he returned in 1810 and became a leader of the first Venezuelan republic. After its collapse he was handed to the Spanish and died in prison in 1816.

Miranda appears in historical fiction about the beginnings of Latin American independence, usually in relation to the younger Simón Bolívar. No single English-language novel has fixed his image, and his extraordinary travels invite episodic treatment across courts, armies and revolutions. Fiction can portray him as a visionary precursor, but also as a cosmopolitan strategist whose plans often depended on uncertain British, French or American support.

C. S. Forester’s Hornblower During the Crisis is set in 1805 Hornblower leaves HMS Hotspur and. After helping capture a French vessel, obtains documents that could be used to forge orders from Napoleon.