Foremost among the early conspirators was the Venezuelan, Francisco de Miranda, known to his fellow Americans of Spanish stock as the "Precursor." Napoleon once remarked of him: "He is a Don Quixote, with this difference—he is not crazy.... The man has sacred fire in his soul." An officer in the armies of Spain and of revolutionary France and later a resident of London, Miranda devoted thirty years of his adventurous life to the cause of independence for his countrymen. With officials of the British Government he labored long and zealously, eliciting from them vague promises of armed support and some financial aid. It was in London, also, that he organized a group of sympathizers into the secret society called the "Grand Lodge of America." With it, or with its branches in France and Spain, many of the leaders of the subsequent revolution came to be identified.
In 1806, availing himself of the negligence of the United States and having the connivance of the British authorities in Trinidad, Miranda headed two expeditions to the coast of Venezuela. He had hoped that his appearance would be the signal for a general uprising; instead, he was treated with indifference. His countrymen seemed to regard him as a tool of Great Britain, and no one felt disposed to accept the blessings of liberty under that guise. Humiliated, but not despairing, Miranda returned to London to await a happier day.
Two British expeditions which attempted to conquer the region about the Rio de la Plata in 1806 and 1807 were also frustrated by this same stubborn loyalty. When the Spanish viceroy fled, the inhabitants themselves rallied to the defense of the country and drove out the invaders. Thereupon the people of Buenos Aires, assembled in cabildo abierto, or town meeting, deposed the viceroy and chose their victorious leader in his stead until a successor could be regularly appointed.
Then, in 1808, fell the blow which was to shatter the bonds uniting Spain to its continental dominions in America. The discord and corruption which prevailed in that unfortunate country afforded Napoleon an opportunity to oust its feeble king and his incompetent son, Ferdinand, and to place Joseph Bonaparte on the throne. But the master of Europe underestimated the fighting ability of Spaniards. Instead of humbly complying with his mandate, they rose in arms against the usurper and created a central junta, or revolutionary committee, to govern in the name of Ferdinand VII, as their rightful ruler.
The news of this French aggression aroused in the colonies a spirit of resistance as vehement as that in the mother country. Both Spaniards and Creoles repudiated the "intruder king." Believing, as did their comrades oversea, that Ferdinand was a helpless victim in the hands of Napoleon, they recognized the revolutionary government and sent great sums of money to Spain to aid in the struggle against the French. Envoys from Joseph Bonaparte seeking an acknowledgment of his rule were angrily rejected and were forced to leave.
The situation on both sides of the ocean was now an extraordinary one. Just as the junta in Spain had no legal right to govern, so the officials in the colonies, holding their posts by appointment from a deposed king, had no legal authority, and the people would not allow them to accept new commissions from a usurper. The Church, too, detesting Napoleon as the heir of a revolution that had undermined the Catholic faith and regarding him as a godless despot who had made the Pope a captive, refused to recognize the French pretender. Until Ferdinand VII could be restored to his throne, therefore, the colonists had to choose whether they would carry on the administration under the guidance of the self-constituted authorities in Spain, or should themselves create similar organizations in each of the colonies to take charge of affairs. The former course was favored by the official element and its supporters among the conservative classes, the latter by the liberals, who felt that they had as much right as the people of the mother country to choose the form of government best suited to their interests.
Each party viewed the other with distrust. Opposition to the more democratic procedure, it was felt, could mean nothing less than secret submission to the pretensions of Joseph Bonaparte; whereas the establishment in America of any organizations like those in Spain surely indicated a spirit of disloyalty toward Ferdinand VII himself. Under circumstances like these, when the junta and its successor, the council of regency, refused to make substantial concessions to the colonies, both parties were inevitably drifting toward independence. In the phrase of Manuel Belgrano, one of the great leaders in the viceroyalty of La Plata, "our old King or none" became the watchword that gradually shaped the thoughts of Spanish Americans.
When, therefore, in 1810, the news came that the French army had overrun Spain, democratic ideas so long cherished in secret and propagated so industriously by Miranda and his followers at last found expression in a series of uprisings in the four viceroyalties of La Plata, Peru, New Granada, and New Spain. But in each of these viceroyalties the revolution ran a different course. Sometimes it was the capital city that led off; sometimes a provincial town; sometimes a group of individuals in the country districts. Among the actual participants in the various movements very little harmony was to be found. Here a particular leader claimed obedience; there a board of self-chosen magistrates held sway; elsewhere a town or province refused to acknowledge the central authority. To add to these complications, in 1812, a revolutionary Cortes, or legislative body, assembled at Cadiz, adopted for Spain and its dominions a constitution providing for direct representation of the colonies in oversea administration. Since arrangements of this sort contented many of the Spanish Americans who had protested against existing abuses, they were quite unwilling to press their grievances further. Given all these evidences of division in activity and counsel, one does not find it difficult to foresee the outcome.
On May 25, 1810, popular agitation at Buenos Aires forced the Spanish viceroy of La Plata to resign. The central authority was thereupon vested in an elected junta that was to govern in the name of Ferdinand VII. Opposition broke out immediately. The northern and eastern parts of the viceroyalty showed themselves quite unwilling to obey these upstarts. Meantime, urged on by radicals who revived the Jacobin doctrines of revolutionary France, the junta strove to suppress in rigorous fashion any symptoms of disaffection; but it could do nothing to stem the tide of separation in the rest of the viceroyalty—in Charcas (Bolivia), Paraguay, and the Banda Oriental, or East Bank, of the Uruguay.
At Buenos Aires acute difference of opinion—about the extent to which the movement should be carried and about the permanent form of government to be adopted as well as the method of establishing it—produced a series of political commotions little short of anarchy. Triumvirates followed the junta into power; supreme directors alternated with triumvirates; and constituent assemblies came and went. Under one authority or another the name of the viceroyalty was changed to "United Provinces of La Plata River"; a seal, a flag, and a coat of arms were chosen; and numerous features of the Spanish regime were abolished, including titles of nobility, the Inquisition, the slave trade, and restrictions on the press. But so chaotic were the conditions within and so disastrous the campaigns without, that eventually commissioners were sent to Europe, bearing instructions to seek a king for the distracted country.
When