View," about which cluster tales of barbaric pleasure that rival
the grim legends clinging to the parapets and enshrouding the
dungeons of his mountain fortress of "La Ferriere." None of these
black or mulatto potentates, however, could expel French
authority from the eastern part of Santo Domingo. That task was
taken in hand by the inhabitants themselves, and in 1809 they
succeeded in restoring the control of Spain. Meanwhile events
which had been occurring in South America prepared the way for
the movement that was ultimately to banish the flags of both
Spain and Portugal from the continents of the New World. As the
one country had fallen more or less tinder the influence of
France, so the other had become practically dependent upon Great
Britain. Interested in the expansion of its commerce and viewing
the outlying possessions of peoples who submitted to French
guidance as legitimate objects for seizure, Great Britain in 1797
wrested Trinidad from the feeble grip of Spain and thus acquired
a strategic position very near South America itself. Haiti,
Trinidad, and Jamaica, in fact, all became Centers of
revolutionary agitation and havens of refuge for. Spanish
American radicals in the troublous years to follow.

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