From Mexico to Chili the same revolutionary fervour engendered the partial movements of 1808 to 1811. Conspirators similar to the Italian _carbonari_, lodges in which men spoke of liberty in the midst of ingenuous rites, and university students who had read the Encyclopædists, were preparing the great crusade. The year 1809 was the first of the Revolution. On the 1st of January there was a popular rising in Buenos-Ayres; on the 16th of July a revolt at La Paz; on the 2nd of August a meeting took place at Quito. In 1806 an English expedition attacked Buenos-Ayres. At a venture, on his way home from Africa, an officer who entertained ambitions in the direction of new territory and new sources of wealth--Sir Home Popham--invaded the capital of the viceroyalty of La Plata. This city was defended not by the legitimate Spanish authority, but by a noble _caudillo_, who was soon to be a popular viceroy: Santiago de Liniers, the hero of the "Reconquest." In this struggle against the imperialist invader the Argentine people found the first revelation of nationality. First they freed themselves from the English; then from the Spaniards. On the 25th of May, 1810, the _cabildo abierto_ (the municipality and the people), who had united on the 22nd, demanded the dismissal of the viceroy, and elected a governmental and revolutionary _junta_, patriotic but undecided. As early as 1808, in Montevideo, a _junta_ formed in the heat of a violent popular commotion had turned against the viceroy of Buenos-Ayres.
Spain implacably condemned these precursors of the Independence. She exiled or strangled the rebels, { 66} Zela in Peru; Dr. Espejo in Ecuador; Gual y España in Venezuela; two indomitable priests, Hidalgo and Morelos, in Mexico; Father Camilo Henriquez and Dr. Martinez de Rosas in Chili; Tiradentes in Brazil; Nariño in Colombia; all, between 1780 and 1810, struggled against the governors and viceroys, and in their liberal enthusiasm were precursors of the audacious wars of the future. The most notable of these was a Byronic individual, the Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda. He was born in Caracas in 1756. He had a brilliant career in Europe, knew ministers and monarchs, was the favourite of Catherine of Russia, fought beside Dumouriez in the armies of the French Revolution, went to the United States with the legion which Spain sent thither to fight in the cause of American independence, obtained the sanction of Pitt to lead revolutionary expeditions against the Spanish authorities in Venezuela, and was concerned in all the liberative movements of his time, whether in Caracas or Buenos-Ayres. He formed an alliance between the destinies of the continent and the ambition of England, the gold of the London bankers, and the interests of English merchants, and so contributed, even more than by his abortive enterprises, to the cause of American liberty.