Beschreibung:

VENEZUELAN LIBERATION] MIRANDA, FRANCISCO de. Three proclamations, two manuscript and one printed , each in Spanish dated August 1806, the manuscripts likely in the hand of secretary Thomas Molina who has also signed the printed document in ink. The printed broadside and one manuscript both roughly 17 x 22 (43 x 55 cm), the other smaller. Folds, foxing to printed broadside, well preserved overall. Miranda is a romantic figure: he fought in both the American and French Revolutions and in 1805 travelled to the United States to enlist volunteers for an expedition to liberate Venezuela from Spanish rule. In the month of these proclamations, August 1806, Miranda and his volunteers made landfall at Coro but were repelled by August 10th to Aruba. The manuscript proclamation here is dated from Coro on August 3rd and regards possession of that city; the second is dated August 19th and is addressed to the inhabitants of Aruba ("a government of murderers are our enemies"). The large printed broadside, likely printed in Haiti in March 1806, bears manuscript additions and amends the place and date to Coro, August 2nd, is a call for the citizens there to join him and abandon the monarchy. Miranda later became Supreme Chief of Venezuela during Bolivar's First Republic but after an 1812 armistice treaty with the Royalists failed, he was handed over to the Spanish and died in a prison in Spain in 1816. C