section_path: Political and military career
section_name: Political and military career
paragraph_text: Political and military career
  
  By April 1806, Bolívar had returned to Paris and desired passage to Venezuela, where Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda had just attempted an invasion with American volunteers. British control of the seas resulting from the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, however, obliged Bolívar to board an American ship in Hamburg in October 1806. Bolívar arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, in January 1807, and from there traveled to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. After six months in the United States, Bolívar returned to Philadelphia and sailed for Venezuela, where he arrived in June 1807. He began to meet with other creole elites to discuss independence from Spain. Finding himself to be far more radical than the rest of Caracas high society, however, Bolívar occupied himself with a property dispute with a neighbor, Antonio Nicolás Briceño.
  
  In 1807–08, Napoleon invaded the Iberian peninsula and replaced the rulers of Spain with his brother, Joseph. This news arrived in Venezuela in July 1808. Napoleonic rule was rejected and Venezuelan creoles, though still loyal to Ferdinand VII of Spain, sought to form their own local government in place of the existing Spanish government. On 24 November 1808, a group of creoles presented a petition demanding an independent government to Juan de Casas, the Captain-General of Venezuela, and were arrested. Bolívar, though he did not sign the petition and thus was not arrested, was warned to cease hosting or attending seditious meetings. In May 1809, Casas was replaced by Vicente Emparán and his staff, which included Fernando Rodríguez del Toro. The creoles also resisted Emparán's government, despite his friendlier disposition towards them.
  
  By February 1810, French victories in Spain prompted the dissolution of the anti-French Spanish government in favor of a five-man regency council for Ferdinand VII. This news, and two delegates that included Carlos de Montúfar, arrived in Venezuela on 17 April 1810. Two days later, the creoles succeeded in deposing and then expelling Emparán, and created the Supreme Junta of Caracas, independent from the Spanish regency but not Ferdinand VII. Absent from Caracas for the coup, Bolívar and his brother returned to the city and offered their services to the Supreme Junta as diplomats. In May 1810, Juan Vicente was sent to the United States to buy weapons, while Simón secured a place in a diplomatic mission to Great Britain with the lawyer Luis López Méndez and Andrés Bello by paying for the mission. The trio boarded a British warship in June 1810 and arrived at Portsmouth on 10 July 1810.
  
  The three delegates first met Miranda at his London residence, despite instructions from the Supreme Junta to avoid him, and thereafter received the benefit of his connections and consultation. On 16 July 1810, the Venezuelan delegation met the British foreign secretary, Richard Wellesley, at his residence. Led by Bolívar, the Venezuelans argued in favor of Venezuelan independence, which Wellesley stated that it was intolerable for Anglo-Spanish relations. Subsequent meetings produced no recognition or concrete support from Britain. Finding that he had many shared beliefs with Miranda, however, Bolívar convinced him to come back to Venezuela. On 22 September 1810, Bolívar left for Venezuela while López and Bello remained in London as diplomats, and arrived in La Guaira on 5 December. Although the British government wanted Miranda to remain in Britain, they could not prevent his departure, and he arrived in Venezuela later in December.