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[Assistant] Of course, de las Casas also suggested lessening the horrors inflicted on the Amerindians by importing slaves from Africa to do their work, which helped kick off the flood of African slave labor across the Atlantic. He came to regret that, too.


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[Assistant] But though the Encomiendas were being phased out, that did not mean life suddenly got great for the conquered Amerindians. And indeed, the Spanish really just moved on to an ever so slightly less exploitive system.


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[Assistant] Once the new laws were promulgated, full-blooded Amerindians were classified as minors in Spanish law and then resettled in communities called reductions as part of a program to instruct these child Indians on the proper mode of European living and religion.


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[Assistant] These reductions, though, would be headed by a native leader who would be responsible for making sure that his people stayed in line, paid the tribute that the Crown now imposed upon them, and that they showed up for their forced labor duties because ditching the encomienda did not mean ditching forced labor.


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[Assistant] The Amerindians were forced to provide free labor for all manner of public works projects, which meant most especially working in the mines. At the height of its operations, for example, the Peruvian silver mine at Potosi was run by upwards of 200,000 laborers.


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[Assistant] Now the Spanish Empire was not entirely run by forced Amerindian labor, they were now augmented by African slave labor, and even, get this, paid wage labor.


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[Assistant] So as the Spanish Empire grew up, the native populations and culture were slowly eradicated and then merged with the arriving white Spaniards and black Africans, neither of whom arrived with many women in tow.


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[Assistant] As the three principal races, that is Spanish White, African Black, and Native Amerindian, started intermixing, a racial classification system, just like the one we saw grow up in San Domingue, soon developed to determine the social status of all the mixes and matches that arose.


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[Assistant] By the end of the Spanish Golden Age, a pretty clear hierarchy had developed.


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[Assistant] At the very top of this hierarchy were the Peninsulares, whites born in Spain. Beneath them were Criollo.


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[Assistant] Whites born in the Americas. And I should mention that while creole really refers to anyone and anything native to the Americas, in the Spanish context, creollo is all but synonymous with whites born in America.


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[Assistant] Below them were mestizo, mixed-race children of whites and Amerindians, that is, a white man and a native woman,


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[Assistant] And critically here, if you had any white blood at all, that released you from the legal burdens imposed by the Spanish authorities on full-blooded Amerindians, the tributes, the forced labor,


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[Assistant] And more than a few native women found a white man whose blood could release her children from de facto bondage.


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[Assistant] Then there were the African slaves coming into it, and you have, just like in Sandalmang, mulattoes, the mix of one white and one black, and then further on through the quadroons and octaroons.


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[Assistant] Collectively, mixed race black and whites are called Pardos.


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[Assistant] Below them were Sombos, which was a mix of Black and Amerindian, and all of these mixed race people were collectively called Kostas because of their inferiority in the caste system.


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[Assistant] Now this is all important because while the American Revolution resulted in a system of white supremacy,


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[Assistant] Color blindness of post-Spanish America remains a really important ideological principle.


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[Assistant] So all of these people combine to work in and administer the economic system of Spanish America.


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[Assistant] From the very lowly slave, working in the worst conditions in the mine, up through the very senior peninsulari viceroys and governors.


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[Assistant] All of them kept under pretty tight control and all of their work directed to enrich the Spanish crown.


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[Assistant] As I mentioned, all exports to and imports from the Americas had to run through the port of Seville, where the House of Trade could monitor everything.


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[Assistant] The port cities in the Americas were forbidden even from trading with each other, as that might tend to keep wealth in the New World rather than shipping it back to enrich the Old World.


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[Assistant] To keep shipments to and from Spain safe from British and French and Dutch pirates who were now roving the waters, the Spanish developed a convoy system, these huge trade fleets protected by the Spanish Navy.


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[Assistant] And by the late 1500s, they also had established a twice yearly shipment to and from the Philippines. The famous Manila galleons would depart from Alcapulco on the Pacific coast of New Spain, loaded with silver. They would then land in Manila, trade all that silver for Chinese spices, and then come back to Alcapulco.


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[Assistant] Chinese goods would then be transferred overland to Veracruz, the principal port city on the Atlantic side of New Spain, and from there shipped to Seville.


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[Assistant] This Chinese trade was another boon to Spanish economic fortunes, and is also how 40% of all silver minted in the Americas winds up in China.


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[Assistant] And it was in describing this sprawling Spanish trade network that you first get the old saw about quote, the empire upon which the sun never sets.


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[Assistant] Now what I just described was essentially the political and economic system that will run the empire for the whole rest of the Spanish Golden Age. Which, as I mentioned, collapses along with the Habsburg dynasty at the end of the 1600s. So.


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[Assistant] Let's hop across the Atlantic again and finish off today's episode by finishing off the Hapsburgs.


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[Assistant] In the mid-1550s, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, proceeded through a series of planned abdications to relinquish his various titles. And in 1556, Charles' brother became Holy Roman Emperor, and then Charles' son, Philip, inherited the Spanish Crown.


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[Assistant] Now at that point, Philip was also technically the King of England, thanks to his marriage to Queen Mary in 1553, but that only lasted until 1558, whereupon she died, and he was politely asked to take a hike.


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[Assistant] So King Philip II of the Spanish kingdoms kept up his father's passion for waging war and cast himself as the great defender of Catholicism, battling the forces of the Protestant Reformation on the one side and the Muslim Turks on the other.


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[Assistant] And this is pretty much where all that silver is going to go. Because he needs to pay for armies and navies to fight his wars.


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[Assistant] He was, for example, the principal financier for the Holy League's navy that soundly defeated the Turks at Lepanto in 1571, one of the greatest naval battles of all time.


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[Assistant] But Philip did manage to add to his revenue streams. And just a few years later, he snuck in a successful claim to the Portuguese throne, when the Portuguese were in the midst of a succession crisis.


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[Assistant] And so in 1581, Philip was also made King of Portugal, uniting the crowns of Spain and Portugal and all of their respective overseas holdings under one crown for the next 60 years.


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[Assistant] So though King Philip II was like richer than God, he was constantly short of cash. It all just disappeared into the hands of his creditors the minute it showed up in Seville.


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[Assistant] Spanish finances were mismanaged to the point where Philip had to repeatedly declare bankruptcy and stiff the men he owed money to, which he did in 1557, 1560, 1575, and 1596.


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[Assistant] Now we're not gonna wander into this, but all of that played a huge role in the Dutch War of Independence as the Dutch rebelled against the Spanish Habsburgs, a conflict that runs from 1566 to 1648. Because while Spanish credit was now crap,


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[Assistant] Philip's fortunes then took a further hit when his rivalry with Queen Elizabeth of England led him into another one of the great naval battles in history, because in 1588, Philip dispatched the famous Spanish Armada, which Mother Nature and the English then proceeded to sink to the bottom of the deep blue sea.


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[Assistant] All the Spanish Crown's profits from their empire were immediately being handed over to creditors or used to purchase goods from the rising commercial industries of neighboring countries because the massive amounts of Spanish silver brought into the country was causing inflated prices for home industries but making imports super cheap.


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[Assistant] Totally arrested the economic development of the Iberian Peninsula.


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[Assistant] Meanwhile, the rising Dutch and English who were taking advantage of all this,


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[Assistant] And then the French got into the act and suddenly everyone was becoming a colonial power. And the Spanish and the Portuguese were fast losing traction.


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[Assistant] So after its peak during the reigns of Charles and Philip in the 1500s, the subsequent reigns of Philip III, Philip IV, and Charles II that spanned the whole length of the 1600s was just one long decline.


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[Assistant] They got sucked into the Thirty Years War and in not a good way. The ministers of Philip IV tried to strengthen the Crown's central authority to cope with this war and instead triggered revolts in Portugal and Catalonia. The former successful, the latter crushed.


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[Assistant] And then even after the Thirty Years War ended, a further war with France dragged on until 1659.


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[Assistant] Well exhausted by now, the Spanish monarchy was slipping into full second-rate power status, a process greatly accelerated by the long and torturous reign of King Charles II, who inherited the throne at the age of three in 1665.


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[Assistant] The problem was that Charles II was physically and mentally disabled. Possibly thanks to Habsburg inbreeding, but nobody really knows.


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[Assistant] During his reign, the men and women who acted as regents and caretakers of the monarchy just used it as an excuse to make themselves and their friends rich. So by the time Charles II finally died, childless, in November 1700, the Spanish crown and the Spanish empire were utterly, completely moribund.


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[Assistant] As they say in the biz, the fundamentals of the empire were sound. I mean yea, Spain was not really being allowed to sit at the adult table anymore, but their overseas empire was by far, and I mean by far, the largest and most lucrative in the world.


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[Assistant] I mean, at this point, the French are like running beaver pelts out of Canada. Saint-Domingue is just now being colonized. It's not anywhere close to being turned into the sugar engine that it became. The British are what? Just now figuring out how to run a stable tobacco colony in Virginia? Catching some cod off the New England coast?


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[Assistant] So yea, the Spanish Empire had been badly mismanaged and was in need of top to bottom reform, but that did not mean it couldn't be fixed.


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[Assistant] And next week, we'll kick things off with the death of Charles II, because as I said, he died childless, which kicked off the War of the Spanish Succession, which would bring a new dynasty into power, the Spanish Bourbons.


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[Assistant] These guys attempted to turn Spanish fortunes around, a process that we will follow specifically through the lens of one of the new administrative units they created to better manage their domains.


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[Assistant] I believe communities like the Monctons of Canada should get the same technology that the big cities do. That way,


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[Assistant] My neighbors can be as productive and as plugged in as people in any other part of the country. It makes me proud.


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[Assistant] So why is our government giving a giant US corporation special treatment?


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[Assistant] This week's episode is brought to you by Casper. Casper is an online retailer offering an obsessively engineered mattress, made in America at a shockingly fair price.


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[Assistant] The mattress industry is built on forcing consumers into paying notoriously high markups, and Casper is revolutionizing the mattress industry by cutting the cost of dealing with resellers and showrooms and passing those savings directly onto the customer.


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[Assistant] A Casper mattress provides resilience and long-lasting supportive comfort. Casper's mattress is a one-of-a-kind blend of springy latex and supportive memory foam for a sleep surface that's got just the right sink and just the right bounce. Plus, its breathable design sleeps cool to help you regulate your temperatures through the night.


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[Assistant] Time Magazine named this one of the best inventions of 2015, and starting at just 500 for a twin size mattress and 950 for a king size mattress, I mean those are great deals. Compared to industry averages, they are outstanding.


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[Assistant] Buying a Casper mattress is also completely risk free. Casper offers free delivery and free returns to the US and Canada in a hundred night home trial. If you don't love it, they'll just pick it up and refund everything.


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[Assistant] So you get $50 towards any mattress purchase by visiting casper.com slash revolutions and using the promo code revolutions at checkout. Terms and conditions do apply.


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[Assistant] The Battle of Boyacá was, for once, an indisputable and permanent triumph for Simone Bolivar.


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[Assistant] He had been a professional revolutionary for nearly a decade now, and he had spent most of it trapped in a revolving door. He was exiled, and then returned, and then exiled, and returned again. He won battles, but then suffered equivalent reverses. He suffered equivalent reverses, but then somehow bounced back. He was constantly on the move, but he never seemed to get anywhere. While now, he had finally gotten somewhere.


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[Assistant] New Granada was cleared of any peninsular royalist army. The Republicans had seized Bogota and they would not be giving it back. The nation that would become modern Columbia was now free and independent and would remain so.


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[Assistant] The only part of the colony still under Spanish control was now Cartagena, and though Cartagena was a city that could be defended militarily by six guys in a slingshot, it could be reduced by prolonged siege. And in short order, it would be under a prolonged siege.


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[Assistant] But this was no time to sit back and bask in the glow of victory, to get lazy or complacent. Quite the opposite.


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[Assistant] He remained in Bogota from the first week of August to the last week of September 1819. But as we ended last week's episode, Believar put the government in the hands of Santander and then himself rode off on a slow moving tour northeast through the newly liberated cities of New Granada on his way back to Venezuela.


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[Assistant] In every city he passed, there were celebrations and balls and parties and dancing. Believar's entourage became a traveling celebration as the people rejoiced in their liberation. And though Believar celebrated, and the whole thing must have been something of a dream, reality did not waste much time crashing back down on his head.


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[Assistant] For one thing, even though Believar was constantly surrounded by secretaries and soldiers and civilian well-wishers, at this moment of his greatest triumph, he was personally in a very lonely place. It had now been fully three years since he had laid eyes on his long-time mistress, Pepita Machado.


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[Assistant] He did not know where she was or whether or not he would see her again.


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[Assistant] Now if you'll recall from back in episode 5.14, Pepita had been with him through the disaster at Akumare in the summer of 1816, but after redepositing her on the island of St. Thomas, they had just never linked back up.


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[Assistant] In the intervening years, Believer had been re-exiled to Haiti in 1816, then returned to Venezuela and gone off and captured Angostura in 1817, then led that failed campaign to capture Caracas in 1818, and then marched across the Janos and up into the mountains of New Granada in 1819.


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[Assistant] Papita had been present for none of this. Mostly this was because in the chaos of war, they had lost touch with each other. I mean, it's the early 1800s. Keeping in contact with somebody over long distances is tricky in the best of times. But in all of this mess? Forget it.


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[Assistant] So after returning to Angostura in the summer of 1818, Believar finally said enough is enough, and he sent a nephew to personally track Pepita down. This was a search that took months, but ultimately the happy news that Pepita had been finally located on the island still of St. Thomas and would soon be on her way.


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[Assistant] But it was still a while before Believar got confirmation that she had actually boarded a ship, and even then, days continued to pass without any sign of her.


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[Assistant] In the meantime, Believar kept busy arranging the Congress of Angostura and then preparing for his still-secret plan to invade New Granada, a plan that included a place for Pepita by his side, but she just kept not showing up.


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[Assistant] By the time he had to march into New Granada in May 1819, he had to ride without her. And so, he was now forced to celebrate his greatest triumph alone.


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[Assistant] Adding to his depressed spirits, after leaving Bogota, Believar proceeded to get hit by a continuous string of bad news. I don't know exactly the order that all of this came in, but I would guess that the first thing he heard was that Santander had gone and done something really dumb.


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[Assistant] In the aftermath of the Battle of Boyacá, most of the senior royalist commanders had been captured alive, including the commander in chief, General Jose Maria Barrario.


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[Assistant] With the war to the death ancient history, Believar treated his prisoners with all due courtesy, and he hoped to eventually exchange them for Republican prisoners.


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[Assistant] But almost as soon as Believer departed Bogota, Santander decided he could not risk letting these officers live. On October the 11th, Santander ordered General Barrario and 38 others removed from confinement and marched into the center of town.


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[Assistant] With no further ceremony, Santander ordered the kneeling general shot in the back. Then the other 38 men were lined up against a wall and executed.


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[Assistant] It was a shocking scene for the residents of the city. Though they were happy the viceroy was gone, General Barario himself had never been particularly disliked. I mean, many people actually liked him quite a bit. And then, to add insult to injury, Santander then led a parade to celebrate and capped it all off with a splendid ball.


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[Assistant] The sudden cruelty of Santander's new regime came as an unwelcome surprise to the residents of Bogota.


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[Assistant] When Believar was told about all this, he wrote a tense letter back to Santander saying, Okay, I understand that you were afraid that they might have gotten up to something, but really, this is not how I wanted things handled, and it will make our lives difficult. But, okay, I forgive you for doing what you thought was best.


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[Assistant] Clearly though, this was through gritted teeth. Though he could not risk Santander going completely rogue, so Believar kept the chastisement to a minimum.


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[Assistant] Shortly thereafter, Believar was told that another general he couldn't risk alienated had also ignored his orders. Because it turned out that Jose Antonio Paz had never gone to Cucuta as he had been ordered. That instead of guarding the rear while Believar pushed up into the mountains, that Paz had ridden hundreds of miles east to winter in the small town of Achaguas.


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[Assistant] As Believer crossed back into Venezuela, he recognized that he was going to have to once again walk a fine line between reprimanding Paz and alienating him.


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[Assistant] Now General, I did give you an order and you did say you would do it. I know you're not a military man by training, but that does have to mean something.


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[Assistant] But he couldn't go too far and drive Paz away from the cause, because without Paz there was no free Venezuela. And it really was that simple.


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[Assistant] Then once he crossed the border into Venezuela, Belivar got hit with two pieces of personally tragic news. The first was that one of his favorite officers, and a guy Belivar had been grooming for a prominent position in the hierarchy of the New Republic, had suddenly gotten sick and just died.


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[Assistant] And as if that wasn't depressing enough, the really terrible news hit.


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[Assistant] The reason Pepita Machado had never appeared in Angostura was that she too was dead.


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[Assistant] And there is no confirmed version of what actually happened to her. Some say she never left St. Thomas, others say that she sailed away but died en route, others that she made it to the mainland but died before reaching Angostura, and others say that she passed through Angostura, made it up the Orinoco River and out onto the Janos before finally succumbing to a fatal illness.


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[Assistant] Even that is built on unsubstantiated rumors. Frankly, nobody knows what really happened to Papita Machado.


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[Assistant] The news hit Believer like a ton of bricks, but he was good at compartmentalization and all about that old-style Roman stoicism in the face of adversity. But just a few months after riding triumphantly into Bogota after the Battle of Boyacá, he had to have just been emotionally deflated.


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[Assistant] It had been just about nine months since Bolivar had departed Angostura, and he had left behind what he thought was a functional government in what he thought were the capable hands of Vice President Francisco Antonio Seha. The armies of the eastern Cádizos were supposedly sitting there just awaiting further instructions.


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[Assistant] But now he received dispatches that all was not well back east.


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[Assistant] That Santiago Mourinho had refused an order from the vice president to join his forces with Bermudez. And further, that another key general, a guy whose name I have not specifically mentioned yet, but it's Juan Batista Arismendi, had been insubordinate enough that Bermudez had tossed him in jail.


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[Assistant] And though Believar did not know it at the time, the situation was further being rocked by a strong rumor that Believar himself had been killed in New Granada.


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[Assistant] Believar quickened his return home, but events would move faster than he could.


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[Assistant] Indeed, by the time Believer found out that things were amiss back east, they had likely already gotten even more amiss. Believer had studiously avoided major confrontations with insubordinate commanders over the year, Manuel PR being the one notable exception.


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[Assistant] But Vice President Seya had tried to test the legitimate authority of the civilian government by sacking General Santiago Mourinho for his refusal to follow orders.


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[Assistant] But Mourinho had quite a bit more juice, both politically and of course militarily, than Vice President Seia did. So after getting fired, Mourinho began conspiring with the aforementioned General Otis Mendy. And that conspiring took real shape when the rumours came round that Simone Bolivar was dead.


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[Assistant] Mourinho and artist Mendy decided to overthrow Seiya, which turned out to be not too hard at all.


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[Assistant] And the members of Congress agreed. They voted to depose Seiya from office. Artis Mendi was elected the new vice president, and Mourinho went from being fired to commander in chief of all the eastern armies.


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[Assistant] After this simple little coup, Mourinho returned to his base up along the North Coast to reorganize the army to his own specifications, while Ars Mendi remained in Angostura to cement the new order of things.


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[Assistant] Then in early December 1819, Aris Mendi rode out on a military inspection tour of his own. So he was not around when a ghost rode into Angostura in the middle of the night.


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[Assistant] The people of the city were thrilled, and even though it was the middle of the night, word got out that the Liberator was coming back and they flocked to greet him.


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[Assistant] Exhausted from his journey, though, which had taken him from Bogota to Angostura in just 64 days, Bolívar spent the next two days holed up in his house recuperating and taking interviews with men and women who could fill him in on what had happened in his absence. And then he visited the Deposea to get his version of events.


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[Assistant] Paris Mendy, meanwhile, was alerted that Believar had returned, and I have to imagine he went a little bit white when he got the news. But he mounted his horse and rode straight for Angostura to try to head off what may turn out to be dire consequences.


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[Assistant] But when Adesmendi arrived, Believar did not greet him with fireballs of wrath, but instead welcomed him with open arms, and told him, you've done a good job. It sounded like things got very confused and maybe even a little dangerous, and you did what you thought best to preserve the Republic. Isn't that right? Isn't it?


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[Assistant] And Ars Mendi was like, uh, yeaah, that's absolutely right. And Believar said, well, now that that's all cleared up and everything's fine, you'll be happy to return the vice presidency to Seya, right?


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[Assistant] And Arismendi recognized the face-saving out Believar was handing him on a silver platter. So Arismendi announced that yes, of course, immediately I will resign now that the Liberator is home. And he did.


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[Assistant] Santiago Mourinho, meanwhile, continued to face no consequences for his own repeated insubordinations, although when Believar goes out for his next major campaign, he will make sure Mourinho joins his staff, and will not let him out of his sight.


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[Assistant] With all that settled, Believar convened the Congress of Angostura on December the 14th to deliver a formal report.


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[Assistant] New Grenada has been liberated. Bogota is in Republican hands. And the time has come to make good on the grandiose proclamations we made when the Congress first convened back in February. We must unite and form Gran Colombia for real.


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[Assistant] On December the 17th, the Congress agreed and voted that the Union would go into full effect.


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[Assistant] Bolivar was given the title Liberator President, and Seya was confirmed as Vice President of the whole republic.


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[Assistant] But then they also created two junior vice presidencies. Santander was elected vice president of the Department of New Granada, and a guy named Juan Germán Rosquillo, who was a minor figure in the grand scheme of things, but for the record was one of the signatories to the original Declaration of Venezuelan Independence back in 1811,


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[Assistant] Then the Congress voted to convene a new constitutional convention in Cucuta on January the 1st, 1821 to work out the details of a joined government now that both New Granada and Venezuela would be able to both fully participate.


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[Assistant] The government hopefully now back on the right track, but Levar turned back to his last military problem.


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[Assistant] General Pablo Murillo and the 7,000 or so royalist soldiers who still occupied the critical northwestern coast of Venezuela.


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[Assistant] And though Murillo was hemmed in, Believar had learned back in the summer of 1818 that it was not wise to just go launching a full frontal attack.


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[Assistant] Especially because retaining soldiers in the Republican Army was becoming nearly impossible.


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[Assistant] The wars of independence had been going on for nearly a decade now, and the Grim Reaper had already harvested half a generation's worth of young men, and it was hard to convince the rest to stay in the army. Especially when they were never paid or fed what they had been promised, they would be paid and fed.


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[Assistant] It seemed like for every man recruited into the army, two more would slip out the back of the tent. Not that there were tents, that's just a metaphor.


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[Assistant] So supplying and paying the army became Believar's overriding concern, and Believar was eventually furious with Seha, for example, when he discovered that rather than directing cattle meat from the Janos to the army, Seha had been selling it to merchants from the United States, and then, and I'm not making this up, after facing a shortage of meat in Venezuela,


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[Assistant] Buying meat from the United States and losing money on the deal.


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[Assistant] It was pretty amateur-hour stuff, to be honest, and Believar started to suspect that maybe Seiya was not actually the man for the job.


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[Assistant] Ever on the move though, Belivar departed Angostura again, almost as soon as he had arrived. Back out to inspect what troops he had, and then really to make his way all the way back to New Granada to recruit men to serve in what he hoped would be the final campaign to liberate Venezuela.


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[Assistant] After all we liberated you, it's time for you to return the favor.


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[Assistant] So he rode and rode, retracing the journey he had just made, because, I mean, they don't call him iron ass for nothing.


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[Assistant] He was soon riding back up into the mountains and back through the cities of New Granada on his way to Bogota to check in with Santander.


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[Assistant] But the recruitment effort was disappointing, as were reports from Santander that the tax receipts were not as robust as they needed to be.


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[Assistant] When Believar reached Bogota, he and Santander conferred over what to do.


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[Assistant] Believer told him first of all to just squeeze the provinces for money. Voluntary patriotic contributions were not going to get the job done.


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[Assistant] But Believar also raised a subject that would help drive a wedge between the two men.


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[Assistant] After being converted to the cause of emancipation by Alexandre Pation, Believar had not wavered in his commitment to freeing the slaves. And he told Santander now that when the Constitutional Convention met in Cucuta, that emancipation must be written into the fabric of the Republic of Columbia.


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[Assistant] And beyond the moral dimension, there was a very simple military dimension. That the newly freed black citizens must be given the opportunity to show their loyalty and fight in the army. It simply isn't fair that they haven't been given the chance to fight for their own freedom.


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[Assistant] But Santander balked, and would continue to balk, at emancipation. He did not think it wise to upend the few money-making plantations left in the country, and he agreed only that if emancipation came, that it would have to be done slowly and carefully.


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[Assistant] The fate of the slaves would remain a point of contention between the two for the remainder of their revolutionary partnership.


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[Assistant] After just three weeks in Bogota, Bolivar moved out of the capital again and set up a base of operations in Cucuta, which was the most centrally located city in Republican hands, and from there he could keep his eye on Bogota, the Magdalena River, the ongoing siege of Cartagena, the Venezuelan Jaunos,


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[Assistant] And, hopefully, be ready to strike at Murillo and Caracas if the Republican army could get its act together.


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[Assistant] So through the whole first half of 1820, a tense stalemate settled in everywhere.


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[Assistant] Meanwhile, Believar for once did not risk losing everything by launching an offensive campaign before his army was really ready. Both commanders made limited moves, but mostly just to mask their respective weaknesses from each other.


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[Assistant] But in June of 1820, word of a major, major, major development back in Spain leaked that would change everything. It was information that was by now months old, but, you know, that's how it goes with cross-Atlantic communications. Especially cross-Atlantic communications that are supposed to remain top secret.


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[Assistant] So to grasp the magnitude of this development, we have to hop back over to Spain for the first time in quite a while.


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[Assistant] Now when last we checked in, it was back in episode 5.12, The Desired One, when we covered the return of King Ferdinand VII, aka The Desired One, to the Spanish throne.


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[Assistant] If you will recall, Ferdinand's return spelled the end for the regency government that had ruled in his absence and through the entirety of the Peninsular War and the liberal constitution of 1812 that they had ratified.


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[Assistant] But though the Spanish population in general wanted to reject the very French sounding ideas lodged in the Constitution of 1812,


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[Assistant] I don't think anybody really wanted it to go back to how it had been before the abdications of Bayan.


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[Assistant] There had to be some reforms, and Ferdinand was encouraged by many petitioners to call the original version of the Cortes, the medieval version with the clergy and nobility and commons coming together to work out an understanding of how the restored monarchy was going to work going forward.


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[Assistant] And Ferdinand said, yeah sure, that sounds great. Okay, I'll let you know.


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[Assistant] And then nothing. He never called the Cortes. And he and a small group of loyal ministers went about trying to bring back the absolutist Ancien Regime in its entirety. And it did not take long for the desired one to not be very desirable at all.


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[Assistant] So there's no need to get into the thickets of the high-handed incompetence of Ferdinand's government as it affected Spain itself.


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[Assistant] What we need to focus on is their American policy. And when it came to the rebellious colonies, the regime's policy was full pacification and the reestablishment of the old order. To turn the clock back to 1807 and pretend like nothing had ever happened.


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[Assistant] That had been the basic set of instructions the king had given General Murillo when the Great Armada had set sail for Venezuela in February 1815.


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[Assistant] And for a long while, the reports coming back across the Atlantic confirmed the viability of this strategy of uncompromising reconquest. Murillo made a clean sweep through Venezuela and New Cronada, and after capturing Bogota, was preparing to move on Peru. But then the news took a sharp downward turn.


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[Assistant] Now, Murillo's report said, uh, Venezuela has re-revolted, so instead of going to Peru, I'm going to have to go back to Venezuela. And these new reports were always accompanied by Murillo's request to be relieved of duty.


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[Assistant] And then news came in that a rebel army led by the defector Jose de San Martin had crossed the Andes, captured Chile, and now threatened Peru.


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[Assistant] So instead of a grand royalist army parading into Lima to complete the reconquest, it now appeared that the rebel scum were poised to attack the most lucrative colony in the whole empire.


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[Assistant] So Ferdinand's ministers made plans to send reinforcements to Murillo in Venezuela, but even more importantly to send a second armada to the Rio de la Plata to follow in the footsteps of San Martin and undo everything he had done.


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[Assistant] One guy in particular who had been put in charge of all this, a senior minister named Jose Pesado, started pointing out that they might be spitting into a hurricane here.


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[Assistant] At a minimum, negotiating with the Americans was probably going to be more effective than reconquest.


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[Assistant] Pizarro said, look, you can save it all by compromising. You can dig in your heels and maybe save some of it, like Peru, but most likely continuing down this uncompromising path is going to lose us everything.


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[Assistant] So in June 1818, Pesado produced a massive pile of recommendations, an all-encompassing plan to keep the Americas in the Spanish orbit by conceding the end of Spanish absolutism.


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[Assistant] Pizarro recommended that the Spanish Americas be open not just to foreign trade, but also foreign settlement to rebuild the population and revitalize the American economy. He recommended increased participation of the Criollo in their own government, an end to the trade monopolies, the works, everything basically that the Americans had been asking for. But the king did not want to hear it.


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[Assistant] After mowing it over with his closer advisors, Passato and anyone associated with him were dismissed in September 1818 and told to vacate the Capitol immediately.


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[Assistant] The king then got back to the business of uncompromising reconquest.


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[Assistant] To begin with, the Spanish navy was hardly a navy at all. All the good ships had gone off with Maria with the first armada, and not much had been built up in the meantime.


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[Assistant] So the king had personally authorized the purchase from Russia of a small fleet of ships, but when these ships arrived, they turned out to be lemons, scraps from the junk heap that were barely seaworthy. I mean basically Russia ripped him off and there was nothing he could do about it.


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[Assistant] But still, the king persisted, and over the course of 1819, men were transferred to Cotty's to muster for the expedition, and ultimately, they would number 14,000 men.


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[Assistant] But when these men arrived, they just sat there. And despite the something like 400 million pesos that had been spent so far on the expedition since it had first been dreamed up back in 1816, were as ill-fed, ill-supplied, and ill-paid as any of the troops in the Americas, rebel or royalist.


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[Assistant] The soldiers were reduced to begging food and supplies from the Khadis merchants, and then to top it all off, a little epidemic of plague swept through town, decimating the ranks of soldiers and civilian alike.


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[Assistant] Now as is often the case, the men had not been told why they were all being reassigned to Cotty's. They did not know what this was all about. Certainly not that they were going to be sent to the Americas.


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[Assistant] But when the final preparations were being made in September 1819, the final destination leaked out, and the soldiers were dismayed and furious. They had heard plenty about the bloody, disease-ridden chaos of the Americas. They knew from their brothers who had gone over with Murillo what they could expect. Nothing good. Probably just a grim death.


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[Assistant] And on top of that, this fight is to what? Reconquer the Americas? That meant nothing to them personally. I mean, it was one thing to suffer and die to expel the French from the peninsula, but to go across the Atlantic to put down some provincials who are probably on the right side of history anyway? I mean, forget it.


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[Assistant] The men started talking amongst themselves, and they agreed that no, we are not going to do it, they can't make us.


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[Assistant] The leader of this brewing mutiny was a guy named Colonel Rafael del Riego, commander of one of the ten battalions that composed the expedition. Riego was, like everybody else, a veteran of the peninsula war, but he was also a strong liberal, and he had always begrudged the king for nullifying the constitution of 1812.


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[Assistant] The return of the desired one in Riego's mind had been an unmitigated disaster, and it had sent Spain right back under the yoke of ignorant, backward repression.


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[Assistant] Riego looked around and decided that he might be able to convince the 14,000 disgruntled soldiers in Cádiz to turn their backs on the planned invasion of the Río de la Plata and instead march on Madrid.


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[Assistant] On January the first, 1820, Riego and his fellow conspirators staged a mutinous revolt. They seized the commander of the expedition and declared themselves defenders of the constitution of 1812. They demanded the king acknowledge the constitutional monarchy.


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[Assistant] Now at first, Ferdinand scoffed at these demands, and he tried to blow off the mutiny as just unhappy soldiers who would soon be sailing across the Atlantic anyway, so there's no point in giving it all too much credence.


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[Assistant] Except that the mutiny in Cádiz set off a string of similar mutinies in garrisons across Spain. And the civilian population was ominously sympathetic.


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[Assistant] Basically, the Spaniards had been willing to give Ferdinand the benefit of the doubt in 1814.


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[Assistant] But having been given the benefit of the doubt, King Ferdinand had blown it, and they were all now ready to say, uh, maybe the constitutional monarchy of 1812 is actually worth another look.


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[Assistant] So through January and into February 1820, the mutinous revolt spread out, and soon it was knocking on the king's doorstep in Madrid.


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[Assistant] Ferdinand tried his best to keep his head lodged firmly in the sand. This is all gonna blow over, I don't have to give in, I'll just hold out a few more days.


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[Assistant] But by March, the noose had been tied, placed around the king's neck, and was now tightening, even if the king didn't quite realize it yet.


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[Assistant] Finally, on March the 6th, the king and his ministers decided they might be able to buy themselves some time by officially calling for the courtes, which they had been avoiding for so long, but that only bought them a few days.


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[Assistant] On March the 9th, 1820, in the midst of popular agitation consuming Madrid, the King was forced to go out onto the balcony of the Royal Palace and announce to the crowd that yes, I accept the Constitution of 1812.


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[Assistant] The six years of restored bourbon absolutism was dead and the dawning of a new liberal era was at hand.


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[Assistant] Now what this means for the wars of Spanish-American independence is that the expedition that was supposed to invade the Rio de la Plata never sailed. And instead of the next chapter beginning with a huge army arriving in Buenos Aires, the next chapter started with nothing at all.


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[Assistant] The Rio de la Plata would never face reconquest. Jose de San Martin never had to break off his approach to Peru and go back to rescue them.


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[Assistant] Because this army never showed up, the Royalists in America were just going to have to make do with what they had on hand, and that was never going to be enough to stave off independence. So it's all pretty much just an inevitable run from here on out.


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[Assistant] Now probably the Americas wind up breaking away anyway, even with the influx of 14,000 new soldiers, because they probably would have just staved off that inevitability.


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[Assistant] I mean, eventually, it was just not going to be worth the men and resources to try to hold an entire continent in bondage against its will. That had kind of been Juan Pissarro's ultimate point.


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[Assistant] Instead of that coming in the future, it's coming right now today.


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[Assistant] In Venezuela, and still awaiting his allotment of reinforcements, General Murillo did not get word that all of this unrest in Cádiz really was a really real problem until May of 1820.


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[Assistant] And you can imagine just how deep Mario must have sunk into his chair when he read all this.


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[Assistant] But the kicker was that his new orders were to spread the good news to the Americans, that they were all now equal citizens in a liberal kingdom and they can lay down their arms and go back to being happy and productive subjects of the Spanish crown.


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[Assistant] Murillo positively exploded at the stupid ignorance of this order. No one in Spain obviously had the first idea what is going on over here. These people are not going to accept that they are going to be happy subjects of the crown again. Not now. Not after all this. It was over. And Murillo knew it.


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[Assistant] General Murillo sat on the information as long as he could, but by June he was stuck, because he couldn't keep it under wraps forever.


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[Assistant] Just as he was about to announce what had happened back in Spain to Caracas, believe our spies intercepted a letter from the king to Murillo spelling out everything.


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[Assistant] And as deeply as Murillo must have sunk into his chair when he heard the news, you can imagine how quickly Believar must have sprung out of his. Or whatever he happened to be sitting on, probably a cattle skull or something.


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[Assistant] All that was left in all of Gran Colombia standing between Belivar and independence was 7,000 Spaniards clinging to the coast without hope of reinforcement. You beat those guys, just those guys, and it's all over. It had to be.


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[Assistant] And once word got out, General Murillo didn't really do anything to pretend otherwise. On July the 6th, 1820, messengers arrived at Believar's headquarters in Cucuta, bearing a request for a summit with Murillo to discuss a ceasefire.


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[Assistant] Now it took months of negotiations to arrange this summit, as both sides were very cautious about the intentions of the other. But they finally agreed to meet in the city of Trujillo at the end of November.


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[Assistant] And on November the 21st, 1820, representatives from both sides met and formally agreed to a ceasefire that would last for six months. The royalists would recognize Belivar as president of this thing called the Republic of Columbia, and the particulars of the cessation of hostilities and the terms at prisoner exchanges were all worked out.


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[Assistant] With the details finalized, it finally became time for the two commanders to meet face to face for the first time.


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[Assistant] On November the 27th, 1820, at the tiny village of Santa Ana, the two generals finally laid eyes on each other. Murillo arrived first, decked out in his best uniform and accompanied by 50 splendid cavalrymen.


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[Assistant] Then he saw Believar's little party arrive, consisting of just fifteen men. And Murillo was shocked when Believar was pointed out to him, because Believar was riding a donkey and wearing the uniform of a common soldier.


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[Assistant] Not wanting to be outdone in chivalry, Murillo ordered most of his cavalry to depart, and then he dismounted to greet Bolívar, and there, on the side of the road, the two men embraced.


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[Assistant] Then both sides retired to a small house to share a celebratory lunch that involved multiple toasts to each other as professional soldiers do, to the valor and heroics of each other.


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[Assistant] And in the midst of all this, and probably quite drunk, they all agreed to build a great pyramid on the spot in the road where the two generals had embraced, to forever mark the peace. And they went out, they found a big rock and plopped it down to mark the spot where the foundation needed to be laid.


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[Assistant] The toasting and drinking then continued into the night, until eventually, rather than go their separate ways, Murillo and Believar each strung up a hammock in the same room, and they slept that night side by side.


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[Assistant] In the morning they awoke. They returned to the big rock that they had left on the side of the road, probably now quite hung over, and embraced again.


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[Assistant] Then each wrote off in their separate directions. Never to meet again.


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[Assistant] The fighting and the killing would have stopped there at Santa Ana. But unfortunately, the world is not a better place. And when we return to our story, it will sadly turn out that the armistice would not even last its prescribed six months.


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[Assistant] Talking their way to independence was never going to work. If the Americans wanted to be free, they were going to have to decide the issue on the battlefield.


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[Assistant] But the climactic battle of Karabobo is going to have to wait, because as I said, our production schedule is getting a little dicey for the rest of 2016.


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[Assistant] And what that means right now is that there is not going to be a show next week. And then when I come back in two weeks, it's still going to be for a shorter supplemental episode that I still think you're going to find thoroughly entertaining because it's going to be all about the highly colorful con artist slash revolutionary Gregor McGregor.


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[Assistant] And then after that though, I'm going to take another week off, so it's gonna be a while before we get back on track to the main story.


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[Assistant] But in the meantime, I will be finishing the transcript of the book. But also remember, I will be producing five, count them five, new supplementals for the history of Rome that will be available when the new fundraiser launches at the end of this month.


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[Assistant] So I do hope that you are looking forward to all of that when it's done. And until then, I will see you in two weeks for the life and times of Gregor McGregor.


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[Assistant] HelloFresh is the meal kit delivery service that makes cooking fun, easy, and convenient. Whether you're a busy professional couple, a large family that runs at breakneck pace, or someone who simply wants to start cooking more, HelloFresh makes it easier, tastier, and healthier than ever to enjoy the experience of cooking new recipes and eating at home.


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[Assistant] And the best part is they deliver right to your door in a special insulated box so you can skip the trip to the store.


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[Assistant] So the thing that happened to me last night was that I ran late on work and was just about to start scrambling to put dinner together because, you know, you work from home, it's my job to cook dinner.


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[Assistant] And I opened the door to get the mail and there was my big box from HelloFresh that I had been waiting for and it saved the day. So when everybody got home, it was penne pasta with garlic mushrooms and chard. I don't even think it took me 30 minutes to make it. It was delicious. It was a total lifesaver and everyone in the family loved it. So thank you. Thank you. HelloFresh.


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[Assistant] The special deal you get through the show is $35 off your first week of deliveries when you use the promo code REVOLUTION. So please visit HelloFresh.com and enter the promo code REVOLUTIONS when you subscribe.


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[Assistant] So today, we're gonna veer off the main story to follow one of the many fascinating tangents that come from the wars of Spanish American independence. And the man we're gonna talk about today has actually been around for quite a while.


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[Assistant] Sometimes he's just been on the margins of things and occasionally right in the thick of it.


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[Assistant] He arrived right around episode 5.9, and did not depart the scene for good until we got to the events of last week's episode, although by that point he was long gone from the main story, and Believar had long since sentenced him to instant death if he ever set foot in Venezuela again. So, let's talk about Gregor McGregor.


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[Assistant] Gregor MacGregor was born in Glengale, Scotland on Christmas Eve 1786. The MacGregors were old school Highlanders. They were Catholic Jacobites who had continued to support the line of Stuart pretenders to the throne after the Glorious Revolution.


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[Assistant] Gregor himself was allegedly the great great nephew of Rob Roy, but by the end of this episode you'll fully appreciate why that sort of claim can be taken with a massive dose of salt.


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[Assistant] The McGregors had suffered for their religion, but strict anti-Catholicism was fading away by the end of the 18th century, and Gregor's father was a fairly prosperous ship captain working for the East India Company.


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[Assistant] No doubt an adventurous spirit from the get-go, McGregor joined the British army as soon as he could, the minimum age at that point being 16, which just so happened to be April of 1803, which if you'll recall from various episodes, 3.53, 4.17, 5.5,


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[Assistant] was just a few weeks before the official end of the year of peace, when the Treaty of Amiens broke down and the Napoleonic Wars truly began.


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[Assistant] But the teenage McGregor spent the next few years on relatively sleepy assignments. He joined the 57th Foot Regiment and was posted first to Kent and then the island of Guernsey to guard against an expected French invasion that never materialized.


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[Assistant] Along the way though, he met, courted, and married a woman named Maria Bowater, which was an amazing catch for McGregor. His new father-in-law was an admiral in the British Navy, various uncles and cousins of his new bride were high-ranking generals, and there was even an MP thrown in there.


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[Assistant] McGregor married way way up, and Maria married way way down, and I cannot imagine her family was thrilled by the match. Which, if nothing else, proves that McGregor was a hell of a persuasive talker from the get-go.


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[Assistant] The couple married in 1805, and McGregor used funds from his wife's considerable dowry to purchase a captaincy. He was then posted in Gibraltar until 1809, which, after the British had won Trafalgar, was again a fairly sleepy assignment.


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[Assistant] The sitting around and doing nothing finally ended in the summer of 1809 when McGregor's regiment was transferred to Portugal to reinforce Wellington. This was just about a year into the Peninsular War when Wellington was launching his second campaign to put the French out of Portugal and we touched on this briefly in episode 5.7.


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[Assistant] But McGregor's time in the British army proper came to a close just a few months later.


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[Assistant] In October 1809, he was transferred to the Portuguese army and elevated to the rank of Major, and he served there until May 1810, at which point he abruptly resigned his commission and left the service.


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[Assistant] Various tales of personal clashes with other officers seeming to be the root cause of both his transfer to the Portuguese and his eventual retirement at the ripe old age of 23.


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[Assistant] Now before we move on though, I specifically mentioned that he joined the 57th foot regiment, which is the kind of detail I'd usually skip over.


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[Assistant] But at the Battle of Albuera, fought in May of 1811, the 57th Foot made a courageous stand against the French, earning them some very positive press and the regimental nickname the Diehards. And for the rest of his life, MacGregor would talk big about how he had served with the Diehards.


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[Assistant] Massively embellishing who he was and what he had done.


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[Assistant] He returned to Edinburgh after retirement and made a big deal about being now Sir Gregor McGregor, claiming and invented Portuguese knighthood.


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[Assistant] The following year he and Maria moved to London where he further let it be known that he was actually the head of Clan McGregor. Which was not true at all, but he was a smooth talker and was soon walking tall in London High Society.


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[Assistant] It is not hard to imagine that during this period he met Francisco de Miranda, who, while not being quite as shameless as McGregor, did share the habit of not going out of his way to correct people's mistaken beliefs about his rank or exploits.


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[Assistant] And though there is no clear documentation, I do think it's probable that McGregor did meet Miranda during this period, given what happens next.


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[Assistant] What happens next is that Maria dies in December 1811, and McGregor finds his in-laws suddenly turning a very cold shoulder.


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[Assistant] Instead of the horror of boredom and anonymity, MacGregor decided instead for a life of high adventure. He sold the estate and used the proceeds to fund his emigration to exotic Venezuela.


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[Assistant] The Venezuelans had declared independence just about six months earlier, and old Miranda himself had already gone home. McGregor quite rightly suspected that the new Venezuelan Republic would have use for a veteran colonel of both the British and Portuguese armies. McGregor arrived though at literally the most inauspicious moment possible.


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[Assistant] Pulling up to Caracas with baggage in tow in April 1812, just two weeks after God's divine wrath had leveled the city.


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[Assistant] But though morale in the First Republic was low, McGregor was right that he would be a welcome addition to their small army. Miranda embraced the dashing young Scotsman, still only 25 years old, and commissioned him a cavalry colonel.


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[Assistant] But this was not the time to be joining the Venezuelan army, and the walls were already closing in on the First Republic.


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[Assistant] But in between losing skirmishes, MacGregor found time to court and marry Josefa Antonia Andrea Aristeguieta, a daughter of the Caracas Creole aristocracy and cousin to none other than Simone Bolivar, though at that point Bolivar was just a brash young radical who Miranda was trying to keep out of the way.


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[Assistant] At the end of June 1812, Miranda promoted McGregor to Brigadier General, but this was just a few weeks before his cousin-in-law Bolivar lost Puerto Cabello and the whole project collapsed, as we saw in episode 5.9.


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[Assistant] In the chaotic aftermath of Miranda's surrender, McGregor managed to secure passage for himself and Josefa on the very British ship that Miranda himself was planning to board the night that he was arrested.


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[Assistant] While Miranda was tossed in prison by Believer and the other disgruntled Venezuelans


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[Assistant] McGregor sailed away, getting himself deposited shortly thereafter in Curacao, like so many of the other exiled Republicans.


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[Assistant] But Curacao offered few amusements and little chance for fame and glory, so McGregor moved on to new Granada.


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[Assistant] After landing in Cartagena, McGregor trekked up to Toon Haw and presented himself to President Camilo Torres.


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[Assistant] Now bearing the rank of brigadier general, it was not hard to convince the Tunja government to give him a commission in their army, and he was given command of 1200 men and placed in the Socorro district on the border with Venezuela.


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[Assistant] And that is where he would sit, during the dramatic events that we discussed in episode 5.10, as Believar, arriving in New Granada just a few months after McGregor, launched first the Magdalena campaign, and then the Admirable campaign.


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[Assistant] McGregor's job, though, was to guard the frontier with Venezuela, so he took part in neither of these campaigns, and continued to sit in Socorro as Believar established the Second Republic and then watched it get consumed by the legions of Hell.


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[Assistant] But none of that was McGregor's particular concern. He had his own problems.


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[Assistant] As we touched on in episode 5.12, during this same period, Antonio Nourinho's army was defeated by a royalist force and the Union of New Granada was teetering on the brink of collapse. So McGregor prudently transferred himself down to Cartagena, the one city in New Granada that remained in firm Republican hands.


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[Assistant] This meant that McGregor was in Cartagena when Believar came back through at the end of 1814, and was still there when Believar came back through again. This is still all in episode 5.12. This is when Cartagena turned against Believar, and he was forced to resign his commission and go into exile in Jamaica.


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[Assistant] McGregor was on the other side of that confrontation.


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[Assistant] But if you recall, Believe Ourself in Post-Exile came at just the right moment because in September 1815 General Pablo Morillo's Armada showed up and put Cartagena to siege.


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[Assistant] McGregor participated in the defense of the city, though when he got out, he was happy to let people think that he had heroically LED the ultimately doomed resistance to the Spanish. But he did not.


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[Assistant] He was, however, among the officers who concluded at the beginning of December that further resistance was futile. Among those other officers was also José Antonio Sucre and José Francisco Bermúdez.


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[Assistant] The few men strong enough to keep fighting loaded themselves onto 12 gunboats on December the 5th, 1815, and successfully blasted their way through the Spanish blockade, getting clean away as General Murillo focused not on the birds who had flown the coup, but on the entire city that was now his for the taking.


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[Assistant] So McGregor and the other refugees were able to reach Jamaica, where they quickly learned that Believar and a few other revolutionary veterans were reconvening in Haiti.


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[Assistant] McGregor and the others joined the crew in Haiti, with McGregor being enrolled as a general in this colonel of a Republican army.


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[Assistant] He sailed with everyone else from Lakai at the end of March 1816, and then waited along with everyone else as Believar dropped anchor until he could reunite with Pepita Machado.


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[Assistant] Once they all landed on Margarita Island, though, McGregor stayed with Believar. He was not an eastern caudillo. He had no local support or connections to speak of, other than the fact that Believar was his cousin-in-law.


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[Assistant] So when Believar made his ultimately doomed play at Akumare in July 1816, we talked about that in episode 5.14, Gregor McGregor was given a key assignment. He was deposited with about 600 men 10 or 15 miles east of Akumare on the beaches of Choroni.


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[Assistant] When the disaster subsequently unfolded, McGregor and his men were lost in the shuffle and left to fend for themselves, as Believar sailed away.


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[Assistant] With no chance of escape by sea, the only shot they had was to make a 300 mile overland march right through the heart of Royalist Hell territory.


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[Assistant] And thus began McGregor's one true, non-invented, non-embellished, non-scandalously disastrous military exploit.


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[Assistant] After realizing that they had been abandoned, McGregor led his men on a sweeping march that ran them south around Caracas. But the enemy knew that there was this rebel unit on the move, and they sent two armies to trap and capture them.


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[Assistant] On July the 27th, one of these armies got out in front of McGregor, and with no other option, McGregor had to just plow right through the blockade line they had set up. With an intense charge that seems to have flustered the royalist, McGregor and his men successfully punched through the line,


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[Assistant] And sent the enemy running back to a nearby town where it took them fully two days to regroup and restart the chase.


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[Assistant] McGregor stayed ahead of this pursuing army for about two weeks, waging constant rearguard actions. But on August the 10th, the beleaguered Republicans were finally set upon


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[Assistant] But again McGregor managed to break the trap, this time setting up archers amidst heavy marshland that was able to cut down the royalist cavalry and infantry as they tried to slog through the muck.


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[Assistant] This finally broke the momentum of the royalist pursuers for good, and ten days of fast marching later, MacGregor's army was back in Barcelona, a city now held by friendly forces.


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[Assistant] After his return to rebel territory, McGregor briefly joined the army run by Manuel PR, but the two men clashed over both strategy and tactics, so by October 1816 McGregor had transferred himself back to Margarita Island, which at that point was under the command of Colonel Artis Mendy.


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[Assistant] The guy who last time joined together with Santiago Mourinho to overthrow Vice President Seha.


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[Assistant] Well, from his island base, Artis Mendi was looking out to the sea and thinking about how the Republicans might establish stable lines of supply and communication. And he got it into his head that the weekly garrison backwater colony of East Florida might hold the key.


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[Assistant] He suggested that McGregor might perform a signal service to the cause if he could establish a permanent base somewhere in Florida to better link with supplies of the above board and below board variety.


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[Assistant] So McGregor sailed back up to Haiti with the hope of raising a force there, and when he arrived he must have met and conferred with Believar, who was sitting in his fourth and final exile, and with whom McGregor had not spoken to since being abandoned to his fate back in July. It would be the last time that they would see each other.


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[Assistant] Haiti turned out to be a dead-end recruitment-wise, so McGregor decided to try his luck in the United States, sailing for Philadelphia, where he ramped up his considerably persuasive charm to raise men and money for his operation.


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[Assistant] All this had to be done with a nod and a wink, as the American government wanted its citizens to remain neutral, but willing adventurers and speculators could always be found in the taverns of the young American republic.


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[Assistant] And as McGregor made his way south through South Carolina on his way ultimately to Georgia, he raised a couple hundred thousand dollars cash and a couple of hundred men to fight for him.


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[Assistant] And it's on this trip that I have to believe he first got the idea for the infamous Poie scheme, because McGregor raised his money by doling out titles to land in Florida that neither he nor anyone else had ever seen, or had any right to actually be doling out.


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[Assistant] But the acreage number on the piece of paper was huge, and the purchase price very small, and so men took their chances on the dashing Scottish adventurer. But as it would turn out, it never, ever, ever paid to take a chance on Sir Gregor MacGregor.


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[Assistant] McGregor's plan was to go and seize Amelia Island, which is just off the northeast coast of Florida, and which had become a thriving pirate enclave running contraband between the United States and points in the Caribbean. Now technically it was still under the jurisdiction of a small Spanish garrison, but they were cooped up in their fort and provided little in the way of actual control.


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[Assistant] At the end of June 1817, MacGregor launched himself from the mainland with one ship and just 80 men and induced the Spanish garrison, who thought this was the beginning of a full-blown American invasion, to surrender without firing a shot.


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[Assistant] McGregor then raised a flag of his own devising, a green cross on a white background, and started making all kinds of declarations about the momentous founding of the Republic of the Floridas.


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[Assistant] But there was no Republic of the Floridas, and McGregor ran into trouble immediately.


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[Assistant] Like, the minute his men asked if they could please now get the wages, they had been promised now that the mission was complete.


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[Assistant] Unfortunately, McGregor had already blown most of the money that he had raised. He tried to tax the pirates who were coming in and out of the main harbor, but they just laughed in his face.


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[Assistant] The other senior officers he had recruited then started pressing him to keep going and use the capture of Amelia Island to launch the promised liberation of all Florida to truly create the Republic of the Florida's


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[Assistant] But McGregor said, yeah, we don't have enough money or supplies are meant to do that.


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[Assistant] So the whole thing just kinda stalled out as McGregor didn't appear to have any plan at all for what to do next. And he really didn't. So Gregor McGregor did what he's gonna do a lot of from here on out. He ran for it.


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[Assistant] In early September 1817, he made his way down to the harbor of Amelia Island and said, yeah, I'm gonna, uh, leave now. I'm sure this is all gonna work out for you guys. I'll, uhm, be back.


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[Assistant] And his men watched incredulously as he just got on a boat and sailed away.


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[Assistant] McGregor never did come back, stiffing all his creditors and leaving the men on the island to their fates.


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[Assistant] And just to wrap up with this, that fate was that some other American adventurers had sailed over with reinforcements and tried to hold the island. But in December 1817, the United States sent in the Marines, retaking the island and then holding it in trust for the Spanish as the American government negotiated the final purchase of Florida, which was completed finally in 1819.


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[Assistant] But by then McGregor himself was long since departed for other schemes.


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[Assistant] His next scheme would be taking advantage of Believer's call for British mercenaries to join the revolution in Venezuela, which we of course just talked about two episodes back in episode 5.15.


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[Assistant] After reuniting with Josefa, McGregor had been living in Nassau for just about a year until he was tipped off that the new Republic of Columbia wanted British soldiers. With his experience and connections, McGregor would be the perfect recruiter, and so he sailed back across the Atlantic to start recruiting.


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[Assistant] The fluffiest and happiest part being that each man who joined him would be paid 80 silver dollars upon arrival in the New World. And in no time, he had a good 500 men and 50 officers signed up for his personal legion.


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[Assistant] McGregor himself led the first contingent of men who departed England in November and who arrived in Lakai, Haiti in February 1819.


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[Assistant] But literally nothing McGregor had promised turned out to be true.


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[Assistant] There were no silver dollars. I mean, hell, there was no pay of any kind. Nor were there any supplies or guns.


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[Assistant] And in April 1819, he was able to announce to his men that they had a mission.


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[Assistant] They would not be heading down to Venezuela, but instead sailing over to the isthmus of Panama to seize the city of Puerto Bello and use it as a base to march down into New Granada.


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[Assistant] And just to be clear here, we're talking about Portobeo, not Porto Cabello.


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[Assistant] On April the 9th, 1819, MacGregor deposited 200 men on a beach outside of Portobello and told them to surprise the city and capture it.


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[Assistant] The Spanish garrison inside was not expecting any kind of attack and was pretty easily driven out of the port.


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[Assistant] McGregor then strode boldly into town and raised his personal green cross flag, made all kinds of impressive proclamations, and then set down to work.


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[Assistant] But mostly that work was designing cool medals for his officers and grandly taking credit for liberating, like, the whole world.


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[Assistant] He did nothing to secure the city at all or prepare for any further action.


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[Assistant] Mostly what they did is just kind of sit around and aimlessly drink.


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[Assistant] And that's when the Spanish launched the inevitable counterattack.


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[Assistant] Without putting out any patrols to keep watch, on April the 30th the Spanish were able to walk up, let themselves in, and just open fire.


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[Assistant] McGregor himself was asleep when the shooting began and he jumped out the window and ran for the shore, literally pushing himself out to sea on some driftwood. He paddled across the harbor until he reached the safety of his ship.


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[Assistant] With the battle unfolding back in town, McGregor seems to have gotten a message to the men he had left behind imploring them to hold out that soon he would be covering them with fire from the ships.


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[Assistant] But the minute he sent out that message, he ordered the captain to weigh anchor and sail away.


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[Assistant] The two hundred men left in Puerto Bello must have felt their hearts drop into their stomachs as they watched the ships not open fire on the enemy, but instead recede into the distance. They had no choice but to surrender. All of them were tossed in prison. Those that weren't executed anyway.


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[Assistant] Obviously well ahead of the real story. McGregor returned to Haiti and was able to spin it in his favor, and he also found an additional 500 or so men that had arrived in the meantime.


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[Assistant] So McGregor went back to work on the Haitian merchants, trying to get money and supplies for further operations, but everyone was starting to get a little skeptical, as were the recruits who were now deserting in droves.


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[Assistant] His problems were exacerbated when 400 more men arrived in early August. This is just as Believar is winning the Battle of Boyacá, by the way, for those of you keeping score at home.


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[Assistant] As McGregor scrambled with excuses, most of his men simply turned around and headed for home, or departed for other opportunities in the Western Hemisphere. And by September 1819, he was leading just 200 men, though he also now controlled three ships.


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[Assistant] In early October, he announced that they were going to go off and capture the city of Rioja, on the north coast of New Granada, near the border to Venezuela.


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[Assistant] So they sailed out of Haiti in the first week of October, but this new operation was going to go no better than the old operation against Portobello. In fact, it played out like a verbatim repeat of Portobello.


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[Assistant] McGregor landed a force outside the city and said, okay, you guys get ready and I'll be back to personally lead you in a couple of hours.


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[Assistant] But McGregor never came back, and after dodging a Spanish force sent out to stop them, McGregor's men managed to break into Riohacha and seize the city.


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[Assistant] The men then raised a flag to signal that they had succeeded, but McGregor had so little faith in them that he could not believe it wasn't a trap.


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[Assistant] And he would not believe it until the commander of that advanced force personally rode out to McGregor's ship and said, dude, what are you doing? We have taken the city. Let's go.


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[Assistant] So into town strides Gregor McGregor once again, and once again he offered very little in the way of practical direction, and his men fell into aimless drinking.


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[Assistant] Meanwhile, outside the city, the Spanish garrison was regrouping.


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[Assistant] Now the better officers under McGregor's command, men with actual military experience, could see that this whole operation was as embarrassing as it was dangerous. And so they commandeered one of the three ships on October the 10th and fled.


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[Assistant] Realizing himself that this wasn't going to end well, McGregor gathered his men together and gave an impassioned and inspiring speech for them to stand fast and defend the city with their pride and their honor.


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[Assistant] After thoroughly arousing the men, McGregor himself said, Ah, I have to escort a few of our women down to the shore. I'll be right back.


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[Assistant] And then he rode out to his ship, and told the captain to sail away.


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[Assistant] The Spanish counter-attack just a few hours later, and so far as I can tell, all the men that McGregor left behind were either killed in battle or executed.


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[Assistant] So Gregor McGregor is kind of a piece of crap, right?


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[Assistant] And by now, everyone was coming round to the same conclusion.


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[Assistant] Word had gotten out about what had really happened everywhere, and by the time McGregor was sailing away from Rio Hacha, his name was infamous.


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[Assistant] He couldn't go back to Haiti because his stiff creditors wanted him dead.


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[Assistant] He couldn't go to the United States because his stiff creditors wanted him dead there too.


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[Assistant] He couldn't go to Jamaica because the British now wanted him for piracy.


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[Assistant] And then down in Venezuela, Belivar had been briefed about how McGregor had been using the cause of Venezuelan independence to enrich himself and lead good men to ruin. So Belivar issued a decree that if McGregor ever set foot in the Republic of Columbia, that he was to be hanged on site. Now here's the craziest part.


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[Assistant] Everything that I have told you so far, all these things that have made Gregor McGregor's name infamous, none of it is why history remembers Gregor McGregor as such an infamous figure. None of it. Seriously. Because it all gets overshadowed by what he does next, which is engage in one of the single most audacious


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[Assistant] After six months in hiding, McGregor resurfaced on the Mosquito Coast in April of 1820.


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[Assistant] Now the mosquito coast is basically an uninhabitable stretch of Honduras that was held in a weird kind of colonial limbo.


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[Assistant] Runaway slaves from New Spain had mixed with the native population over the centuries, and their descendants now populated the region.


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[Assistant] And the British had run into these people at one point and discovered that they were really super anti-Spanish. So the British went ahead and recognized their chief as a king and signed a treaty with him, mostly just to stake a claim to the region against Spanish encroachment.


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[Assistant] The land, however, could sustain neither crops nor livestock, and as the name suggests, it swarmed with deadly mosquitoes every rainy season.


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[Assistant] But in the spring of 1820, MacGregor appeared before the court of King George Frederick Augustus, and after a night of drinking, he got the king to sign a document granting him title to eight million acres of land in the region, where today the north coast of Honduras turns south and becomes the east coast of Nicaragua.


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[Assistant] This claim in hand, McGregor got to work concocting an elaborate fantasy that he planned to take back home and sell for a boatload of cash.


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[Assistant] In the early summer of 1821, McGregor, his wife Josefa, and their now three children sailed back to London.


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[Assistant] Upon arrival, McGregor began making the craziest claims of his life.


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[Assistant] He said that the Mesquite King had made him Cossack of Poirier, that he was now the prince of this country that nobody had ever really heard of.


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[Assistant] He claimed further that he had come as a diplomatic agent of Poirier to attend the official coronation of King George IV, and more importantly, to promote Poirier to the people of Britain and invite them to take advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime and emigrate to paradise. The only problem was, Poirier did not exist.


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[Assistant] At that moment, the British public was ready to believe that it did.


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[Assistant] They followed the course of the revolutions in Spanish America in the press, but with everything splintering into new countries, it was actually pretty easy for McGregor to just slip a complete fabrication into the mix. You know, there's Argentina, and Colombia, Venezuela, Puey, whatever, nobody knew the difference.


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[Assistant] And he was also able to take major advantage of a speculative bubble in Latin American securities that had been growing as the newly freed governments, like say the one Santander was running out of Bogota, tried to raise foreign capital.


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[Assistant] Getting in on the action, McGregor talked a uniformly great game. He worked himself back into high society with tales of the Diehards and the Liberator Believer, and the paradise that he had discovered in Poitiers, a country of which he was now a prince.


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[Assistant] He even published an extensive guidebook written by Captain Thomas Strangeways. In reality, a fictional account written by McGregor himself that described a country whose beauty was matched only by its bounty.


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[Assistant] McGregor had worked out an entire system of government, a description of the economy and the geography and its future prospects. He invented a capital called St. Joseph, which was supposedly as modern a city as any in the Americas and boasting a population of 20,000. None of this existed.


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[Assistant] Though, the book still does. It's been digitized by Google, and I posted a link at revolutionspodcast.com if you want to go take a look at some pretty elaborate world building.


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[Assistant] McGregor started out targeting working class families by offering huge tracts of land in Poyer for dirt cheap, totally affordable to like a wage laborer looking to make his life better.


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[Assistant] Targeting specifically his fellow Scots, he told them that this was their chance to make a Scottish-dominated colony in the New World, and in September 1822, MacGregor had hired a ship, and the first 80 settlers, many of whom had handed him their life savings, boarded that ship and sailed for Poitiers. Which, remember, does not exist.


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[Assistant] But the charade of sending off these settlers was probably designed to further McGregor's scheme in London by alleviating any doubts that a reputable bank might have about his claims. And it appears to have worked.


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[Assistant] Because in October 1822, just like a month later, McGregor talked a bank into underwriting a £200,000 bond issue bearing 6% interest and getting it posted on the London Stock Exchange.


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[Assistant] With eager speculators buying up notes on an installment plan, McGregor now had further cash to keep the scheme going.


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[Assistant] He opened Poyer Consulates in London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh to keep building on the con.


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[Assistant] On paper, this was all a smashing success, and McGregor became the equivalent of a multimillionaire.


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[Assistant] Confidence breeding confidence, MacGregor then disbanded a second ship of 200 settlers in January 1823, but shortly thereafter things began to go awry.


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[Assistant] First of all, of course, the original settlers arrived on the Mosquito Coast in November 1822 and found nothing. Nothing at all.


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[Assistant] Believing they had simply made a navigational error, they plopped down and sent out parties looking to make contact with Poirier and find the best route to Saint Joseph.


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[Assistant] The captain of the ship though started privately suspecting the truth, though he didn't want to let on. Instead, he told everyone to sit tight here on the coast while I sail off to find the king and get to the bottom of this.


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[Assistant] He had still not returned when the second ship bearing the new settlers arrived in March of 1823, eager to begin their lives in Poitiers.


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[Assistant] But a few weeks later, the first captain came back and said, look, I found King George Frederick Augustus, and he doesn't know anything about any of this, and probably we should give this up now.


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[Assistant] But the duped settlers refused to believe it, even as the rain started, the mosquitoes arrived, and the yellow fever and malaria set in.


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[Assistant] So the captain sailed away a second time ostensibly to search for supplies and ask around about where they were really supposed to be.


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[Assistant] Finally, about a month later, a magistrate from the British colony of Belize happened to be sailing by when he spotted this random camp on the Mosquito Coast.


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[Assistant] He came in and asked the people what they were doing there. And when they replied that they were colonists looking to settle in Poitiers, the magistrate was like, uh, there is no such place as Poitiers, and you're all going to die if you stay here. But they still didn't believe it.


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[Assistant] I mean, if you've dumped your life savings into a fraud, that can blind you to the obvious reality.


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[Assistant] And it wasn't until the first captain returned for the second time that they finally started cluing in to what was going on.


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[Assistant] Because this time, the captain had King George Frederick Augustus in tow, and the king angrily said, you're all trespassing on my land, I do not know who this MacGregor character is, but whoever he is, he's a liar, now I want you to get out of here.


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[Assistant] The settlers reluctantly evacuated to British Honduras except now the tropical diseases were really taking their toll.


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[Assistant] The only good news now was that the British magistrates had alerted the Royal Navy of the fraud.


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[Assistant] And the Navy managed to intercept five further boatloads of would-be settlers that McGregor had filled in the meantime, sparing all of those poor souls an even worse fate.


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[Assistant] By that point though, the real juice was already running out of the scheme.


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[Assistant] The Latin American bubble appears to have burst over the winter of 1822-1823, and many of the initial bondholders decided to cut their losses rather than make further installment payments to MacGregor. By the fall of 1823, the notes were trading at just 10% of face value,


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[Assistant] And it was right then, in October 1823, that 50 survivors of the Pouye scheme returned to London.


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[Assistant] Before their stories hit the street, McGregor said, ah yeaah, I'm really not feeling very good. And he let it be known that he was going to Italy to recuperate.


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[Assistant] But he wasn't going to Italy. Really, he bolted for Paris just ahead of the scandal hitting the British press who had a field day with it.


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[Assistant] Oddly enough, though, the full breadth of MacGregor's con was not grasp. It was so huge and audacious and unprecedented that many even of the swindled settlers believed that they had been screwed by the ship captain, or that MacGregor himself had been duped by the wily King George Frederick Augustus.


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[Assistant] No one could quite believe that the whole thing really was just Gregor McGregor wandering around, spinning bullshit.