Bolivar’s British Legion
At a low point in his fortunes, the Liberator sent an emissary to recruit troops in London. Philip Ziegler describes how their achievements were of various importance, but the flame of Simón Bolivar’s British Legion lives on.
By 1817 the wars of liberation in Gran Colombia seemed almost to have petered out. According to all the rules, the rickety edifice of the Spanish Empire, undermined by the eclipse of Spain in Europe, should have been about to fall.
And yet it obstinately refused to do so. Indeed, in the face of the skilful and savage counter-attacks of Pablo Morillo, Simón Bolivar, the Liberator, had been forced to flee to Jamaica and thence to Haiti.
By 1817 he was again established on the mainland at Angostura, a river village in the swamps of Maracaibo about two hundred miles from Caracas. But his position was both precarious and uncomfortable and, though nothing could affect his own confidence in victory, the morale of his supporters was dangerously low.
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