Editing Gregor MacGregor (section)

===Rio de la Hacha===
Making his way first to San Andrés, then Haiti, MacGregor conferred invented decorations and titles on his officers and planned an expedition to [[Riohacha|Rio de la Hacha]] in northern New Granada. He was briefly delayed in Haiti by a falling-out with his naval commander, an officer called Hudson.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=208–209}} When the naval officer fell ill, MacGregor had him put ashore, seized the ''Hero'' — which Hudson owned—and renamed her ''El MacGregor'', explaining to the Haitian authorities that "drunkenness, insanity and mutiny" by his captain had forced him to take the ship. MacGregor steered the hijacked brigantine to Aux Cayes, then sold her after she was found to be unseaworthy. Waiting for him in Aux Cayes were 500 officers and enlisted men, courtesy of recruiters in Ireland and London, but he had no ships to carry them and little in the way of equipment.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=209–211}} This was remedied during July and August 1819, first by the arrival of his Irish recruiter Colonel Thomas Eyre with 400 men and two ships—MacGregor gave him the rank of general and the Order of the Green Cross—and then by the appearance of war materiel from London, sent by Thomas Newte on a schooner named ''Amelia''.{{sfn|Rodriguez|2006|p=118}}{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=210–211}}

MacGregor bombastically announced his intention to liberate New Granada, but then hesitated. The lack of action, rations or pay for weeks prompted most of the British volunteers to go home.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=211–213}} MacGregor's force, which had comprised 900 men at its peak (including officers), had dwindled to no more than 250 by the time he directed the ''Amelia'' and two other vessels to Rio de la Hacha on 29 September 1819. His remaining officers included Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Rafter, who had bought a commission with the hope of rescuing his brother William.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=213–215}} After being driven away from Rio de la Hacha harbour by cannon on 4 October, MacGregor ordered a night landing west of the town and said that he would take personal command once the troops were ashore. Lieutenant-Colonel William Norcott led the men onto the beach and waited there two hours for MacGregor to arrive, but the general failed to appear. Attacked by a larger Spanish force, Norcott countered and captured the town. MacGregor still refused to leave the ships, convinced that the flag flying over the fort must be a trick; even when Norcott rowed out to tell him to come into port, MacGregor would not step ashore for over a day. When he did appear, many of his soldiers swore and spat at him.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=215–217}} He issued another lofty proclamation, recalled by Rafter as an "aberration of human intellect", at the foot of which MacGregor identified himself as "His Majesty the Inca of New Granada".{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=215–217}}{{sfn|Rafter|1820|p=228}}{{#tag:ref|According to Rafter's book, the basis for this was a story circulated at the time, believed and talked about by MacGregor himself, that the MacGregor emigrant to Darien in 1698 had married a local princess, from whom all subsequent members of the MacGregor line were descended.{{sfn|Rafter|1820|pp=388–389}} Sinclair comments that MacGregor was indeed unusually swarthy for a Scotsman, and that if there was truth in the Darien story "it might go some way towards explaining his behaviour in relation to Poyais".{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=323–324}}|group="n"|name="darienancestor"}}

Events went largely as they had done earlier in the year at Porto Bello. MacGregor abstained from command in all but name, and the troops descended into a state of confused drunkenness.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=217–218}} "General MacGregor displayed so palpable a want of the requisite qualities which should distinguish the commander of such an expedition," Rafter wrote, "that universal astonishment prevailed amongst his followers at the reputation he had for some time maintained." As Spanish forces gathered around the town, Norcott and Rafter decided the situation was hopeless and left on a captured Spanish schooner on 10 October 1819, taking with them five officers and 27 soldiers and sailors.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=217–220}} MacGregor convened his remaining officers the next day and, giving them promotions and Green Cross decorations, exhorted them to help him lead the defence. Immediately afterwards he went to the port, ostensibly to escort Eyre's wife and two children to safety on a ship. After putting the Eyres on the ''Lovely Ann'', he boarded the ''Amelia'' and ordered the ships out to sea just as the Spanish attacked. General Eyre and the troops left behind were all killed.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=219–220}}

MacGregor reached Aux Cayes to find news of this latest debacle had preceded him, and he was shunned. A friend in Jamaica, Thomas Higson, informed him through letters that Josefa and Gregorio had been evicted, and until Higson's intervention had sought sanctuary in a slave's hut.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=220–221}} MacGregor was wanted in Jamaica for piracy and so could not join his family there. He similarly could not go back to Bolívar, who was so outraged by MacGregor's recent conduct that he accused the Scotsman of [[treason]] and ordered his death by [[hanging]] if he ever set foot on the South American mainland again. MacGregor's whereabouts for the half year following October 1819 are unknown.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=220–221}} Back in London in June 1820, Michael Rafter published his highly censorious account of MacGregor's adventures, ''Memoirs of Gregor M'Gregor'', dedicating the book to his brother Colonel William Rafter and the troops abandoned at Porto Bello and Rio de la Hacha.{{sfn|The Economist|2012}}{{sfn|Rafter|1820|p=iii}} In his summary Rafter speculated that following the latter episode MacGregor was "politically, though not naturally dead" — "to suppose", he wrote, "that any person could be induced again to join him in his desperate projects, would be to conceive a degree of madness and folly of which human nature, however fallen, is incapable".{{sfn|Rafter|1820|p=375}}