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Gregor MacGregor
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==South America== ===Venezuela, under Miranda=== [[File:Josefa MacGregor.jpg|thumb|upright|Josefa Lovera MacGregor, painted by [[Charles Lees (painter)|Charles Lees]] in 1821|alt=A dark-haired, exotic-looking young lady in a light-coloured dress]] MacGregor arrived in the Venezuelan capital [[Caracas]] a fortnight after much of the city had been destroyed by [[1812 Caracas earthquake|an earthquake]]. With swathes of the country under the control of advancing royalist armies, the revolutionary government was losing support and starting to fracture.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=128–129}} MacGregor dropped his pretended Scottish baronetcy, reasoning that it might undermine the republican credentials he hoped to establish, but continued to style himself "Sir Gregor" on the basis that he was, he claimed, a knight of the Portuguese [[Order of Christ (Portugal)|Order of Christ]].{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=126–127}} He offered his services directly to Miranda in Caracas.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=130–133}} As a former British Army officer—from the famous "Die-Hards", no less—he was received with alacrity and given command of a cavalry battalion with the rank of colonel. In his first action, MacGregor and his cavalry routed a royalist force west of [[Maracay]], between [[Valencia, Carabobo|Valencia]] and Caracas. Subsequent engagements were less successful, but the republican leaders were still pleased with the glamour they perceived this dashing Scottish officer to give their cause.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=130–135}} MacGregor married Josefa Antonia Andrea Aristeguieta y Lovera, daughter of a prominent Caracas family and a cousin of the revolutionary [[Simón Bolívar]], in Maracay on 10 June 1812.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=149–151}} By the end of that month Miranda had promoted MacGregor to [[brigadier-general]], but the revolutionary cause was failing; in July, after the royalists took the key port of [[Puerto Cabello]] from Bolívar, the republic capitulated. In the chaos that ensued Miranda was captured by the Spanish while the remnants of the republican leadership, including MacGregor with Josefa in tow, were evacuated to the Dutch island of [[Curaçao]] aboard a British [[brig]], the ''Sapphire''. Bolívar joined them there later in the year.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=135–148}} ===New Granada; defence of Cartagena=== With Miranda imprisoned in Spain, Bolívar emerged as the new leader of the Venezuelan independence movement. He resolved that they would have to take some time to prepare before returning to the mainland. Growing bored in Curaçao, MacGregor decided to offer his services to General [[Antonio Nariño]]'s republican armies in Venezuela's western neighbour, [[United Provinces of New Granada|New Granada]]. He escorted Josefa to lodgings in Jamaica, then travelled to Nariño's base at [[Tunja]] in the eastern [[Andes]]. Miranda's name won the Scotsman a fresh commission in the service of New Granada, with command of 1,200 men in the Socorro district near the border with Venezuela. There was little action in this sector; Nariño's forces were mainly engaged around [[Popayán]] in the south-west, where the Spanish had a large garrison.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=152–155}} Rafter reports positively on MacGregor's conduct in Socorro, writing that "by the introduction of the European system of tactics, [he] considerably improved the discipline of the troops", but some under his command disliked him. An official in [[Cúcuta]], the district capital, expressed utter contempt for MacGregor in a letter to a friend: "I am sick and tired of this bluffer, or [[Don Quixote|Quixote]], or the devil knows what. This man can hardly serve us in New Granada without heaping ten thousand embarrassments upon us."{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=152–155}} [[File:Sunset-cartagena-tower-Igvir.jpg|thumb|Battlements at [[Cartagena, Colombia|Cartagena de Indias]], where MacGregor took part in the defence against Spanish attackers in 1815|alt=Old, somewhat decayed battlements, with a sunset in the background over the sea.]] While MacGregor was in the New Granadian service, Bolívar raised a force of Venezuelan exiles and local troops in the port of [[Cartagena, Colombia|Cartagena de Indias]], and [[Admirable Campaign|captured Caracas]] on 4 August 1813.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=155–156}} The royalists quickly rallied and crushed Bolívar's [[Second Republic of Venezuela|second republic]] in mid-1814. Nariño's New Granadian nationalists surrendered around the same time. MacGregor withdrew to Cartagena, which was still in revolutionary hands,{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=155–156}} and at the head of native troops destroyed hamlets, local infrastructure and produce to prevent the Spanish from using them. A Spanish force of about 6,000 landed in late August 1815 and [[Siege of Cartagena (1815)|lay siege to the city]]. After repeatedly failing to overcome the 5,000 defenders, they deployed to subdue the fortress by [[blockade]]. Sinclair records that MacGregor played an "honourable, though not conspicuous" part in the defence.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=158–159}} By November 1815, there remained in Cartagena de Indias only a few hundred men capable of fighting. The defenders with the aid of the French corsair [[Louis-Michel Aury]] resolved to use the dozen [[gunboat]]s they had to break through the Spanish fleet to the open sea, abandoning the city to the royalists; MacGregor was chosen as one of the three commanders of this operation. On the night of 5 December 1815, the gunboats sailed out into the bay, blasted their way through the smaller Spanish vessels and, avoiding the frigates, made for Jamaica. All the gunboats escaped.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=158–159}} ===Venezuela, under Bolívar=== The British merchant class in Jamaica that had shunned MacGregor on his first arrival in 1812 now welcomed him as a hero. The Scotsman entertained many dinner parties with embellished accounts of his part in the Cartagena siege, leading some to understand that he had personally headed the city's defence. One Englishman toasted the "[[Hannibal]] of modern [[Carthage]]".{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=159–160}}{{#tag:ref|Among the claims MacGregor made about Cartagena was that he had lost two children during the siege—Sinclair calls this "almost certainly a lie", noting the lack of evidence for any MacGregor children being born at this time, but proposes that Josefa may have suffered miscarriages, which would make her husband "guilty of hyperbole rather than outright lying".{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=159–160}} Whatever the truth, Sinclair comments, MacGregor's claim strongly implies that Josefa had left Jamaica at some point between 1812 and 1815 and joined him in New Granada.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=159–160}}|group="n"|name="miscarriages"}} Around New Year 1816, MacGregor and his wife made their way to [[Santo Domingo]] (today the Dominican Republic), where Bolívar was raising a new army. Bolívar received MacGregor back into the [[Venezuelan Army]] with the rank of brigadier-general, and included him in an expeditionary force that left [[Les Cayes|Aux Cayes]] (now Les Cayes) on 30 April 1816.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=160–163}} MacGregor took part in the capture of the port town of [[Carúpano]] as second-in-command of [[Manuel Piar]]'s column, but is not mentioned in the record of the battle prepared by Bolívar's staff.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=160–163}} After the Spanish were driven from many central Venezuelan towns, MacGregor was sent to the coast west of Caracas to recruit native tribesmen in July 1816. On 18 July, eight days after the numerically superior royalists countered and broke Bolívar's main force at La Cabrera, MacGregor resolved to retreat hundreds of miles east to [[Barcelona, Venezuela|Barcelona]].{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=165–167}} Two pursuing royalist armies harried MacGregor constantly as he retreated across country, but failed to break his rearguard. With no carts and only a handful of horses, the Scotsman was forced to leave his wounded where they fell. Late on 27 July, MacGregor's way east was obstructed by a royalist force at [[Chaguaramas, Venezuela|Chaguaramas]], south of Caracas and about a third of the distance to Barcelona. MacGregor led his men in a furious charge that prompted a Spanish retreat back into Chaguaramas, then continued towards Barcelona.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=167–169}} The Spanish remained in the town until 30 July, giving MacGregor two days' head start,{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=167–169}} and caught up with him only on 10 August. The Scotsman deployed his 1,200 men, mostly native archers, behind a marsh and a stream—the Spanish cavalry were bogged down in the marsh, while the archers repelled the infantry with volleys of arrows. After three hours MacGregor charged and routed the royalists. MacGregor's party was helped the rest of the way east to Barcelona by elements of the main revolutionary army. They arrived on 20 August 1816, after 34 days' march.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=169–171}} In Rafter's view, this marked "the zenith of MacGregor's celebrity" in South America.{{sfn|Rafter|1820|p=82}} He had, according to his biographer Frank Griffith Dawson, "led his troops with brilliant success";{{sfn|Dawson|2004}} Sinclair agrees, calling the march a "remarkable feat" demonstrating "genuine military skill".{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=169, 173}} With Bolívar back in Aux Cayes, overall command of the republican armies in Venezuela had been given to Piar.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=172–173}} On 26 September, Piar and MacGregor defeated the Spanish army commanded by Francisco Tomás Morales at El Juncal.{{sfn|Harvey|2011|p=178}} But MacGregor and Piar had several disagreements over the strategic conduct of the war{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=172–173}}—according to the American historian [[David Bushnell (historian)|David Bushnell]], the Scottish general probably "r[an] afoul of personal and factional rivalries within the patriot camp".{{sfn|Bushnell|1986|p=9}} In early October 1816, MacGregor left with Josefa for [[Isla Margarita|Margarita Island]], about {{convert|24|mi}} off eastern Venezuela, where he hoped to enter the service of General [[Juan Bautista Arismendi]].{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=172–173}} Soon afterward, he received an acclamatory letter from Bolívar: "The retreat which you had the honour to conduct is in my opinion superior to the conquest of an empire ... Please accept my congratulations for the prodigious services you have rendered my country".{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=172–173}} MacGregor's march to Barcelona would remain prominent in the South American revolutionary narrative for years.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=167–170}} The retreat also earned him the title of "[[Xenophon]] of the Americas" ({{langx|es|Jenofonte de América}}).<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VJ_GZJE1MWEC&q=%22jenofonte+de+am%C3%A9rica%22+macgregor&pg=PA33|title=Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia. TOMO CCIV. NUMERO I. AÑO 2007|publisher=Real Academia de la Historia|language=es}}</ref> ===Florida republic; Amelia Island affair=== Arismendi proposed to MacGregor that capturing one of the ports in [[East Florida|East]] or [[West Florida]], which were then Spanish colonies, might provide an excellent springboard for republican operations elsewhere in Latin America.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=174–176}} MacGregor liked the idea and, after an abortive attempt to recruit in Haiti, sailed with Josefa to the United States to raise money and volunteers. Soon after he left in early 1817, a further congratulatory letter arrived in Margarita from Bolívar, promoting MacGregor to [[divisional general]], awarding him the ''Orden de los Libertadores'' (Order of the Liberators), and asking him to return to Venezuela. MacGregor remained ignorant of this for two years.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=174–176}} On 31 March 1817 in [[Philadelphia]], MacGregor received a document from [[Lino de Clemente]], [[Pedro Gual Escandón|Pedro Gual]], and Martin Thompson, each of whom claimed to speak for one or more of the Latin American republics. They called themselves the "deputies of free America" and called upon MacGregor to take possession of "both the Floridas, East and West" as soon as possible.{{#tag:ref|Clemente was one of Bolívar's agents, Gual signed in the name of [[United Provinces of New Granada|New Granada]] and Mexico, and Thompson, a US citizen, informally represented the [[United Provinces of the River Plate]]. According to Bushnell, none of these governments had specifically instructed any action in Florida, which at that time was a province of the Captaincy General of Cuba.{{sfn|Bushnell|1986|p=9}}|group="n"|name="mandate"}} Florida's proposed fate was not specified; MacGregor presumed that the Floridians would seek US annexation, as they were mostly of non-Spanish origin, and that the US would quickly comply. He thus expected at least covert support from the US government.{{sfn|Bushnell|1986|p=9}} MacGregor raised several hundred armed men for this enterprise in the [[Mid-Atlantic states]], South Carolina, and particularly [[Savannah, Georgia|Savannah]], Georgia. He also raised $160,000 by the sale of "[[scrip]]ts" to investors, promising them fertile acres in Florida or their money back with interest.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|p=178}}{{sfn|Bushnell|1986|p=10}} He determined to first attack [[Original Town of Fernandina Historic Site|Fernandina]], a small settlement with a fine harbor at the very northern tip of Amelia Island, which contained about 40% of East Florida's population (recorded as 3,729 in 1815).{{sfn|Bushnell|1986|p=10}} He expected little to no resistance from the tiny Spanish garrison there. MacGregor left [[Charleston, South Carolina|Charleston]] in a ship with fewer than 80 men,{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|p=179}}{{sfn|Norris|1986|pp=19–21}} mostly US citizens.{{sfn|Bushnell|1986|p=10}} He led the landing party personally on 29 June 1817{{sfn|Norris|1986|pp=19–21}} with the words: "I shall sleep either in hell or Amelia tonight!"{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|p=179}} The Spanish commander at [[Fort San Carlos]], with 51 men and several cannon, vastly overestimated the size of MacGregor's force and surrendered without either side firing a shot.{{sfn|Norris|1986|pp=19–21}} {{Location map+|Florida|width=170 |float=left |places= {{Location map~|Florida|label=Amelia<br/>Island|position=right|lat=30.704689|long=-81.454461|marksize=8}} {{Location map~|Florida|label=[[File:Green Cross flag of Florida.svg|80px|border|alt=A green St George's Cross on a white background.]]|position=left|lat=28.4|long=-83.4|mark=|marksize=0}} |caption=[[Amelia Island]]'s location in modern [[Florida]]. Inset: the Green Cross flag raised by MacGregor, later the flag was reused by MacGregor as the flag of the fraudulent country of Poyais{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=77–78}} |alt=A map. See description. }} Few of Amelia's residents came out to support MacGregor but, at the same time, there was little resistance; most simply left for mainland Florida or Georgia.{{sfn|Bushnell|1986|p=10}} MacGregor raised a flag showing a green cross on a white field—the "Green Cross of Florida"—and issued a proclamation on 30 June urging the island's inhabitants to return and support him. This was largely ignored, as was a second proclamation in which MacGregor congratulated his men on their victory and exhorted them to "free the whole of the Floridas from Tyranny and oppression".{{sfn|Norris|1986|pp=21–22}} MacGregor announced a "Republic of the Floridas" under a government headed by himself. He attempted to tax the local pirates' booty at an "admiralty court",{{sfn|Owsley|Smith|1997|pp=127–128}}{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|p=182}} and tried to raise money by seizing and selling dozens of slaves found on the island. Morale among the troops plummeted when he prohibited looting.{{sfn|Bushnell|1986|pp=10-11}} Most of his recruits were still in the US; American authorities prevented most of them from leaving port, and MacGregor was able to muster only 200 on Amelia. His officers clamoured for an invasion of mainland Florida, but he insisted that they did not have enough men, arms, or supplies.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|p=183}} Bushnell suggests that MacGregor's backers in the US may have promised him more support in these regards than they ultimately provided.{{sfn|Bushnell|1986|p=13}} Eighteen men sent to reconnoitre around [[St. Augustine, Florida|St Augustine]] in late July 1817 were variously killed, wounded, or captured by the Spanish. Discipline disintegrated among MacGregor's troops, who were paid first in "Amelia dollars" that he had printed, and later not at all.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=183–187}} Spanish forces congregated on the mainland opposite Amelia, and MacGregor and most of his officers decided on 3 September 1817 that the situation was hopeless and that they would abandon the venture. MacGregor announced to the men that he was leaving, explaining vaguely that he had been "deceived by my friends." He turned over the command to one of his subordinates, a former [[Pennsylvania]] congressman named [[Jared Irwin (Pennsylvania politician)|Jared Irwin]],{{sfn|Norris|1986|p=28}} and he boarded the ''Morgiana'' with his wife on 4 September 1817 with an angry crowd looking on and hurling insults at him. He waited offshore for a few days,{{sfn|Norris|1986|p=28}} then left on the schooner ''Venus'' on 8 September.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=183–187}} Two weeks later, the MacGregors arrived at [[Nassau, Bahamas|Nassau]] in the Bahamas, where he arranged to have commemorative medallions struck bearing the Green Cross motif and the Latin inscriptions ''Amalia Veni Vidi Vici'' ("Amelia, I Came, I Saw, I Conquered") and ''Duce Mac Gregorio Libertas Floridarium'' ("Liberty for the Floridas under the leadership of MacGregor"). He made no attempt to repay those who had funded the Amelia expedition.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=183–187}} Irwin's troops defeated two Spanish assaults and were then joined by 300 men under [[Louis-Michel Aury]], who held Amelia for three months before surrendering to American forces, who held the island "in trust for Spain" until the [[Adams–Onís Treaty|Florida Purchase]] in 1819.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=183–187}}{{sfn|Brown|2015|p=8}}{{sfn|Bushnell|1986|pp=13–17}} Press reports of the [[Amelia Island affair]] were wildly inaccurate, partly because of misinformation disseminated by MacGregor himself. His sudden departure, he claimed, was because he had sold the island to Aury for $50,000.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|p=187}} Josefa gave birth to their first child in Nassau on 9 November 1817, a boy named Gregorio.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=183–184}} The owner of the ''Venus'' was an ex-captain of the British [[Corps of Colonial Marines]] named George Woodbine. He drew MacGregor's attention to the [[British Legions]] being raised by the Latin American revolutionaries in London, and suggested that he could recruit and command such a force himself. MacGregor was excited by the idea of leading British troops again after years in command of colonials, tribesmen, and miscellaneous adventurers. He sailed for home with Josefa and Gregorio and landed in [[Dublin]] on 21 September 1818, and from there made his way back to London.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=188–189}} ===Porto Bello=== The [[Third Republic of Venezuela|third Venezuelan republic]]'s envoy in the British capital borrowed £1,000 for MacGregor to engage and transport British troops for service in Venezuela, but the Scotsman squandered these funds within a few weeks. A London financier, an old friend of MacGregor's called Thomas Newte,{{sfn|Rodriguez|2006|p=106}}{{sfn|Bennett|2001|p=203}} took responsibility for the envoy's debt on the condition that the general instead take troops to New Granada.{{sfn|Vittorino|1990|pp=60–61}}{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=189–192}} MacGregor funded his expedition through the sale of commissions at rates cheaper than those offered by the British Army,{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=189–192}} and assembled enlisted men through a network of recruiters across the British Isles, offering volunteers huge financial incentives. MacGregor sailed for South America on 18 November 1818 aboard a former Royal Navy [[brigantine]], renamed the ''Hero''; 50 officers and over 500 troops, many of them Irish, followed the next month. They were critically under-equipped, having virtually no arms or munitions.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=194–195}} The men came close to mutiny at Aux Cayes in February 1819 when MacGregor failed to produce the 80 [[Spanish dollar|silver dollars]] per man on arrival promised by his recruiters. MacGregor persuaded South American merchants in Haiti to support him with funds, weapons and ammunition, but then procrastinated and gave the order to sail for the island of [[San Andrés (island)|San Andrés]], off the Spanish-controlled Isthmus of Panama, only on 10 March.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=196–198}} Going first to Jamaica to arrange accommodation for Josefa and Gregorio, MacGregor was almost arrested there on charges of gun-running. He joined his troops on San Andrés on 4 April. The delay had led to renewed dissension in the ranks that the stand-in commander Colonel William Rafter had difficulty containing. MacGregor restored morale by announcing that they would set out to attack [[Portobelo, Colón|Porto Bello]] on the New Granadian mainland the following day.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=198–200}} [[File:Batería de Santiago, Portobelo - Flickr - andrea1victoria (2).jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Part of the fort at Porto Bello, Panama, where MacGregor abandoned his troops led by Colonel William Rafter in April 1819|alt=Battlements and an old cannon, overlooking a harbour.]] Colonel Rafter disembarked with 200 men near Porto Bello on 9 April, outflanked a roughly equal force of Spanish defenders during the night, and marched into Porto Bello without a fight on 10 April. MacGregor, watching from one of the ships with Woodbine—to whom he had given the rank of colonel—quickly came ashore when he sighted Rafter's signal of victory, and, as usual, issued a flowery proclamation: "Soldiers! Our first conquest has been glorious, it has opened the road to future and additional fame."{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=200–202}} Rafter urged MacGregor to march on [[Panama City]], but MacGregor did not make much in the way of plans to continue the campaign. He devoted most of his attention to the particulars of a new [[chivalric order]] of his design, the emblem of which would be a Green Cross. The troops became mutinous again after more promised money failed to materialise—MacGregor eventually paid each man $20, but this did little to restore discipline.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=202–208}} The lack of patrolling by MacGregor's troops allowed the Spanish to march straight into Porto Bello early on 30 April 1819. MacGregor was still in bed when the Spaniards found his riflemen drilling in the main square and opened fire. Awoken by the noise, MacGregor threw his bed and blankets from the window onto the beach below and jumped out after them, then attempted to paddle out to his ships on a log. He passed out and would probably have drowned had he not been picked up and brought aboard the ''Hero'' by one of his naval officers.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=204–208}} MacGregor would claim that on regaining consciousness he immediately raised his standard over the ''Hero'', then despatched runners to Rafter ordering him not to surrender. The version of events favoured by Sinclair is that Rafter received orders to this effect only after he had himself contacted MacGregor on the ''Hero''. Rafter, in the fort with 200 men, kept up a steady barrage and waited for his commander to fire on the royalists from the ships—but to the colonel's astonishment MacGregor instead ordered his fleet to turn about and made for the high seas.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=204–208}}{{#tag:ref|MacGregor had five ships—the ''Hero'' and the four others that had carried the troops from Britain.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|p=194}}|group="n"|name="fiveships"}} Abandoned, Colonel Rafter and the remnants of MacGregor's army had no choice but to surrender; most of the surviving officers and troops entered miserable existences in captivity.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=204–208}} Rafter was ultimately shot with 11 other officers for conspiring to escape.{{#tag:ref|Although it soon became public knowledge that MacGregor had suffered a humiliating defeat at Porto Bello, the full story of how he had abandoned his troops emerged only a year later with the publishing of a survivor's account in the press and of the book by William Rafter's brother Michael in June 1820. MacGregor responded in 1821 with a heavily embellished account in which he claimed to have been forced to withdraw after a Latin American officer betrayed him and William Rafter let him down.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=208, 331}}|group="n"|name="mahary"}} ===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}}
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