Simon Bolivar is forced to flee Venezuela to Jamaica, where he issues an eloquent letter that establishes his intellectual leadership of the Spanish American independence movement.

Bolivar was born in 1783 into one of Caracas's most aristocratic criollo families.

Orphaned at age nine, he was educated in Europe, where he became intrigued by the intellectual revolution called the Enlightenment and the political revolution in France.

As a young man, Bolivar had pledged himself to see a united Latin America, not simply his native Venezuela, liberated from Spanish rule.

His brilliant career as a field general begins in 1813 with the famous cry of "war to the death" against Venezuela's Spanish rulers.

The cry is followed by a lightning campaign through the Andes to capture Caracas.

Here he is proclaimed "The Liberator" and, following the establishment of the Second Republic, is given dictatorial powers.

Once again, however, Bolivar overlooks the aspirations of common, nonwhite Venezuelans.

The llaneros (plainsmen), who are excellent horsemen, fight under the leadership of the royalist caudillo, José Tomás Boves, for what they see as social equality against a revolutionary army that represents the white, criollo elite.

By September 1814, having won a series of victories, Boves's troops force Bolivar and his army out of Caracas, bringing an end to the Second Republic.

After Ferdinand VII regains the Spanish throne in late 1814, he sends reinforcements to the American colonies that crush most remaining pockets of resistance to royal control.

Ferdinand VII returns to the Spanish throne in March 1814 with the help of an army corps and of conservative sentiment that had been outraged by the liberal anticlericalism of 1812.

The Spanish people, blaming the policies of the Francophiles (afrancesados) for causing the Napoleonic occupation and the Peninsular War by allying Spain too closely to France, at first welcome the king.

Ferdinand will soon find that in the intervening years a new world had been born of foreign invasion and domestic revolution.

In his name Spain fought for its independence, and in his name as well, juntas had governed Spanish America.

Spain is no longer the absolute monarchy he had relinquished six years earlier.

Instead he is now asked to rule under the liberal Constitution of 1812.

Before being allowed to enter Spanish soil, Ferdinand had had to guarantee the liberals that he would govern on the basis of the Constitution, but he had given only lukewarm indications that he would do so.

The French hand King Ferdinand over to the Spanish Army in Girona on Mach 24, and thus begins his procession towards Madrid.

The restored Bourbon king of Spain, during his journey from Girona to Madrid and in the following months, had been encouraged by conservatives and the Church hierarchy to reject the Constitution.

On May 4 he had ordered its abolition and on May 10 has the liberal leaders responsible for the Constitution arrested.

Ferdinand justifies his actions by claiming that the Constitution had been made by a Cortes illegally assembled in his absence, without his consent and without the traditional form. (It had met as a unicameral body, instead of in three chambers representing the three estates: the clergy, the nobility and the cities.)

Ferdinand initially promises to convene a traditional Cortes, but will never do so, thereby reasserting the Bourbon doctrine that sovereign authority resides in his person only.

The restoration of Ferdinand VII had signified an important change, since most of the political and legal changes done on both sides of the Atlantic—the myriad of juntas, the Cortes in Spain and several of the congresses in the Americas, and many of the constitutions and new legal codes—had been done in his name.

Once in Spain, he had realized that he had significant support from conservatives in the general population and the hierarchy of the Spanish Catholic Church, so on May 4 he had repudiated the Spanish Constitution of 1812 and ordered the arrest of liberal leaders who had created it on May 10.

Ferdinand had justified his actions by stating that the Constitution and other changes had been made by a Cortes assembled in his absence and without his consent.

He had also declared all of the juntas and constitutions written in Spanish America invalid and restored the former law codes and political institutions.

News of the events arrived through Spanish America during the next three weeks to nine months, depending on time it took goods and people to travel from Spain.

This, in effect, constituted a definitive break with two groups that could have been allies of Ferdinand VII: the autonomous governments, which had not yet declared formal independence, and Spanish liberals who had created a representative government that would fully include the overseas possessions and was seen as an alternative to independence by many in New Spain, Central America, the Caribbean, Quito (today Ecuador), Peru, Upper Peru (today, Bolivia) and Chile.

Most Spanish Americans are moderates who have decided to wait and see what will come out of the restoration of normalcy.

Spanish Americans in royalist areas who are committed to independence have already joined guerrilla movements.

Ferdinand's actions do set areas outside of the control of the royalist armies on the path to full independence.

The governments of these regions, which have their origins in the juntas of 1810—and even moderates there who had entertained a reconciliation with the crown—now see the need to separate from Spain, if they are to protect the reforms they had enacted

The Spanish force of the South American reconquest, leaving the port of Cádiz on February 17, 1815, initially lands at Carupano (Venezuela) in April and later invades the island of Margarita, where no resistance is encountered.

After leaving the island, Morillo's troops reinforce existing royalist forces in the Venezuelan mainland, entering Cumaná, La Guaira, Caracas, and Puerto Cabello in May.

A small part of the main corps sets off towards Panamá, while the main contingent is directed towards the Neogranadine coastal city of Santa Marta, which is still in royalist hands.

After picking up supplies and militia volunteers in Santa Marta on July 23, the Spanish expeditionary forces besiege Cartagena de Indias.

After a five-month siege the fortified city falls in December 1815.

José María Morelos is captured and executed on December 22, 1815.

Spain will be torn by revolution and counter-revolution throughout much of the nineteenth century, beginning with the French occupation of Spain in 1808.

Spain has attempted since 1814 to recover control of Spanish America, now partly independent,  and the problem of maintaining an inflated wartime army with a permanent economic deficit has foiled all Ferdinand's efforts to assemble a large army and a fleet to send to America.

His ministers can neither reinforce his armies in America nor persuade the British government to collaborate or connive at reconquest.

His domestic policies have effectively destroyed Spanish liberalism and all its works by 1819, leading to a series of insurrections.

Generals, chafing at control by civilian juntas had on occasion overthrown them, thus initiating the phenomenon of the pronunciamiento, or military revolution.

The afrancesados, often men of liberal inclinations but tarred with the accusation of collaboration with the French, remain as an indigestible element within liberalism itself.

Spain's American colonies take advantage of the postwar chaos to proclaim their independence, and most established republican governments.

By 1825 only Cuba and Puerto Rico will remain under the Spanish flag in the New World.

When Ferdinand is restored to the throne in Madrid, he expends wealth and manpower in a vain effort to reassert control over the colonies.

The move is unpopular among liberal officers assigned to the American war.

Major Rafael de Riego leads a revolt among Spanish troops quartered in Cadiz while awaiting embarkation to America in 1820.

Garrison mutinies are not unusual, but Riego issues a pronunciamiento, or declaration of principles, to the troops, which is directed against the government and which calls for the army to support adoption of the 1812 constitution.

Support for Riego spreads from garrison to garrison, toppling the regalist government and forcing Ferdinand to accept the liberal constitution.

The pronunciamiento, distributed by barracks politicians among underpaid members of an overstaffed officer corps, will become a regular feature of Spanish politics.

An officer or group of officers will seek a consensus among fellow officers in opposing or supporting a particular policy or in calling for a change in government.

If any government is to survive, it needs the support of the army.

If a pronunciamiento receives sufficient backing, the government is well advised to defer to it.

This "referendum in blood" is considered within the army to be the purest form of election because the soldiers supporting a pronunciamiento—at least in theory—are expressing their willingness to shed blood to make their point.

A pronunciamiento is judged to have succeeded only if the government gives in to it without a fight.

If it does not represent a consensus within the army and there is resistance to it, the pronunciamiento is considered a failure, and the officers who had proposed it dutifully go into exile.

French intervention in Spain, ordered by Louis XVIII on an appeal from Ferdinand and with the assent of his conservative officers, brings the three years of liberal government under the 1812 constitution—called the Constitutional Triennium (1820-23)—to an abrupt close.

The arrival of the French is welcomed in many sectors.

Ferdinand, restored as absolute monarch, chooses his ministers from the ranks of the old afrancesados.