Page:The History of San Martin (1893).djvu/341

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IMPRISONMENT AND DEATH OF MIRANDA.
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urged him to embark at once. Bolívar and the others prevented him from going on board, saying that he required rest. They dined together, and after Miranda had retired, twelve officers formed themselves into a sort of secret tribunal, and decided that he, as the author of the capitulation, ought to share the fate of the rest. Bolívar accused him of receiving bribes from the Spaniards, and voted for his death as a traitor to the cause of independence, but it was resolved to detain him. Before dawn Bolívar went to his room, removed his sword and pistols, and then awoke him. He was made prisoner by his own friends and shut up in the castle of San Carlos.

Monteverde paid no attention whatever to the terms of the capitulation. The prisons were filled with citizens; Bolívar hid himself, but all except two of the other members of the secret tribunal were among the prisoners. Many died in the dungeons, and the Canarians had their revenge in the open plunder of all who had taken part against them.

Miranda was sent to Puerto Cabello and loaded with chains. From his dungeon he addressed a memorial to the Supreme Court, demanding, in the name of the new Spanish Constitution, the liberty of his comrades as guaranteed by the capitulation, but he asked nothing for himself. His protest was unheeded, and he, being sent to Spain, languished for three years in a dungeon at Cadiz, where he died miserably on the 14th July, 1816, and was buried in the mud banks, over which the waters of the Mediterranean ebb and flow, in front of that city.

Bolívar, after remaining for some days in hiding, was presented by a Spanish friend of his to Monteverde, who gave him a passport "in recompense for his service to the King in the imprisonment of Miranda."