Venezuela Independent

When news reached Caracas in 1810 that Napoleon had toppled the Spanish monarchy, the city's leading creoles deposed the Spanish captain general and formed a governing junta, initially claiming to act in the name of the captive king Ferdinand VII. The movement quickly gathered momentum toward a more complete break with Spain.

The revolutionaries invited the veteran patriot Francisco de Miranda, long exiled in Europe, to return and lead the cause, and the young Simon Bolivar journeyed to London on a diplomatic mission and came back with Miranda to join the leadership. On July 5, 1811, a congress in Caracas formally declared Venezuela's independence, the first such declaration in Spanish South America.

This First Republic proved short-lived, undermined by internal divisions, a catastrophic earthquake in 1812, and royalist counterattacks that forced its surrender. Miranda was handed over to the Spanish and died in prison. Bolivar escaped and continued the struggle for more than a decade, achieving lasting Venezuelan independence only after the campaigns culminating in the Battle of Carabobo in 1821.