ABSTRACT

Looking back on his experience of the war in Venezuela, the Spanish officer Rafael Sevilla recalled the royalists' retreat from their last stronghold, in the fortress at Puerto Cabello, in a few bitter words:

Thus ended that war which Spanish titans had fought in a burning climate against the unfettered elements, against wretchedness and the greatest hardships, against the ferocity of a numerous and battle-hardened army, and, what is most terrible, against the constant treachery of Spain's bastard offspring, the degenerate Judases whose insatiable greed and ambition can always be bought by thirty pieces of silver … 1