John Hemming is the doyen of historians of South America. In his previous books he has revealed the tragic history of the Incan empire (The Conquest of the Incas); the impact of the arrival of Europeans on the Brazilian Indians (Red Gold); and the story of the Amazon (Tree of Rivers). Now he has produced a biography of a modest baker’s son from Kent who became one of the greatest figures in the liberation of Spanish South America.
William Miller was born in 1795, and fought as a teenager in the Peninsular War against Napoleon. Then, like many other Englishmen, he travelled to South America to fight alongside some of the greatest commanders battling the Spanish and striving for independence. But he was one of the few foreign volunteers who went south to join José de San Martin in Chile rather than Simon Bolivar in the north.
His first appointment was with another more famous British fighter, Admiral Lord Cochrane, one of Nelson’s most successful naval captains, who went on to command the Chilean navy, and was the inspiration for C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower. Miller’s role was to lead Cochrane’s marines, making devastating attacks on the Spanish navy and demolishing imperial Spain’s presence in the Pacific.
Leaving Cochrane and going to fight with the land army, Miller proved a brilliant tactician with the infantry, cavalry and irregular special forces and was chivalrous, brave (he was wounded repeatedly) and hugely popular with his men. Even more important than his great courage in battle was his influence in liberating slaves and his passionate opposition to imperialism, which won him the admiration even of his enemies. Being from humble origins himself, he had great empathy with the downtrodden.
The following extract is a fine example of how Hemming combines vivid description of combat with historical analysis:
The Spanish troopships were in acute distress. A sixth of the soldiers had died of scurvy during the voyage and half the survivors were devastated by the same cruel affliction. The ships were filthy, and the misery of the scene was greatly aggravated by the sight of several unfortunate men who, eaten up by scurvy, were stretched out at the gangways in the agony of death. It is shocking and almost incomprehensible that the Spanish navy should have let this happen as late as 1818. Sixty years previously, a British Royal Navy surgeon had experimented with diets and found that fresh fruit and vegetables, particularly citrus fruits, prevented this hideous killer, because scurvy is caused by Vitamin C deficiency. Captain Cook did not lose a single man from scurvy during his circumnavigations in the 1770s, and Americans used to mock British seamen as ‘limeys’ because they were made to eat limes and other fruits to save them from scurvy. Decades later, the Spanish navy should surely have known about this simple remedy.
English Liberator reads like a thrilling adventure story while at the same time being a meticulous account of how South American states achieved independence from Spain in the 19th century. The author knows Peru well, so can empathise with Miller’s gruelling marches across waterless deserts and giddy trails in the Andes. The story is a splendid evocation of all that was best and bravest about one of our forgotten Victorian heroes.
At the final battle of Ayacucho in 1824, which secured the independence of Peru, there were 12 generals in the two armies. Eleven of these were Hispanic, and Miller was the only foreigner. Among the many who thought the world of the young Kentish lad and were his mentors were the two great liberators San Martin and Bolivar.
In 1851, Palmerston made Miller our first consul in Hawaii, with a brief to prevent the United States or France from grabbing that monarchy – which Miller fulfilled during his decade there. The Americans did not take it until the end of the century; and the Hawaiian state flag still includes a Union Jack.
Miller ended his life as a field marshal of Peru, the only foreigner to achieve this rank. He died in his sixties on a British naval ship in Lima’s harbour. An autopsy revealed 22 external wounds and three balls of shot internally. He was given a state funeral and later buried in the Pantheon of Founding Fathers of Peru. There still exist many statues honouring him as the Brit who did most for that country.
But there was a sad twilight for the old warrior, because he was constantly denied his field marshal’s back pay and other awards that had been promised by Bolivar among others. So Miller died, lionised but unmarried, in ill health, and almost as poor as when he set out from his Kentish village some 50 years earlier.
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