24 February 1854 – Daniel Florence O’Leary dies in Bogotá
Born in Cork, O’Leary is remembered for his role in the liberation of multiple Latin American countries.
On 24 February 1854, Daniel Florence O’Leary died in Bogotá, Colombia. Born in Cork in 1801, O’Leary was the son of a butter merchant from Dunmanway, and the eighth of 10 children. At age 16, he enlisted in the 1st Division of the Red Hussars of Venezuela, a company raised in Ireland and Great Britain to fight for the liberation of South America from Spanish rule, under the command of Colonel Henry Wilson. O’Leary left Portsmouth on board the Prince on 3 December 1817, and arrived in the town of Angostura (today known as Ciudad Bolívar) in late March 1818.
O’Leary was shocked by the brutality which he witnessed in Venezuela, later writing that he was “disgusted at the barbarous and unnecessary sacrifice of human lives,” namely of prisoners who were executed daily, often by sword, to preserve what little gunpowder was available. Not long after his arrival, O’Leary was appointed by General Carlos Soublette to the guard of honour of General José Anzoátegui. Soon, he was promoted to captain. As part of Venezuelan revolutionary leader Simón Bolívar’s staff, O’Leary took part in the crossing of the Andes, and in the Battle of Pantano de Vargas, during which he was wounded in the face with a sabre. So serious was this injury, it was falsely reported in O’Leary’s hometown of Cork that he had been killed. The next battle in which O’Leary participated – the Battle of Boyacá – saw a decisive victory for Bolívar’s troops, and a turning point in the Venezuelan War of Independence.
After Anzoátegui’s death, O’Leary became aide-de-camp to Simón Bolívar. He was 19 years old. He was entrusted with negotiating a truce with the Spanish general Pablo Murillo in 1820, one of several important military and diplomatic missions of which he was put in charge. It was Bolívar’s ambition was to establish a federal South America to rival the United States, and he sent O’Leary to Peru in June 1826 in the hopes that he could help unite Peru and Bolivia with Gran Colombia (the state comprising Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, which lasted until 1830). In this quest, O’Leary was ultimately unsuccessful. He did, however, command troops in the Gran Colombia-Peru War from 1828 to 1829, and was made a general.
Perhaps the most controversial moment of O’Leary’s career came when he was tasked with suppressing a rebellion by General José María Córdova, a former comrade of his, in the province of Antioquia. Córdova had been a loyal supporter of Bolívar, but turned against him when a plan was formed to establish a constitutional monarchy in Colombia, with Bolívar the President for Life. Córdova demanded a return to the Cúcuta Constitution of 1821. O’Leary defeated Córdova’s troops at the Battle of El Santuario in October 1829. Córdova was taken prisoner, and was subsequently killed, not by O’Leary, but by another Irishman, Captain Rupert Hand, a native of Dublin. Hand was one of O’Leary’s officers, who stabbed Córdova to death, apparently on his own initiative. O’Leary was accused of ordering Córdova’s murder, and forced to flee to Jamaica. He returned to Caracas in 1833.
From 1834 to 1839, O’Leary sought recognition for the newly established state of Venezuela in London, Paris and Madrid. In August 1834, he visited his birthplace of Cork, as well as Killarney. He died in Bogotá of apoplexy on 24 February 1854, aged 53. His remains stayed in Bogotá until 1882, when they were reinterred in the National Pantheon in Caracas, near those of Simón Bolívar. Today it is protected by 24-hour guard.
Before he died, O’Leary began his 32-volume Memories of General O’Leary (Memorias del general O'Leary). He had written the first three volumes in 1854. The remaining 29 were finished by O’Leary’s son, Simon, based on his notes and correspondence with Bolívar. It is considered by many to be the definitive account of Bolívar’s independence campaigns.
O’Leary is remembered for his role in the liberation of multiple Latin American countries from Spanish rule – Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Panama. In 2010, a bust and plaque honouring O’Leary was unveiled in Fitzgerald’s Park, Cork, by the Venezuelan Ambassador to Ireland and the United Kingdom, Dr. Samuel Moncada. In 2019, another plaque was unveiled by President Michael. D Higgins on Barrack St. in Cork, where O’Leary was born.
O’Leary was not the only young Irishman to voyage to South America at that time. In 1819 and 1820, it is estimated that 2,100 Irish soldiers arrived in Venezuela, travelling over 4,500 miles by sea from their home. One such person was Morgan O’Connell, the teenage son of Daniel O’Connell, who landed in Margarita in 1819. Morgan carried with him a letter from his father to Simón Bolívar, speaking of Daniel O’Connell’s “attachment to that sacred cause which your talents, valour and virtue have gloriously sustained – I mean the cause of Liberty and national independence.” It is perhaps not a coincidence that Bolívar and O’Connell are both known as ‘The Liberator’ in their respective homelands.
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