Francisco de Miranda participant of French Revolution
Sebastián Francisco de Miranda y Rodríguez de Espinoza (28 March 1750 – 14 July 1816), commonly known as Francisco de Miranda (American Spanish: [fɾanˈsisko ðe miˈɾanda]), was a Venezuelan military leader and revolutionary who fought in the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolution and the Spanish American wars of independence. He is regarded as a precursor of South America's liberation from the Spanish Empire, and remains known as the "First Universal Venezuelan" and the "Great Universal American".
Born in Caracas in the Viceroyalty of New Granada into a wealthy family, Miranda left to pursue an education in Madrid in 1771 and subsequently enlisted in the Spanish army.
In 1780, following Spain's entry into the American Revolutionary War, he was sent to Cuba and fought the British at Pensacola. Accused of espionage and smuggling, he fled to the United States in 1783. Miranda returned to Europe in 1785 and travelled through the continent, gradually formulating his plans for Spanish American independence. From 1791 on, he took an active part in the French Revolution, serving as a general during the Battle of Valmy and the Flanders campaign. An associate of the Girondins, he became disillusioned by the Revolution and was forced to leave for Britain.
In 1806, Miranda launched an unsuccessful expedition to liberate Venezuela with volunteers from the United States. He returned to Caracas following the outbreak of the Venezuelan War of Independence in 1810 and was granted dictatorial powers after the establishment of the First Republic. In 1812, the republic collapsed and Miranda was forced to finalize an armistice with Spanish royalists. Other revolutionary leaders including Simón Bolívar considered his capitulation treasonous, and allowed his arrest by the Spanish authorities. He was taken to a prison in Cádiz, where he died four years later.Miranda and the French Revolution (1791–1798)
Starting in 1791, Miranda took an active part in the French Revolution as marechal de camp. In Paris, he befriended the Girondists Jacques Pierre Brissot and Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, and he briefly served as a general in the section of the French Revolutionary Army commanded by Charles François Dumouriez, fighting in the 1792 campaign of Valmy.
The Army of the North (Armée de la Belgique) commanded by Miranda laid siege to Antwerp. When Miranda (and John Skey Eustace) failed to take Maastricht in February 1793 they were arrested  on the orders of Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville, Chief Prosecutor of the Revolution, and accused of conspiring against the republic with Charles François Dumouriez, the renegade general, who quickly defected  to the enemy. Though indicted before the Revolutionary Tribunal – and under attack in Jean-Paul Marat's L'Ami du peuple – he and his lawyer Claude François Chauveau-Lagarde conducted his defence with such calm eloquence that he was declared innocent.However, Marat denounced Chauveau-Lagarde as a liberator of the guilty. Even so, the campaign of Marat and the rest of the Jacobins against him did not weaken. He was arrested again in July 1793 and incarcerated in La Force prison, effectively one of the ante-chambers of death during the prevailing Reign of Terror. Appearing again before the tribunal, he accused the Committee of Public Safety of tyranny in disregarding his previous acquittal.
Miranda seems to have survived by a combination of good luck and political expediency: the revolutionary government simply could not agree on what to do with him. He remained in La Force even after the fall of Robespierre in July 1794, and was not finally released until January of the following year. The art theorist Quatremère de Quincy was among those who campaigned for his release during this time. Now convinced that the whole direction taken by the Revolution had been wrong, he started to conspire with the moderate royalists against the Directory, and was even named as the possible leader of a military coup. He was arrested and ordered out of the country, only to escape and go into hiding.
He reappeared after being given permission to remain in France, though that did not stop his involvement in yet another monarchist plot in September 1797. The police were ordered to arrest the "Peruvian general", as the said general submerged himself yet again in the underground. With no more illusions about France or the Revolution, he left for England in a Danish boat, arriving in Dover in January 1798.