General Gregor MacGregor (24 December 1786 – 4 December 1845) was a Scottish soldier, adventurer and confidence trickster who attempted from 1821 to 1837 to draw British and French investors and settlers to “Poyais”, a fictional Central American territory that he claimed to rule as “Cazique“. Hundreds invested their savings in supposed Poyaisian government bonds and land certificates, while about 250 emigrated to MacGregor’s invented country in 1822-23 to find only an untouched jungle; more than half of them died. MacGregor’s Poyais scheme has been called one of the most brazen confidence tricks in history.
From the Clan Gregor, MacGregor was an officer in the British Army from 1803 to 1810; he served in the Peninsular War. He joined the republican side in the Venezuelan War of Independence in 1812, quickly became a general and, over the next four years, operated against the Spanish on behalf of both Venezuela and its neighbour New Granada. His successes included a difficult month-long fighting retreat through northern Venezuela in 1816. He captured Amelia Island in 1817 under a mandate from revolutionary agents to conquer Florida from the Spanish, and there proclaimed a short-lived “Republic of the Floridas”. He then oversaw two calamitous operations in New Granada during 1819 that each ended with his abandoning British volunteer troops under his command.
On his return to Britain in 1821, MacGregor claimed that King George Frederic Augustus of the Mosquito Coast in the Gulf of Honduras had created him Cazique of Poyais, which he described as a developed colony with an existing community of British settlers. When the British press reported on MacGregor’s deception following the return of fewer than 50 survivors in late 1823, some of his victims leaped to his defence, insisting that the general had been let down by those whom he had put in charge of the emigration party. A French court tried MacGregor and three others for fraud in 1826 after he attempted a variation on the scheme there, but convicted only one of his associates. Acquitted, MacGregor attempted lesser Poyais schemes in London over the next decade. In 1838, he moved to Venezuela, where he was welcomed back as a hero. He died in Caracas in 1845, aged 58, and was buried with full military honours in Caracas Cathedral.
Family and childhood
Gregor MacGregor was born on Christmas Eve 1786 at his family’s ancestral home of Glengyle, on the north shore of Loch Katrine in Stirlingshire, Scotland, the son of Daniel MacGregor, an East India Company sea captain, and his wife Ann (ne Austin). The family was Roman Catholic and part of the Clan Gregor, whose proscription by King James VI and I in 1604 had been repealed only in 1774. During the proscription the MacGregors had been legally ostracised to the extent that they were forbidden to use their own surnamemany of them, including Gregor’s celebrated great-great-uncle Rob Roy, had participated in the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745. MacGregor would assert in adulthood that a direct ancestor of his had survived the Darien scheme of 1698, the ill-fated Scottish attempt to colonise the Isthmus of Panama. Gregor’s grandfather, also called Gregor and nicknamed “the Beautiful”, served with distinction in the British Army under the surname Drummond, and subsequently played an important role in the clan’s restoration and rehabilitation into society.
Little is recorded of MacGregor’s childhood. After his father’s death in 1794, he and his two sisters were raised primarily by his mother with the help of various relatives. MacGregor’s biographer David Sinclair speculates that he would probably have spoken mainly Gaelic during his early childhood, and learned English only after starting school around the age of five-and-a-half. MacGregor would claim in later life to have studied at the University of Edinburgh between 1802 and 1803; records of this do not survive as he did not take a degree, but Sinclair considers it plausible, citing MacGregor’s apparent sophistication and his mother’s connections in Edinburgh.
MacGregor joined the British Army at 16, the youngest age it was possible for him to do so, in April 1803. His family purchased him a commission as an ensign in the 57th (West Middlesex) Regiment of Foot, probably for around 450. MacGregor’s entrance to the military coincided with the start of the Napoleonic Wars following the breakdown of the Treaty of Amiens. Southern England was fortified to defend against a possible French invasion; the 57th Foot was at Ashford, Kent. In February 1804, after less than a year in training, MacGregor was promoted without purchase to lieutenantan advancement that usually took up to three years. Later that year, after MacGregor had spent some months in Guernsey with the regiment’s 1st Battalion, the 57th Foot was posted to Gibraltar.
MacGregor was introduced to Maria Bowater, the daughter of a Royal Navy admiral, around 1804. Maria commanded a substantial dowry and, apart from her by-now-deceased father, was related to two generals, a member of parliament and the botanist Aylmer Bourke Lambert. Gregor and Maria married at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster in June 1805 and set up home in London, at the residence of the bride’s aunt. Two months later, having rejoined the 57th Foot in Gibraltar, MacGregor bought the rank of captain for about 900, choosing not to wait the seven years such a promotion might take without purchase. The 57th Foot remained in Gibraltar between 1805 and 1809. During this time MacGregor developed an obsession with dress, rank insignia and medals that made him unpopular in the regiment; he forbade any enlisted man or non-commissioned officer to leave his quarters in anything less than full dress uniform.
In 1809 the 57th Foot was sent to Portugal as reinforcements for the Anglo-Portuguese Army under the Duke of Wellington, during his second attempt to drive the French out of Spain during the Peninsular War. MacGregor’s regiment disembarked at Lisbon about three months into the campaign, on 15 July. By September it was garrisoning Elvas, near the frontier with Spain. Soon thereafter MacGregor was seconded to the 8th Line Battalion of the Portuguese Army, where he served with the rank of major from October 1809 to April 1810. According to Michael Rafter, author of a highly critical 1820 biography of MacGregor, this secondment came after a disagreement between MacGregor and a superior officer, “originally of a trivial nature”, that intensified to such an extent that the young captain was forced to request discharge. This was promptly granted. MacGregor formally retired from the British service on 24 May 1810, receiving back the 1,350 he had paid for the ranks of ensign and captain, and returned to Britain. The 57th Foot’s actions at the Battle of Albuera on 16 May 1811 would earn it considerable prestige and the nickname “the Die-Hards“MacGregor would thereafter make much of his association.
Edinburgh to Caracas
On his return to Britain the 23-year-old MacGregor and his wife moved into a house rented by his mother in Edinburgh. There he assumed the title of “Colonel“, wore the badge of a Portuguese knightly order and toured the city in an extravagant and brightly-coloured coach. After failing to attain high social status in Edinburgh, MacGregor moved back to London in 1811 and began styling himself “Sir Gregor MacGregor, Bart.“, falsely claiming to have succeeded to the MacGregor clan chieftainship; he also alluded to family ties with a selection of dukes, earls and barons. This had little bearing on reality but MacGregor nevertheless created an air of credible respectability for himself in London society.
In December 1811, Maria MacGregor died. At a stroke MacGregor lost his main source of income and the support of the influential Bowater family. His choices were, Sinclair suggests, limited: announcing his engagement to another heiress so soon after Maria’s death might draw embarrassing public protests from the Bowaters, and returning home to farm the MacGregor lands in Scotland would be in his mind unacceptably dull. His only real experience was military, but the manner of his exit from the British Army would make a return there awkward at best.
MacGregor’s interest was aroused by the colonial revolts against Spanish rule in Latin America, particularly Venezuela, where seven of the ten provinces had declared themselves an independent republic in July 1811, starting the Venezuelan War of Independence. The Venezuelan revolutionary General Francisco de Miranda had been feted in London society during his recent visit, and may have met MacGregor. Noting the treatment London’s highest circles gave to Miranda, MacGregor formed the idea that exotic adventures in the New World might earn him similar celebrity on his homecoming. He sold the small Scottish estate he had inherited from his father and grandfather and sailed for South America in early 1812. On the way he stopped in Jamaica, where according to Rafter he was tempted to settle among the planters and traders, but “having no introductory letters to that place, he was not received into society”. After a comfortable sojourn in Kingston, he sailed for Venezuela and disembarked there in April 1812.
Venezuela, under Miranda
MacGregor arrived in the Venezuelan capital Caracas a fortnight after much of the city had been destroyed by an earthquake. With swathes of the country under the control of advancing royalist armies, the revolutionary government was losing support and starting to fracture. MacGregor dropped his pretended Scottish baronetcy, reasoning that it might undermine the republican credentials he hoped to establish, but continued to style himself “Sir Gregor” on the basis that he was, he claimed, a knight of the Portuguese Order of Christ. He offered his services directly to Miranda in Caracas. As a former British Army officerfrom the famous “Die-Hards”, no lesshe was received with alacrity and given command of a cavalry battalion with the rank of colonel. In his first action, MacGregor and his cavalry routed a royalist force west of Maracay, between Valencia and Caracas. Subsequent engagements were less successful, but the republican leaders were still pleased with the glamour they perceived this dashing Scottish officer to give their cause.
MacGregor married Doa Josefa Antonia Andrea Aristeguieta y Lovera, daughter of a prominent Caracas family and a cousin of the revolutionary Simn Bolvar, in Maracay on 10 June 1812. By the end of that month Miranda had promoted MacGregor to brigadier-general, but the revolutionary cause was failing; in July, after the royalists took the key port of Puerto Cabello from Bolvar, the republic capitulated. In the chaos that ensued Miranda was captured by the Spanish while the remnants of the republican leadership, including MacGregor with Josefa in tow, were evacuated to the Dutch island of Curaao aboard a British brig, the Sapphire. Bolvar joined them there later in the year.
New Granada; defence of Cartagena
With Miranda imprisoned in Spain, Bolvar emerged as the new leader of the Venezuelan independence movement. He resolved that they would have to take some time to prepare before returning to the mainland. Growing bored in Curaao, MacGregor decided to offer his services to General Antonio Nario‘s republican armies in Venezuela’s western neighbour, New Granada. He escorted Josefa to lodgings in Jamaica, then travelled to Nario’s base at Tunja in the eastern Andes. Miranda’s name won the Scotsman a fresh commission in the service of New Granada, with command of 1,200 men in the Socorro district near the border with Venezuela. There was little action in this sector; Nario’s forces were mainly engaged around Popayn in the south-west, where the Spanish had a large garrison. Rafter reports positively on MacGregor’s conduct in Socorro, writing that “by the introduction of the European system of tactics, considerably improved the discipline of the troops”, but some under his command disliked him. An official in Ccuta, the district capital, expressed utter contempt for MacGregor in a letter to a friend: “I am sick and tired of this bluffer, or Quixote, or the devil knows what. This man can hardly serve us in New Granada without heaping ten thousand embarrassments upon us.”
While MacGregor was in the New Granadian service, Bolvar raised a force of Venezuelan exiles and local troops in the port of Cartagena, and captured Caracas on 4 August 1813. The royalists quickly rallied and crushed Bolvar’s second republic in mid-1814. Nario’s New Granadian nationalists surrendered around the same time. MacGregor withdrew to Cartagena, which was still in revolutionary hands, and at the head of native troops destroyed hamlets, local infrastructure and produce to prevent the Spanish from using them. A Spanish force of about 6,000 landed in late August 1815 and, after repeatedly failing to overcome the 5,000 defenders, deployed to subdue the fortress by blockade. Sinclair records that MacGregor played an “honourable, though not conspicuous” part in the defence. By November there remained in Cartagena only a few hundred men capable of fighting. The defenders resolved to use the dozen gunboats they had to break through the Spanish fleet to the open sea, abandoning the city to the royalists; MacGregor was chosen as one of the three commanders of this operation. On the night of 5 December 1815 the gunboats sailed out into the bay, blasted their way through the smaller Spanish vessels and, avoiding the frigates, made for Jamaica. All the gunboats escaped.
Venezuela, under Bolvar
The British merchant class in Jamaica that had shunned MacGregor on his first arrival in 1812 now welcomed him as a hero. The Scotsman entertained many dinner parties with embellished accounts of his part in the Cartagena siege, leading some to understand that he had personally headed the city’s defence. One Englishman toasted the “Hannibal of modern Carthage“. Around New Year 1816, MacGregor and his wife made their way to Santo Domingo (today the Dominican Republic), where Bolvar was raising a new army. Bolvar received MacGregor back into the Venezuelan Army with the rank of brigadier-general, and included him in an expeditionary force that left Aux Cayes (now Les Cayes) on 30 April 1816. MacGregor took part in the capture of the port town of Carpano as second-in-command of Manuel Piar‘s column, but is not mentioned in the record of the battle prepared by Bolvar’s staff. After the Spanish were driven from many central Venezuelan towns, MacGregor was sent to the coast west of Caracas to recruit native tribesmen in July 1816. On 18 July, eight days after the numerically superior royalists countered and broke Bolvar’s main force at La Cabrera, MacGregor resolved to retreat hundreds of miles east to Barcelona.
Two pursuing royalist armies harried MacGregor constantly as he retreated across country, but failed to break his rearguard. With no carts and only a handful of horses, the Scotsman was forced to leave his wounded where they fell. Late on 27 July MacGregor’s way east was obstructed by a royalist force at Chaguaramas, south of Caracas and about a third of the distance to Barcelona. MacGregor led his men in a furious charge that prompted a Spanish retreat back into Chaguaramas, then continued towards Barcelona. The Spanish remained in the town until 30 July, giving MacGregor two days’ head start, and caught up with him only on 10 August. The Scotsman deployed his 1,200 men, mostly native archers, behind a marsh and a streamthe Spanish cavalry were bogged down in the marsh, while the archers repelled the infantry with volleys of arrows. After three hours MacGregor charged and routed the royalists. MacGregor’s party was helped the rest of the way east to Barcelona by elements of the main revolutionary army. They arrived on 20 August 1816, after 34 days’ march.
In Rafter’s view, this marked “the zenith of MacGregor’s celebrity” in South America. He had, according to his biographer Frank Griffith Dawson, “led his troops with brilliant success”; Sinclair agrees, calling the march a “remarkable feat” demonstrating “genuine military skill”. With Bolvar back in Aux Cayes, overall command of the republican armies in Venezuela had been given to Piar. MacGregor and Piar had several disagreements over the next two months regarding the strategic conduct of the waraccording to the American historian David Bushnell, the Scottish general probably “r afoul of personal and factional rivalries within the patriot camp”. In early October 1816 MacGregor left with Josefa for Margarita Island, about 24 miles (39 km) off eastern Venezuela, where he hoped to enter the service of General Juan Bautista Arismendi. Soon afterwards he received an acclamatory letter from Bolvar: “The retreat which you had the honour to conduct is in my opinion superior to the conquest of an empire … Please accept my congratulations for the prodigious services you have rendered my country”. MacGregor’s march to Barcelona would remain prominent in the South American revolutionary narrative for years.
Florida republic; Amelia Island affair
Arismendi proposed to MacGregor that capturing one of the ports in East or West Florida, which were then Spanish colonies, might provide an excellent springboard for republican operations elsewhere in Latin America. MacGregor liked the idea and, after an abortive attempt to recruit in Haiti, sailed with Josefa to the United States to raise money and volunteers. Soon after he left in early 1817, a further congratulatory letter arrived in Margarita from Bolvar, promoting MacGregor to divisional general, awarding him the Orden de los Libertadores (Order of the Liberators), and asking him to return to Venezuela. MacGregor remained ignorant of this for two years. On 31 March 1817 in Philadelphia, MacGregor received a document from Lino de Clemente, Pedro Gual, and Martin Thompson, each of whom claimed to speak for one or more of the Latin American republics. They called themselves the “deputies of free America” and called upon MacGregor to take possession of “both the Floridas, East and West” as soon as possible. Florida’s proposed fate was not specified; MacGregor presumed that the Floridians would seek US annexation, as they were mostly of non-Spanish origin, and that the US would quickly comply. He thus expected at least covert support from the US government.
MacGregor raised several hundred armed men for this enterprise in the Mid-Atlantic states, South Carolina, and particularly Savannah, Georgia. He also raised $160,000 by the sale of “scripts” to investors, promising them fertile acres in Florida or their money back with interest. He determined to first attack Amelia Island, an anarchic community of pirates and other criminals containing about 40% of East Florida’s population (recorded as 3,729 in 1815), and expecting little to no resistance from the tiny Spanish garrison there. He left Charleston in a ship with fewer than 80 men, mostly US citizens. He led the landing party personally on 29 June 1817 with the words: “I shall sleep either in hell or Amelia tonight!” The Spanish commander at Fort San Carlos, with 51 men and several cannon, vastly overestimated the size of MacGregor’s force and surrendered without either side firing a shot.
Few of Amelia’s residents came out to support MacGregor but, at the same time, there was little resistance; most simply left for mainland Florida or Georgia. MacGregor raised a flag showing a green cross on a white fieldthe “Green Cross of Florida”and issued a proclamation on 30 June urging the island’s inhabitants to return and support him. This was largely ignored, as was a second proclamation in which MacGregor congratulated his men on their victory and exhorted them to “free the whole of the Floridas from Tyranny and oppression”.
MacGregor announced a “Republic of the Floridas” under a government headed by himself. He attempted to tax the local pirates’ booty at an “admiralty court”, and tried to raise money by seizing and selling dozens of slaves found on the island. Morale among the troops plummeted when he prohibited looting. Most of his recruits were still in the US; American authorities prevented most of them from leaving port, and MacGregor was able to muster only 200 on Amelia. His officers clamoured for an invasion of mainland Florida, but he insisted that they did not have enough men, arms, or supplies. Bushnell suggests that MacGregor’s backers in the US may have promised him more support in these regards than they ultimately provided. Eighteen men sent to reconnoitre around St Augustine in late July 1817 were variously killed, wounded, or captured by the Spanish. Discipline disintegrated among MacGregor’s troops, who were paid first in “Amelia dollars” that he had printed, and later not at all.
Spanish forces congregated on the mainland opposite Amelia, and MacGregor and most of his officers decided on 3 September 1817 that the situation was hopeless and that they would abandon the venture. MacGregor announced to the men that he was leaving, explaining vaguely that he had been “deceived by my friends.” He turned over the command to one of his subordinates, a former Pennsylvania congressman named Jared Irwin, and he boarded the Morgiana with his wife on 4 September 1817 with an angry crowd looking on and hurling insults at him. He waited offshore for a few days, then left on the schooner Venus on 8 September. Two weeks later, the MacGregors arrived at Nassau in the Bahamas, where he arranged to have commemorative medallions struck bearing the Green Cross motif and the Latin inscriptions Amalia Veni Vidi Vici (“Amelia, I Came, I Saw, I Conquered”) and Duce Mac Gregorio Libertas Floridarium (“Liberty for the Floridas under the leadership of MacGregor”). He made no attempt to repay those who had funded the Amelia expedition. Irwin’s troops defeated two Spanish assaults and were then joined by 300 men under Louis-Michel Aury, who held Amelia for three months before surrendering to American forces, who held the island “in trust for Spain” until the Florida Purchase in 1819.
Press reports of the Amelia Island affair were wildly inaccurate, partly because of misinformation disseminated by MacGregor himself. His sudden departure, he claimed, was because he had sold the island to Aury for $50,000. Josefa gave birth to their first child in Nassau on 9 November 1817, a boy named Gregorio. The owner of the Venus was an ex-captain of the British Corps of Colonial Marines named George Woodbine. He drew MacGregor’s attention to the British Legions being raised by the Latin American revolutionaries in London, and suggested that he could recruit and command such a force himself. MacGregor was excited by the idea of leading British troops again after years in command of colonials, tribesmen, and miscellaneous adventurers. He sailed for home with Josefa and Gregorio and landed in Dublin on 21 September 1818, and from there made his way back to London.
The third Venezuelan republic‘s envoy in the British capital borrowed 1,000 for MacGregor to engage and transport British troops for service in Venezuela, but the Scotsman squandered these funds within a few weeks. A London financier, an old friend of MacGregor’s called Thomas Newte, took responsibility for the envoy’s debt on the condition that the general instead take troops to New Granada. MacGregor funded his expedition through the sale of commissions at rates cheaper than those offered by the British Army, and assembled enlisted men through a network of recruiters across the British Isles, offering volunteers huge financial incentives. MacGregor sailed for South America on 18 November 1818 aboard a former Royal Navy brigantine, renamed the Hero; 50 officers and over 500 troops, many of them Irish, followed the next month. They were critically under-equipped, having virtually no arms or munitions.
The men came close to mutiny at Aux Cayes in February 1819 when MacGregor failed to produce the 80 silver dollars per man on arrival promised by his recruiters. MacGregor persuaded South American merchants in Haiti to support him with funds, weapons and ammunition, but then procrastinated and gave the order to sail for the island of San Andrs, off the Spanish-controlled Isthmus of Panama, only on 10 March. Going first to Jamaica to arrange accommodation for Josefa and Gregorio, MacGregor was almost arrested there on charges of gun-running. He joined his troops on San Andrs on 4 April. The delay had led to renewed dissension in the ranks that the stand-in commander Colonel William Rafter had difficulty containing. MacGregor restored morale by announcing that they would set out to attack Porto Bello on the New Granadian mainland the following day.
Colonel Rafter disembarked with 200 men near Porto Bello on 9 April, outflanked a roughly equal force of Spanish defenders during the night, and marched into Porto Bello without a fight on 10 April. MacGregor, watching from one of the ships with Woodbineto whom he had given the rank of colonelquickly came ashore when he sighted Rafter’s signal of victory, and, as usual, issued a flowery proclamation: “Soldiers! Our first conquest has been glorious, it has opened the road to future and additional fame.” Rafter urged MacGregor to march on Panama City, but MacGregor did not make much in the way of plans to continue the campaign. He devoted most of his attention to the particulars of a new chivalric order of his design, the emblem of which would be a Green Cross. The troops became mutinous again after more promised money failed to materialiseMacGregor eventually paid each man $20, but this did little to restore discipline.
The lack of patrolling by MacGregor’s troops allowed the Spanish to march straight into Porto Bello early on 30 April 1819. MacGregor was still in bed when the Spaniards found his riflemen drilling in the main square and opened fire. Awoken by the noise, MacGregor threw his bed and blankets from the window onto the beach below and jumped out after them, then attempted to paddle out to his ships on a log. He passed out and would probably have drowned had he not been picked up and brought aboard the Hero by one of his naval officers. MacGregor would claim that on regaining consciousness he immediately raised his standard over the Hero, then despatched runners to Rafter ordering him not to surrender. The version of events favoured by Sinclair is that Rafter received orders to this effect only after he had himself contacted MacGregor on the Hero. Rafter, in the fort with 200 men, kept up a steady barrage and waited for his commander to fire on the royalists from the shipsbut to the colonel’s astonishment MacGregor instead ordered his fleet to turn about and made for the high seas. Abandoned, Colonel Rafter and the remnants of MacGregor’s army had no choice but to surrender; most of the surviving officers and troops entered miserable existences in captivity. Rafter was ultimately shot with 11 other officers for conspiring to escape.
Rio de la Hacha
Making his way first to San Andrs, then Haiti, MacGregor conferred invented decorations and titles on his officers and planned an expedition to Rio de la Hacha in northern New Granada. He was briefly delayed in Haiti by a falling-out with his naval commander, an officer called Hudson. When the naval officer fell ill, MacGregor had him put ashore, seized the Herowhich Hudson ownedand renamed her El MacGregor, explaining to the Haitian authorities that “drunkenness, insanity and mutiny” by his captain had forced him to take the ship. MacGregor steered the hijacked brigantine to Aux Cayes, then sold her after she was found to be unseaworthy. Waiting for him in Aux Cayes were 500 officers and enlisted men, courtesy of recruiters in Ireland and London, but he had no ships to carry them and little in the way of equipment. This was remedied during July and August 1819, first by the arrival of his Irish recruiter Colonel Thomas Eyre with 400 men and two shipsMacGregor gave him the rank of general and the Order of the Green Crossand then by the appearance of war materiel from London, sent by Thomas Newte on a schooner named Amelia.
MacGregor bombastically announced his intention to liberate New Granada, but then hesitated. The lack of action, rations or pay for weeks prompted most of the British volunteers to go home. MacGregor’s force, which had comprised 900 men at its peak (including officers), had dwindled to no more than 250 by the time he directed the Amelia and two other vessels to Rio de la Hacha on 29 September 1819. His remaining officers included Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Rafter, who had bought a commission with the hope of rescuing his brother William. After being driven away from Rio de la Hacha harbour by cannon on 4 October, MacGregor ordered a night landing west of the town and said that he would take personal command once the troops were ashore. Lieutenant-Colonel William Norcott led the men onto the beach and waited there two hours for MacGregor to arrive, but the general failed to appear. Attacked by a larger Spanish force, Norcott countered and captured the town. MacGregor still refused to leave the ships, convinced that the flag flying over the fort must be a trick; even when Norcott rowed out to tell him to come into port, MacGregor would not step ashore for over a day. When he did appear, many of his soldiers swore and spat at him. He issued another lofty proclamation, recalled by Rafter as an “aberration of human intellect”, at the foot of which MacGregor identified himself as “His Majesty the Inca of New Granada”.
Events went largely as they had done earlier in the year at Porto Bello. MacGregor abstained from command in all but name, and the troops descended into a state of confused drunkenness. “General MacGregor displayed so palpable a want of the requisite qualities which should distinguish the commander of such an expedition,” Rafter wrote, “that universal astonishment prevailed amongst his followers at the reputation he had for some time maintained.” As Spanish forces gathered around the town, Norcott and Rafter decided the situation was hopeless and left on a captured Spanish schooner on 10 October 1819, taking with them five officers and 27 soldiers and sailors. MacGregor convened his remaining officers the next day and, giving them promotions and Green Cross decorations, exhorted them to help him lead the defence. Immediately afterwards he went to the port, ostensibly to escort Eyre’s wife and two children to safety on a ship. After putting the Eyres on the Lovely Ann, he boarded the Amelia and ordered the ships out to sea just as the Spanish attacked. General Eyre and the troops left behind were all killed.
MacGregor reached Aux Cayes to find news of this latest debacle had preceded him, and he was shunned. A friend in Jamaica, Thomas Higson, informed him through letters that Josefa and Gregorio had been evicted, and until Higson’s intervention had sought sanctuary in a slave’s hut. MacGregor was wanted in Jamaica for piracy and so could not join his family there. He similarly could not go back to Bolvar, who was so outraged by MacGregor’s recent conduct that he accused the Scotsman of treason and ordered his death by hanging if he ever set foot on the South American mainland again. MacGregor’s whereabouts for the half year following October 1819 are unknown. Back in London in June 1820, Michael Rafter published his highly censorious account of MacGregor’s adventures, Memoirs of Gregor M’Gregor, dedicating the book to his brother Colonel William Rafter and the troops abandoned at Porto Bello and Rio de la Hacha. In his summary Rafter speculated that following the latter episode MacGregor was “politically, though not naturally dead””to suppose”, he wrote, “that any person could be induced again to join him in his desperate projects, would be to conceive a degree of madness and folly of which human nature, however fallen, is incapable”.