Spain–Venezuela relations
News of Spanish losses in the 1808 Napoleonic Wars soon reached Latin America, but only on 19 April 1810 did the "cabildo" (city council) of Caracas decide to follow the example set by the Spanish provinces two years earlier. On 5 July 1811, seven of the ten provinces of the Captaincy General of Venezuela declared their independence in the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence. The First Republic of Venezuela was lost in 1812 following the 1812 Caracas earthquake and the Battle of La Victoria (1812). Simón Bolívar led an "Admirable Campaign" to retake Venezuela, establishing the Second Republic of Venezuela in 1813, but this did not last long either, falling to a combination of a local uprising and Spanish royalist reconquest.
Venezuelan War of Independence
The French invasion of Spain in 1808 led to the collapse of the Spanish Monarchy. Most subjects of Spain did not accept the government of Joseph Bonaparte, placed on the Spanish throne by his brother, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France. At the same time, the process of creating a stable government in Spain, which would be widely recognized throughout the empire, took two years. ("See Junta (Peninsular War)".) This created a power vacuum in the Spanish possessions in America, which created further political uncertainty. On 19 April 1810 the municipal council of Caracas headed a successful movement to depose the Spanish Governor and Captain General, Vicente Emparán. A junta was established in Caracas, and soon other Venezuelan provinces followed suit. The reverberations of this act of independence could be felt throughout Venezuela almost immediately. Across Venezuela, towns and cities decided to either side with the movement based in Caracas or not, and de facto civil war ensued throughout much of Venezuela. The Caracas Junta called for a congress of Venezuelan provinces to establish a government for the region. Initially, both the Junta and Congress upheld the "rights of Ferdinand VII," meaning that they recognized themselves to still be part of the Spanish Monarchy, but had established a separate government due to the French invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. As the Congress deliberated, a faction proposing outright independence quickly won favor. Persons such as Francisco de Miranda, a long-term Venezuelan expatriate, and Simón Bolívar, a young, Criollo aristocrat—both influenced by Age of Enlightenment ideas and the example of the French Revolution—led the movement. The Congress declared Venezuela's independence on 5 July 1811, establishing the Republic of Venezuela.