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 a 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.

His options 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.

[22] 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.

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 Curaçao aboard a British brig, the Sapphire.

The defenders with the aid of the French corsair Louis-Michel Aury 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 18 July, eight days after the numerically superior royalists countered and broke Bolívar's main force at La Cabrera, MacGregor resolved to retreat hundreds of miles east to Barcelona.

Soon after he left in early 1817, a further congratulatory letter arrived in Margarita from Bolívar, promoting MacGregor to divisional general, awarding him the Orden de los Libertadores (Order of the Liberators), and asking him to return to Venezuela.

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 Andrés, off the Spanish-controlled Isthmus of Panama, only on 10 March.

[n 7] Making his way first to San Andrés, then Haiti, MacGregor conferred invented decorations and titles on his officers and planned an expedition to Rio de la Hacha in northern New Granada.

[78] 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.

[82] "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."

[96] Despite Rafter's book, London society remained largely unaware of MacGregor's failures over the past few years, but remembered successes such as his march to Barcelona; similarly his association with the "Die-Hards" of the 57th Foot was recalled, but his dubious early discharge was not.

He therein announced the 1820 land grant, his departure for Europe to seek investors and colonists—"religious and moral instructors ... and persons to guide and assist you"—and the appointment of Brigadier-General George Woodbine to be "Vice-Cazique" during his absence.

[47] By the end of 1821 Major William John Richardson had not only accepted MacGregor's fantasy as true but had become an active ally, providing his attractive estate at Oak Hall, Wanstead to be a British base for the supposed Poyaisian royal family.

[86] After continental European bonds were popular in the immediate post-Waterloo years, the Latin American revolutions brought a raft of new alternatives to the London market, starting with the £2 million loan issued for Gran Colombia (incorporating both New Granada and Venezuela) in March 1822.

[108] Bonds from Colombia, Peru, Chile and others, offering interest rates as high as 6% per annum, made Latin American securities extremely popular on the London market—a trend on which a nation like the Poyais described by MacGregor would be ideally positioned to capitalise.

[106] In mid-1822, there appeared in Edinburgh and London a 355-page guidebook "chiefly intended for the use of settlers", Sketch of the Mosquito Shore, Including the Territory of Poyais — ostensibly the work of a "Captain Thomas Strangeways", aide-de-camp to the Cazique,[111] but actually written either by MacGregor himself or by accomplices.

[114] The soil was so fertile that a farmer could have three maize harvests a year, or grow cash crops such as sugar or tobacco without hardship; detailed projections at the Sketch's end forecast profits of millions of dollars.

Sir John Perring, Shaw, Barber & Co., a London bank with a fine reputation, underwrote a £200,000 loan—secured on "all the revenues of the Government of Poyais" including the sale of land — and offered provisional certificates or "scrip" for the Poyaisian bonds on 23 October.

[134] Leadership of the Cazique's first emigration party was given to an ex-British Army officer, Hector Hall, who was commissioned into the Poyaisian "2nd Native Regiment of Foot" with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and created "Baron Tinto" with a supposed 12,800-acre (20-square-mile; 52-square-kilometre) estate.

[137] While claiming royal status as Cazique, MacGregor attempted to dissociate himself from the Latin American republican movement and his former comrades there, and from late 1822 made discreet overtures towards the Spanish government regarding co-operation in Central America.

The emigrants had brought ample provisions with them, including medicines, and had two doctors among them, so they were not in a totally hopeless situation, but apart from Hall none of the military officers, government officials or civil servants appointed by MacGregor made any serious attempt to organise the party.

[149] Hall returned to Cape Gracias a Dios several times to seek help, but did not explain his constant absences to the settlers—this exacerbated the general confusion and anger, particularly when he refused to pay the wages promised to those supposedly on Poyaisian government contracts.

He had never granted MacGregor the title of Cazique, he said, nor given him the right to sell land or raise loans against it; the emigrants were in fact in George Frederic Augustus's territory illegally and would have to leave unless they pledged allegiance to him.

[155] MacGregor left London shortly before the small party of Poyais survivors arrived home on 12 October 1823—he told Richardson that he was taking Josefa to winter in Italy for the sake of her health, but in fact his destination was Paris.

[163][n 20] In Paris, MacGregor persuaded the Compagnie de la Nouvelle Neustrie, a firm of traders that aspired to prominence in South America, to seek investors and settlers for Poyais in France.

[166] Gustavus Butler Hippisley, a friend of Major Richardson and fellow veteran of the British Legions in Latin America, accepted the Poyais fantasy as true and entered MacGregor's employ in March 1825.

The delay gave MacGregor and Merilhou time to prepare an elaborate, largely fictional 5,000-word statement purporting to describe the Scotsman's background, activities in the Americas, and total innocence of any endeavour to defraud.

[2][184] He stressed his travails on Venezuela's behalf two decades earlier and asserted that Bolívar, who had died in 1830, had effectively deported him; he described several unsuccessful requests to return and being "[forced to] remain outside the Republic ... by causes and obstacles out of my control" while losing his wife, two children and "the best years of my life and all my fortune".