Francisco de Miranda - in Europe: England, Prussia, Turkey and Russia (1786–1790)

In Europe: England, Prussia, Turkey and Russia (1786–1790)

Much later, after his adventures in England, (until August 9, 1785), Miranda went to Venice, Padua, Verona, Mantua, Parma, Modena, Bologna, Florence, Pisa, Lucca, Livorno, Rome and Naples, (from November 12, 1785 to around March 16, 1786). He traveled on April 2, 1786, to the modern-day Dubrovnik (a vassal city of the Ottoman Empire, then better known with other, Italian name Ragusa), and then to Constantinople in Turkey (until September 23, 1786), Russia, (from September 26, 1786 until September 7, 1787, slightly under one year), Sweden, (in Stockholm as from September 10, 1787 until November 2, 1787), Norway, from November 10, 1787 until departing from Karlskrona in Sweden from December 17, 1787), Denmark (from September 23, 1787 until March 10, 1788 after being received in Denmark orders of capture from Spain no later than January 22, 1788), the Free Hanseatic Town of Hamburg, (from (April 1, 1788 until the April 27, 1788), the Free Town of Bremen, (leaving on April 27), Holland, (from around the May 2, 1788 until around June 16, 1788), some actual Belgian towns and German cities along the Rhine river, Swiss Basel, (arrival July 30, 1788, and then again after touring German-speaking Switzerland on October 12, 1788), Swiss Geneva (arrival September 25, 1788), and France, (entry around the 3rd and 4th weeks of September 1788, two stays in Marseilles, the second departing there towards Bordeaux on February 26, 1789 via inland waterways), travels to Rouen, Le Havre and Paris around May 5, 1789, getting papers as "Mr. Meeroff from Livonia" to arrive in Dover, (England) and then London on June 19, 1789, taking lodgings at the house of his British friend, "A Barlow", at 47 Jermyn Street ).

The attempts to abduct Miranda by the diplomatic representatives of Spain failed as the Russian Ambassador in London, Semyon Vorontsov, declared on August 4, 1789 to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Francis Osborne, 5th Duke of Leeds, that Sebastian (Francisco) de Miranda, although a Spanish subject, was a member of the Russian diplomatic mission in London at the service of H. R. H. Empress Catherine II of Russia. His letter to Catherine II is a good example of the lecherous manners of some of the eighteenth-century courtesans. In Russia, he used the surname Meeroff and he left several children who later emigrated to the United States and Argentina and are currently well known academicians.{Meeroff, M. Cambio de Modelo Medico. De la Medicina Biológica a la Medicina Bioantropologica. Fundamentacion Científica. Del Cano (Editor). Teoría y práctica de la Medicina Antropológica. BsAs,Argentina: Sociedad Argentina de Medicina Antropológica. 2004: 16-39}

Miranda made use of the Spanish-British diplomatic row known as the Nootka Crisis in February 1790 to present to some British Cabinet ministers his ideas about the independence of Spanish territories in South America.

Later on, after fighting for Revolutionary France, Miranda made his home in London, where he had two children, Leandro (1803 – Paris, 1886) and Francisco (1806 – Cerinza, Colombia, 1831), with his housekeeper, Sarah Andrews, whom he later married. During these earlier times in London he had met Colonel William S. Smith, secretary to John Adams's American Legation.