Biography
Born December 2, 1795 in Wingham, Kent, Miller was fluent in several languages by the age of seventeen, when he enrolled in the British army to fight in the Napoleonic Wars. In September 1817, hearing of the wars in Latin America, he set sail for Buenos Aires to join San Martín's Army of the Andes. He took part in San Martín's liberation of Chile, participating in the decisive battle of Maipú, and then joined Lord Cochrane as the commander of marines in the Chilean Navy. He participated in the failed expedition to Chiloé and lost the little but significant Battle of Agüi.
Read more about this topic: William Miller (Peruvian General)
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)