The Last Shock to the Restoration Period

Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1807 knocked off the Bourbon monarchy. Up until that point, all the revolutionary hopes of people like Francisco de Miranda and Young Simone Belivar were proving hopelessly quixotic. The shock of Napoleon opening up his bleeding ulcer in Spain created the conditions against which potential revolutionary triggers could actually trigger a revolution. And one need only look at the spectacular failure of Miranda's expedition as late as 1806 to see how important the Napoleonic invasion of 1807 was to the possibility of revolutionary action in Spanish America.