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[benji]

was a Scottish soldier, adventurer, and con man who attempted from 1821 to 1837 to draw British and French investors and settlers to "Poyais", a fictional Central American territory that he claimed to rule as "Cazique". Hundreds invested their savings in supposed Poyaisian government bonds and land certificates, while about 250 emigrated to MacGregor's invented country in 1822–23 to find only an untouched jungle; more than half of them died.
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On his return to Britain in 1821, MacGregor claimed that King George Frederic Augustus of the Mosquito Coast in the Gulf of Honduras had appointed 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. A French court tried MacGregor and three others for fraud in 1826 after he attempted a variation on the scheme there, but convicted only one of his associates. Acquitted, MacGregor attempted lesser Poyais schemes in London over the next decade.

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.[86][112][n 11]

The Sketch mostly comprised long, reprinted tracts from older works on the Mosquito Coast and other parts of the region. The original material ranged from misleading to outright made up.[112] MacGregor's publicists described the Poyaisian climate as "remarkably healthy ... agree[ing] admirably with the constitution of Europeans"—it was supposedly a spa destination for sick colonists from the Caribbean.[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.[115] Fish and game were so plentiful that a man could hunt or fish for a single day and bring back enough to feed his family for a week.[113] The natives were not just co-operative but intensely pro-British.[86] The capital was St Joseph, a flourishing seaside town of wide paved boulevards, colonnaded buildings and mansions,[116] inhabited by as many as 20,000.[117][118] St Joseph had a theatre, an opera house and a domed cathedral; there was also the Bank of Poyais, the Poyaisian houses of parliament and a royal palace.[116] Reference was made to a "projected Hebrew colony".[110] The Sketch went so far as to claim the rivers of Poyais contained "globules of pure gold".[86][119][120]

Honduras Packet reached the Black River in November 1822. Bemused to find a country rather different from the Sketch's descriptions, and no sign of St Joseph, the emigrants set up camp on the shore, assuming that the Poyaisian authorities would soon contact them. They sent numerous search parties inland; one, guided by natives who recognised the name St Joseph, found some long-forgotten foundations and rubble.[145][n 16] Hall quickly came to the private conclusion that MacGregor must have duped them, but reasoned that announcing such concerns prematurely would only demoralise the party and cause chaos.[146] A few weeks after their arrival, the captain of the Honduras Packet abruptly and unilaterally sailed away amid a fierce storm; the emigrants found themselves alone apart from the natives and two American hermits.[145][n 17] Comforting the settlers with vague assurances that the Poyaisian government would find them if they just stayed where they were, Hall set out for Cape Gracias a Dios, hoping to make contact with the Mosquito king or find another ship. Most of the emigrants found it impossible to believe that the Cazique had deliberately misled them, and posited that blame must lie elsewhere, or that there must have been some terrible misunderstanding.[147]

The London press reported extensively on the Poyais scandal over the following weeks and months, stressing the colonists' travails and charging that MacGregor had orchestrated a massive fraud.[n 19] Six of the survivors—including Hastie, who had lost two of his children during the ordeal—claimed that they were misquoted in these articles, and on 22 October signed an affidavit insisting that blame lay not with MacGregor but with Hall and other members of the emigrant party.[161] "[W]e believe that Sir Gregor MacGregor has been worse used by Colonel Hall and his other agents than was ever a man before", they declared, "and that had they have done their duty by Sir Gregor and by us, things would have turned out very differently at Poyais".[161] MacGregor asserted that he himself had been defrauded, alleged embezzlement by some of his agents, and claimed that covetous merchants in British Honduras were deliberately undermining the development of Poyais as it threatened their profits.[162] Richardson attempted to console the Poyais survivors, vigorously denied the press claims that the country did not exist, and issued libel writs against some of the British newspapers on MacGregor's behalf.[163][n 20]

Discarding the idea of co-operation with Spain, MacGregor published a new Poyaisian constitution in Paris in August 1825, this time describing it as a republic—he remained head of state, with the title Cazique—and on 18 August raised a new £300,000 loan through Thomas Jenkins & Company, an obscure London bank, offering 2.5% interest per annum. No evidence survives to suggest that the relevant bonds were issued.[169] The Sketch was condensed and republished as a 40-page booklet called Some Account of the Poyais Country.[170] French government officials became suspicious when an additional 30 people requested passports to travel to this country they had never heard of, and ordered the Nouvelle Neustrie company's ship to be kept in port.

MacGregor was arrested after three months and brought to La Force on 7 December 1825. He speculated to his confederates that the charges against them must be the result of some abrupt change of policy by France, or of some Spanish intrigue calculated to undermine Poyaisian independence. The three men remained imprisoned without trial while the French attempted to extradite Lehuby from the Netherlands.[172] Attempting to re-associate himself and Poyais with the republican movement in Latin America, MacGregor issued a French-language declaration from his prison cell on 10 January 1826, claiming that he was "contrary to human rights, held prisoner ... for reasons of which he is not aware" and "suffering as one of the founders of independence in the New World".[173][n 21] This attempt to convince the French that he might have some kind of diplomatic immunity did not work. The French government and police ignored the announcement.[173]

In 1828, MacGregor began to sell certificates entitling the holders to "land in Poyais Proper" at five shillings per acre. Two years later King Robert Charles Frederic, who had succeeded his brother George Frederic Augustus in 1824, issued thousands of certificates covering the same territory and offered them to lumber companies in London, directly competing with MacGregor. When the original investors demanded their long-overdue interest, MacGregor could only pay with more certificates. Other charlatans soon caught on and set up their own rival "Poyaisian offices" in London, offering land debentures in competition with both MacGregor and the Mosquito king.[182]