Bernardo de Gálvez
BORN: JULY 23, 1746, IN MÁLAGA, SPAIN
DIED: NOVEMBER 30, 1786, IN NEW SPAIN (MEXICO TERRITORY)
Born in Macharaviaya, a mountain village in Málaga, Spain, to a military family, young Bernardo followed his father and uncles into the Spanish royal service. In 1762, at the age of sixteen, he began as a lieutenant in the Spanish army, posted to Portugal, then he fought in New Spain (Mexico territory) and North Africa.
In 1776, the year that the thirteen American colonies declared independence from Britain, Gálvez was transferred to the distant province of Louisiana in the new world. The Louisiana Territory, an immense expanse of land, at that time belonged to Spain. It controlled land as far as the Mississippi River, while the British controlled the land along the East Coast and had several posts at the southern end of the colonies.
In Europe, Spain was an ally of France; both were enemies of Great Britain. In the colonies, Gálvez pursued Spain’s interests, which served the American cause. Gálvez was familiar with the area along the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast from his previous postings there. He corresponded directly with American leaders, including Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, and sent bullets, supplies, medicine, and arms up the Mississippi River to aid the colonists. He claimed the town of New Orleans for Spain and drove the British out of the Gulf of Mexico. This meant that American, Spanish, and French ships (France also favored the American colonists) could travel up the Mississippi River to reach the American forces in the north.
Once Spain actually entered the war against the British in 1779, Gálvez could engage officially with the British. Always keen on strategy and with the needs of his troops in mind, he arranged for the transfer of cattle from Texas to provide meat for those under his command nearly a century before the great cattle drives out of Texas. Gálvez also requested several hundred horses for his cavalry, and he did not hesitate to share these resources with American forces. Young and dashing—he was in his early thirties at the time—he forged ahead with his own battle plans, even without the support of other Spanish leaders. Thus he became known as Yo Solo, “I alone.”
He gathered troops that were a mixture of Spaniards, mixed-race Creoles, Mexicans, and Native Americans. With these reinforcements, his 1,400 soldiers were able to defeat the British in battles in Manchac, Baton Rouge, and Natchez. They next captured Mobile, thus overtaking all the major Southern British strongholds except Pensacola. His most important victory was to come there.
In 1781, just months before the British defeat at Yorktown, Virginia—which ended with their ultimate defeat in the war—Gálvez took the large British outpost in Florida in what has become known as the Siege of Pensacola. It has been called by historians one of the most brilliantly executed battles of the war, the one that broke the back of the British.
A year later he made the last of his contributions to the American Revolution—he was among a select group that drafted the terms of the Treaty of Paris that ended the war.
He returned to Spain with his family, but in 1785, he was appointed as Viceroy to New Spain, succeeding his father. Always the compassionate and caring leader, upon his move to Mexico City which was undergoing a famine, he gave away much of his personal fortune to provide for the people in need. He died suddenly at the age of forty.
The city of Galveston on the Texas coast is named for this hero. While Gálvez was still governor of Louisiana, the body of water now known as Galveston Bay was called Bahía de Galveston.
In 1976, for the American Bicentennial, Spain gave to the United States a statue of Bernardo de Gálvez astride a horse in a triumphant gait, which stands on Virginia Avenue in Washington, D.C. Presenting the statue, the king of Spain said: “May the statue of Bernardo de Gálvez serve as a reminder that Spain offered the blood of her soldiers for the cause of American independence.”
The inscription at the base reads: “Bernardo de Gálvez, the great Spanish soldier carried out a courageous campaign in lands bordering the lower Mississippi. This masterpiece of military strategy lightened the pressure of the English against the American settlers who were fighting for their independence.”