CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Spanish Siege of Pensacola

BY FEBRUARY 1781, Pensacola had been effectively blockaded for months, as Pensacola merchants feared to send their ships into the Gulf and ships from outside avoided it for fear that the Spanish navy would arrive. Inflation and shortages caused Isabella and James Bruce “disagreeable uncertainty,” as he put it, in feeding and clothing their family. For now, there was enough flour to keep them from starving, but without sugar, tea, coffee, wine, or rum, life would be reduced to the bare necessities. It had been a year since the fall of Mobile, and Pensacolans had started to hope that the Spanish were not coming. They even imagined that, as James Bruce wrote, a recent hurricane had killed “our most inveterate foe, Don G—z.” Bruce rejoiced in the hope that he “will no longer persecute us” but perhaps “may be forgiven, where we suppose he now is, for the evils he hath brought on us.”

As the town seemed safer, an announcement came that a ship was finally daring to try to leave port, so Isabella Bruce began compiling a list of clothes and other articles for herself and the children. James would send it to one of his London business partners, whose wife could shop for the items and send them on a return ship to Pensacola. Both children needed a variety of clothes. Charlotte May needed six pairs of cotton gloves or mittens, and Archibald needed two pairs. James added an order for some port and British national lottery tickets for himself and the children, noting that “I hope a fortunate number may turn up for them in order to compensate for these misfortunes of their father for these last two years.” It had not been good times for commerce in West Florida, but if Bernardo de Gálvez was dead, prospects would surely improve, even if the Bruces did not win the lottery.¹

But on March 9, cannons rang out and smoke rose again from the Pensacola lighthouse. The ships stationed at the mouth of Pensacola Bay—the Mentor and the Port Royal—had spotted a large Spanish fleet. General Gálvez was not dead. The siege of Pensacola had begun. Leaders among the British, Spanish, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws had to decide how important Pensacola was to them and how much they should sacrifice to defend or take it. Gálvez hoped that Petit Jean’s message would get through to reinforcements in New Orleans. From Pensacola, General John Campbell sent calls for help to Indian country and to Jamaica, carried by a ship that managed to slip out of Pensacola Bay soon after the Spanish ships came into view. He pleaded that “we must undoubtedly fall unless we are relieved.”²

The problem for both sides at Pensacola was that none of these decision-makers, whether Indians within a few hundred miles or imperial officials in the Caribbean and Europe, saw Pensacola as the chief point of conflict in the spring of 1781. Although the Spanish crown enthusiastically supported Gálvez’s attempt to expand Spain’s empire, both Spanish and British forces were occupied with other fronts of the American Revolution on land and on sea. British officials were receiving other urgent cries for help, from St. Augustine and Charleston and from General Charles Cornwallis for his crucial advance in the Carolinas. Some members of Parliament bemoaned the cost of fighting “so many enemies” at once and claimed that the large sums already spent on defending Pensacola had already reached more than it was worth. British Colonial Secretary George Germain argued against this position, but it was true that trying to tax the American colonies to pay off debts from the Seven Years’ War had sparked another costly war, which had now spread even to colonies not in rebellion.³

For their part, the Spanish and French were pouring resources into a siege they had begun almost two years earlier against the British at Gibraltar. Spain was sending troops to fight its own rebellions: a tax-inspired revolt in New Granada with similarities to the American Revolution and an indigenous uprising in Peru led by Tupac Amaru. Southeastern Indians had problems unrelated to the fate of Pensacola, including smallpox, a succession of bad harvests, and wartime trade stoppages. As the Revolution dragged on, these problems grew more severe, and talk of pan-Indian alliances continued. The advice of Payamataha and others to stay out of European wars had persuaded many men and women across the southeast. Isabella and James Bruce could only hope that someone would heed General Campbell’s call.⁴

Pensacola Bay

While Pensacola Bay is deep and wide, the only way into it by ship is through a narrow channel between the eastern finger of Perdido Key to the west and Santa Rosa barrier island to the east. On Santa Rosa’s tip, overlooking the channel, was a hill for mounting artillery that the Spanish themselves had built before the Seven Years’ War. The town of Pensacola sat on the northern shore, far inside the bay. In peacetime, Pensacola was a thriving port city of several thousand people, where Creeks and other Indians traded skins, furs, and tallow for goods from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. But during the war, as Isabella Bruce and her family could attest, few traders came from inland, and there were few ships docked at the wharves.

Parts of Pensacola lay within a five-sided stockade that the Spanish had built and British slaves had reinforced and expanded. Campbell had added a new fort less than a mile up the hill above the town. He named it Fort George for King George III and named the hill Gage Hill for Thomas Gage, then the commander of British forces in North America. From its height, the cannons of Fort George could bombard anyone who tried to take Pensacola. Fort George itself was a double stockade: two circles of tall, upright, sharpened pine logs with a barrier of sand in between. Another 350 yards above Fort George was a supporting battery, the Prince of Wales Redoubt, and about the same distance farther north was the larger, crescent-shaped Queen’s Redoubt. Mounted artillery protected the fort and both redoubts, although not as many as Campbell had asked for. Taking Pensacola would not be easy.⁵

Eighteenth-century tactics for seizing a defended location were clear, methodical, and not to be rushed. If all went well for Gálvez, there would probably be four steps. First, his ships would take control of the bay. Second, he would establish a base on the mainland where he could combine his forces and artillery with reinforcements from Mobile and New Orleans. From the bay, the ships could supply this camp with provisions and ammunition. Unless the British either drove off the Spanish or surrendered during the first two steps, a classic siege would then commence. The Spanish troops would gradually move their camp and artillery close enough to the British fortifications to bombard them but, Gálvez hoped, remain out of range of the British artillery. This third step would be the most arduous, requiring the army to haul artillery, tents, food, and ammunition for miles through rough terrain without the help of oxen or even many horses, while risking being shot by muskets or, as the army got closer to its destination, artillery fire. With each advance, the army would have to build protective trenches and batteries and hope that they would hold. The final step would be to force a British surrender, either by bombardment or starvation. The four steps could take months, but Gálvez figured that early May would leave enough time to succeed before the worst heat, storms, and disease of late summer.

The defenders aimed to counter the Spanish at every step, and they had the advantage. On the marshy, irregular Gulf Coast, heavily wooded and fragmented by waterways, lagoons, and inlets, the methodical process of a siege could stall. Not only did the landscape make progress with artillery and supplies slow and painful, it also made the army an easier target for the far less methodical and far more mobile Indian forces. Eighteenth-century Indian military tactics were perfectly suited to slicing off bits of an invading army as it trudged inland. Indians would not have to kill all of the invaders. If they could do enough damage and slow the Spanish down, then disease, hunger, and attrition would end the campaign. As General Campbell explained, Indian forces could, “by continually harassing and hanging on the enemy’s rear,” at least “impede the operations, if not totally defeat and disconcert the designs of any force they can send against us.” On March 9, the Spanish ships anchored in the Gulf off the south side of Santa Rosa Island, and the troops began to disembark.⁶

Persuading Empires and Indians

The British commanders of Manchac, Baton Rouge, and Mobile had surrendered fairly quickly, knowing they did not have the forces to counter Gálvez. But Pensacola was West Florida’s capital and had reserved most of the army for its own defense. Whoever could muster the most resources to last through the siege would have the upper hand.

Spanish General Bernardo de Gálvez had been more successful than General Campbell or Alexander McGillivray in persuading constituencies that there was much to gain in the war. And at last officials in Havana had provided the ships, troops, and supplies to West Florida that the king had ordered when he declared war. Gálvez had reminded them that, with few resources, he had taken Baton Rouge, Natchez, and Mobile. With a little more support, he could win all of West Florida and advance the Spanish empire far into North America. His arguments carried the day. On February 13, Gálvez left Havana on the sixty-one-gun flagship San Ramon. Accompanying him was a fleet of twenty brigantines, frigates, and convoy ships bearing over 1,300 sailors and soldiers from Havana’s permanent regiment and companies sent from Spain as well as the provisions and armaments for war. Once the winds were favorable, the convoy set sail.⁷

Isabella Bruce and her neighbors were frustrated that the British empire seemed less determined to defend West Florida than Spain was to take it. She must have shuddered when her husband came home to report that Campbell had suggested to His Majesty’s Council for West Florida that if the Spanish attacked, the best way to protect Pensacola’s women and children would be to ask Gálvez to take them on a ship or somewhere else away from combat. Outraged, the Council wrote Campbell that giving the enemy their women and children was “unprecedented in any society.” In their view, protecting dependents should be Campbell’s main concern, not something to entrust to the enemy.⁸

The Bruces hoped that Campbell’s lackluster defense of West Florida did not represent British intentions. Certainly West Florida was not yet a profitable colony. But James Bruce spoke for himself and his family and neighbors when he wrote that “we are still in hopes” that the crown would defend West Florida. After all, the crown had spent heavily on the colony, expenditures that would be justified if British forces could take New Orleans and Louisiana, giving them access to the Mississippi and the Gulf. Then the Bruces could reclaim their property on the Mississippi, and West Floridians could continue to develop plantations and export their produce through a more convenient port. But the administration would have to become more aggressive. James Bruce worried that “if the war is carried on even another spring without the proposed reinforcement, we must fall, for even our Indian allies begin to think that we scarcely belong to the Great King, or he would not suffer us to be so long in being able to drive out the Spaniards from the places they have taken from us.”⁹

When the Spanish ships approached, General John Campbell had some 1,700 soldiers under his command in Pensacola and its supporting fortifications. Despite repeated requests, he had only three armed ships, all much smaller than the San Ramon. Because Campbell did not record militia numbers, it is hard to know how many people ultimately defended Pensacola. With few white Pensacolans eager to serve, many of the militiamen were of African descent. One account mentions a detachment of “50 negroes” that went out on one sortie. The regular troops included German Waldeckers in British service and the Pennsylvania and Maryland Loyalists Battalions.¹⁰

These soldiers would be essential in Pensacola’s defense, but the lack of reinforcements from Jamaica meant that Campbell depended even more on Chickasaw, Creek, and Choctaw warriors. He assumed that Indians would compose well over half of his forces, and they could also hunt venison for the troops at all of the posts. Yet whether they would come was uncertain. Three times between the spring of 1780 and early 1781, Campbell had sent word to Alexander McGillivray to come to Pensacola’s defense against the Spanish, and each time another messenger soon followed saying it was a false alarm and that the Creeks should not come.¹¹

The British at Pensacola had insufficient supplies for rewarding Indian allies, especially for multiple trips. General John Burgoyne, organizing in Canada, estimated that the muskets, gunpowder, and other supplies Indians required beyond what they actually used in battle meant that one thousand Indian fighters cost more than twenty thousand British regulars. Burgoyne was exaggerating, but still, Indians were expensive. As Alexander Cameron explained to George Germain, “the Indians in general have been long accustomed to receive lavish gratuities, even when their services were not immediately called for, and they now consider as their due, what they formerly received as great favors.” Now, “when we are daily desiring” their help, was a bad time to economize.¹²

Nonetheless, Germain sent no more goods but only the hope that the British victory at Charleston two months earlier would “serve to confirm the Indians in their attachment to His Majesty, and encourage them to exert themselves in His Cause.”¹³ Cameron warned General Campbell that “refusing presents to the Indians at so critical a conjuncture may be very hurtful to his Majesty’s interest.” As “at present our principal dependence is on the Indians for the protection of this place,” Indian allies should be retained and supplied nearby so they could come in case of attack on Pensacola and in the meantime scout for Pensacola and raid around Mobile to keep the Spaniards entrapped.¹⁴ Campbell refused to supply such a plan and could not even promise that there would be provisions and presents for visiting Creeks. He told Cameron that he wanted to see Creeks only when their aid was “absolutely required.”¹⁵ The defenders of Pensacola could only hope that Alexander McGillivray would bring large forces and that British ships would soon appear on the horizon.

Several hundred Choctaws, forty Creek men and their families, and a few Chickasaws were already in Pensacola when the Spanish arrived. When Campbell issued and then rescinded his latest cry for help in January 1781, they had come anyway, seeking food and ammunition for hunting. After this disappointment, the visiting Indians had considered their next steps. Should they head home—some two hundred miles for the Creeks and Choctaws and nearly four hundred for the Chickasaws—or stay to see if anything developed in Pensacola? While the others lingered, Choctaw Headman Franchimastabé and about half of the Choctaws left for home on March 6. On the trail the next morning, about eighteen miles northwest of Pensacola, they were receiving rations of rum from one of the British Indian agents when Deputy Indian Superintendent Alexander Cameron caught up with them. He descended from his horse and told the Choctaws that at last the Spanish were coming.¹⁶

Franchimastabé agreed to return immediately to defend Pensacola but declared, “I will not answer for my people returning, for we received but little provisions[,] and the presents the great warrior [Campbell] made us were for nothing.” He told Cameron, “You may speak to them as they are here and will answer for themselves.” Like other southeastern Indian leaders, Franchimastabé did not command warriors. Chiefs of the Southeast could only persuade with words, with goods, or by example, and Franchimastabé was already known among the Choctaws as supportive of the British. He was a war leader who was in the process of becoming an important Choctaw chief in part because he had been able to acquire British goods for his military services and funnel them to supporters within the Choctaw nation. This connection put Franchimastabé in a tight spot. He needed more goods than the British were currently giving, but if he turned his back on them, he would have no goods at all. Franchimastabé simply told his fellow Choctaws that they could choose: Make the long day’s walk back to Pensacola, turn in the other direction toward Spanish Mobile and try their luck there, or resume the journey home, hoping to kill enough deer and other game along the way to keep their trip from being a complete waste of time. About half decided to return with Franchimastabé to join the few hundred Choctaws who had not yet left Pensacola; the other half continued along the path toward home.¹⁷

Lining Up the Forces

Choctaws, Creeks, and Chickasaws looking down from the British fortifications at Red Cliffs saw the Spanish making progress. On March 10, troops crossed Santa Rosa Island and discovered no artillery there to fire on incoming ships. General Campbell had hoped to rebuild and staff the battery on Santa Rosa, but he spent his limited resources on the fortifications on the mainland and in any case was short on cannons. The Indians on Red Cliffs saw the flagship San Ramon approach the channel but not enter the bay. The captain worried that the ships would run aground in the bay’s shallow entrance without a local pilot boat to lead them. For a week, the Spanish ships floated outside the bay as Pensacolans wondered what would happen next. On March 18, an audience at Red Cliffs assembled again as a corsair brigantine, a two-masted sailing ship designed for maneuverability, hoisted a flag signaling that it was now the flagship of the fleet. It maneuvered past the San Ramon and the frigates and into the bay. The ship was the Galveztown, named for the general. Captaining it was Bernardo de Gálvez himself, frustrated with his captains’ timidity. Seeing the brigantine make it, the lighter frigates followed him into the bay.¹⁸

The British fired their cannons madly at the lead ship. As an observer later wrote, the artillery fire “passed through sails and riggings,” but the Galveztown “entered the port without the least damage.” The other warships and convoy ships followed the next day, none running aground. The artillery at Red Cliffs rained down hundreds of shells without causing serious damage. Campbell had had high hopes for the “exceedingly well executed” fortification he had built, but his engineers had positioned it so high in an effort to avoid cannon fire from ships in the bay that its artillery could not accurately target the ships below.¹⁹ The Indians saw the British Mentor and Port Royal give up guarding the mouth of the bay and sail up toward Pensacola. British soldiers began to torch log blockhouses and storage buildings on the shore of the mainland to prevent the Spanish from taking them. These were not good signs. Some Indians went to Campbell’s headquarters and threatened him, saying that if he did not provide more supplies, they would not stay. Others packed up and left Pensacola to its fate.²⁰

Each night, around campfires and in the makeshift wooden huts the Indians had built north of Red Cliffs, there was a lot to discuss. Indian opinion had swung over the previous few years toward viewing British alliance as useless, and what Indians could see from Red Cliffs lent credence to this opinion. Wartime trade stoppages made British alliances unprofitable, and the recent Spanish victories could not be ignored. The counterargument to all of this was that the Spanish were fighting on the side of the American colonists, the very people whose westward expansion most Creeks wanted to oppose.²¹

The Indians who stayed accused Campbell of robbing them of pledged goods, especially ammunition. Because the British had failed to send supplies to their towns, they said, their people would be unable to defend their homes if the Spanish came inland. Even the additional goods they were earning by defending Pensacola were in danger because the British kept the goods in the fort, which they believed would soon fall. And they feared for their wives, sisters, and children who were nervously sequestered in the town of Pensacola with the British civilians.²²

Siege of Pensacola, 1781, as the Spanish ships sailed past Red Cliffs. (Toma de la plaza de Panzacola y rendición de la Florida Occidental a las armas de Carlos III, Ministerio de Defensa, Archivo del Museo Naval, Spain)

Despite their grumbling, the Indians who were at Pensacola did their best to defend it. Each day, bands spread out along the coast and inland between Red Cliffs and the Perdido River, about five miles away. The Indians suspected that troops coming from Mobile would walk the nearly fifty miles and would have to cross Perdido Bay, where the Perdido River widens before it reaches the Gulf. Crossing the Perdido in launches, the soldiers would be vulnerable to gunfire from the eastern shore. That would be the time to strike. Indian bands plus nearly one hundred troops from Fort George patrolled the eastern side of the Perdido, but it was a difficult task. The shore of the Perdido is extremely curvy, forming some thirty miles of coastline.

Several times over these few days, Indian parties saw ships approaching from the Gulf and fired on them, preventing them from sending men ashore to look for Spanish Colonel José de Ezpeleta and his troops from Mobile. At one point, an Indian party discovered a group of Spanish sailors who had anchored in Perdido Bay and had ventured away from the boat to cut some grass in the marshlands to feed the cattle they had on board. One of the troubles with transporting provisions in the eighteenth century was the lack of refrigeration. Drying and salting meat kept it safe for later consumption, but Cuba could not cure enough meat to feed an army for months, and soldiers preferred fresh meat anyway. Bringing live animals solved these problems but created others, such as feeding the animals and disposing of their waste. Leaving the ship to collect feed and stretch their legs seemed a useful diversion to the sailors, afflicted with the combination of edginess and boredom particular to combat missions. But it was not a good idea. The Indians who found them were also eager for action. When they came upon the eleven Spaniards cutting away at the long grasses, they killed ten of them and marched the eleventh to Fort George at the end of a rope. There, they presented the ten scalps and the prisoner for payment. Indian fighters in the region treated war captives harshly. They would have killed him had Campbell not ransomed him for his information.²³

Although only a small percentage of the Indians Campbell hoped for had arrived, they still did most of the killing. Their mission was to pick off Spanish troops and little by little make the siege impossible. The British troops mostly stayed within the fortifications except for occasional forays once the Spanish drew closer. For their part, the Spanish troops coming with Colonel Ezpeleta from Mobile feared Indian attack. These troops were marching on narrow paths through dense, thorny woods. An armed Creek could be a few yards away behind a bushy young pine tree. The Spanish would not know he was there until he had fired a shot.²⁴

Ezpeleta managed to sneak past them. Realizing from scouts’ reports that Indians were patrolling east of the Perdido, Ezpeleta changed the route. Rather than going directly by land from Mobile to Perdido Bay, he and the troops took boats to the southeastern edge of Mobile Bay, right on the Gulf. From there, they walked along the beach and in the early morning of March 21 crossed the three-hundred-yard strait to Perdido Key on armed launches provided by the San Ramon as it lingered outside the bay. (The keys that hid the bay gave it its name, Perdido or Lost Bay.) The Choctaws had forced Ezpeleta’s men to march without rest and killed several of them, but they failed to stop their progress.²⁵

On the morning of March 22, Amand Broussard was sailing from New Orleans toward the fight. When Acting Louisiana Governor Piernas had received the news from Petit Jean of Gálvez’s impending attack on Pensacola, he sent out the call for militia units to assemble in New Orleans. Broussard and his Acadian neighbors in the Attakapas settlement wasted no time in checking their muskets, bidding adieu to their families, and rowing themselves downriver to New Orleans. In the afternoon of March 23, sixteen vessels bearing Broussard and some 1,600 other militiamen and regulars from New Orleans with arms, ammunition, and a three-month supply of provisions approached Pensacola Bay. They were delighted to see Gálvez’s ships floating in the bay already. Like the others, they marveled as they sailed past Red Cliffs under fire that did no serious damage.²⁶

The hearts of Pensacola’s defenders sank as they saw the approaching fleet from New Orleans. Here were additional Spanish reinforcements, while the forces expected by land from the Chickasaws, Creeks, and Choctaws and by sea from Jamaica still had not appeared. With every day that passed, their arrival seemed less likely. Frustrated, General Campbell evacuated his troops from the town of Pensacola and stationed them in Fort George and the two redoubts above it. The battle for Pensacola would be decided there.²⁷

When most of the troops moved to Fort George, Pensacola’s civilians and the families of Creek and Choctaw warriors stayed behind. A few days earlier, on March 21, Governor Peter Chester and General Campbell had written to General Gálvez asking that the town of Pensacola be exempt from the fighting so that noncombatants could be protected. It was not unusual to shell besieged cities, but Gálvez agreed, as long as Campbell removed all British troops from the town. Therefore, as the troops left, James and Isabella Bruce found themselves between the British fort on the hill above the town and the Spanish warships in the bay below, each firing on the other. The place that was supposed to be safe for civilians ended up between the warring parties.²⁸

James Bruce wrote of “the distresses of the inhabitants” as they were “between the guns of both.”²⁹ Cannons from both sides boomed day and night. When stray cannonballs landed within the town walls, Pensacolans rushed to put out fires. Isabella Bruce could too well imagine the death and destruction that would result if one hit her house by the water or the shelter in which she and her family now took refuge. Her neighbor Mrs. Morison died during the siege, leaving John Morison a widower with five small children to take care of under these siege conditions.³⁰

Beyond the immediate fear of the bombardment lay the terror of every person under siege—running out of food and water. For now, there were enough supplies in the town, but no one knew how long the siege would last. The bay was blocked, and there was little possibility of goods coming by land past the Spanish forces. And in any case, the nearest British posts were in Georgia, 450 miles away. The longer the siege lasted, the more danger the Bruces and their neighbors faced.

Making matters worse, the Indian and European civilians did not get along well in tight quarters under tense circumstances. Pensacolans accused Indians of theft and lawlessness, while the Indian women complained of inadequate food and vulnerability to Spanish capture. Campbell returned a few soldiers to Pensacola to help deal with the conflicts and fires, prompting charges from Gálvez that he was violating the sanctuary of Pensacola, a complaint that served to make the people in town even more nervous. Isabella Bruce could only hope that her empire would send reinforcements, and soon.³¹

Converging on Fort George

After sailing into Pensacola Bay, Amand Broussard’s ship rounded Tartar Point and anchored on the northeastern side of Moore’s Lagoon. As he disembarked, Broussard could see why the ships from New Orleans had stopped here, safely between the cannons of Red Cliffs and those of Fort George and the redoubts. Having completed the first step of taking the bay, here they would begin the second step of establishing a camp on the mainland and slowly advancing toward Fort George. To the northeast lay Sutton’s Lagoon, which the troops would have to get around.³²

Broussard’s militia company was assigned a spot on the side of the camp nearest Fort George, where they settled in to guard the camp and prepare for their advance. On March 27, José de Ezpeleta and his bedraggled soldiers from Mobile arrived with tales of terror from their journey. It was hard enough to travel during the day through the dense woods and over the undulating hills. Night brought total darkness. At one point in the dark, several Spanish soldiers heard a rustling on their flank and began to fire. From the direction of the sound came musket fire in return. Several men lay dead and wounded before their comrades realized that both sides were part of Ezpeleta’s army.³³

The Spanish camp was a frightening place to sleep. Amand Broussard and his thousands of comrades tried to drift off in the ominous silence between Indian attacks. One participant recalled the camp being “in the middle of the forest and surrounded by savages, who insult us at all hours, hiding themselves for that purpose.”³⁴ The soldiers expected musket fire but never knew when it would break out or from which side of the camp it would come. It seemed that every night musket balls pierced the fabric of tents and wounded or killed soldiers within. Even if Indians only once in a while killed a soldier bathing incautiously or serving guard duty, it made the Spanish very nervous. They also worried about disease, which could slowly eat its way through the attacking army as the defending army simply waited them out.

On the evening of March 28, Broussard heard gunfire close by. Several hundred Indians and about a hundred British had opened fire on the camp’s guards. Broussard heard his orders—a Spanish officer sent white and black militia out against the attackers. Broussard charged out of camp as the artillery fired overhead. The militia pushed back the attacking parties into the woods. Hoping that they had retreated to Fort George, Broussard and his comrades returned to camp, ate their dinner, and settled into an uneasy sleep. Near midnight, Broussard woke with a start. The sound of gunfire came from all directions. He pulled on his shoes, grabbed his musket, and headed for action. Rather than retreating, the Indians who had attacked earlier had spread out in smaller parties and, after nightfall, crept toward the camp from several sides. They killed and wounded several on the Spanish side before drawing back into the woods again. The Spanish forces knew that if the British and their Indian allies kept up this kind of attack, the Spanish effort was doomed. The attackers barely put themselves at risk, and if they could inflict several casualties every night, they would halt Spanish progress and eventually weaken the besiegers so much that they would have to give up.³⁵

Therefore, just over twenty-four hours later, before dawn on the morning of March 30, Amand Broussard was with one thousand advance light troops following General Gálvez himself in a march around Sutton’s Lagoon. They nervously walked through unknown terrain, imagining Indian fighters behind any tree or bush. Even if the human enemies did nothing, the panthers, bears, alligators, and poisonous snakes could kill just as easily. At one point, scouts reported an Indian ambush up ahead, but Gálvez ordered cannons fired into the woods, and the ambushers scattered, perhaps simply having been deer. At 10:30 Broussard and the others emerged with Gálvez onto the beach on the northeastern side of Sutton’s Lagoon a little over a mile from Fort George. There they met the ships that landed artillery and the troops from Havana. They sent a message that they had secured the spot and that Ezpeleta could begin sending the rest of the army in launches across the mouth of the lagoon. Soon after they began, an Indian force fired at the launches and at the outposts of the new camp. Broussard advanced from the camp with the light troops, firing his musket.³⁶

The Maryland Loyalists and fifty black slaves sallied out of Fort George. They brought two howitzers, a highly mobile piece of artillery. One shell from the howitzer fell among thirteen boats crossing Sutton’s Lagoon and frightened Ezpeleta’s forces into rowing quickly back to the far side. The lagoon battle raged, as the Indian troops shot from behind the trees and brush that surrounded the beach. After four hours of heavy fighting and a few casualties on each side, the Maryland Loyalists and enslaved troops retreated back into Fort George. Seeing the retreat, the Indians fell back into the woods. Broussard and the other Spanish troops and laborers returned to the work of setting up camp, including building the earthworks for the sides not protected by the bay or the lagoon.³⁷

As the rainy morning of March 31 dawned, Amand Broussard enjoyed a celebratory round of aguardiente, a hard alcohol made from sugar cane. Since moving their camp, the Spanish troops had completed the second step and were ready to advance together toward Fort George. In contrast, the British were depressed, and the Indians were angry. Choctaw Headman Franchimastabé was “in a passion,” Alexander Cameron later wrote. The Choctaw side had inflicted major casualties on the Spanish and might have been on the verge of a decisive victory, but the British troops had retreated, and Gálvez had achieved his objective. Franchimastabé charged that the Choctaws “have done everything in our power,” whereas the British effort had been half-hearted. Campbell pledged more support next time, so Franchimastabé promised he would not “leave Pensacola before its fate was determined.”³⁸

Franchimastabé may have begun to think that its fate had been written already. The Spanish were slowly gaining ground, just as they aimed to do, and the way to stop them was to do what Franchimastabé’s men had done, attack aggressively at vulnerable places and times. But if the British gave up so easily, why should Franchimastabé’s men risk their lives and expend their precious gunpowder, especially when most Choctaws already thought they were wasting their time?

But the Spanish did not move immediately. The ship bearing six battering cannons from Mobile had run aground in Mobile Bay and been captured by the British. Without that artillery, taking down the batteries would be impossible. While the Spanish waited in hopes of more artillery from Havana, the Choctaws, Creeks, and Chickasaws were steadily picking off the troops. Ezpeleta informed Gálvez that the constant Indian attacks meant that he would need at least eight hundred more soldiers to maintain a siege for more than a few days. If artillery and troops arrived for the Spanish, they would regain the advantage. But if British or Indian reinforcements came instead, they might push Gálvez’s men back onto their ships and away from Pensacola.³⁹

Alexander McGillivray finally rode into Pensacola on April 8 or 9 with about forty Creeks, a far cry from the six hundred who had ridden with him to Pensacola a year earlier. When Campbell’s call came in March, McGillivray had spread the news to Okfuskee, Tuckabatchee, Great Tallassee, his own Little Tallassee, and other Upper Creek towns. He again urged Creeks to put on their war paint, conduct their ceremonies, strap on their muskets and hatchets, and defend their British allies. But most Creeks were tired of being treated poorly. If they could be sure that they would return from Pensacola with food, musket balls, and gunpowder, it might be worth the trip, but those who had made the most recent journey of nearly two hundred miles to Pensacola had received barely enough supplies for the return home. Trade stoppages, smallpox, and crop failures had left the Creeks needing outside aid, but they were learning not to rely on the British. Creek women may have reminded the men that they were needed at home to help with the planting and to hunt for small game. Other divisions of the Creek Confederacy—Alabamas and maybe even some Upper Creeks—might show up on the Spanish side, and the Creeks did not want to risk facing other Creeks in battle. Some young men wanted to fight but not against the Spanish. They had joined the raids of Cherokee leader Dragging Canoe against Virginia’s frontier settlements. Many Creeks doubted whether the Spanish actually would come this time, and some wondered about McGillivray’s motives, given that he was receiving a salary as a British agent.

McGillivray did his best to counter these arguments. He reminded the Creeks that cultivating interdependence with the British would facilitate Creek protection of their eastern border, where the British were fighting the Creeks’ most hated enemies, Georgians and Virginians. However, it was an impossible task even for a man of McGillivray’s rhetorical skills. The British were clumsy allies, and killing Spaniards seemed a circuitous defense against Georgia and Virginia. Some of McGillivray’s clan members and a few others packed up to go with him to Pensacola, but this time most Creeks stayed home.⁴⁰

In addition to the forty Creeks who arrived with McGillivray, another forty followed a few days later, and on April 15, a new party of about ninety Choctaws showed up. Some fifty Chickasaws arrived with James Colbert, a Scottish trader, interpreter, and British Indian agent who had lived with the Chickasaws since at least 1740. His force was mostly composed of his Chickasaw sons and other relations. These two-hundred-odd Indians bolstered and invigorated those already there. Still, Pensacolans remembered that 1,500 had come the first time Campbell called.⁴¹

Even worse, some Creeks were indeed in the Spanish camp, believing the British loss likely. While McGillivray was recruiting for the British in the Upper Creek Towns, some Alabamas were already with Gálvez, and on April 5, several Upper Creek headmen arrived at the Spanish camp. They were not there to join the fight; they would not have fought against McGillivray and the Creeks who were with the British. However, they offered non-combat assistance as part of their responsibility to sustain diplomatic relations with the Spanish in hopes of paving the way for good postwar Spanish relations.

There was some Nativist thinking within the Creeks’ reluctance to participate in any bloodshed. An Upper Creek man explained to a Spanish officer that the Creeks were “frugal with the blood of their compatriots, for the reason that the nations consist of a small number of individuals.” He explained that “in the world there were three races of men: white, black, and red; that the first and the second were innumerable, and therefore the loss of some of them was not a cause for grief; but that there were very few of the third, and therefore it was necessary to preserve them with great care.” The Spanish officer observed that “during the siege, they were quick to harass the English every time they were ordered to do so, but never could they be persuaded to attack those Indians who were allies of the English.”⁴²

Indeed, there is no evidence that Indians killed one another at all in the Pensacola conflict. Ultimately, despite Campbell’s hopes, this was not their fight. The ways in which they served one side or the other gave them access to payment and glory without exposing them to much physical risk or using much of their valuable and scarce ammunition and gunpowder. Although a headman from “a small nation” (probably near the Mississippi) came with ten warriors and declared, “We come to aid the Spaniards” and “We know how to shed our blood for our friends,” he and his warriors did not actually fight.⁴³ When General Campbell tried to persuade the Choctaws to encamp near Fort George, they insisted instead on a spot four or five miles from the fort, on the road that led to their towns. From there, they could make a quick getaway if necessary. As the Spanish advanced, Campbell had trouble persuading Indians to put up much opposition. When they did attack, on March 30, Campbell believed they had done so “with more noise than advantage.”⁴⁴ On April 9, he managed to get Choctaws to agree to stay another four days only by giving them extra presents. Occasionally, they did make an easy raid. For example, on April 30, some parties of Indians approached under the cover of thickets to within half a musket shot of the Spanish camp and opened fire on the advance post, then retreated back into the forest and emerged near the Spanish launches to kill four unsuspecting sailors bathing in a creek.⁴⁵

Although Indians were highly selective with the risks they took, to the Spanish, the Indians on the British side seemed great in number and frightening in their ability to strike at will from the cover of the woods. The Spanish knew nothing of Indian reticence about joining this battle. They imagined that thousands were on their way or were already entrenched in Pensacola’s defenses. In what was surely an intentional deception, a British deserter told Gálvez that three hundred Creeks came in early April, when the real number was only eighty. Another deserter reported the ninety Choctaws as five hundred. Many of Gálvez’s tactical decisions reflected the threat—both real or imagined—that Indians posed. Spanish troops spent much of their time chopping down trees and clearing brush surrounding the camp to reduce the number of hiding places from which Indians could shoot. They built entrenchments and redoubts to provide cover from Indians attacking the camp and the supply launches. And Gálvez posted soldiers and cannons to guard the front of the camp against Indian attacks.⁴⁶

Waiting for Help

Over the next two weeks, Amand Broussard joined in the exhausting work of the third step: relocating the camp again and again as the Spanish advanced northward toward Fort George, always keeping their back to Sutton’s Lagoon. Each time they nervously built new defenses and dreaded the night. In one move, they left the tents up in the old camp until they could transfer nearly everyone to the new one in hopes of fooling the Indians. When they settled on a final spot, with its back to the lagoon, the Spanish protected the other three sides of this camp with a tall log wall; earthworks as high as a man, several feet thick, and topped with artillery; and a moat. They hoped “to ensure against the sudden violent attacks of the Indians.” When Indian parties approached, the New Orleans free black militia, known by Louisianans as “famous marksmen,” would sally out to drive them away. But even here Choctaws, Creeks, and Chickasaws killed men in the tents by climbing into the dense foliage of the trees overhanging the camp wall. And the defenses did nothing to keep out the Gulf Coast’s rain, which dampened both clothes and spirits. Fort George and the Indians’ temporary huts suffered some damage, but they were built for the elements, and they could take heart that rain would be a worse enemy for an invading force. In the less-prepared Spanish camp, rain soaked the ammunition, brought most of the tents to the ground, and left soldiers vulnerable to disease.⁴⁷

As expected, the third step of the Spanish plan was turning out to be the most difficult. The Spanish had four thousand troops to advance on Fort George, but Choctaws, Creeks, and Chickasaws combined forces to slow their progress through the dense woods that led uphill from the base camp to the fort. As one of the officers later remembered, “Many Indian nations, warlike, cruel, excellent marksmen skillful in the handling of muskets,” continually impeded his army’s progress “in the march it had had to make in a country full of dense forests and with many obstructions, the most appropriate land in the world for ambushes.” As Gálvez recorded, “Each step was a peril and a clash with the Indians.” Now that the Spanish were closer to Fort George, the British troops could easily come out to attack them together with Indian parties, bringing their relatively light and extremely damaging field artillery.⁴⁸

Altogether, the Indian and British military forces totaled almost two thousand, and they inflicted casualties on the Spanish forces every day. Each time Gálvez gained a little ground, he lost men and morale. The miserable conditions and loss of life made many consider “all their work to be useless,” and they “despaired of the whole undertaking.” On April 12, Gálvez was out with the light infantry when an Indian spotted the general and fired a musket ball straight at him. It hit a finger on Gálvez’s left hand and continued on to graze his abdomen. With help, he made his way back to camp and let the surgeon bind his wounds. While he was recovering in the hospital tent, a torrential rainstorm blew in. The surgeons feared that the weather would kill off their commander and many more of their patients, but the skies cleared the next day, and Gálvez survived.⁴⁹

Both sides watched the sea. The British sent a pilot to wait at Red Cliffs in case a fleet arrived to relieve them. On April 18, Amand Broussard rejoiced when two Spanish ships brought supplies and the news that Gálvez’s father, Guatemalan President Matias de Gálvez, had recaptured Fort Inmaculada in Nicaragua from the British. The next afternoon, a large number of ships approached through a thick fog over the Gulf. Rumors began to fly: fourteen ships…twenty…two hundred. As the ships approached, lookouts could see that they flew no flags. Many shared Gálvez’s “intense fright” and Campbell’s “hopes and fears” as they waited to learn the nationality of the ships.⁵⁰

Only once the incoming captains saw the Spanish ships in the bay did they unfurl their Spanish and French flags and fire their cannons into the air. Gálvez’s pleas had been answered: fifteen warships, three frigates, and over a hundred transport vessels under the command of Vice Admiral José Solano bore Field Marshal Juan Manuel de Cagigal and 1,600 infantry from the regiments stationed at Havana, a naval force of over 1,400 sailors, and the ammunition, provisions, and artillery that would make taking Fort George possible. With them were about seven hundred French troops to support their ally’s effort. Hasty preparations in Havana had left no time to send word to Gálvez that the fleet was coming, but it was a very welcome surprise.⁵¹

Why did Spanish officials decide to reinforce Gálvez’s effort? First, his success thus far had persuaded the king himself of the feasibility of taking West Florida, which would atone for the humiliations of the Seven Years’ War and advance Spanish imperialism in North America. Second, although Spain was deeply involved in battles for the Caribbean and Gibraltar, it could spare, at least for a few weeks, ships and troops for the opportunity at Pensacola. Finally, what tipped the scale was that a few weeks earlier a fisherman off the west coast of Cuba had spotted eight British warships and a frigate. The news made Havana’s governing council nervous. The council inferred that the British in Jamaica had gotten the news of Gálvez’s attack and were sending help to Pensacola. Fearing the king’s wrath if they let West Florida slip away, the councilmembers dispatched a fleet to Gálvez, which included French ships that had been anchored in Cuba.⁵²

Jamaica Governor John Dalling had sent only two ships to aid Pensacola, both with crews so undependable that they attacked and looted rival ships rather than going to Pensacola. Britain’s more reliable forces were stretched thin. The previous fall’s hurricane had damaged the British fleet and killed over twenty thousand people in the Leeward Islands alone. British troops at Jamaica were suffering from disease. As British Colonial Secretary George Germain explained to Campbell, “Mortality among the troops in Jamaica had been so considerable” that Governor Dalling “judged it unsafe to lessen his force.” Governor Dalling and Admiral Peter Parker were focused on fighting the French and Spanish in the Caribbean, Honduras, and Nicaragua (against Gálvez’s father) and protecting Jamaica itself from attack. And now the Dutch had joined their enemies.⁵³

The British ships that the Cuban fisherman spotted may have been headed for the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Eustace. The Dutch, with their strong merchant class, had hoped to make profits from the war by remaining officially neutral while taking over trade routes that had been dominated by the British. St. Eustace had been sending supplies to the American rebels by the shipload, and British officials felt that closing it was essential to the war effort. Britain declared war on the Dutch in October 1780 and attacked St. Eustace the following February. British reports returned saying that even the beach “was covered with hogsheads of sugar and tobacco” worth more than three million pounds and destined for the rebels. For his part, Campbell doubted his superiors’ motives and believed that the fleet failed to come to his aid because British leaders coveted the valuable Dutch cargoes.⁵⁴

As for the British army in North America, Cornwallis was trying to conquer Virginia, and General Henry Clinton was defending New York against the combined forces of George Washington’s Continental Army, French General Rochambeau’s troops, and the French navy. In late April, a mounted messenger arrived at Fort George with news of a Cornwallis victory in the Carolinas. The Fort George artillery and soldiers fired volleys to celebrate, and a rumor circulated that the messenger had also brought news of “an intended reinforcement for this garrison,” but in reality the news only affirmed that Pensacola was on its own. Letters from Germain indicating that he could not spare assistance for Pensacola were in transit but had not yet arrived. His letters optimistically assured Campbell that Indian assistance and Pensacola’s seaside fortifications should suffice for its defense.⁵⁵

The seaside fortification at Red Cliffs fired, ineffectually, on the new Spanish and French fleet as it entered the bay. Choctaws and Creeks reported to Fort George that thousands of men were disembarking and joining the Spanish camp with boatloads of supplies. Company by company, army and navy troops were assigned spots to set up camp. Amand Broussard and the rest of the camp greeted them with “infinite rejoicing.” The Spanish troops now totaled well over seven thousand, while fewer than two thousand men were defending Pensacola. No one in the Spanish camp complained as they set to work enlarging the camp and building new defenses.⁵⁶

Taking Pensacola

When the sun rose on April 29, Alexander McGillivray could see, only about half a mile west of Queen’s Redoubt, a parallel trench with substantial earthworks protecting it. Spanish soldiers were fast at work building up the battery and mounting their cannons. Behind the parallel trench, men were widening the zigzag trench that connected to the Spanish camp.

In Pensacola, prospects for victory appeared ever slimmer. By the end of April, Isabella and James Bruce had been trapped inside the walls of Pensacola’s fort for seven weeks. They had a disheartening view of Gálvez’s growing fleet and the thousands of troops and artillery sufficient “to attempt at least the island of Jamaica,” as James put it. Unable to leave the town walls, the Bruces had plenty of time to rail against those who had not come to their rescue. James called Admiral Peter Parker one of the “unworthy sons of Neptune who have disgraced their country.” He still hoped that Admiral Rodney would take the opportunity of “saving this colony and destroying the force collected against it,” which “would be a stroke of more national consequence than perhaps in this or any other war ever offered.” Caught between the Spanish navy and Fort George, James Bruce lamented that he and the other men could “either trust our women and children etc. to the power of the merciless savages in the woods, or accept the generosity of Don Gálvez who has offered a sanctuary to our women and children and property until the capitulation of Fort George.”⁵⁷

The Bruces did not know what would happen to their family if Pensacola fell. In early May, Isabella Bruce could still see the British flag flying over Fort George although it had sustained “a very heavy cannonade for these six days past.” She knew that the enemy was “working hard night and day to get nearer our batteries with his heavy artillery.” James wrote his business partners in London that unless Pensacolans had “another miraculous escape there is little doubt but that so superior an army, fleet and artillery must at last carry their point.” James was “determined” to leave quickly if the siege went against Britain. The Bruces would not attempt a life in a Spanish colony.⁵⁸

In the dark early morning hours of May 4, over a hundred provincial troops and eighty German Waldeckers crept out of their forts and quietly made their way around the newest Spanish parallel trench, which was not yet protected by cannons. They waited at the edge of the woods closest to the trench. In the early afternoon, a “lively mortar, cannon, and howitzer fire” began to issue from the British redoubts. What the Spanish did not realize was that the artillery was firing without shells so that the small parties could advance without being hit by friendly fire. The Spanish officers in the trench, knowing that the earthworks would protect them from the artillery fire and not knowing about the 180 men sneaking up on them, continued to eat their lunch. One Spaniard later ruefully remarked that the officers ate as if they were “as safe and beyond risk as if they were in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor.”⁵⁹

While the Spaniards ate, the British troops emerged from the woods wielding their bayonets. The first group they attacked tried to flee backward into the zigzag trench behind them, and, according to one observer, panicked cries rang out of “Somos perdidos, que nos pasan a cuchillo!”—“We are lost, we are put to the knife!” The British killed and wounded more than forty Spanish soldiers, including most of the officers in the advanced trench, which added an extra panic to the Spanish retreat. The British troops spiked the five cannons within the advanced trench to prevent the Spanish from using them again and set fire to the fascines and cotton bales supporting the earthworks and the wooden cannon mounts that the Spanish had laboriously constructed and hauled. As the victorious parties returned to the woods, they heard the whoops of the British soldiers who had stayed back to guard from the woods “shouting joyfully and throwing their hats into the air.” By the time Spanish light infantry arrived to retake the advanced trench, the British soldiers were long gone, their pockets full of the silver utensils, buckles, and coins they had stripped from the fallen Spaniards.⁶⁰

However, the small triumph did nothing to change Pensacola’s prospects. By that time, the Spanish had men and cannons to spare. The Spanish rebuilt the cannon mounts and earthworks and advanced to a final parallel trench within two hundred yards of Queen’s Redoubt. As General Campbell wrote Germain on May 7, “Our fate appears inevitable. We are attacked by an armament that shows the importance of the conquest in the estimation of Spain.” In contrast, he noted, British Pensacola had “been neglected.” He was going to hold out as long as he deemed reasonable, but he suspected that his next letter “will be the unpleasing and disagreeable task of reporting the triumph of Spain and their acquisition of a province under their dominion.”⁶¹

The Taking of Pensacola, engraved by H. G. Berteaux and Nicolas Ponce, Paris, 1784. (Recueil d’estampes representant les différents événemens de la Guerre qui a procuré l’indépendance aux Etats Unis de l’Amérique, Rare Book Collection, Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

In the morning of Tuesday, May 8, “a terrifying noise” rang out from Queen’s Redoubt, and “a great column of smoke” rose into the air. As both sides soon learned, a Spanish shell had burst by the door of the British powder magazine, the small building where the gunpowder was stored, and blew it up. The blast killed nearly a hundred men, mostly soldiers from the Maryland and Pennsylvania Loyalists Battalions and sailors working on shore. Some were blown up by the explosion, others were buried under the rubble, and many died later from painful injuries. When a soldier of the Maryland Battalion named William Augustus Bowles entered Queen’s Redoubt just as the shell hit, he saw “the melancholy spectacle of near a hundred men blown into the air.” Observers from all sides saw the flames cover the redoubt. Those British troops who were able to walk picked their way across the fallen bodies and the holes in the ground made by the shells to the Prince of Wales Redoubt about two hundred yards away, carrying as many of the wounded as they could. From there, the British exchanged fire with the Spanish troops who rushed to occupy what was left of Queen’s Redoubt. But with the Spanish commanding the heights, British defense was futile. General Campbell raised the white flag over Fort George.⁶²

After negotiating the exact terms, Campbell on May 10 officially surrendered all of West Florida to the Spanish. As evening fell, the British troops marched out of Fort George following Campbell and the other officers to the sound of the drums. James Bruce processed out of Pensacola with Governor Peter Chester and the other civilian leaders. The Spanish and French officers and troops, including Amand Broussard, marched to meet them. No Indians surrendered. After the magazine exploded, Alexander McGillivray and the Creek and Choctaw warriors quickly gathered the women and children out of Pensacola, grabbed what they could carry out of Pensacola’s warehouses, and headed home. Seeing the Indian women she had been living among depart, Isabella Bruce must have wished she too were headed home with her husband and children rather than to an unknown fate. When all were assembled outside the town, Generals Gálvez and Campbell advanced and solemnly greeted each other. Gálvez accepted the flags that the British guards surrendered. The British troops then set down their arms, and Spanish troops entered the fort and raised the colors of Spain. French officers took command of the Prince of Wales Redoubt.⁶³

That night, Amand Broussard celebrated the victory. His “Hourra!” mixed with the Spanish regulars’ “Viva Gálvez!” and the Irish regiment’s “Hurrah!” Cheers rose from the several hundred men who looked more like Petit Jean but who were themselves diverse: enslaved and free; black and mixed-race; born in Louisiana, Cuba, or West Africa. Among them were the New Orleans free black militia, who had just won their third victory under Gálvez, and slaves from New Orleans who were seeing their very first action. Perhaps mixed in but probably in their own separate camp, Upper Creeks and Alabamas hailed their victory in their languages and looked forward to claiming the spoils of Pensacola’s stores.⁶⁴

The next day, a priest led the Spanish forces in a Te Deum to thank their god for the victory. More than seventy men on their side had died of battle wounds and several dozen more of illness. They had been lucky to be spared a more serious outbreak of disease. Over a hundred more had been wounded, many so seriously that they would soon die. Seven of the wounded on the Spanish side were slaves, and if Gálvez kept his promise, the survivors would have a chance for freedom. On the British side, nearly a hundred soldiers had died, and around fifty more had been wounded. Indian losses were far fewer, with perhaps only one death.⁶⁵

The following day, James, Isabella, Archibald, and Charlotte Bruce boarded one of the ships for Havana that the Spanish and French had loaded with artillery, troops, and more than a thousand prisoners. Gálvez was already planning his next siege—St. Augustine? the Bahamas? Jamaica? In New Orleans, Oliver and Margaret Pollock cheered the news, and Oliver forwarded it to Congress, jubilantly declaring that the Spanish victory meant that U.S. merchants could now trade freely all along the Mississippi and Gulf Coast. Oliver Pollock wrote Gálvez congratulating him for winning West Florida and thanking him “for all your past favors and protection.” Pollock hoped that the funding he had provided to the Spanish effort and his friendship with Gálvez would prove profitable investments.⁶⁶

On the way home, Indians and their British agents discussed what this change in West Florida might mean for them. As the Chickasaws and Choctaws took their paths for home, they promised Alexander Cameron that they would help the British if they tried to retake West Florida. When the rest of the party arrived at the Upper Creek towns on the Tallapoosa River, McGillivray and the other Creeks demanded that Cameron write down their version of events to forward to Germain. Creeks surrounded Cameron as he wrote, instructing him to describe their commitment and bravery. He did so faithfully, recording the details of Creek and Choctaw participation, particularly mentioning McGillivray and Choctaw Chief Franchimastabé and praising the Indians’ “great spirit and attachment,” bravery, and honor. The Creeks demanded that he ask Germain to send goods overland from Georgia, as hard as that would be, because they should be rewarded for their service. Different Indians shouted to Cameron that they would go to the Spaniards for rum and ammunition or to Augusta to make their case personally before the British there. After Cameron left for Georgia with the letter, discussions continued about what to do next. When the Alabamas and Upper Creeks who had been with Gálvez returned, they too must have given their version of the siege and their opinions about the Creeks’ future.⁶⁷

Conclusion: The Resurgence of Europe’s Oldest Empire in the War for Independence

The siege of Pensacola decided the fate of an important part of the British empire, for the next few decades at least. The victory was a startling reversal from British dominance in 1763. As a result of the surrender, Spanish imperial claims now stretched from Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America to Alaska and included both sides of the Mississippi up to the Great Lakes. The Seven Years’ War had driven Spain out of its lands in eastern North America, but that now seemed like a temporary reversal. The thirteen colonies’ war for independence had strengthened Europe’s oldest and largest empire. The victory was proof that the Spanish empire was on the rise again and that the Bourbon reforms enacted in North America after 1763 were working. Enlightened leaders, cutting-edge military tactics, careful Indian diplomacy, and an inclusive military force had been wildly successful.

If Indians had come in the numbers that the British expected, they would have made a difference, quite likely allowing the British to preserve Pensacola. Alexander Cameron asserted that “had my advice been regarded by General Campbell in time, instead of having 500, I should have had 2,000 Indians to oppose the Spaniards at the siege of Pensacola.”⁶⁸ Historians have tended to agree with Cameron and to judge Campbell harshly for failing to support his Indian allies. It is true that some well-timed supplies and, even more important, demonstrations of respect might have helped. After all, as Cameron told Germain, although Governor Gálvez “has very little to give them besides tafia [rum], commissions, and medals,” he had the right spirit. “He will even humble himself so low as to kiss their warriors from ear to ear and pay them every respect that is due to great chiefs.”⁶⁹

Yet Campbell was in a difficult situation. Southeastern Indian allies not only cost a great deal of money, they were also too independent to come when called. Their failure to come showed that they did not think British control over Pensacola mattered much—the Spanish in Louisiana seemed to be as useful as trading partners and diplomatic allies and asked less in return. General Campbell’s bumbling had simply added to their growing belief that British alliance was not worth the cost. At the same time that the Spanish crown increasingly identified an opportunity on the Gulf Coast worth risking lives and resources, Indians had decided the Spanish-British battle was not worth joining.

The surrender’s repercussions were already apparent from Creek country to the Caribbean. The British had lost a colony that had not rebelled. The loss would help push them toward the decision after Yorktown to cut their losses and recognize American independence before things got any worse.

Yet the siege of Pensacola has not taken its place alongside Yorktown in the written histories of the American Revolution’s weighty events. Historical significance is seldom set in acts of battle but in the words that come after. Whose independence would be won and whose would be lost? The answers would be hashed out by diplomats in Paris and by countless men and women on the ground across the eastern half of North America. Far from settled in 1781, the lives of people in and around the Gulf Coast would continue to change with the fortunes of empires and nations.