Fortifying British Pensacola (1763- 10 May 1781) - a podcast by Aj Van Slyke

Don Bernardo de Gálvez, Spanish Governor of Louisiana and Field Marshall of the Spanish troops, laid siege to the capital of British West Florida at Pensacola in 1781. The 61-day siege was the longest landlocked siege of the American Revolutionary War. The Siege of Pensacola was the conclusion of Gálvez’s conquest of the Northern Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River Valley. Commencing his conquest from New Orleans in September 1779, one month after a violent hurricane destroyed the General’s initial invasion there, General Gàlvez campaigned and took control of the British outposts of Manchac (September 7), Baton Rouge (September 21), and Fort Panmure at Natchez (October 5). The following spring Gálvez took Fort Charlotte at Mobile on March 14, 1780. Hurricanes and the Spanish miscalculation of merchants shipping at Pensacola in March 1780 delayed the Siege of Pensacola, which commenced in March 1781, a year after the siege of Mobile. After the siege of Pensacola in 1781, Bernardo de Gálvez was praised by his Catholic Majesty Carlos III for “the expulsion of the English from the entire Gulf of Mexico.” The Spanish King’s appreciation of Gálvez’s victory was rectified in re-naming the prestigious harbor of Pensacola to the “Bahia de Santa Maria de Gálvez.” Conde de Gálvez was raised to royalty and promoted to Lieutenant General and Governor of West Florida and Louisiana. Gálvez’s coat of arms incorporated himself aboard his flagship Gálveztown, flying a broad pennant bearing “Yo Solo,” which commemorated his entrance to and the defeat of Pensacola.

Cover Image accessible through the University of West Florida’s Archives:

https://uwf.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/digital_object_components/4229

https://archives.uwf.edu/Archon-Migrated/6.jpg

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