Military Condition of West Florida in 1778—General John Campbell—The
Waldecks—Spain at War with Britain—Bute, Baton Rouge and Fort
Charlotte Capitulate to Galvez—French Town—Famine in Fort George—
Galvez’s Expedition against Pensacola—Solana’s Fleet Enters the
Harbor—Spaniards Effect a Landing—Spanish Entrenchment Surprised—The
Fall of Charleston Celebrated in Fort George.
The military condition of West Florida was changed as the revolutionary
war progressed. There were no longer seen two or more regiments at
Pensacola, one or two at Mobile, and one at Fort Bute, Baton Rouge, and
Panmure. The call for troops for service in the northern colonies had,
by the latter part of 1778, reduced the entire effective force of the
province to five hundred men.
That such a reduction was thought prudent, was due to the peaceful
relations of the Spaniards and the British, as well as those of the
latter with the Creek and Choctaw Indians, attributable to the influence
of McGillivray, now a colonel in the British service.
In the latter part of 1778, however, the British government becoming
suspicious of Spain, and anticipating her alliance with France, ordered
General Clinton to reinforce West Florida. Accordingly, General John
Campbell, a distinguished officer, was sent to Pensacola, with a force
of 1,200 men, composed of a regiment of Waldecks, and parts of two
regiments of Provincials from Maryland and Pennsylvania. They did not
arrive, however, until the twenty-ninth of January, 1779.[26]
Early in 1789, General Campbell sent two companies of Waldecks to
reinforce Fort Bute, which brought its garrison up to about 500 men
under the command of Lt. Colonel Dickson.
At length Spain threw off the mask, and adopted a course which justified
the suspicions of the British Court as to her inimical intentions. On
June 16, the Spanish minister, the Marquis d’ Almodovar, having
delivered to Lord Weymouth a paper equivalent to a declaration of war,
immediately departed from London without taking leave. Spain thereupon
became an ally of France, but not of the United States. Nevertheless,
under the influence of the Court of Versailles, Don Bernardo de Galvez,
the Governor of Louisiana, on June 19, published, at New Orleans, the
proclamation of the Spanish King, acknowledging the independence of the
United States. The dates of these transactions furnish conclusive
evidence of a pre-arrangement, designed to enable the Spaniards to
assail the British posts in West Florida before they could be succored
by the home government.
In pursuance of that policy, Galvez at once began his preparations for
offensive operations against Forts Bute, Baton Rouge and Panmure, in the
order in which they are mentioned. The great distance of Pensacola from
them, as well as the want of facilities of communication, assured him
that with an adequate force at his command, General Campbell’s first
intimation of his operations would be the news of their capture.
In August, with a force of 2,000 men, Galvez began his advance on Fort
Bute. As soon as Dickson was informed of his movement, he resolved to
concentrate his forces at Baton Rouge, leaving at the former post a few
men to man the guns, and to make such a show of resistance as would give
him time to perfect the defenses of the latter.
On August 30, Galvez appeared before Bute. After a contest of some
hours, its handful of defenders arrested his movements by the time
consumed in an honorable capitulation. Bute having been secured, Galvez
pushed on to Baton Rouge. In his first attack, he was repulsed with the
heavy loss of 400 men killed and wounded, which was within 100 of
Dickson’s entire force. In the next attack which was made on the
following day, the Spanish loss was 150. Although the loss on his side
was in both attacks only 50 men, Dickson realizing that he was cut off
from all succor, and that he must either surrender, or see his command
gradually waste away under the repeated attacks of an overwhelming
enemy, capitulated upon the most honorable terms. The command was
pledged not to fight against Spain for eighteen months unless sooner
exchanged. With loaded guns and flags flying the garrison was to march
to the beat of the drum 500 paces from the fort and there stack arms.
The officers were to retain their swords and every one his private
property. All were to be cared for and transported to a British harbor
by the Spaniards.[27] Fort Panmure, from which the garrison had been
withdrawn for the defense of Baton Rouge, was included in the surrender.
It was not until the twentieth of October that a courier brought to
Pensacola intelligence of the fall of the Mississippi Posts, although
Baton Rouge had surrendered during the first days of September. When it
was received it was not credited, but regarded as a false report coming
from the Spaniards to entice the British commander from Pensacola in
order that it might be captured in his absence. Even the report of a
second courier coming, on the twenty-third, failed at first to work
conviction; but at last all doubt was dispelled, and every effort
directed to putting Pensacola in a defensive condition.
Why Galvez did not follow up his success at Baton Rouge by an immediate
advance on Mobile, it is difficult to conceive, except upon the
presumption of his ignorance of the weakness of the military forces
there, and at Pensacola.
In December, 1779, Clinton’s expedition against Charleston sailed from
New York; its destination veiled in such secrecy, that even General
Washington, as well as the rest of the world outside of the British
lines, was in the dark respecting it. Miralles, the Spanish agent,
feared it was intended to recover the conquests of Galvez in West
Florida, and signified so much in a letter to General Washington. By the
time the letter was received, however, the General had become convinced
“that the Carolinas were the objects,” and in reply so tells the Spanish
agent.
It was during the interval of Galvez’s inaction between the capture of
Baton Rouge, and his attack on Mobile, that Chevalier de la Luzerne had
a conference with General Washington, on the fifteenth of September,
1779, at West Point, with the view of bringing about such concert of
movement in the American forces in the Carolinas and Georgia, and the
Spanish forces in Florida, as would be a check on the British in their
movements against either.[28] But with every disposition for such
co-operation, the latter being without authority to that end, went no
further than to show his sympathy with the Spaniards, and his readiness
to afford advice and information, which he afterwards manifested in the
letter to Miralles above mentioned.
In that letter, referring to the capture of Fort Bute and Baton Rouge,
he says: “I am happy of the opportunity of congratulating you on the
important success of His Majesty’s arms.” It is hardly probable,
however, that General Washington would have been so ready to
congratulate Miralles on those successes, had he known that in
consequence of Galvez’s bad faith, their result would be to increase the
ranks of the foe he was fighting.
In the beginning of March, 1780, Galvez again began military operations,
by advancing against Fort Charlotte. On the twelfth, after his demand
for a surrender had been refused by Captain Durnford, the British
commander, the fort was assailed by six batteries.
By the fourteenth, after a conflict of ten days, a practicable breach
having been made, Durnford capitulated upon the same terms which Dickson
had exacted at Baton Rouge. Hunger had conspired with arms to make
capitulation a necessity. For several days before that event the
garrison had been comparatively without food. When the gallant Durnford
marched out of the breach at the head of a handful of hunger-smitten
men, Galvez is said to have manifested deep mortification at having
granted such favorable terms to so feeble a foe. An effort was made by
General Campbell to relieve Fort Charlotte, but it fell just as succor
was at hand. The delay in rendering it was occasioned by rain storms,
which, having flooded the country, greatly impeded the movements of the
relieving force.[29]
The gallant defense of Fort Charlotte by Durnford seems to have lead
Galvez to reflections which ended in the conclusion that he was not,
then, strong enough to attack Pensacola. He, accordingly, made no
further movement, until he had procured from Havana a supply of heavy
artillery, and a large additional force.
That it was a part of his plan to advance upon Pensacola immediately
after the capture of Mobile, is evidenced by the Spanish Admiral
Solana’s fleet appearing, and anchoring off the harbor, on March 27,
hovering about as if in expectation of a signal from the land until the
thirtieth, and then sailing away. The appearance of a scouting party of
Spaniards about the same time, on the east side of the Perdido, likewise
pointed to such a design.
Be that as it may, Galvez made no further movement in West Florida until
February, 1781, the eventful year of the great American rally; the year
that witnessed Morgan’s brilliant victory, on the seventeenth of January
at the Cowpens; and Green’s masterly strategy, culminating on the
fifteenth of March at Guildford Court House in an apparent defeat, but
in sequence, a victory, for it sent Cornwallis to Yorktown for capture
on the nineteenth of October.
As we contemplate that year, big with the fate of empire on this
continent, the imagination is captivated by the spectacle of a line of
battle extending from the northern limits of Maine to the mouth of the
Mississippi; the intense points of action being Cowpens, Guildford Court
House, Pensacola and Yorktown.
That no reinforcement was sent to General Campbell, although the fall of
Fort Charlotte was a warning that Galvez’s next effort would be against
Pensacola, manifests the strain which Britain’s contest with her
colonies and France had brought upon both her naval and military
resources. When, therefore, in February, 1781, Galvez was about to
advance against the place with a large fleet and an army of 15,000 men,
according to the lowest estimate, the British force numbered about
1,000[30] regular troops, besides some provincials.
The British looked for some aid from the Creek, Choctaw and Chickasaw
Indians. It was a body of the latter which drove the Spanish scouts
across the Perdido shortly after the capture of Mobile.
The three tribes were loyal to their white allies, even when the latter
were no longer able to furnish them with their customary supplies. The
Spaniards, on the other hand, with everything to offer them, utterly
failed to shake their British loyalty. As illustrative of their
devotion, it is related when the Waldecks landed at Pensacola, the
Indians, inferring from their strange language that they were enemies,
inclined to attack them. They had the prudence, however, to call upon
Governor Chester for an explanation. After he had satisfactorily
answered the question “whether the men of strange speech were the
friends or foes of their Great White Brother on the other side of the
big water,” they manifested great joy and honored the strangers with a
salute from their rifles.
When, however, the advance on Pensacola by the Spaniards was abandoned
in the spring of 1780, and thence up to the following December General
Campbell found his savage allies rather an encumbrance than a benefit.
That time was devoted to strengthening Fort George and the defenses of
the harbor, a labor in which no reward could induce them to assist. The
exciting occupation of taking Spanish scalps, for which £3[31] were
paid, however, was one in which they could render a barbarous service to
the British.
The Indians were under the command of a Marylander, formerly an ensign
in the British army, who, whilst stationed at Pensacola, had been
cashiered for misconduct. He afterwards went to the Creek Nation, where
he married the daughter of a chief. Though vainly styling himself
General William Augustus Bowles, he was content to accept restoration to
his rank of ensign as a reward for the service, which, at the head of
his band of Creeks, Choctaws and Chickasaws, he was expected to render
to the British during Galvez’s operations in West Florida.
In the latter months of 1780, Pensacola and the garrison of Fort George
were on the point of starvation. All the resources of the British
government seem to have been required for the great struggle of 1781 on
the Atlantic coast, and Galvez’s conquest had cut off the customary
supplies from the rich country lying between Mobile Bay and the
Mississippi.
Field-preacher Stuernagel says in his journal: “This morning we drank
water and ate a piece of bread with it. At mid-day we had just nothing
to drink but water. Our evening meal consists of a pipe of tobacco and a
glass of water. A ham was sold for seven dollars. A pound of tobacco
cost four dollars. A pound of coffee one dollar. The men have long been
without rum. From hard service, and such want, diseases were more and
more engendered.”[32]
But that state of want was suddenly changed to superabundance. A British
cruiser captured in the gulf a number of merchant vessels loaded with
supplies, embracing “rum, meal, coffee, sugar and other welcome
provisions,” and another exclusively with powder.[33] Not long
afterwards a more brilliant, although not as useful, a prize was
captured. It contained $20,000 in coin, a large collection of
silver-plate, fine wines, “all sorts of utensils for the kitchen and
things of the same kind, being General Galvez’s outfit and requirements”
for his intended campaign of 1781.[34] Fortune thus feasted and gilded
the victim for the coming sacrifice.
Having perfected the defenses of Fort George, General Campbell turned
his attention to Red Cliff, in which, on November 19, he placed a small
garrison of 50 Waldecks, under the command of Major Pentzel, at the same
time providing it with some heavy artillery, which could be spared from
Fort George.
Apparently, tired of waiting for Galvez’s attack, or presuming from his
delay in making a movement that he had abandoned the intention of
attacking Pensacola, General Campbell sent an expedition against a
Spanish post, on or near the Mississippi, called French Town by the
British. The force consisted of 100 infantry of the Sixtieth regiment,
and 60 Waldeckers, besides 300 Indians, commanded by Colonel Hanxleden,
the senior officer of the Waldecks, and next in command to General
Campbell. It was an unfortunate enterprise, resulting in the death of
the gallant Hanxleden, as well as other veteran officers and soldiers
who were soon to be greatly needed at Pensacola. In the retreat, the
body of their brave commander was borne by his men from the field of
battle to a large oak in its vicinity under the shade of which it was
buried. Gratefully did the Waldecks, on their return to Germany,
remember and record the chivalric conduct of “the gallant Spaniards who
honored fallen gallantry by enclosing the grave with a railing.”[35] On
January 9 the remnant of the expedition reached Fort George.
On the ninth of March General Campbell’s impatient waiting for Galvez
was brought to a close. On that day a preconcerted signal of seven guns
from the war-ship _Mentor_ told the British that the Spaniards were at
last approaching for the final struggle for mastery in West Florida.[36]
By 9 o’clock of the next morning, thirty-eight Spanish ships, under
Admiral Solana, were lying off the harbor, or landing troops and
artillery. During the night a British vessel glided out of the harbor
with dispatches to the commandant of Jamaica, pleading for
reinforcements, which however were not to be had, for the movements of
de Grasse on the Atlantic coast required all the attention of the
British navy, whilst Cornwallis and Clinton had drawn, or were drawing,
there every available man to meet the great American rally.
On March 11, the Spaniards opened fire upon the _Mentor_, then lying in
the harbor, from a battery on Santa Rosa island. She replied to the
attack until she had received 28 shots from twenty-four pound guns, when
she retired nearer the town.
After this affair there were no further movements by the Spaniards until
the eighteenth, when a brig and two galleons, taking advantage of a very
favorable wind, sailed past the batteries defending the mouth of the
harbor, without receiving any perceptible injury. Thinking they might
sail up to the town, and find cover from some structures on the beach,
General Campbell caused them to be burned down.
On the nineteenth, the entire Spanish fleet, excepting a few vessels,
sailed past the batteries, though subjected to a heavy fire from Red
Cliff, which lasted for two hours.
Galvez, even after he found himself in possession of the harbor with a
fleet of 38 vessels, and a large land force, consisting not only of
troops brought directly from Havana, but those also with which he had
captured the posts west of the Perdido, sent to Havana for
reinforcements; and remained inactive until they reached him on April
16. The reinforcement consisted of eighteen more ships, and an
additional land force, with heavy siege artillery.
Whilst awaiting that addition to his strength, a landing was attempted.
The attempt was resisted by a body of Indians and a part of the garrison
of Fort George with two field pieces of artillery. The Spaniards, taken
by surprise, were driven to their boats. In the attack many were killed,
and in the confusion of re-embarking others were drowned. On April 22,
however, a second and successful attempt to land was made by the
invaders, followed by the establishment of camps where batteries were to
be erected.
One of the camps, nearer the Fort and the town than the others, by its
temerity invited rebuke. Accordingly, a surprise for it, to be executed
on the twenty-third, was prepared, but defeated by a fanatic. On the
night of the twenty-second, a Waldeck private reported to his captain,
that a Waldeck corporal was missing, under circumstances which implied
desertion; that the deserter was a Catholic, the only one in the
regiment, the rest being Protestant; and that it had been suspected by
his comrades that his fanaticism would lead him, on the first
opportunity, to desert to his co-religionists. That the suspicion was
well founded was manifested by the movements of the enemy the next
morning.
The enterprise, however, though arrested, was not abandoned. The British
commander, shrewdly calculating on the improbability in the enemy’s
conception, that a surprise defeated on the twenty-third would be
attempted on the twenty fifth, actually executed the movement on the
latter day. The attacking force, composed of a part of the garrison, and
a body of Indians, was commanded by the general in person. The Spaniards
were driven from their entrenchments with considerable loss, and their
works hastily destroyed. This proved, however, the last aggressive act
of the British. By the twenty-seventh of April, batteries mounted with
heavy siege artillery completely invested Fort George.
On the twenty-fourth, the day before the attack on the Spaniards,
General Campbell learned for the first time, that Charleston had been
captured by General Clinton on the eleventh of May, 1780. We are not
informed of the channel through which the information came to him; but
as it could not have come by sea, it must have reached him through the
Indians, who obtained it, probably, from traders of the Atlantic coast.
His ignorance for nearly a year of so important an event impresses us
with his isolation, and the courage with which he bore it. The event was
duly celebrated in Fort George by an illumination and a discharge of
rockets.
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Footnote 26:
It is to the presence of these Waldecks at the siege and capture of
Pensacola, that we are indebted for the only detailed account we
possess of those events. The Waldeck regiment was one of the many
mercenary bodies of German troops which Great Britain hired to conquer
her revolted colonies. On the return of the commands to Germany, after
the close of the war, each commander was required to make to his
government a detailed report of its experiences. In 1863, Max Von
Elking published, at Hanover, two volumes containing the substance of
those reports, entitled:
[“Die deutschen Hülfstruppen im Nordamerikanischen Befreiungskriege,
1776 bis 1783.”]
The German Troops in the North American War of Independence, 1776 to
1783.
Those of the Waldecks extended from the day the regiment was completed
at Corbach, where it was reviewed by the widowed Princess of Waldeck,
and her court ladies, on May 9, 1776, up to the return of its small
remnant in 1783. The princess entertained them, and furnished them
besides 100 guelden for a jollification—doubtless out of the hire she
received for the hapless creatures. The remark of a courtier, that he
would see “all those who came back riding in carriages,” indicates the
delusive hopes with which it was sought to inspire them. Nevertheless,
it was thought prudent by the Princess, that the departing mercenaries
should, to prevent desertion, be guarded during their journey to the
_Weser_, where they were to embark, by the Green Regiment of
Sharpshooters. The regiment consisted of 640 men, under the command of
Colonel Von Hanxleden. Stuernagel was the Field Preacher, or chaplain,
to whose journey Von Elking makes many references.
Footnote 27:
Von Elking, Vol. II, p. 142.
Footnote 28:
Sparks, Vol. 6, p. 542.
Footnote 29:
Von Elking, Vol. II, pp. 144-5. “It proved a horrible march. It almost
continually rained. The men were forced to wade up to their ankles
through the soft ground, or through mud. It was only possible to cross
the greatly swollen streams by means of the trunks of the trees. The
men could only pass singly on them, and the one who missed his
footing, and stept into the water below was irretrievably lost.”
Footnote 30:
Von Elking, Vol. II., p. 152.
Footnote 31:
Von Elking, Vol. II., p. 140.
Footnote 32:
Von Elking, Vol. II., p. 146.
Footnote 33:
Id. 147.
Footnote 34:
Von Elking, Vol. II., p. 149.
Footnote 35:
Von Elking, Vol. II., p. 148.
Footnote 36:
Von Elking, Vol. II., p. 148.
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