A CAMPAIGN IN CUBA
It can not be denied that Israel Putnam was already quite a traveler; but it must be added that he had so far traveled mainly within a circumscribed area. Over and over again this faithful soldier had plodded the trails and military roads, and pushed his way through the swamps, morasses, forests, of the wilderness region of New York, which by the end of 1761 he should have known almost as well as the woodland pastures of his own farm. But he was destined to extend his travels and make a foreign voyage, still in the service of the King of England, whom he had served so long and so well.
He was present at the capitulation of Montreal, one September day, 1760, and had the pleasure of meeting the Indian chief who had taken him prisoner two years previously. He lived near Montreal, at the Indian village of Caughnawaga, where he received his former captive with pride, and was highly delighted to see his old acquaintance, "whom he entertained in his own well-built stone house with great friendship and hospitality; while his guest did not discover less satisfaction in an opportunity of shaking the brave savage by the hand and proffering him protection in this reverse of his military fortunes."
Returning home at the end of the 1760 campaign, Putnam remained on his farm all winter, and the next spring set out again for what proved an uneventful season, with much hard work on fortifications and entrenchments, but no fighting of account. For, so far as the mainland of North America was concerned, the long struggle between France and England was nearly at an end. France had been shorn of her possessions in Canada, and she was losing her islands in the West Indies, where, early in 1762, beautiful Martinique (to become famous as the birthplace of the Empress Josephine, and a rich land of sugar and spices) was captured by the British.
In fact, the theater of war was transferred to the more southern regions of the Caribbean Sea, and the New Englanders took a long breath and congratulated themselves that at last they were at liberty to pursue their callings unmolested. But in this they were somewhat premature, as England was still engaged in fighting, and, no matter where her battles were fought, she seemed to expect the loyal American colonists to furnish soldiers for her wars. Connecticut, Putnam's home State, was again called upon for the same number of able-bodied men she had furnished year by year, and promptly proffered her bone and sinew to fight the wars of King George the Third.
A thousand men, besides fifteen hundred from New York and New Jersey, embarked at the port of New York, in the month of June, 1762, bound for Havana in Cuba, where British regulars were dying by hundreds of pestilence, and sorely needed those colonial reenforcements. On this, his first sea voyage, Colonel Putnam had a rough experience all the way down, and off the north coast of Cuba the transport containing himself and five hundred of his men was wrecked on a coral ledge. "Old Put" was calm and collected, never more so, though unused to life at sea, and preserved strict discipline among his men, thus aiding the mariners in their endeavors to get out rafts and boats, on and in which the entire company finally reached the shore. To his perils by fire, twice incurred, brave Putnam could now add that by flood, thus giving the spice of variety to his various adventures.
"As soon as all were landed," wrote the biographer who knew him best, "Putnam fortified his camp, that he might not be exposed to insult from inhabitants of the neighboring districts.... Here the party remained unmolested several days, until the storm had so much abated as to permit the convoy to take them off. They soon joined the troops before Havana, who, having been several weeks in that unhealthy climate, had already begun to grow extremely sickly. The opportune arrival of the Provincial reenforcement, in perfect health, contributed not a little to forward the works and hasten the reduction of that important place. But the Provincials suffered so miserably by sickness afterward, that very few ever returned to their native land again."
This is all that Colonel Putnam's contemporary, Humphreys, has to say of the most eventful episode of his hero's career, but it seems to the present writer (who has personally investigated the British and Colonial invasion of Cuba "on the spot") that the subject is worthy of more extended notice. The English expedition against Havana was occasioned by the King of Spain, Charles III, having entered into what was known as the "family compact" with Louis XV of France, by which the Bourbons were to support each other against British rapacity and aggrandizement, as they styled it.
England had long looked covetously upon Havana, which the Spaniards themselves called the "Key of the New World," situated at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico and (in the hands of a strong power) then controlling the seaboard of territory at present comprised in the South Atlantic States of our Union. So she hastened to seize the capital of Cuba, the "Pearl of the Antilles," and early in June, 1762, the surprised and frightened inhabitants were informed that a fleet of sixty ships-of-war had landed more than 20,000 men at the little port of Cogimar, a few miles to the east of picturesque and formidable Morro Castle.