Such were the friendly relations existing between the Florida Spaniards and the Louisiana French up to 1719, being the year after Bienville had founded the city of New Orleans; relations which must be borne in mind to enable us to form an enlightened judgment upon the actions of the men engaged in the bloody drama which was ushered in by the nineteen years of kind offices and good fellowship which have been mentioned.
Lemoine d’ Iberville, a Canadian, esteemed the most skillful officer of the French navy brilliantly distinguished on many occasions, was selected to command the expedition to southern Louisiana, designed to perfect by colonization the claim France founded upon the voyage of La Salle. He and his brothers, Bienville, the founder of New Orleans, Sauville, Sevigny and Chateaugné presented a group of men seldom accorded to one family.
During a visit to Havana, d’ Iberville died on the ninth of July, 1706, leaving to his brothers the task of perfecting the great enterprise to which the last seven years of his own life had been devoted.
CHAPTER V.
War Declared by France against Spain—Bienville Surprises Metamoras—Metamoras Surprises Chateaugné—Bienville Attacks and Captures Pensacola—San Carlos and Pensacola Destroyed—Magazine Spared.
On the thirteenth of April, 1719, two French vessels brought to the French colony the intelligence that in the previous December, France had declared war against Spain; an event of which Don Juan Pedro Metamoras, governor of Pensacola, who had just succeeded Don Gregorio de Salinas, had no information.
Bienville at once organized, with all possible secrecy, an expedition by land and water to capture Pensacola by surprise. The land force, consisting of four hundred Indians and a body of Canadians, was collected at Mobile. The naval force, composed of three vessels, two of them, the Philippe and the Toulouse, carrying twenty-four guns each, under the command of Sevigny, had its rendezvous at Dauphin Island.
The movement of Bienville, who marched across the country with his land force, and that of the fleet were so well timed that on the fourteenth of May, at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, as the vessels presented their shotted broadsides to San Carlos, Bienville, his Canadians, and Indians, appeared on its land side. There was, of course, nothing for Metamoras to do but to order the chamade to be beaten and to settle the terms of capitulation. He surrendered the post and all public property within his jurisdiction. It was stipulated that he and his garrison should march out of the fort with the honors of war, retaining a cannon and three charges of powder, that they should be transported to Havana in French vessels, that the town should be protected from violence, and that the property of the soldiers and that of the inhabitants should be respected.