Historical Sketches of Colonial Florida

by Richard L. Campbell

The victim of such a ruse, it was natural that Metamoras should have directed his thoughts to retaliation; and it is probable that during the voyage to Havana he meditated for his captors a surprise as complete and prompt as that which he had just suffered from them.

After the French vessels, the Toulouse and the Mareschal de Villars had reached Cuba and landed their prisoners, they were seized by order of the governor of Havana, who had at once, upon learning of the disaster at Pensacola, determined upon its prompt reparation by a recapture. He accordingly prepared a fleet, consisting of a Spanish war ship, nine brigantines and the two French vessels. In this fleet Metamoras and his lately captured troops, besides others, embarked for Pensacola.

On the sixth of August, the Spanish fleet was off the harbor. The two French vessels, flying the French flag, first entered as decoys, to enable them to secure favorable positions for attacking San Carlos in the event of a refusal to surrender. Immediately after them came the Spanish war vessel. The ruse for position succeeded, but the demand to surrender was peremptorily refused by Chateaugné, the commander of the fort. To an almost harmless cannonade there succeeded an armistice, which the French sought to have extended to four, but which the Spaniards limited to two days.

After the expiration of the armistice, another ineffectual exchange of cannon shots was followed by the surrender of the fort; the terms being that the garrison of one hundred and sixty men should march out with the honors of war and be sent to Havana as prisoners. Chateaugné also was to be sent there and thence to Spain to await exchange. They were accordingly all taken to Havana. Chateaugné, however, instead of being sent from there to Spain, was imprisoned in Moro Castle, where he remained only a short time, in consequence of the energetic preparations which his brother, Bienville, was then making for his deliverance.

Metamoras, once again in command at Pensacola, fully realized that the stake for which he and Bienville had been playing was not to be finally won by such strategems, as each in turn had been the other’s victim, and that the two which had been achieved were but preludes to a trial by battle. Appreciating, too, the bold, prompt and enterprising Bienville, he well calculated that his time for preparation would be short, and he accordingly improved it to the best of his abilities and resources.

He erected a battery on Point Seguenza, the western extremity of Santa Rosa Island, which he named Principe d’ Asturias, to aid San Carlos and the Spanish fleet in resisting an attack by sea. To guard San Carlos from a land attack, he built a stockade in its rear. To man all his works he had a force of six hundred men.

The Fort was captured by Metamoras early in August, and on the eighteenth of the following September Bienville was ready to settle by arms his right to retain it.

The celerity of Bienville’s preparations was due, however, to the accidental arrival at Dauphin Island of a French fleet under Champmeslin, who at once relieved him from the care and preparation of the seaward operations of his expedition.

The naval force of the French consisted of six vessels, under the command of Champmeslin, the Hercules of sixty-four guns, the Mars of sixty, the Triton of fifty, the Union of thirty-six, the ---- of thirty-six and the Philippe of twenty. The land force, commanded by Bienville in person, consisted of two hundred and fifty troops lately arrived from France, besides a large number of Canadian volunteers, which, when it reached Perdido, was joined by five hundred Indians under Longueville.

Whilst Bienville was moving towards Pensacola, Champmeslin, having sailed from Dauphin Island, entered the harbor on the eighteenth of September with five of his vessels, and was soon engaged in a fierce conflict with Principe d’ Asturias, the Spanish fleet, and San Carlos. At the time the five vessels went into action, it was supposed that the Hercules was following them, but her commander hesitated to cross the bar, owing to her draught of twenty-one feet, a hesitation which almost proved fatal to her consorts, for, relying upon the support of her heavy batteries, they now found themselves without it, whilst they were under the concentrated fire of the Spanish fleet and the two forts.