Historical Sketches of Colonial Florida

by Richard L. Campbell

In that conjuncture, however, they were saved by one of those inspirations which sometimes come to a man in the supreme hour of trial, making him for the occasion the soul of a host. A Canadian pilot, being inspired himself, inspired the commander of the Hercules with confidence in his ability to take her over the bar and into the action. With a cheer from her crew and all the canvas she could bear, the gallant ship sped under the guidance of the bold Canadian to the rescue of her consorts.

Speedily her sixty-four guns turned the tide of battle. Whilst her heavy broadside of thirty-two guns soon battered Principe d’ Asturias into silence, her consorts poured their fire into the Spanish fleet, which, now short of powder, struck its colors.

After a conflict of two hours, San Carlos was the only point of defense left to the Spaniards, and that too, threatened by a new foe. Bienville was in its rear ready for an assault, which he soon boldly made. He was, however, so much impeded by the stockade that he withdrew his men until he could be better prepared for another attack. In the assault, it is said, his Indian allies emulated the French soldiers in daring and in their efforts to tear away the impeding stockade. But their war-whoop was more effectual and decisive than their valor. Impressing the Spaniards, as it did, with visions of blood-dripping scalps, it disposed them to obviate by surrender the dire consequences of a successful assault, for they felt that Bienville, however so disposed, would be powerless to stay the Indian’s scalping knife when his blood was at battle heat. Accordingly, before the assault was repeated, Metamoras signaled for a parley, which resulted not in a capitulation on terms which he asked for, but in a surrender at discretion.

Even after the cooling process of the time required for the parley and arranging the surrender, the Indians were so loath to forego their scalping pastime, the precious boon of victory, that it was necessary for Bienville to redeem the scalps of the Spaniards by bestowing one-half of their effects upon his allies, and reserving the other half only for his own soldiers.

When Don Alphonso, the commander of the Spanish fleet, surrendered his sword to Champmeslin, the latter returned it with the complimentary assurance that the Don was worthy to wear it. But Bienville would not even condescend to accept that of Metamoras, but directed him to deliver it to a by-standing soldier.

But the real hero of this battle, like the real heroes of many other fields of glory, must be unnamed, for though it is recorded that the pilot of the Hercules was rewarded with a patent of nobility for his skill and daring, there is no accessible record of his name.

Having won a surrender at discretion, it was Bienville’s pleasure to send Metamoras and a sufficient number of Spanish troops to Havana, in a Spanish vessel, to be exchanged for the Frenchmen who had been sent there in August; and thus it was that he worked the deliverance of his brother Chateaugné from his imprisonment in Mora Castle. The rest of the Spaniards were sent to France as prisoners of war.

It was his will and pleasure likewise to burn the town of Pensacola, and to utterly destroy San Carlos by blowing it up with powder. The only structure left undestroyed was the magazine which stood about half a mile from the fort.

Upon the ruins of San Carlos there was fixed a tablet announcing: “In the year 1718, on the eighteenth day of September, Monsieur Desnard de Champmeslin, Commander of His Most Christian Majesty, captured this place and the Island of Santa Rosa by force of arms.”

Thus did the Pensacola of Arriola, after having been a shuttlecock in the cruel game of war—captured, recaptured and captured again within four months—perish utterly in the throes of a convulsion and the glare of a conflagration; a fate which may be traced to the intrigues of Cardinal Alberoni, the ambitious and crafty minister of Philip V., resulting in a war in which Spain, without an ally, was confronted by the united arms of France, Great Britain, Holland and Austria. “I quickened a corpse” was the vain boast by which he expressed the change he had effected in Spanish policy, one of the many disastrous consequences of which was the ending in fire and blood of a little settlement on the far-off shores of the new world.