This period, besides being a season of growth and prosperity to Pensacola, as well as the rest of the Province, was one of repose, undisturbed by the march of armies, battles, and the other cruel shocks of war that afflicted the northern colonies. But it was not to remain to the end a quiet spectator of the drama enacting on the continent. It, too, had an appointment with fate. Though not even a faint flash of the northern storm was seen on its horizon, yet there had been one for long brooding for it in the southwest.
The earthquake, too, that visited it on the night of February 6, 1780,[[25]] was but a presage of that which on May 8, 1781, was to shake it to its center; and prove the signal of an exodus of the English almost as complete as was that of the Spanish population in 1763.
CHAPTER XIII.
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.