What, it may be asked, were “those very powerful reasons?” He had an army at his command only one thousand less in number than General Washington had before Yorktown, when he wrote the letter to Rendon; he had ample supplies of every description; he was backed by a powerful fleet; he had selected for his expedition a time when de Grasse’s movements on the Atlantic coast required the presence, in that quarter, of the whole British naval force on this side of the Atlantic; and hence, we can find no “necessity he was under of granting terms,” which General Campbell “required,” unless we find it in his want of faith in his ability by force of arms, to compel the British commander to modify his requirements.
In order to fully appreciate the transaction, it should be borne in mind that there was an understanding between Galvez and the French commanders in America, that he should not grant to British troops that might fall into his power during his operations in West Florida, such terms as would enable them to become a part of the armies operating against the United States.
This understanding Galvez violated at Baton Rouge and Mobile, and again for the third time, in conceding the terms demanded by General Campbell; for the articles bound the garrison not to serve against Spain and her allies only, and the United States was not her ally, but only a sympathizer.
To say that the “powerful reasons,” to quote from General Washington, were not in Fort George, would be to accuse Galvez of bad faith to his French ally, and untruth, as to the existence of any necessity for his concession to the British.
Such being the conclusions that impartial history must draw, impressive was the spectacle presented, on the ninth of May, 1781, upon that hill now crowned by the monument to the Confederate dead. In a circle around Fort George the Spanish army stands in array. The roll of a drum breaks the stillness, followed by the sound of mustering in the Fort. Again as it beats to the fife’s stirring military air, the British commander, in the dress of a major-general, sword in hand, emerges from the breach, followed by his less than eight hundred heroes. Proudly does the gallant band step the five hundred paces; then successively come the orders to halt, fall into line, and stack arms.
The scene would have thrilled the heart of every soldier whose memory is consecrated by the shaft that springs from that historic hill, then the centre of a landscape, whence, northward, the eye could rest on a limitless expanse of verdure; eastward and westward upon the far-sweeping curves of the shore; southward upon the glorious mirror of the Bay, with the hills of Santa Rosa rising out of the blue waters like snow-clad peaks above the azure of a distant horizon, and far beyond them upon the tremulous sky-line of the heaving gulf.
The formal signing of the articles of capitulation in the Council Chamber of Fort George, which occurred on the ninth of May, immediately before the British marched out, was anticipated in a former page.
On June the fourth the British troops sailed for Havana, where they arrived on the fourteenth of the same month; and thence the same vessels transported them to Brooklyn. A further addition was made to the strength of the British, by the garrisons of Baton Rouge and Fort Charlotte, which after many obstacles, and several voyages from point to point, finally reached Brooklyn about the time the Pensacola troops arrived there. And thus, in consequence of Galvez’s breach of faith, a force of 1,200 veterans, with their gallant officers, was added to the British army.
It was doubtless this accession of British strength, at New York, in that rallying year, when each side required every available man, that caused de Grasse to complain to the Spanish government of the capitulation at Pensacola, and called forth the apology of Galvez referred to by General Washington in his letter to Rendon.