Percy in a communication to Lafitte, the commander of the Barrataria pirates, says: “As France and England are now friends, I call on you with your brave followers to enter into the service of Great Britain, in which you shall have the rank of Captain.”
Nicholls likewise issued a proclamation to the people of Louisiana and Kentucky, inviting them to join the British. To the latter he addressed himself specially as follows: “Inhabitants of Kentucky, you have too long borne with grievous impositions. The whole brunt of the war has fallen on your brave sons. Be imposed upon no more. Either range yourselves under the standard of your forefathers, or observe a strict neutrality.”[[52]]
And as an additional stimulus to the activity and zeal of the Indians, the bounty on American scalps was raised from five to ten dollars.[[53]]
CHAPTER XX.
Attack on Fort Boyer by Percy and Nicholls—Jackson’s March on Pensacola in 1814—The Town Captured—Percy and Nicholls Driven Out—Consequences of the War to the Creeks—Don Manuel Gonzalez.
The first aggressive operation of Percy and Nicholls against the Americans after they had established themselves at Pensacola was an attack on Fort Boyer on Mobile Point, preparatory to an advance on Mobile. But General Jackson’s great victory of the Horse Shoe over the Creeks on the twenty-seventh of March had effectually crushed them, and the treaty with them which followed enabled him to direct his attention exclusively to the movements of the British at Pensacola.
His first step was to put Fort Boyer in condition to resist an attack, by repairing it, mounting additional guns and placing an ample garrison in it. This preparation had hardly been accomplished, when, early in September, 1814, the British commanders made a combined attack upon it by land and water. The former was repulsed, and the latter resulted in the destruction of the Hermes, Percy’s flag ship, and the drawing off of the other vessels in a crippled condition. After the inglorious expedition, the British fleet and land forces retired to Pensacola—a result hardly in keeping with the vaunts of Percy and Nicholls in their several proclamations issued in August.
Pensacola having lost all claim to neutrality, as well by being under the British flag, as by becoming a refuge for the hostile Indians who declined to bring themselves within the terms of the treaty which General Jackson had made with the Creeks after the victory at the Horse Shoe, he resolved to advance upon it. He had previously written Maurique a letter reminding him of the peaceful relations between Spain and the United States, expostulating with him upon his permitting the British to make Pensacola the base of their operations, and allowing it to be an asylum for the hostile Creeks, naming two of them especially, McQueen and Francis, whose strange adventures will be mentioned in a future page. To this mild expostulation the governor made an ambiguous and insulting reply, ending with the threat “that Jackson should hear from him shortly.”[[54]] The correspondence occurred just before the Percy and Nicholls’ attack on Fort Boyer, and doubtless it was their bombastic prediction of success which prompted old Maurique to send Jackson so defiant reply.
General Jackson, however, did not wait longer than the last days of October, 1814, for the execution of the Spanish governor’s threat. Having collected his forces at Fort Montgomery, on the twenty-seventh he took up his line of march for Pensacola, the Indian trail referred to in an early chapter being its guiding thread. The troops consisted of the Third, Thirty-ninth and Forty-fourth infantry, Coffee’s brigade, a company of Mississippi dragoons and part of a West Tennessee regiment, numbering three thousand effective men, besides a band of friendly Choctaws.