| In the Treasury of the General Administration: | Silver Reales with milled edges cut away | Weight in ounces | |
| Havana | 311,625 | 23,340 | 10 |
| Guanabacoa | 2,808 | 151 | |
| Santa Maria del Rosario | 21,870 | 1,117 | 12 |
| Arroyo Arenas | 7,049 | 380 | 14 |
| Santa Clara | 237,665 | 12,558 | |
| San Juan de Los Remedios | 68,153 | 3,848 | |
| Trinidad | 40,137 | 2,145 | |
| Sancti Spiritus | 197,905 | 11,670 | 14 |
| Puerto Principe | 73,792 | 3,207 | |
| Bayamo | 94,499 | 4,615 | 7 |
| Holguin | 31,013 | 1,701 | |
| Baracoa | 6,396 | 1,465 | |
| 1,092,940 | 66,231 | 5 |
The Gazeta added to this report: "There have been collected from the public over two million pesos (cut away), and in their exchange they yielded a little over eighty thousand pesos fuertes (efficacious), and although the loss is excessive as a whole it must be stated, that in particular it was not very grave, the money being distributed in small amounts among the public."
This was a critical period in the conflict which had gradually involved the principal countries and was watched with apprehension by all the sovereigns of Europe. Up to this date Florida Blanca, who, from a simple lawyer in the provinces had risen to be prime minister of Spain, had not attained the goal of his ambition and secured for Spain victories, the glory of which should cast a halo about his name. On the contrary, circumstances began so to complicate the task which he had imagined to be comparatively easy, that he was puzzled and began to lose some of his extraordinary self-assurance. Bancroft gives in his "History of the United States" (Vol. VI. p. 441) a very interesting review of the situation and of the relation of Spain to the Revolutionary War, which was drawing towards its close. He says:
"The hatred of America as a self-existent state became every day more intense in Spain from the desperate weakness of her authority in her trans-atlantic possessions. Her rule was dreaded in them all; and, as even her allies confessed, with good reason. The seeds of rebellion were already sown in the vice-royalties of Buenes Ayres and Peru; and a union of Creoles and Indians might prove at any moment fatal to metropolitan dominion. French statesmen were of the opinion that England, by emancipating South America, might indemnify itself for all loss from the independence of a part of its own colonial empire; and they foresaw in such a revolution the greatest benefit to the commerce of their own country. Immense naval preparations had been made by the Bourbons for the conquest of Jamaica; but now, from the fear of spreading the love of change Florida Blanca suppressed every wish to acquire that nest of hated contraband trade. When the French ambassador reported to him the proposal of Vergennes to constitute its inhabitants an independent republic, he seemed to hear the tocsin of insurrection sounding from the La Plata to San Francisco, and from that time had nothing to propose for the employment of the allied fleets in the West Indies. He was perplexed beyond the power of extrication. One hope only remained. Minorca having been wrested from the English, he concentrated all the force of Spain in Europe on the one great object of recovering Gibraltar, and held France to her promise not to make peace until that fortress should be given up."
From that time began a series of secret manoeuvres in favor of a general peace, and rumors of the signing of treaties that had then not even been drafted, began to float across the ocean and agitate the colonies of Spanish America. But naval operations in the waters of the West Indies continued almost without cessation. The French fleet under de Grasse had before its return to France restored to the Dutch St. Eustatius. It had captured St. Christopher, Nevis and Montserrat. When in February, 1782, Admiral Rodney appeared at Barbados with twelve new ships of line in addition to his fleet, and was towards the end of the month joined by the squadron under command of Hood at Antigua, it became necessary for the French to look for a junction with the Spanish fleet. For this purpose de Grasse left Port Royal to Martinique on the eighth of April and hurriedly sailed for Hispaniola. After a small engagement at Dominica, Admiral Rodney by a skillful ruse brought on a battle with the French between Guadeloupe, Saintes and Marie Galante. The British had on their side superiority in number and quality, having thirty six vessels, all in good repair and manned by well-trained and disciplined sailors. The French ships were better constructed, but inferior in number, and their mariners were known to be less efficient and experienced. The combat raged for eleven hours. Four of de Grasse's ships were captured, one sunk. The British lost about one thousand men in killed and wounded, the French about three times as many. This defeat of their ally tended to depress the spirits of the Spanish people, both in the mother country and the colonies, for they saw Britain once more exercising almost undisputed authority over the seas.
By this time the belligerents were all becoming tired of the war and were seriously hoping for peace. The situation in France had after this new defeat become specially precarious. Her coffers had been depleted by participating in a war in which she had nothing to gain. Hence her statesmen were particularly anxious to end a conflict the ideal aim of which had been attained by the recognition of the independence of the United States from Britain. But she was bound by the alliance with Spain; and Spain was inflexible in refusing to acknowledge that independence and in insisting upon her demands, among them above all others, in Europe, the return of Gibraltar, in America the territory east of the Mississippi, including the right of navigation on that river. Conferences between John Jay and Benjamin Franklin, the special American emissaries, and the French minister Vergennes and his able assistant Rayneval were constantly taking place. Couriers were speeding back and forth between Paris and London. Rayneval attempted to bring the subject of Gibraltar to the attention of the Earl of Shelburne, saying: "Gibraltar is as dear to the king of Spain as his life," but he was told that it was out of the question even to propose to the government to cede it to Spain. He pleaded for Spain's claim of the Mississippi and its eastern valley, and received an ambiguous reply, implying that Britain might be induced to cede Jamaica. But the indirect offer was ignored, just as had been that of Porto Rico some time before. The more the negotiations progressed, the more did Spain, persisting in her traditional conservatism, prove a stumbling block to peace. For as late as September, 1782, in a meeting between Lafayette, Jay and Aranda, did the latter, as representative of King Carlos III., refuse to acknowledge the independence of the new republic.
In the mean time Spain was clamoring for action against Gibraltar, and the French and Spanish fleets united in an attempt to reduce the fort under the command of the Duke of Crillon. But three years of blockade, with intervals of famine and privation, had not broken the spirit of the British garrison. While the first question of the king of Spain on awakening every morning was: "Is Gibraltar taken?" the British continued to defend it with a stubbornness which threatened to prolong the struggle interminably. Receiving constant supplies from the British fleet under Lord Howe, General Eliot was able to hold his own and the futility of this expedition soon became apparent. When the Spanish batteries were blown up and General Eliot made his audacious sortie, the hope of this victory had to be abandoned.
Spain at last realized the necessity of yielding to the inevitable. Her debt had been increased by twenty millions sterling, her navy had been almost annihilated and she had gained nothing but an island or two. King Carlos III., who had so long withheld his recognition of the United States and blocked the negotiations for peace, because the American envoys justly demanded that recognition before they could deal with the representatives of Spain, finally yielded to the pressure of the moment and the preliminaries of peace were signed on the thirtieth of November, 1782. By the separate articles of this treaty, the claim of the United States to all the country from the St. Croix to the southwestern Mississippi, from the Lake of the Woods to the St. Mary's, was verified. By a separate article the line of north boundary between West Florida and the United States was defined, in case Great Britain at the conclusion of the war should recover that province.
Thus was the republic, the consummation of which King Carlos III. had in his loyalty to the old tradition of sovereignty so zealously tried to prevent, established upon the very continent, which Columbus had discovered, and to the greater part of which Spain had laid claim. If the Spanish king and his cabinet were at all conscious of the analogy presented by comparison of the commercial and other restrictions placed upon both colonies by the kingdoms from which they had sprung, they had reason to be filled with vague apprehensions at the rise of this new and free power among the countries of the world. They could not help seeing in the republic which by a long and tenacious fight had won her independence from the mother country, a neighbor whose example offered a dangerous precedent.
Perhaps it was with the intention of forestalling the development of such events in Cuba, as had led to the Declaration of Independence by the colonies to the north, that the Spanish King had some years before begun to remove the restrictions which had for two centuries and more hampered the growth of Cuban commerce and retarded her general development. It was a proof of his own growth towards a more liberal conception of the relations between a country and her colonies, that the removal of these restrictions was effected within so short a time. He opened the trade of Cuba and the other islands of his possessions in America in 1765, and that of Louisiana in 1768 to eight Spanish ports besides Cadiz; he gradually permitted direct trade from the Spanish ports to his dependencies in South and Central America; and in 1782 even allowed New Orleans and Pensacola to trade with French ports that had Spanish consuls.