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epidemic. The French soldiers were at the same time depressed by the fierce and uninterrupted conflict. "Scarce a fourth of the town is won," said one of them, "and we are already exhaust- ed. We shall all perish amongst these ruins, which will become our own tombs, before we can force the last of these fanatics from the last of their dens." With the assailants thus de- pressed, and the besieged deprived of the pres- ence and encouragement of their leader, besides the havoc of pestilence, a favorable capitulation was accepted by Marshal Lannes. The regular troops marched out of the walls with the honors of war, and were sent as prisoners into France, each soldier retaining his knapsack, the officers their horses and side arms. The peas- ants were dismissed, and private property was respected. Fifty thousand human beings per- ished during the siege, all, except six thousand, from pestilence. Palafox remained a prisoner in France until 1814, when he returned to Spain. He was afterwards created Duke of Zaragoza, and died in 1847.
Of this siege a British historian has said: "Modern Europe has not such a memorable
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siege to recount; and to the end of the world, even after Spain and France have sunk before the waves of time, and all the glories of modern Europe have passed away, it will stand forth in undecaying lustre; a monument of heroic devotion, which will thrill the hearts of the brave and generous throughout every succeed- ing age."*
Baylen, a parallel street with Palafox, next invites notice. Baylen is a small town at the foot of the Sierra Morena, on the road leading from Cadiz to Cordova and Seville. There, on July nineteenth, 1808, the French General Dupont, after his recent plunder of Cordova, with excesses more in keeping with the days of Alaric, than the nineteenth century, was, with 20,000 men, and all their plunder, compelled to surrender, after a series of battles to a Spanish army, largely made up of irregular Spanish troops.
To Reding, a Swiss in the service of Spain, was due the glory of the event, which excited profound attention throughout Europe, and
* Allison's Modern Europe, Vol. III., p. 301.
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made a deep and sinister impression on the French.
Of the "catastrophe " Napoleon, who was at Bordeaux when he heard of it, said : "That an army should be beaten, is nothing; it is the daily fate of war and is easily repaired; but that an army should submit to a dishonorable capitulation is a stain upon the glory of our arms which can never be effaced. Wounds in- flicted on honor are incurable. The moral effect of this catastrophe will be terrible." Baylen was doubtless the first link in the chain of events which drew from him the reflection in which he indulged at St. Helena: "It was that unhappy war in Spain which ruined me."
Romana street bears the name of the most illustrious General Spain produced during her great Peninsula war-the Marquis de Romana. He was one of those great and generous charac- ters who are too great and generous to be moved by selfishness or envy, and was in con- sequence the bond of union between the English and Spanish armies. He was marching to the relief of Badajoz, when he was seized with heart disease at Cartaxo, where he died suddenly Jan-
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uary 22, 1811. It is enough for his fame for him to have been the subject of the following dispatch by the Duke of Wellington: "In the Marquis de Romana, the Spanish army has lost its brightest ornament, his country its most upright patriot, and the world the most stren- uous and zealous defender in the cause in which we are engaged; and I shall always acknowl- edge with gratitude the assistance which I received from him, as well by his operation, as by his counsel, since he has been joined with the army."
Alcaniz is a reminder of another field of Spanish glory. It is the name of a town in Ar- agon, on the right bank of the Guadalupe, sixty miles south-east of Zaragoza. It was, on May twenty-third, 1809, the scene of the defeat of a French army under Suchet by the Spanish forces under General Blake.
Tarragona street commemorates one of those sieges like that of Saragossa, which signalize the Spanish race above all others, for the tenac- ity and devotion with which in all ages it has defended its homes. The city of that name, situated on the Mediterranean shore of Spain,
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was besieged by Suchet, and defended by Gen- eral Cortinas, from May 4, to June 29, 1811. The defense was conducted with the same fierce obstinacy and courage which marked that of Saragossa, and with even greater mortality, if allowance is made for the ravages of pestilence in the latter. But there was a vast difference in the finality of the two sieges. Tarragona was taken by assault; and never did American savages exercise more demon-like fury upon unresisting and powerless humanity than the French troops visited upon the Tarragonese. Above six thousand human beings comprising all ages, and both sexes, were massacred whilst appealing for mercy. "The blood of the Spaniards inundated the streets and the houses. Armed and unarmed, men and women, gray hairs and infant inno- cence, attractive youth and wrinkled age, were alike butchered by the infuriated troops."*
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* Allison's History of Modern Europe, Vol. III., p. 422.
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CHAPTER XIX.
Folch Leaves West Florida-His Successors-War of 1812 -Tecumseh's Visit to the Seminoles and Creeks- Consequences-Fort Mims-Percy and Nicholls' Expe- dition.
IN October, 1809, Folch left Pensacola to fill the appointment of Governor of the country west of the Perdido, the capital of which was Mobile. The uneventful period, for Pensacola at least, between that year and 1813, was marked only by the incoming and outgoing of governors. Folch's successor was his son-in- law, Don Francisco Maximiliano de Saint Maxent, under an ad interim appointment. In July 1812, he was succeeded by Mauricio Zuniga, who in May, 1813, gave place to Mateo Gurzalez Maurique, whose administration covered the period of the war between the United States and Great Britain, which was declared by the former, on June 18, 1812.
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That Pensacola should have been involved in that struggle would seem to be out of the natural order of events, when it is remembered that Spain and the United States were at peace. But, as before intimated, there existed a covert hostility on the part of the Spanish officials at Pensacola against the Americans, growing out of the dispute as to the limits of West Florida; and now intensified by the capture of Mobile on April 13, 1813, by an expedition from New Orleans, under the command of General Wilkin- son. Spain herself was too much absorbed by her struggle for existence to take any active interest in a question of boundary in the new world. But the British, who were her allies in her war with the French, availed themselves of that official hostility to induce the Spaniards at Pensacola to permit them to make that place a base from which the Indians could be furnished with supplies to wage war on the United States.
After the capture of Detroit, in August, 1812, the British formed the scheme of combining the Indians on the western frontier of the United States in a line of warfare extending from the
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Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. As their chief em- issary to accomplish that end, they employed Tecumseh, the great Shawnee Chief, who in the fall of that year made his appearance amongst the Seminoles and Creeks. He at once began the work of exciting their hostility against the Americans, by every argument, art, and device which his own savage shrewdness could sug- gest, or the deliberate calculations of his British allies prompt. He addressed the Creek assem- blies with the burning words of an impassioned oratory, to which his stately form and command- ing presence gave additional force. Heupbraided their disposition to adopt the speech, the dress, and habits of the white man, instead of cleav- ing to those of their forefathers. He persuaded them that it was degrading to an Indian war- rior to follow the plow, or to rely upon cattle and the fruits of the field for sustenance ; that it was decreed by the Great Spirit that the coun- try should go back to the forest, and that the Indian should depend upon the chase for his food, as his forefathers had done. An invidious contrast was drawn between the disinterested friendship of the British, who had no occasion
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or use for their lands, and the cupidity of the Americans who were annually restricting their hunting grounds by their ever extending settle- ments. Superstition, and necromancy, too, were successfully employed to enforce his teachings. Some of the wavering, like Francis, afterwards known as the prophet, were induced to submit to days of seclusion and fasting, in houses from which the light was excluded, until darkness, spells, and incantations, acting upon bodies enfeebled by hunger, inspired faith in the mis- sion of the great Shawnee. A comet, which ap- peared in the last days of September of that year, was pointed to as a sign placed in the heavens by the Great Spirit, as a presage of wrath and destruction to the white man, and a promise of redemption to the Indian.
He had the temerity, even, to foretell a great natural phenomenon of which he was to be the proximate cause, as an evidence his mission was inspired. "When I reach Detroit I shall stamp my foot, and the earth will tremble and rock." And strange to relate, at about the lapse of time the journey would consume, an earthquake was felt throughout the Creek
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country, when from all sides came the cry of the awe-stricken Indians : "Tecumseh has reach- ed Detroit and stamped his foot."*
His mission divided the Creeks into two par- ties, of which by far the most numerous and warlike, was that which yielded to his seduc- tions. To each of his converts he gave a red stick as an emblem of war, and hence the hostile Creeks became known as "Red Sticks."
He had hardly returned to Detroit, when there came to Pensacola British agents, bring- ing with them military supplies for distribution amongst the Red Sticks, to whose bloody in- stincts was applied the stimulus of a bounty of five dollars for every American scalp.
That Pensacola should be the Creek base of supply, was in accordance with the plan of warfare designed by the British at Detroit, and a fulfillment of Tecumseh's promised assistance to their savage allies. After the arrival there of the British agents and their stores, the Red Sticks lost no time in procuring from them the needed supplies for the war to which they had
* Pickett's History of Alabama, Vol. II., p. 246.
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pledged themselves. From all parts of the Creek country the hostiles were seen hurrying to Pensacola, and returning with arms and am- munition, without hindrance from the Spanish officials.
The first startling result of the alliance between the British and Indians, was the mas- sacre of Fort Mims, which occurred in August, 1813, an event that sent a thrill of horror through every American heart.
The fort was situated on Lake Tensas, a mile east of the Alabama river. It consisted of a stockade enclosing about an acre, with a block- house in one of its angles. In the center of it stood the residence of Samuel Mims, for whom it was named. It had been hastily constructed, as a refuge for the people of the neighborhood, in anticipation of an extended war, rendered imminent by encounters that had taken place between small parties of Indians and whites. In July, there entered the stockade five hundred and fifty-three souls, composed of soldiers, other men, women and children. Owing to the ill chosen site, situated as it was in a hammock, and the negligence of those in command, the
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place was surprised at midday on August 30, by one thousand Creek Indians under William Weatherford and Francis, who rushed in at the open gate, which had been heedlessly left un- closed. But few of those in the Fort escaped. All the dead were scalped, except those who were saved from that outrage, by undergoing the process of cremation in the buildings in which they had taken refuge, and which were fired by the enemy to overcome their defenders. Their bloody work finished, the Indians rested and feasted, at the scene of the massacre, smok- ing their pipes, and trimming and drying the scalps they had taken. Afterwards, these hor- rid trophies of victory, strung on sticks, were taken to the British agents at Pensacola, who paid for them the promised bounty.
It is due to William Weatherford, who was a son of a half-sister of Alexander McGillivray, that, it should be mentioned, at the peril of his own life, he interfered to save the women and children. Failing in his merciful efforts, he refused to witness their massacre, and left the bloody scene.
Not content with making Pensacola a base
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for inciting the Indians to hostitilies against the United States, in 1814, there came into the harbor a British fleet, with a body of marines, the former under the command of Captain William Henry Percy, and the later under that of Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Nicholls, for the purpose of taking possession of its fortifications. This the imbecile Maurique permitted them to do. Fort George, which had been named St. Michael by the Spaniards, resumed its English name, and received a British garrison, whilst the flag of St. George once again floated from its ramparts. Fort San Carlos and the battery on Santa Rosa Island were also turned over to the British. And at the same time, the Governor's house was made the headquarters of Percy and Nicholls.
The fleet consisted of two ships, each of twenty-four guns, and two brigs, each of eighteen guns, with three tenders. The marines numbered two to three hundred men.
Nicholls at once began to increase his force by enlisting Indians, whom he supplied with British uniforms, and drilled in the streets of Pensacola.
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Thus reads his order of the day, twenty-sixth of August 1814. "The noble Spanish nation › has grieved to see her territories insulted, having been robbed and despoiled of a portion of them while she was overwhelmed with distress, and held down by the chains which a tyrant had imposed on her gloriously struggling for the greatest of all blessings (true liberty). The treacherous Americans, who call themselves free, have attacked her like assassins while she was fallen. But the day of retribution is fast approaching. As to the Indians, you are to exhibit to them the most exact discipline, being patterns to these children of nature. You will teach and instruct them, in doing which you will manifest the utmost patience, and you will correct them when they deserve it."
Percy in a communication to Lafitte, the commander of the Banataria 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
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them to join the British. To the latter he addressed himself specially asfollows: "Inhabi- tants 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."*
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. i
* Niles' Weekly Register, Vol. VII., pp. 134-135.
¡ Pickett's History of Alabama, Vol. II., p. 357.
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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, pre- paratory 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 con- dition 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,
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1814, the British commanders made a com- bined 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 ex- pedition, the British fleet and land forces retired to Pensacola-a result hardly in keep- ing 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
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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."* The corre- spondence 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 Mont- gomery, on the twenty-seventh he took up his line of march for Pensacola, the Indian trail re- ferred to in an early chapter being its guiding thread. The troops consisted of the Third, Thirty-nineth and Forty-fourth infantry, Coffee's brigade, a company of Mississippi dragoons and part of a West Tennessee regi- · ment, numbering three thousand effective men, besides a band of friendly Choctaws.
He reached the vicinity of the town on the
* Niles' Weekly Register, Vol. VII., p. 11.
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evening of the sixth of November. He first ap- peared on its western side, and there, having halted, he says, in the dispatch containing an account of the expedition, "On my approach I sent Major Pierre with a flag to communicate the object of my visit. Heapproached the Fort St. George with his flag displayed, and was fired on by the cannon from the fort."* Im- mediately afterwards, with the adjutant and a small party, he himself made a reconnoissance. He found the fort manned by Spanish as well as English troops. He likewise observed that there were in the harbor seven English war vessels, which it was necessary for him to con- sider in his future movements. His plans were at once formed. A force under Captain Denkins, with several pieces of artillery, occupied the site of Fort St. Barnardo, which was once again to be pitted against its old antagonist, Fort George.t Inferring that the enemy would ex- pect his attack from the west, General Jackson, on the night of the sixth, caused the main body of his army to make a circuitous march, so that
* Niles' Weekly Register, Vol. VII., p. 281.
+ Niles' Weekly Register, Vol. VII., p. 281.
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the morning would find it on the eastern ex- tremity of the town .* This movement shielded him from the guns of St. George or St. Michael, whilst by entering the town at the eastern end of Government street he would, in a measure, be protected from the guns of the English ves- sels. But he encountered a battery of two guns as he entered the street, which fired upon the centre column with ball and grape, whilst there opened upon the troops a shower of musketry from houses, fences and gardens." The battery was soon silenced, however, by a storming party led by Captain Laval, who lost a leg at the last fire of the guns. All the Spanish forces at the battery fled as Laval's command rushed upon it except a gallant Spanish officer, who, refusing to fly, was taken prisoner. But tra- dition says, instead of laurels, he won from his own people the imputation of "fool" for his rashness-a rashness, however, which, had it been crowned with success, would probably have secured him the praise of a hero.
* Niles' Weekly Register, Vol. VII., p. 281.
+ Niles' Weekly Register, Vol. VII., p. 281.
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When the command had well advanced into the town it was met by the governor in person, with a white flag, and an offer of surrender at discretion. The offer was accepted, but solely for the purpose of enabling General Jackson to accomplish the declared object of the expedition -which was not conquest-but to expel the British, whose presence was due to the im- becility of Maurique, as well as the small Spanish force at his command, consisting, as it did, of two or three companies of the regiment of Tarragona. In order to attain that object, possession of Forts Barrancas and St. Michael by the Americans was indispensable, and, to the extent of his ability, the governor made the surrender. But when Captain Denkins and his command were about to proceed to take pos- session of St. Michael, Captain Soto, the Spanish officer in command, refused to obey the governor's instructions to make the surrender. Preparations that were immediately made to take it by storm, however, induced Soto to re- consider his refusal and to admit the American command. The demand was made at six o'clock on the evening of the seventh, and the surrender
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occurred at midnight. The purpose of Soto's
· delay cannot be divined, for Nicholls having on the night of the sixth withdrawn his men to the shipping, there remained in the fort but a small band of Spaniards.
As General Jackson withdrew his forces from the town, which he did on the evening of the same day of its capture, they were fired upon by the British vessels, but without inflicting any injury.
Whilst, on the morning of the eighth, a detachment was preparing to march on Bar- rancas, with the purpose of cutting off the retreat of the British fleet, there was heard a great explosion, which it was at onceconcluded was occasioned by the blowing up of San Car- los. General Jackson nevertheless sent the detachment there to verify the fact. On its return in the night it reported the fort blown up, everything combustible burned, and cannon spiked by the British, who had taken to their ships, and sailed out of the harbor.
The only casualties which occurred doing these operations on the part of the Americans were seven killed and eleven wounded, including
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Captain Laval; and on the part of the Span- iards four killed and six wounded.
Captain William Laval was a South Carolin- ian, the son of a French officer of the Legion of Lauzun, belonging to the French forces in the Revolutionary war. In 1808 he received the commission of ensign in the American army. In 1812, he became a first lieutenant. The break- ing out of the Creek war found him a captain. He was with the third regiment, to which his company belonged, at the battle of Holy Ground. For the service of charging the Spanish battery at Pensacola he was specially selected by General Jackson. The loss of his leg prevented his sharing with his regiment in the glorious victory of New Orleans, and ended his military career as well. His aptitude for civil as well as military life was manifested by his filling the offices of Secretary of State, Comptroller Gen- eral, and Treasurer of South Carolina, as well as Assistant Treasurer of the United States under Polk's administration.
That the presence of the British was enforced, and by no means agreeable to the Spaniards, was promptly manifested by the good feeling
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exhibited by the latter towards the Americans, as soon as Percy and Nicholls had taken their departure. The inhabitants were much im- pressed by the kind and generous conduct of General Jackson; who seems fully, to have appreciated the peculiar position in which the town was placed, by the pretentious audacity of Percy and Nicholls, the feebleness of its garrison, and above all the imbecility of Mau- rique: In the dispatch before referred to he says: "The good order and conduct of my troops, whilst in Pensacola, have convinced the Span- iards of our friendship and our prowess; and have drawn from the citizens an expression, that 'The Choctaws are more civilized thanthe British.'"' In letters written from Pensacola to Havana, in relation to the capture of the place, the comparison is thus expressed : "the Ameri- can Choctaws were more civilized than the religious English." These letters teem with the praises of the considerate conduct of General Jackson and his army.
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