Bernardo de Gálvez: Spanish Hero of the American Revolution

Bernardo de Gálvez

Bernardo de Gálvez

Spanish Hero of the American Revolution

GONZALO M. QUINTERO SARAVIA

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

Chapel Hill

This book was published with the assistance of Joseph R. Godfrey, Ph.D., the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, and Joseph W. Dooley; and with the assistance of the Fundación Consejo España–Estados Unidos, www.spainusa.org.

Published with the assistance of the Anniversary Fund of the University of North Carolina Press.

© 2018 The University of North Carolina Press

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Jacket illustration: Friars Pablo Jesús and Jerónimo, Pintura del Excelentisimo Señor Conde de Gálvez, 1796. Museo Nacional de Historia, Castillo de Chapultepec, Mexico; reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City. Technique: sgrafitto, a combination of painting and calligraphy. One of few examples of portraits of a Spanish viceroy on horseback; the position of the horse—a la jineta, with the two front legs in the air—was traditionally reserved for portraits of Spanish monarchs.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Quintero Saravia, Gonzalo M., 1964– author.

Title: Bernardo de Gálvez : Spanish hero of the American Revolution / Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia.

Description: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017050244| ISBN 9781469640792 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469640808 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Gálvez, Bernardo de, 1746–1786. | Soldiers—Spain—Biography. | Viceroys—New Spain—Biography. | Spain—Colonies—North America—History—18th century. | United States—History—Revolution, 1775–1783—Participation, Spanish. | Pensacola (Fla.)—History—Siege, 1781.

Classification: LCCDP199.9.G27 Q85 2018 | DDC 973.3/46 [B]—DC23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017050244

To

Elisa, Santiago, Salvador, and my mother

Contents

Note on Terminology, Names, and English Translations of Spanish Documents

Introduction

1. Early Years

2. New Spain: Fighting the Apache

3. Learning to Be an Officer and Tasting Defeat

4. Arrival in Louisiana and Preparations for War

5. Bernardo de Gálvez Takes the Initiative

6. His Finest Hour: Pensacola, I Alone

7. Objectives: Jamaica, Return to Europe, Cuba

8. Viceroy of New Spain

Afterword

Appendix

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Figures, Tables, Graphs, and Maps

FIGURES

Portrait of Bernardo de Gálvez

Engraving of José de Gálvez as Marquis of Sonora

View of Madrid from the south entrance to the city

Portrait of Matías de Gálvez, Bernardo’s father, as viceroy of New Spain

Engraving of a private of the Royal Cantabre Regiment

Expulsion of the Jesuit order from the territories of the Spanish monarchy in 1767

Late eighteenth-century depiction of an Apache family

The Harvesters of Malaga before King Carlos III, by Joaquín Inza

View of the Bay of Algiers during the Spanish attack in 1775

Portrait of Alejandro O’Reilly as governor of Cadiz

King Carlos III wearing the Royal Order of Carlos III

Contemporary drawing of the flag of the Louisiana Fixed Infantry Regiment

Coat of arms of the province of Spanish Louisiana, 1786

Plan for the village of Galveztown in Louisiana

Two creole women

Map of the coast between New Orleans and Apalachicola Bay

Only surviving British flag of the several captured by Bernardo de Gálvez

Engraving published in London on March 8, 1780

Contemporary Spanish map of the landing at Mobile in 1780

Portrait of José de Ezpeleta

View of Havana’s marketplace during the British occupation

Highly idealized view of Pensacola in the late 1770s

British brig

Map of the conquest of Pensacola in 1781

Portrait of Peter Chester, British governor of West Florida

Portrait of Francisco de Saavedra

Portrait of Admiral José Solano y Bote

Spanish map of the British forts and Spanish trenches at Pensacola, 1781

The explosion of the Queen’s Redoubt in Pensacola

First accurate portrait of General George Washington, 1781

French map published in 1782

Engraving of Pensacola Bay, conquered by the Spaniards in 1781

Coat of arms granted by King Carlos III to Bernardo de Gálvez

Miniature depicting Bernardo de Gálvez on horseback

British lion confronting its four enemies

Portrait of Bernardo de Gálvez, 1782

John Jay

Cartoon by James Gillray, 1783

French engraving depicting several battles of the American War of Independence

Engraving of the aerostatic fish in flight

Testing Bernardo de Gálvez’s invention

Mexico City’s main square in 1769

Portrait of Miguel de Gálvez

Blueprint of the second floor of the Royal Palace of Chapultepec

Medals awarded by the Royal Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City

Detail of the design for the gardens of the Royal Palace of Chapultepec

TABLES

A. Louisiana’s Colonial Population According to the May 1777 Census

B. Cost of the War with Britain, 1779–1783

GRAPHS

1. Annual Expenditures in the Defense of New Spain’s Northern Frontier

2. Spanish Casualties at the Siege of Pensacola, 1781

3. Daily Average of Dossiers Processed by Bernardo de Gálvez as Viceroy of New Spain

MAPS

Treaty of Paris, Proposals

Treaty of Paris, 1783

Note on Terminology, Names, and English Translations of Spanish Documents

Since this book is based on research of documents and sources in several languages, it has been necessary to adapt the Spanish and French spellings of names and locations to the most-common ones used in modern English. The Spanish documents and archival terms have been translated as follows:

Bernardo de Gálvez

Introduction

Since early spring 1781, a Spanish army had been laying siege to Pensacola in British West Florida. By May, after having repelled a fierce British counterattack against the Spanish advanced positions, General Bernardo de Gálvez confided to his good friend Francisco de Saavedra his worries about the slow progress of His Catholic Majesty’s arms against the British stronghold. Saavedra had been Gálvez’s classmate in the Royal Military Academy of Avila and was in Pensacola as the personal representative of the powerful minister of the Indies, José de Gálvez, Bernardo’s uncle.

More than two months after the arrival of the first Spanish forces at Pensacola Bay, the exhausting work of the engineers in excavating trenches and building artillery batteries and the exasperating routine of the exchange of artillery fire were beginning to undercut the morale of the troops. Gálvez was worried. The supplies brought from Havana were running out. Large-caliber cannonballs were so scarce that he was paying his soldiers two reales for each British cannonball retrieved so they could be refired against Pensacola. According to Saavedra, Gálvez was determined to make a frontal assault on the enemy’s Half-Moon Fort [Spanish name for the Queen’s Redoubt], the conquest of which would soon force the surrender of the other two [positions], . . . and in this way he would shorten the siege, which was taking too long.¹

Plans for what would have been a desperate, almost suicidal frontal assault had to be canceled since the Spanish forces arrived in front of the British fort when the sun was already up, and all surprise was lost. The following day, after the work on the Spanish battery closest to the Queen’s Redoubt was finished, Gálvez ordered the Spanish cannons to open fire and reluctantly prepared himself and his troops for what everyone believed would be another routine day at the siege of Pensacola. But at half past nine on the morning of May 8, everything changed. A big explosion was heard. Gálvez rushed to the battery. Seeing the destruction at the Queen’s Redoubt, he immediately ordered an attack. The Spanish troops quickly seized the fort. With Pensacola now within firing range of the Spanish artillery, the British commander, General John Campbell, had no choice but to surrender. That same night, the articles of capitulation were signed, and Pensacola and all West Florida returned to the Spanish empire.²

On December 16, 2014, President Barack Obama signed a joint resolution of the U.S. Congress conferring honorary citizenship on Bernardo de Gálvez—the highest honor the U.S. government can bestow upon a foreign citizen and one that has been granted only eight times.³ According to the resolution, Bernardo de Gálvez was a hero of the Revolutionary War who risked his life for the freedom of the United States people. His victories against the British were recognized by George Washington as a deciding factor in the outcome of the Revolutionary War. Thus, the United States Continental Congress declared, on October 31, 1778, their gratitude and favorable sentiments to Bernardo de Gálvez for his conduct toward the United States because he played an integral role in the Revolutionary War and helped secure the independence of the United States. Despite these official recognitions and the fact that several geographic locations, including Galveston Bay, Galveston, Texas, Galveston County, Texas, Galvez, Louisiana, and St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, are named after Bernardo de Gálvez, his life and the role he played as the highest representative of the Spanish Empire in the American Revolutionary War remain grossly overlooked by mainstream history in the United States.⁴

The life story of Bernardo de Gálvez could be cast as an adventure novel. Even a cursory look at his life shows that, despite its brevity (he died at age forty), he enjoyed a military career full of action and daring. Although he was usually victorious in battle, he also knew defeat. His meteoric rise from simple lieutenant to lieutenant general is a tale of personal and family ambition, of courage, and sometimes of sheer luck. He was a colorful personality, impetuous and romantic, devoted to his wife, Felicitas, and passionate in his pursuits, whether playing the guitar or cheering the performance of a matador.

In the larger context, Gálvez’s life can be viewed through the important role played by Spain during the American War of Independence, when Gálvez was supreme commander of the Spanish troops fighting the British in the present states of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida and later of the joint Franco-Spanish forces in the Caribbean. A British map of North America published in 1783 shows that about three-quarters of what is today the United States was, at that time, part of the Spanish Empire, at least in theory—in theory because Spain had very little control over most of this huge territory, where the local indigenous populations were scarcely affected by Spain’s sovereign claims over their lands.⁵

The only contemporary portrait of Bernardo de Gálvez that could claim certain accuracy since it was included in a book published in Mexico the year after his death. (In Ventura Beleña, Recopilación Sumaria de todos los autos acordados . . . ; Library of Congress, LCCN 28018536)

While sometimes the involvement of Spain in the Revolutionary War has been presented as a contribution to the independence of the United States, even as a gift, the reality is that Spain’s decision to enter the war against Britain was based only on imperial policy considerations. Besides an opportunity for revenge for Spain’s defeat in the Seven Years’ War and the traditional confrontation between Britain and Spain in the Americas, the Spanish objectives in the war were to weaken the British Empire in general and to recover specific territories, especially Gibraltar. At the same time, the Spanish government considered the independence of the United States as a by-product of the war that could set a dangerous example for the Spanish possessions in the Americas. Confronted with the option of sharing North America with the British Empire or with a new and small republic with an extremely weak central government such as the one established by the Articles of Confederation, Spain chose the latter. In this context, it is not surprising that the Spanish government never considered the United States an ally. For Spain, the American Revolutionary War was just another imperial war between France and Spain against Britain.⁶

Well before war was officially declared, Gálvez was responsible for channeling most of the covert aid provided by the Spanish government to the American rebels. Although Spain was not a formal ally of the United States in its struggle for independence—strategic political considerations prevented this—its entry into the war tipped the balance definitively against Britain. The combined Franco-Spanish fleet was larger than the British navy, and Spain’s attack on British-held Minorca and the siege of Gibraltar forced Britain to fight in several very distant places at the same time. Similarly, Gálvez’s campaigns against British settlements on the Mississippi River and later against Mobile and Pensacola prevented British military and naval forces in North America from concentrating solely on the fight against George Washington’s Continental army.

When the thirteen American colonies began the War of Independence, their theater would soon be part of a much greater struggle—that is, an Atlantic and eventually a global war. It was a war that would pit Britain against France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic on three continents. In the Americas, Britain had to fight the French on land and sea; the Dutch, meanwhile, would lose their Caribbean posts of Sint Eustatius, Saba, and Sint Maarten to the British, and Spain would fight the British not only on the Mississippi River and in Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida but also in Guatemala and New Providence (in today’s Bahamas). In addition, jointly with the French, Spain would aim at the conquest of Jamaica. In Europe, Spain conducted a long siege against Gibraltar, conquered the island of Minorca, and even laid plans with France for an invasion of the British Isles. In Asia, the siege of Pondicherry and the naval battle of Cuddalore set the French against the British, while the Dutch fought the latter in the Bay of Bengal.

Aside from being a rousing good tale, Bernardo de Gálvez’s life offers a view of an individual deeply influenced by Enlightenment values. Gálvez’s professional and social successes were possible only because of the political and social reforms that took place in the Spanish Empire during the second half of the eighteenth century. The rise of the Gálvez family, spurred mainly by the brilliant career of Bernardo’s uncle José de Gálvez, minister of the Indies between 1776 and 1787, is an outstanding example of increasing social mobility in eighteenth-century Spain. José de Gálvez’s patronage of his nephew was indispensable to Bernardo’s success, as it allowed him to reach important positions at a young age and in so doing demonstrate his unusually strong military, administrative, and political talents.

Bernardo attended the Royal Military Academy of Avila, where young officers of the Spanish army were instructed in the principles of the new enlightened kind of modern warfare. There he joined the mystery of Avila, a select group of determined, hardworking, and scientifically inclined young officers, whom their enemies called the barbilampiños or beardless ones. Their baby faces were hated by the so-called mozos viejos or old boys, who had no regard for newfangled things and insisted that promotions should be made on the basis of either seniority or courage in battle. The beardless ones favored a new model of warfare based on Frederick II of Prussia’s scientific approach. They believed that merit, and merit alone, should be the criterion for advancement both in the army and in the state bureaucracy.

In the alliance between empire and science that emerged during the eighteenth century, military and naval officers were often at the forefront of the pursuit of useful knowledge for their countries. Their exploits created among other military and naval officers a sense that it was among their duties to be up to date and actively involved in the latest scientific and philosophic advances. In this context Bernardo de Gálvez pursued his own scientific interests. While in Madrid awaiting a new assignment in 1783–84, he devoted his free time to experimenting with military applications of the latest fashion among the educated class: hot-air balloons. But soon Gálvez had to abandon his technological pursuits since he would be busy upon his appointment as capitán general (governor) of Cuba.⁷

Well before that posting, though, Gálvez, on January 1, 1777, assumed his office as acting governor of Louisiana and colonel of Louisiana’s Fixed Infantry Regiment. In Louisiana, Gálvez transformed the province’s rebellious French population into a bastion of the Spanish Empire in North America. Obtaining the loyalty of this group of people was not easy because by Louisiana’s population, Spanish authorities mainly meant the French-origin creole elites. Both planters from the provinces and rich merchants from New Orleans found themselves in a strong position while negotiating with Spanish authority.⁸ Gálvez offered trade concessions to the powerful merchants in New Orleans and to the rich planters of the province, and because of his charismatic personality he was able to captivate Louisiana’s inhabitants within a year and a half of his arrival. When Spain declared war against Britain in June 1779, Gálvez not only could disregard all concerns about his rear guard but also could count on the strong support, even adoration, of the local population. Despite some tensions caused when the local elites tried to push too hard, the result would be that the Spanish authorities had no choice but to accommodate and adapt a substantial part of their model of empire to the interests of Louisiana’s elite. Spain’s accommodating stance had practical results when hundreds of men volunteered to fight against the English.

In administering Louisiana, Gálvez left no branch of the government unshaken. Under his governorship, new towns were founded and new crops introduced. Hundreds of settlers migrated from the Canary Islands and Malaga. Existing military units were reorganized and new ones created. Royal legislation against contraband was strictly enforced against British smugglers, while a much softer hand was applied against French ones. A policy of de facto religious toleration, unknown in the rest of the territories under Spanish rule, made it possible for non-Catholic citizens to prosper.

During his extremely short tenure (1785–86) as viceroy of New Spain, whose territory included today’s southern United States, Mexico, and all of Central America to present-day Panama, Gálvez designed and implemented a vast array of reforms. For example, when dealing with the consequences of disastrous weather that caused the failure of most of the viceroyalty’s crops and left the population on the verge of starvation, he put his Enlightenment ideals into practice by focusing on the welfare of poor peasants. He adopted the principle of public happiness (felicidad pública), a term that also included a unique sense of responsibility by the government toward the governed, especially those on the bottom rung of the social ladder.

One of Bernardo de Gálvez’s most important and long-standing legacies as governor was his Indian policy. Building on his experience as captain of a small cavalry detachment fighting the Apache in the northern provinces of New Spain, he instituted a new Spanish policy toward indigenous groups living in the borderlands of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. Indeed, his Noticia y reflexiones sobre la guerra que se tiene con los indios apaches en las provincias de Nueva España (Account and reflections on the current war against the Apache Indians in the provinces of New Spain) still is one of the most important sources of knowledge about the eighteenth-century Apaches. Instead of succumbing to the warmongering attitudes prevalent in the region, he demanded from his countrymen that they be impartial and acknowledge that if the Indians are not our friends, it is because they do not owe us any benefits, and if they take revenge on us, it is only in just compensation for the affronts we have caused them . . . , the lies we have told them, and the tyrannies they have suffered from us. He states clearly that the main cause of their war against the Spaniards was either hatred or necessity—that is, a hatred born of a desire for vengeance for the affronts they had suffered or a necessity rooted in the extreme need in which they live. On their reputation for cruelty, he wondered what their [the Apaches’] opinion is of us, most probably it would not be better, [and] for much better reason.⁹

Later, in his tenure as viceroy of New Spain, Gálvez completely reorganized New Spain’s northern frontier with his Instrucción formada en virtud de real orden de S.M. (Instruction for governing the Interior Provinces of New Spain) of August 1786. In so doing he introduced a new model of relations between indigenous groups and European settlers. He abandoned the centuries-old model of sporadic confrontation, which had an endemic and almost permanent low-intensity warlike situation in which repeated attacks by indigenous groups elicited punitive military campaigns. Instead, Gálvez designed a new policy that aimed to attract indigenous groups by gift exchanges and commerce. The plan intended to make them dependent on the Spanish so that eventually they would be assimilated into Spanish-American society and would increase the state’s presence throughout the region. By controlling both Spanish and indigenous populations, thereby preventing the multiple abuses inflicted on the latter, Gálvez’s reorganization pacified the region for the duration of the Spanish presence in North America. But peace came with a price: since Spanish policies of assimilation were designed to bring indigenous communities into dependency, the Spanish took little or very limited account of indigenous peoples’ interests.

Bernardo de Gálvez was one of those Spaniards who felt more at home in the Americas than in his native Iberian Peninsula. He spent most of his adult life in America, where he found his wife, where his three children were born, and where he decided that he would be buried. He was a friend of the American Revolution and a friend of an enlightened and progressive empire, friendships that in his mind, far from being contradictory, were mutually reinforcing.¹⁰ Today, almost two and a half centuries after his death, I hope to cast a light on the last decades of the Spanish Empire in North America and on the role of Spain in the American Revolutionary War by bringing to life the world of Bernardo de Gálvez.

1. Early Years

Most people are born into a family. Bernardo de Gálvez was born into a clan. The origins of the Gálvez family in Macharaviaya, a small village near Malaga in southern Spain, can be traced to the sixteenth century, but the Gálvezes had been unable to acquire wealth or an outstanding social position in the village.¹ When Bernardo was born on July 23, 1746, the Gálvezes were mere shepherds of Macharaviaya²—that is, a long way from being members of that select group known as the Spanish monarchy’s watchmakers.³ His father, Matías, was just another poor farmhand in a town with fewer than 300 inhabitants, where most of the men were day laborers, since none can sustain himself on his own wealth.⁴

The family’s limited social status and lack of relevant connections were confirmed by the choice of godparents for baby Bernardo. Without wealthy or noble patrons who could mentor their son, Bernardo’s parents chose some close relatives from the near village of Benaque. At the time of his birth Bernardo seemed destined to continue on the family’s undistinguished path. But his fortunes, like those of the rest of the Gálvez clan, were about to change. His uncle José, the driving force behind the family, had just set up shop in Madrid as an ambitious young lawyer. José de Gálvez’s story is key to understanding the history of the entire Gálvez family.⁵

José was the smartest student in Macharaviaya’s small parochial school, and when the bishop of Malaga paid a visit, José was asked to show off his abilities. So impressed was the bishop that he decided to enroll young José in the Malaga seminary. Discovering early that the church was not his calling, José switched to law and entered the old and prestigious University of Salamanca. After he graduated, in the mid-1740s, he moved to Madrid and married María Magdalena de Grimaldo, who died a year later.⁶ In 1750 he married again, this time to a socially superior partner. Lucía Romet y Richelin was French and well connected to her embassy in Madrid. Through her, José entered the intimate circle of the French ambassador and in a short time became the embassy counsel. Under the patronage of the Marquis d’Ossun, José de Gálvez was introduced to the secretary of state the Marquis of Grimaldi, who appointed him as one of his clerks. In the early 1760s José won an appointment as the official lawyer to Crown Prince Carlos and the alcalde de casa y corte, a judge with jurisdiction over the capital. His real breakthrough came in 1764, when a candidate was urgently needed for the position of visitor-general of New Spain due to the sudden death of Francisco de Armona.

Engraving of José de Gálvez as Marquis of Sonora. Bernardo de Gálvez’s older uncle played a crucial role in his nephew’s career. (Engraving by Jeronimo Antonio Gil, in Magro and Ventura Beleña, Elucidationes ad quatuor libros Institutionum Imperatoris Justiniani, vol. 1)

View of Madrid from the south entrance to the city. The painting by the Italian artist Antonio Joli dates from 1753, just three years before Bernardo de Gálvez arrived in Madrid at the age of ten. Prominent on the left is the royal palace, still under construction, built between 1738 and 1755. Unlike other empire’s capitals, Madrid was not Spain’s largest or richest city, and the kings used to live there only during the winter, spending the other seasons in different palaces (spring in Aranjuez, summer in El Escorial, and fall in La Granja). (Antonio Joli, Vedutta di Madrid, oil on canvas, 1753; private collection)

Little is known about Bernardo’s early years. In 1748 his mother, María Josefa de Madrid, died giving birth to his brother, José.⁷ Two years later his father married Ana de Zayas y Ramos. By 1756 the family was already living in Madrid, where his brother José died, leaving Bernardo the only son, as no children were born during his father’s second marriage. Bernardo would be raised not only by his stepmother (his father would be absent in different military assignments) but also by his uncles from his father’s side: the Gálvez clan.

Tragic as they would be in today’s world, the impact of these losses in Bernardo’s life should not be overestimated. During the Old Regime, both maternal and infant mortality were very high. In eighteenth-century Spain, infant mortality was between 240 and 400 per 1,000 births. That is, one in four children died during his or her first year, and only one in two lived to his or her fifth birthday.⁸ If a child was motherless, as Bernardo was, life expectancy for that child was halved.⁹ People at the time had to adapt to this reality by regarding death very differently than people do today. Death was intimately associated with everyday life, and profound religious convictions played an important part in helping individuals cope with grief and loss.¹⁰ Thus, the loss of Bernardo’s mother and brother was probably not as traumatic as it might be in the twenty-first century.

Portrait of Matías de Gálvez, Bernardo’s father, as viceroy of New Spain, wearing his full regalia with the sash and insignia of the Royal Order of Carlos III. Above the right pocket of his general’s full uniform is embroidered the key to the king’s apartment, symbol of his condition of gentilhombre de cámara del rey. The parchment behind him lists some of his accomplishments, among them the foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts of Carlos III in Mexico City. (Ramón Torres, Portrait of Viceroy Matías de Gálvez, oil on canvas, 1783, in Museo de América, Madrid, inventory no. 1984/06/01)

According to Francisco de Miranda, Bernardo spent some years in the Canary Islands, where his father, Matías, an artillery captain, was posted from 1757 to 1778 as governor of the Castle of Paso Alto in the city of Santa Cruz.¹¹ Matías was also the king’s lieutenant, a sort of deputy general commander of the island of Tenerife.¹² However, we have not found any documentary evidence or any mention by Bernardo de Gálvez himself that he lived in the Canary Islands with his father during this period. Matías de Gálvez’s career would take off in 1778, two years after his brother José’s appointment as minister of the Indies, when he was posted to Guatemala, first as inspector of the army and later as captain general and president of its audiencia. As for Bernardo, at the age of sixteen he entered the army.

JOINING THE ARMY

Becoming a soldier was the natural career path for a captain’s son. The minimum age for signing up as a regimental cadet was sixteen,¹³ and Spain’s entry into the Seven Years’ War the same year Bernardo reached that age provided a perfect opportunity. A nice little war could increase the prospects of a quick promotion. Indeed, by the middle of the eighteenth century, British naval officers raised a glass every Thursday for a bloody war and a quick promotion!¹⁴ Similarly, in 1758 the Prussian colonel Wilhelm Sebastian von Belling used to pray in front of his regiment, Thou seest, dear Heavenly Father, the sad plight of thy servant Belling. Grant him soon a nice little war that he may better his condition and continue to praise Thy name. Amen.¹⁵

Admission as a cadet depended on a vacancy in the regiment and the approval of its colonel, who required a personal recommendation. Even though Bernardo’s father was a military officer, he had few friends in the top echelons of the army and in 1762, at the age of forty-five, was still a captain. So José de Gálvez through his connections at the French embassy in Madrid obtained for his nephew a commission as a lieutenant in the French army. At the time France was allied with Spain, and strange as it may seem, Bernardo de Gálvez was not the only Spanish military hero who started his career under the French flag. Admiral Blas de Lezo, who defeated the British at Cartagena de Indias in 1741, also began his career as a French midshipman in the battle of Vélez-Málaga on August 24, 1704.¹⁶ Moreover, the French system had an important advantage over the Spanish one: the owners of French regiments were authorized to appoint officers to the rank of captain in exchange for an agreed-upon sum of money.¹⁷ We have found no evidence of José de Gálvez paying any amount for his nephew’s appointment as a French officer, but the fact remains that on June 12, 1762, Bernardo de Gálvez received his commission as lieutenant in the Royal Cantabre, one of the French regiments assigned to the joint Franco-Spanish force for the invasion of Portugal.¹⁸

THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR

In January 1762 Great Britain declared war on Spain. What would later be called the Seven Years’ War had started several years earlier, in 1756.¹⁹ About its origins, it is easy to agree with William Makepeace Thackeray, who in 1844 admitted that it would require a greater philosopher and historian than I am to explain the causes of the famous Seven Years’ War in which Europe was engaged.²⁰ What is relevant for the subject is that Spain needed little encouragement to fight the British. In fact, Spanish history can be divided into periods identified by the country’s main enemy. During the eighteenth century that place of honor was occupied by Great Britain.

The rift with Britain started from afar and from the first was about control of Spain’s overseas empire. The peace signed after the Spanish victory in the War of Jenkins’ Ear, 1739–43 (known as Guerra del Asiento in Spain), was just the beginning of a long armistice full of problems and tensions.²¹ The Spanish embassy in London complained, frequently but futilely, about attacks by British corsairs. At the same time, British settlements in Honduras and on the Mosquito Coast remained a thorn that the Spanish authorities could never accept. To these powerful political reasons a personal one was added: Carlos III wanted to avenge the humiliation he had suffered in 1742 as the king of Naples when a British squadron commanded by Admiral Thomas Mathews forced him to withdraw his troops from the northern part of the Italian peninsula.²² As Portugal was Britain’s ally, the Spanish contribution to the war effort would be its invasion of Portugal. The objective was not to conquer Portuguese territory but to end the use of its ports by the British Royal Navy. After the king of Portugal rejected a sugarcoated ultimatum, a joint Franco-Spanish force of 40,000 men crossed the border into his country. If there was ever such a thing as a nice little war, this was it. Armies marched back and forth, cities were laid to siege, and cannons were fired, but the troops saw little actual combat. The Royal Cantabre Regiment was no exception.

LIEUTENANT IN THE ROYAL CANTABRE REGIMENT

Between 8,000 and 15,000 French soldiers formed part of the joint army. The first figure comes from Spanish sources and the latter from French. Despite the discrepancy, both sides agreed that the French played a very secondary role in the campaign.

The Royal Cantabre Regiment was created in 1745 under the name Volontaires Cantabres.²³ Its officers and soldiers were meant to be Basques or Cantabres from a region that today encompasses Asturias, Navarre, the Basque country in Spain, and the French Basque country.²⁴ The regiment was initially formed with 1,500 infantry soldiers, about 300 hussars (cavalry), and a couple of pieces of artillery.²⁵ Its founder, Colonel Jeanne-Philippe de Béla, Chevalier de Béla, was a soldier of fortune who fought under the flags of France, Saxony, and Poland.²⁶ In 1749 he was dishonorably discharged after being accused of embezzlement. He retired from the military and devoted himself to writing local history.²⁷

In 1747 the regiment changed its name to Royal Cantabre under the command of the Chevalier de Luppé.²⁸ It was reformed several times thereafter and then disbanded from 1749 to 1757.²⁹ In the latter year the regiment was formed again with 604 men in eight companies.³⁰ In 1760 the regiment’s colonel was the Baron of Poudenx. Lieutenant Bernardo de Gálvez was assigned to its second battalion, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel the Chevalier of Beauteville.³¹ On the last day of May 1762 the second battalion of the Royal Cantabre arrived in Bayonne, where it was joined by two more battalions from the Sarre regiment to form the sixth column of the French forces. Two weeks later the army crossed the Spanish border. Marching 220 miles in a month, or a little more than 7 miles per day, does not seem like much, but by the time the second battalion of the Royal Cantabre arrived in Valladolid on July 15, a third of its members were reportedly sick.³² The battalion was in such bad shape that the Spanish commander, the Marquis of Sarriá, assigned it to garrison duty. Morale quickly deteriorated. On August 10, the commander of the French sixth column, Charles Juste de Beauvau-Craon, Prince of Beauvau, complained to the French supreme commander that desertion, robbery, lack of discipline, and lack of decorum in the uniforms have reached their highest level: I will do everything I can to preserve the troops that I have the honor to command, but the bad examples have an advantage.³³ The Portuguese city of Almeida capitulated on August 25 without putting up a fight.

A new Spanish supreme commander, the Count of Aranda, arrived with a change of strategy. The objective would now be to take Abrantes, on the road to Lisbon. The meeting point was Penamacor, where the Spanish stayed until September 17 and the French a couple of days longer. The following months would see the Royal Cantabre Regiment moving back and forth across the Spanish-Portuguese border.³⁴ On November 13 the Royal Cantabre Regiment was near Valencia de Alcántara when news arrived that an armistice had been signed. The nice little war was over. The Royal Cantabre spent the autumn in Cáceres and then at the end of November returned to France.

Engraving of a private of the Royal Cantabre Regiment, the French unit in which Bernardo de Gálvez served as a lieutenant in the war with Portugal during the Seven Years’ War. The engraver struggled to represent the typical Basque boina, headgear traditional to that region of France and Spain that Bernardo, as a southerner, would find strange to wear. His experience during this short war, especially learning French, would be of enormous value for his military career. (Major d’après P. B. de la Rue, Cantabres Volontaires, engraving, Paris, F. Chereau, 1747, in Nouveau recueil des troupes légères de France . . . ; Bibliothèque nationale de France)

This was the part of the Seven Years’ War in which Bernardo de Gálvez was involved. He was in no major engagements, and there is no evidence that he ever fired a shot. Bernardo left the Royal Cantabre as a lieutenant, discarding forever the original uniform with the béarnaise (Basque) beret, under which an Andalusian may not have felt very comfortable.³⁵ The regiment barely survived the end of the war: it was definitively abolished on November 25, 1762.³⁶ Most probably Bernardo then went to Madrid, where his uncle José was still working his way up through the royal civil service.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR

Although the Seven Years’ War was a conflict within the centuries-old confrontation between European powers in North America, it also represented a turning point in the history of that continent. This crucible of war, as Fred Anderson has called it, had consequences of the utmost importance for everyone. France would disappear from the North American stage. For Britain, although completely victorious, the war would set in motion the forces that created a hollow British empire.³⁷ Local populations would also be profoundly affected by the war and its outcome. For the thirteen colonies the Seven Years’ War was not just the backdrop to the American Revolution, but . . . both its indispensable precursor and its counterpart influence in the formation of the early republic.³⁸ For some of the French settlers in North America, especially for the Acadians, the end of the war would bring deportation and the beginning of an era of wandering across the Atlantic. The life of indigenous groups would also be deeply affected, inaugurating a period of increasing tensions with English settlers. As for Spain, the Iberian Peninsula theater was just one of many in which the war took place. Among others were America and the Philippines, both vitally important for Spain. The British captured both Havana and Manila, while Buenos Aires narrowly escaped the same fate.³⁹

The peace preliminaries were ratified by the kings of England, France, and Spain on November 12, 13, and 14, 1762; the Portuguese monarch did the same shortly thereafter. The peace treaty was signed in Paris on February 10, 1763. The Treaty of Paris ended French aspirations on the American continent, signaled the consolidation of Britain as a world power, and left behind a certain feeling of Spanish impotence. Most of the territories acquired by force during the war were returned to their previous owners, but there were also major changes. According to Guillermo Céspedes del Castillo, the peace treaty signed after the Seven Years’ War brought an unnecessary humiliation to the defeated.⁴⁰ Furthermore, this would be a wake-up call for the Spanish court, which would soon seek its revenge. A new plan for imperial reforms was drafted at court in 1765, and its implementation started immediately afterward and culminated in 1776–79. These were intense years, during which the Spanish reformers engaged in unusual teamwork and placed in the highest positions of government ministers who came with the king from Naples (before becoming Carlos III of Spain, in 1759, he was Carlos VII of Naples).⁴¹ In the telling of Céspedes del Castillo, this team of reformers was creative, optimistic, and bold, although tending toward a premature triumphalism.⁴² All kinds of policy issues were addressed: population and industry; trade and the royal treasury; the army and the navy; society, uses, and customs; urbanism; and so on. Of all of the measures dictated during this reform period, those affecting America’s defensive system had the most direct impact on the life and career of Bernardo de Gálvez.

Although Havana and Manila were returned to Spain, their temporary fall into British hands led to a revision of the system of defense of the American continent. Until the beginning of the eighteenth century, the main threat to Spain’s overseas possessions was attacks by pirates and privateers. But from this time on, Spain had to deal with attempts by several European powers to establish themselves in Spanish territories on the American continent. If at first it was enough to strengthen certain ports with castles or fortresses and to make sure that convoys of the fleet of the Indies (carrera de Indias) were escorted by heavy warships, now it was necessary to design a whole new system of defense: one based in what Julio Albi has called the triad of navy, fortifications, and the army of America.⁴³

This new army of America was made up of three distinct types of units: the ejército de dotación, the ejército de refuerzo, and the militia.⁴⁴ The ejército de dotación or cuerpos fijos (fixed corps) were military units permanently assigned to a place, hence their name. Almost all troops and most officers serving in them were Americans. They were the backbone of the whole defensive system. The ejército de refuerzo (reinforcement army) was formed by regiments or units based in the Iberian Peninsula and sent to America for a certain period of time through a system called the noria or waterwheel.⁴⁵ The militia comprised units of a territorial nature—that is, units were composed of troops recruited in the same place that they served and represented, at least in theory, all men between sixteen and forty-five who had an obligation to serve. The militiamen were locals who received weapons, uniforms, and a few training sessions, usually on Sunday mornings. They were instructed in little more than marching in close order and target practice. Both the officers and the troops in the militia were paid only when mobilized. Traditionally it has been thought that the militia’s military relevance was negligible, although subsequent studies have questioned this idea.⁴⁶ In fact, militiamen should not be considered soldiers but civilians. As Allan J. Kuethe says about the militia’s role in the defense of Havana in 1762, it was too much to ask for men without any systematic training and no knowledge of military discipline to behave as veteran soldiers.⁴⁷ Thus, the role usually assigned to militia units was to keep public order, and they were used for other duties only in case of emergency.

The new defensive system seemed to work reasonably well, but when Havana and Manila fell into British hands in 1762, the alarm sounded. How was it possible that two well-fortified cities, outfitted and equipped with theoretically sufficient troops, had succumbed to the enemy? Part of the answer was that the British had learned the lesson received when they had attacked Cartagena de Indias in 1741. The so-called miracle of Cartagena happened not only because of the courage of its defenders under the command of Viceroy Sebastián de Eslava and Admiral Blas de Lezo but also because the British troops were decimated by disease and local unsanitary conditions. In Havana, the British took advantage of their maritime supremacy in order to supply their troops, thus reducing the danger of diseases.⁴⁸ After the defeat, the Spanish governor of Cuba and other high-ranking officers were court-martialed.⁴⁹ The defeat could have been avenged, but to avoid a future humiliation it was clear that the ejército de dotación must be thoroughly reformed and the presence in America of the ejército de refuerzo augmented. In theory the task was easy, but its implementation was deemed very costly. Thus the Spanish government decided that the ejército de dotación would only reinforce essential cities, ports, castles, and strongholds, while the ejército de refuerzo and the militia would take up the responsibility of defending the rest of the American territory. To make the ejército de dotación and the militia into credible fighting forces, more than 700 men from several regiments from the Iberian Peninsula were sent to New Spain in 1764 under the command of General Juan de Villalba. Their mission was the formation and training of Mexican recruits, who were to compose up to nine militia regiments of infantry, cavalry, and dragoons.⁵⁰ Villalba’s work in New Spain went far beyond training the militia to a complete reform of the army. His plans were not finished during his posting and later would be continued by Bernardo de Gálvez during the 1780s.

The reform of the defensive system also touched the other two pillars of fortifications and the navy. Between 1763 and 1766 the number of military engineers in New Spain doubled.⁵¹ In Cartagena de Indias, the work undertaken during the time of military engineer Antonio de Arévalo received an important boost when new funds were funneled into it.⁵² In Havana, engineer Silvestre Abarca began drafting an ambitious project to prevent a recurrence of the 1762 failure.⁵³ Finally—and this list is not exhaustive—in Rio de la Plata, the engineers from Pedro de Cevallos’s expedition to Colonia were entrusted with the construction and improvement of different strongholds in the estuary.⁵⁴

As for the navy, it was ordered to speed up as much as possible the construction of new ships. The aim was to build thirty-six ships of the line (ships with sixty-four or more guns), eighteen frigates, ten jabeques (a small three-masted vessel of the Mediterranean), and seven galleys. Cartagena’s naval yards received contracts for six more ships, and the yards in Guarnizo got a contract for another ship and four frigates. In addition to these new vessels, a faster communications system was created between Havana and Coruña, one of Spain’s most important Atlantic ports.⁵⁵

For Bernardo de Gálvez, the most important consequence of the Seven Years’ War was that France disappeared from North America, transferring Louisiana to Spain, thus bringing Spanish and British possessions into direct contact.⁵⁶ Until that date, French colonies on both banks of the Mississippi River had served as a kind of buffer zone hindering the expansion of British colonies to the west. Now, however, Spain and England would share a long border along the Mississippi. In British hands, both East and West Florida constituted a spear dangerously pointed at Cuba and the Caribbean. An inevitable conflict was set up, a conflict in which Bernardo de Gálvez was to play a leading role.

2. New Spain

FIGHTING THE APACHE

In 1764, José de Gálvez, Bernardo’s uncle, was appointed visitor-general for New Spain. The institution of the general visit was not new.¹ Juan de Solórzano, arguably the most important Spanish jurist of the seventeenth century, traced its origin back to Genesis 18: 20–21: Then the Lord said, ‘The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.’² The legal framework for the general visit was established by the two main legal texts in force at the time, the Nueva Recopilación and the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias.³

The visit was, together with the pesquisa and residencia, among the institutions that the Spanish Crown used to oversee what today is known as the administration. The pesquisa investigated possible violations of the law by any person, not necessarily only royal officials. The residencia was an examination of the overall performance of a royal official at the end of his mandate. The visita sought full implementation by the administration of all relevant legislation regarding trade, finance, ecclesiastical matters, and justice.⁴ There were two kinds of visit: particular and general. A particular visit focused only on a certain aspect of the administration. This practice was established in 1345. The general visit, created by King-Emperor Carlos V in 1515, looked at all branches of government.⁵ At least that was the theory; in practice things were a bit more complex, depending on the powers attributed to a specific visitor. It could happen, for instance, that during a general visit the visitor-general would open a pesquisa if he found evidence of a crime or misconduct attributable to a royal civil servant.

On July 10, 1764, Francisco de Armona was appointed visitor-general for New Spain. Armona was one of the secretaries of the minister of war, the Marquis de Esquilache, who considered him skillful, honest, and committed to the service of the king, who will not spare any hard work or diligence or fatigue in his service.⁶ Although Armona tried to resist the appointment because of the difficulty and complicated nature of the mission that Your Excellency deigns to assign me in New Spain, he finally accepted it and left for America in 1764.⁷ But he died on September 26 that same year.⁸ It is not known if José de Gálvez was next in line or volunteered for the position, but he was certainly aware that although the post was difficult, it also represented an unparalleled opportunity to distinguish himself in the eyes of his superiors. Since the objective of the general visit was not only to check on implementation of legislation in New Spain but also to gather information on ways to reform its administration, José de Gálvez was supplied with far-reaching powers. In fact, they were much greater than those granted to previous visitors-general. His instructions were laid out in four separate documents. Two of them were drafted by the Council of the Indies, one by the king himself, and one by the Marquis de Esquilache.⁹ This last document was a secret instruction that had previously been issued to Armona before Armona’s brother delivered it to Gálvez upon his arrival in Mexico City. It is of great importance since it reveals Esquilache’s mistrust of New Spain’s viceroy at the time, Joaquín de Montserrat, Marquis de Cruillas. In this instruction José de Gálvez was specifically ordered to find out if it is true that he sells posts, hosts forbidden games at his home for the benefits he derives, grants pardons in exchange for money, delays the delivery of royal charters until the beneficiaries render him a service, [and] trades without paying duties through his nephew, D. Fernando Monserrat.¹⁰

JOSÉ DE GÁLVEZ’S ARRIVAL IN NEW SPAIN

José de Gálvez landed in Veracruz in July 1765. As soon as he set foot in the New World, he saw a significant discrepancy between the official reports the viceroy was sending back to Madrid and what was actually happening on the ground. For example, in the court it was believed that the tobacco monopoly was already in effect, but José de Gálvez realized with the utmost despair, that in that port and in all the kingdom, tobacco was freely traded.¹¹ He also noted the sorry state of the defenses of Veracruz, even though more than 2 million pesos had already been spent on their improvement.¹² On August 21 he arrived in Mexico City, where he found that not everything was as bad as he had expected. For example, the audiencia, or supreme body for administration and justice in the viceroyalty, was doing a good job, even under the suspicious circumstance that most of its members were locals: Despite the express prohibition by law, to give them [that is, the locals] credit, and in service of the truth, I must assure Your Excellency that I haven’t experienced the qualms I anticipated because of the kinships and alliances they have with the city’s most prominent families. When such cases [involving those families] come up, they simply excuse themselves from intervening in the procedures.¹³

José de Gálvez coped with the viceroy’s reluctance to cooperate with him by deftly manipulating Cruillas’s long-standing and open conflict with General Juan de Villalba, who, as was pointed out earlier, had been sent to New Spain to reorganize the army. Although allied with Villalba, Gálvez presented himself to the viceroy as a mediator between the two men.¹⁴ His strategy was to buy time until the appointment of a new viceroy. At court loud rumors were already circulating that Cruillas would be replaced by the general Carlos Francisco de Croix, Marquis de Croix.¹⁵ In fact, as early as November 1765 the marquis had been advised to be in the knowledge that the king was considering him for the position of New Spain’s viceroy.¹⁶ In any case, the situation must have been a tense one, and Gálvez’s patience was tested. On one occasion his difficulties with Cruillas burst into the open. Early in 1766, when Gálvez sent a deputy to carry out some kind of fact-finding mission, the viceroy believed that the tone of Gálvez’s report to him was not respectful enough and made no effort to hide his displeasure.¹⁷

Finally, on July 10, 1766, the Marquis de Croix landed at Veracruz.¹⁸ On August 23, in Otumba, the Marquis de Cruillas solemnly transferred his command to the new viceroy.¹⁹ From the beginning of his tenure in New Spain, Croix had a very good working relationship with José de Gálvez. The marquis was a French-born soldier who had been in the service of the Spanish Crown since the age of seventeen, and he enjoyed the king’s utmost confidence. José de Gálvez’s French connections would have been very useful in smoothing his relationship with the marquis. Certainly his command of the French language helped him a great deal, too. In a letter dated January 1767, the viceroy’s nephew, Teodoro de Croix, described José de Gálvez as an honest man, skilled, [who] gets along well with my uncle, because both are good men and loyal servants of their lord.²⁰ From the moment of their meeting until the end of Croix’s mandate as viceroy in September 1771, José de Gálvez would act as the right hand of the Crown’s highest representative in New Spain. He set out without delay to make changes that were impossible during Cruillas’s tenure. He plunged into frantic activity covering nearly all areas of the administration: taxes, the tobacco monopoly as well as income produced by the postal system and other excises; institutions such as the judiciary and the treasury; and whole economic sectors, including salt and mercury mining—the latter of vital importance to Mexico, as mercury was essential for the smelting of silver.²¹

THE EXPULSION OF THE JESUITS

Among the official correspondences that arrived in Mexico on May 30, 1767, an envelope sent to the viceroy by the Count of Aranda stood out. On it was a very explicit warning: Death sentence. Do not open this envelope until June 24 at nightfall.²² The warning was not exaggerated. It contained detailed instructions for the expulsion of the Society of Jesus from New Spain.

King Carlos III had signed the order on February 27, 1767.²³ Whole libraries could be filled with the studies written about the motives, consequences, and meaning of the Jesuits’ expulsion from the Spanish Empire. All of the studies agree only that it was a crucial event in the history of Spain. But here I will consider not the multiple causes or important consequences of the Jesuits’ expulsion but the important role that José de Gálvez played in its implementation in New Spain.²⁴ According to Eva María St. Clair Segurado, in New Spain (772,000 square miles) alone, more than 500 priests had to be apprehended. Many of them worked in solitary devotion, spiritually ministering to the Indians in remote missions of which only the Jesuits knew the exact location and where few Spanish settlers lived.²⁵

The general orders for the expulsion included an addition to the instruction that addressed the order’s banishment from His Majesty’s dominions in the Indies and the Philippines. This amendment, while stressing the importance of maintaining the simultaneity of its implementation, with uniform procedures to ensure its success,²⁶ left a wide margin for maneuvering by viceroys and governors, who were to proceed with vigor, caution, and secrecy, not trusting this subject but to those strictly concerned with it.²⁷ Viceroy de Croix shared the news only with his two most trusted assistants: his nephew Teodoro and José de Gálvez.²⁸

They worked tirelessly and in secret to prepare all of the details. On June 24, 1767, the command was given to the main public authorities. That same night all Jesuits in the capital were evicted from their residences. The next morning a proclamation was issued that concluded with a severe warning that perfectly sums up the philosophy of enlightened despotism: For once and for all, the subjects of the great monarch who sits on the throne of Spain must know that they were born to keep silent and obey, and not to question or discuss important governmental matters.²⁹

Anticipating difficulties, the viceroy ordered troops from various regions to collect in the capital city and in Puebla. The surprise played out in his favor, and Jesuits living in the capital were peacefully escorted to the port of Veracruz. It was not the same elsewhere in New Spain. According to Luisa Zahino Peñafort, six months after the implementation of the decree of expulsion, the situation in New Spain was very tense. Only a minority group formed by the viceroy, composed of certain prelates and officials and some members of the secular clergy, supported the banishment.³⁰

Contemporary engraving depicting the expulsion of the Jesuit order from the territories of the Spanish monarchy in 1767. The expulsion was done simultaneously throughout the Spanish Empire in a clockwork operation that tested the efficiency of the Spanish imperial bureaucracy to the limit. Under the command of Viceroy Carlos Francisco de Croix, José de Gálvez was put in charge of the complex operations that successfully apprehended more than 500 priests in the 772,000 square miles of the territory of the viceroyalty of New Spain. (Expulsion et embarquement des Jésuites des états d’Espagne . . . ; Bibliothèque nationale de France)

In December the viceroy warned the Crown in very clear terms that if the increase of troops I asked for to rule this country and its large and varied population was necessary before the expulsion of the Jesuits, now that they are gone, it is needed even more. Although from the outside everything seems peaceful, there is a general ferment everywhere. Caution demands that we take necessary measures while we still can.³¹

The viceroy’s fears would soon be realized in the rich mining areas of the country. According to José de Gálvez, Even before [the expulsion], those people were already uneasy for other reasons, and they were getting used to independence.³² The expulsion acted as a trigger for riots in San Luis de la Paz, Guanajuato, Pátzcuaro, and San Luis de Potosí, where the population hid Jesuit priests, raided the prisons, and attacked the authorities. The situation