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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 304: LOSS OF THE BRITISH DOMINION IN FLORIDA.
By Edward Farr
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The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

LOSS OF THE BRITISH DOMINION IN FLORIDA.

Further south the British dominion was already diminished. Early in this year Don Bernardo Galvez arrived in the Gulf of Mexico with a considerable squadron, and a land force of 8000 Spanish troops. Before he could reach Pensacola he was overtaken by a hurricane, in which four of his ships were lost, with 2000 men on board; and he was obliged to run back to the Havanna. Solano, the chief admiral, had previously arrived at the Havanna, and being supplied with more ships and troops Galvez again put to sea. This time he succeeded in his designs. Pensacola, the last of the British fortresses, was reduced by him, and its fall completed the conquest of all Florida. The fortress was defended by General Campbell, who had a motley group of negroes, red Indians, foreign adventurers, and a few British regulars under his command; but, on the 9th of May, after his principal powder-magazine had been blown up, Campbell found himself under the necessity of capitulating. He had gallantly defended the place for two months, although he had not more than nine hundred and fifty men under his command, and had to sustain the siege against a fleet of fifteen sail of the line, and a land force almost ten times the number of his own troops. Thus Florida, which was one of the principal acquisitions made by the British during the last war, remained to the Spaniards.