Spanish troops in a redoubt outside Pensacola, the besieged Capital of British West Florida, stacked their arms and waited for their midday meal on May 4, 1781. Enemy shot and shell soared over and around the partially finished works that sheltered the troops. As noon passed, few soldiers cared to risk looking out toward the British redoubts spitting shot and shell at them, and only a few unfortunates were on duty as sentries. It was then that 200 enemy soldiers poured into their works, driving back the Spanish at bayonet point. As one cannon after another slipped from Spanish hands, it seemed that the Union Jack just might remain flying over British West Florida.
By 1781, the Revolutionary War had evolved into an international conflict. France and Spain had declared war on Great Britain, and the war had reached Pensacola Bay on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Permanent European settlement at Pensacola began with a Spanish fort built in 1698. The third location of Spain’s outpost on the bay, the 1754 presidio called San Miguel de Panzacola, became the nucleus of the modern-day city of Pensacola. The Treaty of Paris signed in 1763 gave Spanish Florida to Great Britain in exchange for the return of Cuba; in turn, France ceded the vast territory of Louisiana to Spain.
