To Begin the World Over Again

by Matthew Lockwood

  Across the Atlantic, the priority was to protect Spanish colonies and secure the transport of the New World treasure so central to Spain’s imperial economy. In Louisiana, the new governor—Bernardo de Gálvez, son of General Matías de Gálvez, and nephew of José de Gálvez, Minister of Indies—was not content to wait. Gálvez was a direct man who bristled at the inaction and complacency he perceived among his compatriots in Havana. In 1779, Gálvez realized that with British forces still bogged down on the Atlantic seaboard and British positions on the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast unprepared and undermanned, there was an opportunity to strike first and retake former Spanish possessions in Florida, driving Britain from the Mississippi and the Gulf Coast once and for all. This would secure Spanish possession of the Caribbean coast, helping to secure Spain’s shipping from British depredations. It would also serve to strengthen Spain’s position in the post-war world, a world in which America was likely to be Spain’s primary foe in the battle for the continent’s south and west. Capturing the coast and securing the Mississippi was thus also a means of forestalling American ambitions in the region in the now likely event of U.S. independence. There was no time to waste, and so without official permission Gálvez struck out from New Orleans on his own authority to take Nanchac, Baton Rouge, and Natchez on the Mississippi before heading east across the Gulf Coast to drive the British from Mobile and Pensacola and make the Gulf a Spanish sea once more.23

  With the French fleet occupied in the Atlantic and Bernardo de Gálvez blazing a swath of destruction across the Gulf Coast, by the end of 1779 an increasingly aggressive Spain had become Britain’s most vigorous opponent in the Caribbean, the greatest threat to Britain’s imperial interests, and thus the new target of British designs. In 1779, the Spanish widened their assault on Britain’s empire with an attack on St. George’s Key off the coast of Belize. In October, British forces under Captain John Luttrell and Captain William Dalrymple responded in kind, storming the fortress of San Fernando de Omoa on the Gulf of Honduras and capturing several ships that had taken shelter in the harbor. The British would be forced to abandon the post in short order. The conquest of Omoa may not have had lasting strategic significance, but the capture of several million Spanish dollars inspired many to see the potential benefits of further assaults on the Spanish empire, the first inkling that, in spite of the anxiety caused by the Spanish threat and the appearance of British vulnerability, the war with Spain might in fact tip the balance of imperial power in Britain’s direction. In Jamaica, Governor John Dalling, a veteran of the Seven Years’ War who had served under Amherst and the martyred General Wolfe, and in 1779 the most senior British official in the region, devised a cunning plan to distract the Spanish war effort, secure Britain’s position in Central America, and sunder the Spanish Empire in two. Dalling’s sedate, corpulent appearance belied a fiercely ambitious nature, and he now saw that the entrance of Spain into the war could provide rich pickings for those who dared to seize them. He was inspired by the bold actions of English privateer heroes of a previous era of Anglo-Spanish conflict, Sir Francis Drake who captured Spanish treasure ships and Sir Henry Morgan who sacked the Spanish city of Granada on Lake Nicaragua before settling into a more legitimate position as Jamaica’s Lieutenant Governor. In consultation with Lord Germain, British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Dalling set about planning a military expedition designed to emulate those of his free-booting forebears.

  The plan was certainly ambitious. Dalling proposed to send a large British force from Jamaica up to the mouth of the San Juan River in what is now Nicaragua. The expedition would then sail up the river to Lake Nicaragua, where it would seize the Spanish settlements at Granada, Leon, and Realejo. Capturing this territory, it was hoped, would achieve a number of important ends. First, control of the Central American isthmus would sever the Spanish empire in two, dividing New Spain from South America. Second, access to Lake Nicaragua, only 12 miles from the Pacific, would provide Britain with access to the South Sea, allowing her to raid Spanish ships and settlements along the Pacific coast. Finally, a British incursion in this strategically important area would distract Spanish attention and resources from its bushwhacking campaign along the Gulf Coast.

  The decision to invade Nicaragua was also influenced by the rumblings of discontent that had begun to reach British ears in 1779. There were murmurs of growing anger in Spanish America, of a Spanish Empire on the brink of revolt, rumors that centuries of Black Legends and Hispanophobia conditioned Britons to believe. But there was substance to these rumors. Spain had gained Louisiana from France at the end of the Seven Years’ War, a small triumph in the wake of a dismal defeat. With possession of Louisiana, Spain added to its North American territories all lands between the Mississippi Valley and the valley of the Rio Grande. The contemplation of a vast continental empire in North America encouraged new efforts to expand and consolidate Spanish territory from the Mississippi to the Pacific. Conscious of Russian and British designs on the Pacific north-west, Spain sent an expedition under Juan Bautista de Anza from New Spain up the California coast to establish missions and strengthen Spanish claims to the region. A string of posts was created up the California coast to San Francisco, established in the fateful year of 1776.24

  Further east, efforts to solidify Spanish claims in the south-west had put Spain on a collision course with another expanding imperial power, the Comanche. By the 1760s, the Comanche had transformed themselves from a small tribe of hunter-gatherers on the northern frontier of Spanish New Mexico into the dominant power in the region. Control of the horse market allowed the Comanche to construct a sprawling trade network that provided access to the guns the Spanish refused to sell them, independent sources of other European trade goods, and a mobile threat of violence that held all, the Spanish included, in check. By the 1770s, the Comanche Empire, not the Spanish, had emerged as the foremost political, economic, and military power in New Mexico, Texas, and the lower Mississippi Valley, better connected, better armed, and more feared than their European rivals.25

  Alienated by Spanish efforts to secure its borders by allying with the Apache and stationing more troops in New Mexico, and lured by the intoxicating enticement of horses and slaves, the Comanche launched more than a hundred major raids on New Mexico in the decade between 1767 and 1777. In these lightning attacks hundreds of settlers were killed, or captured to be sold in a growing Comanche slave economy. Horses and mules, the source of Comanche power and wealth, were stolen in their thousands. Villages were burnt, livestock slaughtered, crops destroyed, and whole regions abandoned in the face of the onslaught. By the year America declared her independence from Great Britain, Spanish colonists lived “in such a state of terror that they sow their lands like transients and keep going and coming to the place where they can live in less fear.” Alejandro O’Reilly did his best to fend off the attacks, but by 1779, vast swathes of Spain’s North American empire had become desolate and devastated, its people having fled or living in thrall to new imperial masters.26

  The outbreak of war with Britain only made matters worse for the beleaguered, overstretched Spanish. With their empire already on the brink of collapse, men and money were now siphoned away from the warzone of the northern borderlands of New Spain for redeployment elsewhere, leaving New Spain, New Mexico, and Louisiana “exposed to the sacrifice of inhumanity and fury of the enemies.” An attempt was made to reach a peace agreement with the Comanche, but this too was scuppered in the name of the American War. To obtain and maintain peace, Spanish officials like de Anza in New Mexico—now charged with bringing the Comanche to heel—and Bernardo de Gálvez in Louisiana needed money to buy diplomatic gifts. But cost-cutting measures forced by the war with Britain ensured that such a vital and expected component of peace was sacrificed to interests elsewhere. The results were devastating. Comanche raids continued to grow in number and ferocity, peaking in 1780 and 1781, and leaving New Mexico and Texas desolate, captive territories. The population of Tex
as declined by 10 per cent by 1784, “at the moment not a foot of land is free of hostility. Its fruits of the field are despoiled, cattle ranches and farms that the happy days of peace had built up are rapidly being abandoned, and the settlers in terror taking refuge in the settlements, nor do they venture to leave the neighborhood without a troop escort.”27

  For the Comanche, it was a boom time. Flush with horses and mules from their numerous raids, the Comanche Empire could dictate terms to the Spanish, who still desperately needed animals for their campaign on the Gulf Coast. For the Spanish, the dream of a continental empire that had emerged after the Seven Years’ War had been dashed. The mirage of a Spanish Empire in the west had transformed into a Comanche Empire, with Spain’s border colonies reduced and subordinated to an Indian power. Spain’s ambitions for a North American empire had collapsed in the face of the American War and the Comanche Empire, and there were signs that Spain’s hold on her southern possessions was under threat as well.

  In Central and South America there were further signs of discontent. From James Lawrie, British superintendent of the Mosquito Coast, Governor Dalling of Jamaica had been informed of the local Mosquito Indians’ “fixed hereditary hatred for the Spaniards” and that the “the natives of the country were ready to revolt and awaited but for the prospect of success.” They would be sure to join in any British expedition against their detested Spanish overlords. Further afield, there were reports that the native people of Peru were deeply dissatisfied with Spanish rule and were nearing open rebellion. New Granada was becoming increasingly restless as well, and even in the north, in New Spain, it was reported that Spain’s hold on power was increasingly precarious. With Spain’s own empire on the brink of rebellion, Dalling and Germain hoped a British flame in Nicaragua would ignite a continent-spanning revolt, thus visiting on the Spanish Empire the very same plague of revolution that Spain was helping to foment in the British Empire. As a report from Havana printed in an American newspaper declared, the British intent was to do to Spain “only as France and Spain have done towards England, and her possessions in America.”28

  The time was ripe to strike a blow against Spain. In a letter to Secretary of State for North America Lord Germain, Dalling pleaded for permission to act. “Give me but the direction of a force, and that of now great extent,” Dalling implored, “and I’ll be answerable to give you the domination of Spain in this part of the world.” Benjamin Moseley, surgeon-general of Jamaica, concurred with the governor’s sentiment, reporting a British desire for “the glory of shaking Spain to her foundation.” For many in Jamaica and Britain alike, “the colours of England were, in their imagination, already even on the walls of Lima.” With such lofty dreams in mind, Dalling’s plan received vigorous support from London.29

  With official approval, an expeditionary force was gathered in Jamaica consisting of 300–400 regular soldiers from the 60th regiment and the Loyal Irish Corps, 200 volunteers from Jamaica, 60 sailors, and another 70 or so local Irish, African, Indian, and mixed-race volunteers. Overall command of the expedition was given to Colonel John Polson of the 60th regiment, but Horatio Nelson was selected to escort the expedition from Jamaica to the mouth of the San Juan River. The choice made good sense. Nelson was an ambitious, well-regarded junior officer, who had distinguished himself in his vigorous command of Fort Charles during the invasion scare of 1779, catching the eye of Governor Dalling in the process. More importantly, he was one of the select few who had direct experience of the Mosquito Coast. In January 1779, with the prospect of open war with Spain drawing near, he had been sent on several missions to the Mosquito Coast, including one to the British settlements on the Black River in Honduras to help ready their defenses, and to find and transport “King George,” the leader of the mixed-race community at Sandy Bay, to Jamaica, in the hope that an anti-Spanish alliance could be formed with King George in the likely event of a Spanish attack on the Mosquito Coast settlements. Nelson’s knowledge of the area and good relations with potential allies made him a logical choice to lead the convoy.30

  Led by Nelson’s frigate the Hinchinbrooke, on February 3 the convoy set sail from Port Royal en route to the Mosquito Coast. From the beginning, the expedition was plagued by delays and disasters that presaged the eventual fate of the mission. Two soldiers died of illness before they even reached the coast; another was fatally injured when one of the transports ran aground. When they finally landed at Cape Gracias a Dios, the inauspicious start was followed by worse. Their stop on the Mosquito Coast was supposed to be brief, a chance to rendezvous with James Lawrie, who had promised to muster a supplementary force of local British settlers, Mosquito Indians, and Africans. But when they arrived on February 14, Lawrie was nowhere to be found. The soldiers couldn’t stay on the ships indefinitely, so after days of waiting, Nelson had them disembarked. The expedition was forced to make camp on a swampy plain for nearly a month while they attempted to recruit local Indian and African communities with gifts and promises of plunder. These local recruits were vital to the success of the expedition, not only adding numbers to the ranks, but also providing crucial knowledge of the interior that none of the British possessed.31

  After days of waiting, on February 22, Lawrie finally arrived, though with only 300 men, not the thousands he had promised. The delay had caused other problems as well. The soldiers, camped on swampy, malaria-ridded ground, and forced to drink fetid water, were beginning to fall ill in significant numbers, with thirty or more already removed from active duty. On March 7, Colonel Polson gave up hope of recruiting more local volunteers and set sail for the San Juan River. Closer to their destination, Nelson was sent ashore to negotiate with the native people. The British still needed more men with experience of the terrain, and perhaps as important, more boats that could navigate the shallows and cataracts of the San Juan River. Nelson seems to have had the touch with the local Indians, and secured an agreement with them to aid the British expedition. But these further delays meant that the expedition didn’t reach the mouth of the San Juan River until March 17, 1780. The expedition had been planned for the winter to avoid the rains and disease that would accompany the warmer weather of spring and summer. Now they risked marching through mangrove forests, malarial swamps, and dense, unknown jungles at the worst possible time of the year. The delays would prove costly.

  Leaving his ship behind, Nelson and about fifty of his sailors and marines, had volunteered to lead the convoy upriver in a collection of smaller vessels and local canoes. But traveling up the San Juan River proved difficult. For starters, there were not enough boats to carry all of the guns, ammunition, and supplies, and the river itself seemed to resist British penetration. At that time of year, the river was treacherously shallow. Boats had to be guided through the twisting maze of sandy shoals by expert Indian guides, dragged through shallow spots, and hauled around rapids and falls. Progress was achingly slow, with Nelson’s convoy only making about 6 miles a day. The soldiers were of little use. They had continued to sicken since their arrival on the river, and few now had the strength to actively assist. It was the knowledge and the “spirited exertions and perseverance” of the Indians, combined with the efforts of Nelson and his sailors, that slowly pushed and prodded the expedition into the interior. The British were, according to Thomas Dancer, a surgeon assigned to the expedition, “greatly indebted” to the Indians.32

  After days of struggle, the expedition reached deeper waters as mangroves and swamps gave way to high banks and thick jungle. On April 9 the party’s Indian scouts brought news of the first Spanish outpost on the San Juan River, a “small horse-shoe battery” manned by 12–18 soldiers on the island of St. Bartholomew. The defenses themselves posed little threat to the invaders, but if the more substantial forts further upriver were to be taken before the weather turned ugly, surprise was of the essence. The fort would have to be taken quickly and quietly to prevent the entire region being set on high alert. Polson decided to send Nelson with a small detachment upr
iver under cover of darkness to attack the fort from the front, while a second party, led by Edward Despard, would circle through the jungle and attack from the rear, ensuring that none of the defenders escaped to bring news of the British advance to the Spanish forces upriver. Polson had already come to rely upon Nelson in most things, but the choice of Despard to lead the second party was inspired as well. Despard had been born in Queen’s County Ireland in 1750 into a prominent family with deep military ties. With five older brothers, all of whom had joined the army or navy, Despard’s path was seemingly preordained, and he wasted no time in following the family business, joining the army at the age of 16 in 1766. His first posting was to Jamaica, a death sentence for many soldiers, but a world Despard succeeded in making his own. He was a born soldier, well regarded by his superiors and quick to advance through the ranks. Mathematical gifts and a desire to rise further convinced Despard to join the engineers, and it was in this capacity, as “principal engineer,” that he had been selected to join the San Juan mission. The Irish engineer and the English sailor would prove to be the most active and daring officers during the San Juan expedition, and it was the healthy regard established in the brutal conditions of the Mosquito Coast that would lead Nelson to testify on behalf of his former comrade when Despard faced charges of treason in 1802.33