Governor Folch—Barrancas—Changes in the Plan of the Town—Ship Pensacola—Disputed Boundaries—Square Ferdinand VII.—English Names of Streets Changed for Spanish Names—Palafox—Saragossa—Reding—Baylen Romana—Alcaniz—Tarragona.

Galvez remained but a short time in Pensacola after the surrender of the British. On their departure, he returned to New Orleans, the capital of his province of Louisiana.

In May, 1781, Don Arturo O’Niell was appointed Governor of Spanish West-Florida, and continued to hold the office until 1792. His successor was Enrique White, who was succeeded by Francisco de Paula Gelabert, whose ad interim tenure expired in 1796, by the appointment of Vicente Folch y Juan.

The events of any interest which occurred before that year, have been already mentioned in previous chapters. Folch signalized the early part of his administration by causing a town to be laid out, “between a quarter and half a mile” from San Carlos, that fort having been reconstructed between 1781 and 1796.^[48] This town was officially known as San Carlos de Barrancas, that being the original application to the locality of the Spanish word barranca, signifying broken, in the sense in which the term is applied to a landscape.

Folch’s purpose in laying out the town was, to substitute it for Pensacola, as the chief town and capital of the province. Of the real motives which prompted the design no information can be obtained. His scheme was defeated, however, by his inability to procure for it the royal approval; the probable result of an appeal to the King by the inhabitants of Pensacola.

He afterwards attempted an important change in the English plan, by laying off into blocks and lots, so much of the park, or public place as is now embraced in the area between Intendencia and Government streets. He also sold many of the lots, which the purchasers proceeded to improve. But, when Intendant Morales visited the town in 1806, he utterly disapproved of Folch’s proceedings, and refused to confirm the titles of the vendees. Morales’ subsequent conduct in the matter, however, shows that in refusing his confirmation he was influenced more by inimical feeling against the governor, than any just sense of public duty, for he himself afterwards granted the lots. This was the beginning of the mutilation of the great public place according to the English plan; a mutilation which was continued from time to time, until there was nothing left but the two small plats of ground known as Seville Square, and that of Ferdinand VII.

His administration in one of its earlier years was marked by one event for which his generation is entitled to credit. A ship of 800 tons was built at Caranaro, as the cove in which the Marine Railway is now situated was then known. Her name was Pensacola, and during the decade from 1870, she was still in existence, making voyages to and from Spanish ports. This was the first, and thus far, the last private enterprise of the kind by Pensacolians.

In 1804, the firm of William Panton & Co., was dissolved by the death of William Panton, who had been, as we have seen, so prominent a figure in the history of Pensacola, both under the British and Spanish rule. The business of the firm was thenceforward carried on under the style of John Forbes & Co.

In October, 1800, Bonaparte compelled Spain by the treaty of San Ildefonso to cede Louisiana to France; and France, in 1803, sold and ceded it to the United States. The United States, from the time of the purchase, claimed that it extended eastward to the Perdido, which was the eastern boundary of Louisiana in the days of d’Arriola and Iberville, and so remained until the cession, in 1763, to Great Britain of Florida by Spain, and of that portion of Louisiana south of the 31 parallel of N. latitude, east of the Mississippi, by France. The British, after that cession, in creating the province of West-Florida, extended it from the Chattahoochee to the Mississippi. Spain, on the other hand, after the treaty of Versailles, restricted West-Florida to the Perdido, she being at that time the owner of the whole of Louisiana. When, therefore, she ceded Louisiana to France, it was, as claimed by the United States, Louisiana beginning westward of the Perdido; for by contracting the West-Florida of the British, she, to that extent, extended Louisiana to its original limit, and left Pensacola within the boundary line tacitly established by the expeditions of Arriola and Iberville. Spain did not, however, consent to that construction. She claimed that British West-Florida was not embraced in Louisiana; and the question was not finally settled until 1819, when Florida was ceded to the United States. It was, from 1803, up to that cession, a cause of ill feeling and secret hostility on the part of Spanish officials at Pensacola, towards the American settlers in the disputed district.

Folch’s official term extended to 1809, and in the number of sovereign masters to whom he was subject during one year of his administration, his official life was remarkable. He was commissioned by Charles IV., who abdicated the throne of Spain in March, 1808. Upon his abdication, his eldest son, the Prince of Asturias, was proclaimed King, under the title of Ferdinand VII. On May 10, Bonaparte, having insidiously enticed Ferdinand to Bayonne, compelled him, by threats against his life, to resign his crown. On June sixth, of the same year, Joseph Bonaparte was proclaimed King of Spain, by no other real authority than the will of his imperial brother.

Never did any event arouse the patriotic resentment of a people, as Spain’s was aroused, by the ignominy of witnessing her lawful King deposed, to enable an adventurer to assume his crown. The French Emperor marched army after army into the country, to establish the new dynasty by overawing the people into submission. But army corps led by marshals, whose names had theretofore been the synonyms of victory, only intensified the spirit of resistance. As one man, from the shore of the Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay, the population flew to arms. Mountain and plain, hill and valley, rang with their battle cry as they hastened to their cities, towns, and villages, to be organized into military commands. The patriotic passion that fired every heart in the Kingdom, was shared by Spaniards in every quarter of the globe. Of the sympathy of Pensacola with the great patriotic movement in the mother country, there exists memorials in the names of some of its streets, and its chief public square.

It was in the fervor of that sympathy that the square received the name of the exiled monarch; a token of loyalty, of which, however, he proved himself unworthy by his conduct after his restoration to the throne. Never had a monarch a better opportunity of making his reign happy and illustrious, and never did one under such conditions make it a source of greater shame to himself, and misery to his people. He was not by nature a cruel, or a bad man; but he was neither firm nor truthful; two weaknesses in a ruler which may prove as fruitful a source of political crimes as a natural inclination to evil actions. In his first proclamation after re-ascending the throne, amid the enthusiastic joy of his people, he said, “I detest, I abhor despotism;” yet he, afterwards, lent himself to schemes which deprived Spain of constitutional government, restored the inquisition, and led to proscriptions involving the lives of some of the patriots who had contributed so largely to the restoration of his crown. The cruel and despotic policy of his advisers, at length, drove the liberal party into a widespread revolt, which would have resulted in his permanent dethronement, but for the intervention of the French, who, in 1823, enabled him by their arms to keep on his head the crown they had snatched from it in 1808.

But, if in the chief square of the town there be a reminder of a perfidious monarch, there are in some of its streets memorials of Spanish glory.

The English names of those streets were changed to the names they bear, at the time when the events with which the latter are associated occurred, and were designed to be commemorative monuments of the glory shed upon old Spain by the illustrious deeds of her sons. Upon their being monumental, must rest the apology for a slight retracing of their legends, which would otherwise be out of place in this book.

Palafox and Saragossa, or Zaragoza, are the first to arrest attention, as they are likewise suggestive one of the other.

JosÉ de Palafox y Melzi, whose ancestral seat was near the city of Zaragoza, was in 1808, a young officer of the King’s guards. He accompanied Ferdinand on his visit to Bayonne, which ended in the King’s abdication. It was by him the captive King sent the instructions to the Junta which was to exercise the sovereignty of the Spanish people during the exile of their monarch. Having performed that duty, Palafox went to Zaragoza, to join in the uprising of Aragon, of which it was the capital. Despite his lack of years and experience, his commanding presence led the Aragonese, full of patriotic ardor and warlike impulse, to choose him as their leader, and proclaim him Captain General of Aragon. In a short time he found himself at the head of ten thousand infantry, two hundred horse, and eight pieces of artillery.

Zaragoza, situated on the right bank of the Ebro, was, in 1808, a city of fifty thousand inhabitants. It stood in the midst of an alluvial plain, rich in its olive trees, its vineyards, and agricultural products. Its fortifications consisted of a brick wall not above ten feet high and three in thickness, pierced for guns, but few were in the embrasures. At intervals, however, there were convents, castles, and other solid stone structures. The universal uprising of the Aragonese, and the proximity of the city to the French frontiers, suggested it as one of the most important points for the French to occupy, in the execution of their designs to subjugate Spain. It was, accordingly, one of the first places against which a military force was sent.

In June 1808, Napoleon ordered Lefebvre to advance against it from the Pyrenian frontier. His advance was interrupted by three battles, in which the raw and undisciplined Aragonese peasants did not hesitate to attack the French column, but were in each instance driven back. Lefebvre at last presented himself before Zaragoza, with a demand for its submission. To that demand Palafox made the memorable reply, “War to the knife;” a reply that foreshadowed the terrific struggle by which those old brick walls were to be won by the enemy. In every attack the French made upon the gates and walls, between the twelfth of June and August fifteenth, they were repulsed with fearful loss. Lefebvre, discouraged by his successive failures to carry the place by storm, drew off his army to await the arrival of heavy artillery, to enable him to undertake a regular siege.

The second attempt on Zaragoza began in December, 1808. In the interval between this and the first attack the defences had been greatly strengthened, and a large supply of arms procured. As the French columns advanced towards the city there was presented a spectacle not often witnessed by one doomed to a siege. The entire population, men, women and children, were engaged in the work of preparing for resistance. None left the walls, but on the contrary the peasantry of the surrounding country rushed within them to share in the perilous defence. By the time the French took their position around the city, it had within it fifty thousand defenders, the most of them undisciplined and uninured to arms, yet animated with the spirit of their leader’s reply to Lefebvre’s demand of surrender.

The French force consisted of two army corps of fifty thousand men, commanded by Marshals Moncey and Montier, with all the necessary artillery and appliances for a siege. For fifty days after the French artillery began to play upon the city the conflict between the besieged and the besiegers was incessant. In that time, thirty-three thousand cannon shot, and sixteen thousand bombs had been hurled against the place. When a breach was made in the wall, immediately and under the terrific fire of the enemy it was closed up with sand bags. If at any point an entry was made within them by the besiegers, the stone houses became citadels for the besieged. If the defenders were driven from a room, a stand was made in the next one. Women and children shared in the labors and the perils of the fight. As a gunner fell at the feet of his wife, stricken down by a cannon shot, she promptly took his place at the gun. Napoleon, dissatisfied with the slow progress made by Moncey and Montier towards a reduction of the place, sent Junot to take the command. Becoming dissatisfied with him, he sent Lannes to bring the operations to a close. Pestilence, too, came to his aid as well as additional forces sent by the Emperor. At last Palafox was confined to his bed with the prevailing 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 exhausted. 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 depressed, and the besieged deprived of the presence 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 peasants were dismissed, and private property was respected. Fifty thousand human beings perished 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 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 succeeding age.”^[49]

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 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 inflicted 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 characters who are too great and generous to be moved by selfishness or envy, and was in consequence 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 January 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 strenuous and zealous defender in the cause in which we are engaged; and I shall always acknowledge 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 Aragon, 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 tenacity and devotion with which in all ages it has defended its homes. The city of that name, situated on the Mediterranean shore of Spain, was besieged by Suchet, and defended by General 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 innocence, attractive youth and wrinkled age, were alike butchered by the infuriated troops.”^[50]