Bernardo de Gálvez
Bernardo de Gálvez fought the British along the Gulf coast during the American Revolution and took Pensacola, and Americans mostly forgot about it. Born in 1746 in Málaga into a family that supplied Spain with colonial administrators — his uncle was minister of the Indies and his father viceroy of New Spain — he was a soldier from sixteen, was wounded fighting Apaches in northern Mexico, and studied military science in France. He became governor of Spanish Louisiana in 1777 at thirty-one. He was supplying the American rebels before Spain entered the war, running gunpowder, muskets, quinine and cloth up the Mississippi to the garrisons at Fort Pitt and to George Rogers Clark, which is the reason the western campaigns were possible at all. Spain declared war in 1779, and Gálvez did not wait for instructions. He took Manchac and Baton Rouge that autumn with a force of Spanish regulars, free Black militia, Acadians, Germans and Choctaw allies, took Mobile in 1780, and then attacked Pensacola, the capital of British West Florida. The fleet commander refused to enter the bay under the guns of the fort, and Gálvez sailed his own brig through alone to shame him into following. The siege ended in May 1781 when a shell hit the powder magazine. The campaign kept a British army occupied and secured the Gulf, which mattered at Yorktown five months later. He became viceroy of New Spain and died of fever in 1786 at forty. Galveston is named for him, and Congress made him an honorary citizen in 2014.
- Lived: 1746 CE – 1786 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: military_leader, colonial_governor, diplomat
