Battle of Pensacola (1814)

Occurring across three days, from November 7 to 9, 1814, the fight for Pensacola followed on the heels of the Creek War and formed part of the broader Gulf Coast campaigns waged during the War of 1812. General Andrew Jackson brought his infantry to bear against a combined British and Spanish garrison holding the city, which lay within Spanish Florida at the time. Facing Jackson's advance, the Spanish defenders yielded the city, while British forces stationed nearby pulled out of the area.

Notably, this clash stands as the war's sole engagement fought on soil belonging to the Kingdom of Spain.

Background

After their defeat at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, which brought the Creek War to its close, numerous Red Stick Creek survivors sought refuge in Spanish West Florida, settling near Prospect Bluff.

Captain Woodbine of the Royal Marines established contact with the natives there. On May 20, various elders gathered aboard HMS Orpheus (1809) for talks, and the British supplied weapons along with other gifts afterward. Woodbine subsequently took up the post of British Agent to the Creek Nations. By June, word had reached Generals Flournoy and Jackson that the Orpheus had been sighted in the Apalachicola.

News reached Jackson that the British had come ashore on Spanish ground to supply arms to natives hostile toward the United States, and that Manrique had done nothing to stop it. On July 12 Jackson wrote to Manrique, cautioning him that "disagreeable consequences" would follow should these accounts prove accurate. Militia captain John Gordon was dispatched to Pensacola to meet with Manrique and collect intelligence, arriving there on July 20, 1814. Gordon's findings, dated July 29, went to Jackson. He recounted his conversation with Governor Manrique, to whom he had handed Jackson's letter that same day. Manrique apparently felt entitled to arm the Indians since Americans were attacking them on Spanish soil without his consent, and Gordon came away believing this arming would occur. Word had reached him secondhand that Spanish authorities were supplying the natives with weapons and powder, though he admitted he had witnessed none of this directly. His account also noted a British foothold at Prospect Bluff and included claims from others that the British had already delivered three thousand muskets earlier that year.

Manrique answered on July 26, insisting the landing had occurred on Indian land rather than Spanish territory. He denied knowledge of two chiefs being handed over to the Americans and condemned what he saw as American double standards, given that Spanish fugitives moved freely under American protection. He further criticized the Baratarian pirates under Jean Lafitte, who operated openly from American territory unmolested by authorities, causing harm to Spanish subjects.

Signs mounted that Jackson intended to move against Pensacola, and he pressed his advantage knowing Manrique's position was weak. His letter of August 24 accused Manrique of tolerating British agents within Pensacola and cautioned that Jackson would hold him personally accountable for any harm done to American citizens.

Manrique found himself in a difficult spot. He sought help from Havana, appealing to Captain General Juan Ruiz de Apodaca, but received none. He informed Apodaca that stopping a British landing was beyond his means. Rather than wait, he acted first, reaching out to the British in August 1814 and inviting them into Pensacola, a sharp departure from his prior strategy of holding a few defended enclaves while avoiding conflict with either power. British ships were seen arriving on the 25th and unloading the following day. Some have suggested Manrique expected a large British force to follow, with Woodbine and Nicolls merely the advance guard, and evidence suggests Nicolls had made such a promise to him. Talk of this spread through Pensacola, and Havana's newspapers claimed that 25,000 troops from Wellington's peninsular campaign had reached Bermuda that August. Jackson wrote to Manrique again on September 9, voicing alarm that a British flag flew over Pensacola despite Florida's supposed neutrality.

In a letter to James Monroe on September 5, Jackson suggested that capturing Pensacola and garrisoning it with American troops, alongside Fort Bowyer at Mobile and a post on the Apalachicola, would secure the region. Monroe replied on October 21, instructing Jackson to pursue diplomacy rather than force regarding Pensacola, and to instead ready himself for an expected British assault on Louisiana. Before this order reached him, Jackson had already written to Monroe on October 26 announcing his intention to attack and laying out his reasons.

On July 4, 1814, at Bermuda, the ships Carron and Hermes took abo

Battle

At first light, some 3,000 American troops under Jackson began their advance toward the city. To stay clear of cannon fire from the forts, they swung east and pushed along the shoreline, though the loose sand there made hauling the artillery forward a slow and difficult task. Despite these obstacles, the assault proceeded. In the town's center, the advancing soldiers ran into a defending line of infantry backed by a battery, but Jackson's men pressed the charge and seized the guns. By November 7, Fort San Miguel had fallen, its garrison of 268 men laying down arms. The surrender terms allowed Jackson's forces to hold the fort only until Spain could send reinforcements to secure it, a measure meant to stop any further British breaches of Spanish neutrality. Fourteen miles further west, Fort San Carlos still flew British colors.

Jackson intended to take that fort by direct assault the following day. Instead, on the morning of the 8th, Captain Gordon spotted a column of 2,000 troops accompanied by three cannon approaching the position. Before Jackson's men could reach it, the fort was destroyed in an explosion and left empty. The British then pulled out of Pensacola entirely, their ships sailing off together: the Seahorse of 38 guns under Gordon, the Carron of 20 guns commanded by Spencer, the 18-gun Sophie, the 18-gun Childers led by Umfreville, and the 12-gun Shelburne.

Among those Nicolls brought away was a substantial portion of the Spanish garrison, some 363 supernumeraries who had boarded the departing ships. They would not see Pensacola again until 1815.

Aftermath

On November 9, Jackson wrote to Manrique voicing his frustration that the British had destroyed Fort San Carlos, contrary to their assurances, and telling him that he would no longer offer American troops to help safeguard Spanish neutrality. Five days later, in a letter to Monroe, he laid out where things stood with what he called his planned strike on Pensacola, noting that the British and Spanish themselves had been responsible for blowing up the works. Since the operation lacked, in his words, the sanction of his government, he chose neither to rebuild Fort San Miguel nor to station American soldiers there, opting instead to pull his men back so they could guard the frontier. He also suspected that the fleet which had sailed from Pensacola's harbor might turn around and target Mobile, Alabama. While still at Pensacola, word reached him a week afterward confirming that a British force was gathering in Jamaica with New Orleans as its object, prompting him to head for Mobile, where he arrived on the nineteenth. Having left Pensacola in Spanish hands, he pushed on toward Mobile, and once there he found urgent calls waiting for him to rush to New Orleans's defense.

The engagement pushed the British out of Pensacola entirely and returned it to Spanish authority. According to Hyde, the Spanish residents of the town were outraged by the British demolition of Fort Barrancas and by the withdrawal of part of their own garrison. This brief seizure and occupation of Pensacola drove a wedge between the British and the Spanish while simultaneously winning goodwill for the Americans, a conclusion drawn both by Jackson and by a letter one Pensacola resident sent to his brother. Admiral Cochrane later told General Lambert that the assault on Pensacola had badly undercut the momentum needed for the planned move against New Orleans.

Losses on the American side were minor, roughly seven killed and eleven wounded, though Eaton's account lists two wounded officers and nine wounded enlisted men. Owsley records Spanish losses at fourteen killed and six wounded. Lieutenant Colonel Edward Nicolls, for his part, claimed the British suffered no deaths at all and believed the Americans had lost fifteen men with many more injured. The legacy of the units present at the Battle of Pensacola, remnants of the old 3rd, 39th and 44th Infantry Regiments, continues today through four active Regular Army infantry battalions: 1-1 Inf, 2-1 Inf, 2-7 Inf, and 3-7 Inf.