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James Giesler, "Francisco de Saavedra's American Revolutionary War, The Spanish Contribution to the Battle of Yorktown" (James Giesler, 2025)
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, everyone. I want to tell you all about another podcast I think you'll enjoy. College Matters from the Chronicle. College Matters is a weekly show from the Chronicle of Higher Education, and it's a great resource for news and analysis about colleges and universities. You'll hear sharp discussions with Chronicle journalists offering fresh perspectives on the latest salvos from the Trump administration and keen insights about how faculty and students are adapting to technological changes. College Matters also features incisive interviews with newsmakers, including recent conversations with Chris Eisgruber, Princeton University's president, and Rick Singer, who is best known as the mastermind of the Varsity Blues admissions scandal. Check out College Matters wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the New Books Network
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B
hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with James Giesler about his book titled Francisco de Saavedra's American Revolutionary War the Spanish Contribution to the Battle of Yorktown. Now that's a very helpful title because it tells us pretty much exactly what we're going to be talking about, but obviously to understand any contribution to any single historical event, there is an interesting before to get to that point. So we are going to talk about the Battle of Yorktown, but all sorts of things leading up to it as well. Obviously, the French contribution to the American Revolutionary War tends to be quite well known, less so the Spanish. And so that will be our focus today. James, thanks. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [01:34]
C
Thank you, Miranda. It's a pleasure to be here with you today.
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B
Could you start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
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C
So, yeah, my name is James Giesler and I decided to write this book as a result of a year that I took to study a master's degree in the University of Seville. I have a Spanish mother and I've been a history enthusiast for a long time. And during that master's degree, I ended up writing my dissertation on Francisco de Saavedra, who came up in a kind of oblique way with the Spanish contribution to the American Revolution. I looked him up and he'd written a diary, and the diary was fascinating. And I gradually, as I read more and more books around this war, I realized that he had been used as a source for many people, but didn't get much more than a paragraph or a page here and there. And a few articles have been written about him, but his diaries and memoirs, which I've sourced in Seville are absolutely fascinating, particularly during the, let's say, the executive end to the American Revolutionary War, the year of Yorta.
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B
Always very interesting to get to play with some primary sources that have lots of detail in them. Can you tell us more about these sources and anything else you've used to research this project?
- [03:09]
C
Yeah. So my master's dissertation, which was around 60 pages in Spanish, was based on the archive material I found in the Artivo de India, the Archive of the Indies, which is based in Seville, which was very useful to start. And I had almost too much information from there, but kind of when I finished my master's degree, I continued to go down the rabbit hole. He fascinated me. And I ended up going to the archive which holds all his records, all his writings, all his books, which is based in the U Faculty of the in Granada University. There I found some letters that corroborated all of what he was saying in his diaries, which I thought his diaries was telling me, this guy's important. But the diary didn't tell me what everybody else thought of him. And I started finding letters about him and letters to him, congratulate him on his achievements during this war, during his mission in Havana. And then I went to the Naval archives and the diplomat archives, diplomatic archives in Paris. And again, I found fascinating letters written between the Comte de Vergennes, the French foreign minister at the time, to his ambassador in Madrid, praising effusively Francisco de Saavedra's help in coordinating the campaign between the Spanish and the French in the Caribbean in 1781 and early 1782. And then on his way back from the Caribbean, Saavedra had stopped in France and become a senior advisor to the French court. He had gone to France because the only ship available was a French frigate. So he spent two weeks in Paris before going back to Spain. So there was a lot of material which had never been seen before that pointed a finger in his enormous ability in being diplomatic and bringing generals together and admirals and being the liaison, the senior liaison man in the background.
- [05:32]
B
Very interesting to get to dive into these archives and see what this kind of career behind the scenes looked like. But of course, before we get to that point, can you tell us a bit about Saavedra as a person, in terms of sort of his background and origins?
- [05:47]
C
Yes, he was from, let's say, poor nobility. In Spain, that's called a hidalgo. Don Quixote de la Mancha was a hidalgo. It means the son of something. You're poor, but you've got some history in your family. But he was a pretty talented person. And from a very early age he was sent to the school in Granada, where he eventually graduated with a doctorate in theology at the age of 16. Around 1762, that would have been. And from there he tried to get employment within the church. He applied for a canonry in the cathedral in Cadiz, but was rejected. He then went to Madrid to continue to try and find employment within the church, because that's what he'd been doing. But he gradually fell into the other good source of employment for people that were looking to go up in the world, which was the military. He had a bit of carousing that went wrong with one of his friends in Madrid. He was frequenting the house of two ladies that he said were on the slippery slip to prostitution. And quite amusingly, because of this noise and altercations that they were provoking, him and his friend were arrested by the local regiment, who took him to the headquarters of the Regimiento Imemorial del Rey, the immemorial regiment of the king. And he made such good friends with the officers there that the colonel in chief, the Count of Fernand Youniz, offered him commission as an officer. So he got wrecked into the army. From there he rose through the ranks and became someone in charge of the training of the people in that regiment. The soldiers and officers in that regiment came to the attention of the Inspector General of the army, the Count of O'Reilly, and he was soon sucked up into the campaign that Spain organized in 1775 against the Bay of Algiers. Algiers at the Barbary coast were source of corsairs that would continuously raid Spanish and Christian possessions in the Mediterranean. And so there was a lot of activity planned during 1775. Unfortunately, a very poor campaign, because it was called the Disaster of Algiers. Salvidder participated as an aide de camp to O'Reilly in organizing the logistics and the sailing of a huge fleet with 40,000 men on board that were disastrously defeated in one day and had to go back with tails between their legs back to Madrid. He then, during that campaign, has met a young officer called Bernardo de Galvez. De Galvez became key because his uncle would soon become the Minister for the Indies, a very powerful position and the eventual employer of Saavedra in the Ministry of the Indies during the War of American Independence. Jose de Galvez, who was the minister, soon would send out Bernardo de Galvez's nephew to be the governor of Louisiana as a means of, let's say, putting him in the frontline areas where he could be successful and rise through the ranks as a young officer. So he went from captain to colonel of the Louisiana regiment and governor of Louisiana. At the same time, Bernardo introduced Saavedra to the Minister of the Indies, Jose de Galvez, and was employed eventually as a senior secretary in the Ministry of the Indies. And this is where, two to three years later, he would volunteer for a mission in the Americas, because Spain was not being successful in its military campaigns in the Caribbean, because there was a lot of jealousy. The young nephew Bernardo was being, and let's say, disturbed in his attempted campaigns by not being given enough provisions by the Governor of Havana and other officers that were, let's say, jealous of a young man who was well connected, being in the plum position of being able to rise through the ranks through active campaigning. So that's how Saavedra eventually got sent out to the Caribbean with the commission or the position of a royal commissioner by Jose de Galvez, the minister, in order to help Bernardo de Galvez, who had many obstacles put in front of him, but also to accelerate the campaigns that the King and the court wanted to execute in the Caribbean.
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B
Yeah, so let's talk about those campaigns in a bit more detail right now that we have a sense of kind of our individual and his place in all of this. What, what were the kind of big picture goals of these campaigns? What was Spain wanting to do in the Caribbean with the sort of American Revolutionary War? What were the goals on a more strategic level for Spain to get involved?
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C
Yeah, so the first thing is to deal with France. France wanted to disturb England as much as it could. It had lost out in the previous war between these powers, the French and Indian War, it's called in North America, or the Seven Years War in the United Kingdom. And France had lost all its North American colonies. So France entered the war in 1778 on behalf of the Americans as an official ally. Now, Spain didn't really see the upside to helping lots of rebellious colonies in the thirteen colonies, as they were called, the eventual United States. It itself had colonies in North America. So what was its interest in fostering the idea that subjects in colonies could rebel against their master, the King? So things were pretty finely balanced in the preamble to Spain's entry to the war. But eventually, France, in its first year of war against the British, let's say 1778 to early 1779, was found to be lacking, or found itself to be lacking against the British. It was worried that it could no longer sustain a long war against the British. Their navies were fairly matched. So the key number was the number of ships of the line the navies had. These are the largest warships available at the time. France and the UK were finally balanced. But Spain had the third largest navy in the world with around 60 ships. And the combined French and Spanish navy would achieve a total around 120 ships of the line versus 90 ships of the line that the United Kingdom had in around 1779. So it was desperate, France was desperate to get the Spanish in, to be able to try and overwhelm the uk The Spanish were still reluctant, but they managed in the negotiations to extract concessions from the French. So the concessions were, okay, we help you achieve victory over the Americans or campaign vigorously against the Americans, but we want your help in getting back some of the areas and territories we've lost to the United Kingdom over the last hundred years or so. So one of them was Gibraltar, which had been lost in 1704. There was Menorca, the island in the Mediterranean. There was Pensacola in West Florida, also East Florida, the Bahamas, and British settlements in Central America, where Logwood was available. And lastly, and the most important one was Jamaica, which had been taken by the British in 1655. This long list was part of the deal to get Spain in. The Spanish said, we'll help you with your allies, the Americans, and you help us with this. So that was the deal. And Spain joined in or declared war in June 1779.
- [15:05]
B
Okay, that's very helpful to kind of lay out the foundations of sort of how we get to this point of Spanish involvement within this agreement. Then what was Saavedra's role and how did his mission sort of initially unfold to achieve it?
- [15:18]
C
Well, for the first year, let's say, he was in Madrid being a secretary to Jose de Garvez in the Ministry of the Indies. He was in charge of all the war logistics and preparations and correspondence during this time. So this first year, not much in terms of action, but he did volunteer a couple of times, and eventually Jose de Garvez, in the middle of 1780, about a year after the Spanish had joined the war, got frustrated that the governor of Havana and other authorities in Havana were not helping his nephew, Bernardo de Garvez, as governor of Louisiana. Garvez the nephew, had been tasked with taking Mobile in Alabama and retaking Pensacola in West Florida. But his forces were meager, and he couldn't achieve this and had some very successful campaigns against minor forts in the Mississippi area, against the British and against Mobile. But he didn't have enough men and provisions Provided he had attempted twice to take Pensacola. And during these attempts, his uncle, Jose de Garvez, got more and more frustrated. So he went to the King and said, I need to send someone who has your authority as a royal commissioner to go and sit on the Havana war council, called the Junta de Generales, and tell them what they need to do or else. Or they will be replaced or will be, you know, and return in disgrace for not helping the King's efforts. So Saavedra was sent out to Havana as a royal commissioner. He departs in July 1780, but doesn't actually get to Havana until January 1781. During that time, he's almost been killed by a huge hurricane. That was the great hurricane of 1780, which killed about 26,000 people all over the Caribbean and raked a lot of navy facilities for a lot of the belligerents there. And after the hurricane, he gets captured by the British. So he ends up in Jamaica meeting all the British high command because they see that he is a man of importance. But during this time, he manages to convince them that he's not in the army, he's not in the military. He is on a commission on behalf of the Ministry of the Indies to improve silver mining in Mexico. Now, this is a civilian role, so the British agree to let him go. He gets on a cartel ship that ends up taking him to Cuba, which is about 80 miles north. And he ends up in Havana in January 1781, which is the beginning of the cooperation between the French and the Spanish that would continue through until April 1782, when Saavedra departs back to France.
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A
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- [19:37]
B
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A
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B
This coordination, I think, is really interesting. Can you tell us more about what the sort of goals of the cooperation was and then how it actually went?
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C
Well, if you can imagine, they didn't have radios or telephones in those days. The reason Saavedra was sent out to knock heads together, as it were, was because, you know, a letter from Madrid to the Caribbean at best would take a four month round trip, assuming it gets there on time. Sometimes during the war they would be intercepted and so things would take a long time. So authorities in Havana would kind of do what they wanted in the general direction of what the court would say, but they wouldn't necessarily implement things vigorously if they didn't want to. So that was the source of the lack of cooperation. So there had been many instructions between the Spanish and the French courts that their forces should cooperate out there, but nothing had actually been achieved. So when Saavedra arrives, there's a little squadron of French ships that have been in Havana careening themselves, interestingly enough, in Havana. Havana was the only major shipyard in the Caribbean. It was a full shipyard that could build and repair. The French and the British didn't have shipyards, they had repair facilities. So Havana was actually a city of 80,000 people which channeled all the silver that came from the Mexican mines. And so it was a very strategic place. So in Havana, Saavedra and the French squadron under Montay start cooperating the Spanish fleet, which has 17 ships of the line in Havana at the time. And the four friendships of the line would be cajoled into cooperating together by secret communications between Saavedra and the command of the Chevalier de Monte. And they would form a little private cabal that would nudge the Havana War Council into becoming more belligerent on behalf of what the first and most important campaign was the taking of Pensacola, where there was an army of 1500 men under General Campbell, the British army. And this task was very important for the Minister of the Indies, Jose de Garvez. It was the main battle that he wanted and the first battle that he wanted to be achieved. Because his nephew, if he was successful, would rise in the ranks and be ennobled. So this was the first task that was carried out. This takes Saavedra about two to three months. Pensacola Falls in May 1781, as a result of Saavedra's efforts to provide much more aid to Bernardo de Galvez. Bernardo de Galvez had gone over to pensacola with around 3,000 men and one ship of the line and two frigates as escorts and his troops. Saavedra realized that this was not enough, and Galvez was struggling in trying to take Pensacola. So Saavedra organizes in the background also with Monte, a second expedition, which ends up sending another 17 ships of the line to Pensacola and another 3,000 men. This joint force gets together and eventually overwhelms the British. So Pensacola Falls in May 1781.
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B
And with all of Saavedra's, like, deep sort of entanglement in making all of this happen, what does he think about, for example, the French and British war efforts? Like, he's incredibly well placed to sort of have a perspective on what they're doing, what they're trying to do. What sorts of insights do we get, for example, from his diaries?
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C
Well, that's what I found so fascinating that no one had seen all this information lying in plain sight and that it needed a thorough working, because I took Saavedra's diary as almost like a point of view or overview, an eagle flying over the battlefield and the Caribbean who saw everything, because he spoke to all the main generals in the Caribbean. He had also, very interestingly enough, had had a ride on a British frigate after being captured. He also rode on French ships and Spanish ships. He could see the different qualities. He very much respected the discipline of the Royal Navy, which was the preeminent navy in the world. They were overwhelmed in this war, lost control of the sea. The French were very aggressive, although they were slightly slacker and had problems in their officer class. The Spanish had very good ships, but culturally they were not aggressive. They had developed a defensive mentality because over the centuries, British pirates, corsairs and navy ships had been attacking all the widespread Spanish possessions, which Spain was only a country of around 8 million people. It didn't have enough men to do everything. So a defensive culture had developed. And one of the tasks that Saavedra succeeded in was making the Spanish navy go out on the offensive. It had been very timid. So when the French and the Spanish got together in Pensacola, that delivered a huge victory. But going on from that, the next task the Saavedra was given by a letter from the Ministry of the Indies, was that after Pensacola, he should go and deal with the French generals in Saint Domingue. Saint Domingue is high tea nowadays. It was the wealthiest sugar colony in the Caribbean, and this is where the French fleet and army would be based prior to the taking of Jamaica. That was the intended aim of basing fleets of men in high tea. High teas probably a day or two sailing from Jamaica downwind, so you could fall on Jamaica quite quickly with the wind putting you quickly to achieve surprise. So that was basically the setup. And Saavedra was tasked with going to Haiti and meet with a French fleet that was coming from Brest under Admiral or Lieutenant General De Grasse. This fleet had been tasked with not only campaigning in the Caribbean, there was a war in the Caribbean at the time, which consisted of, let's all take each other's islands, because even if we don't keep them, they are bargaining chips eventually in any peace negotiations. So there was a war of taking islands. But the main task of De Grasse, apart from taking islands, was during the summer season, which was the hurricane season in the Caribbean, to sail north in aid of Generals Washington and General Rochambeau, who commanded a small. A French army who'd been sent there to help the Americans in their land campaign against the British in North America.
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B
All right, that's definitely helpful to understand that sort of perspective. Do you want to tell us more about kind of the efforts he went to to make these things work? I mean, you've talked about the kind of banging heads together aspect and the sort of analytical perspective he brings. You also talk in the book that he does a lot of fundraising, right?
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C
Yes. And this is a really key element that's not so well understood. And I'll break it down into maybe three areas. First of all, why was money so important? First of all, the North Americans didn't have any money. North America was a barter economy. They would trade whatever they produced. Tobacco, wheat, they would sell it to the Caribbean in exchange for molasses to make rum. Not much money was changing hands. On the other hand, Spain, the Spanish peso, which had several names. The real de Ocho, or the piece of eight in English. The Spanish dollar was the world's first, let's say, globalized currency. It was a piece of silver that weighed about an ounce. Other countries had the same currency, the thaler in Germany, the crown in England or the ecu. But the Spanish had the advantage because they had the world's largest silver mines in Mexico and in Potosi in Bolivia. But the Mexican mines would be key to funding the North Americans and the French during this war because all the silver went via Havana. So during the beginning of the war, the Americans had, because of a lack of money, had started paying everybody in paper dollars. They had launched the Continental dollar at one Continental paper dollar to be exchanged in the future for one silver dollar. But as the silver dollars failed to turn up over the next two to three, four years, the exchange rate went from 1 to 1 to 1 to 12,000. The paper dollar was worthless, basically. So the American army eventually would end up marching and confiscating supplies, paying in what was called commissary notes. And these commissary notes promised to pay the farmer whose produce had been requisitioned in worthless paper money at some future date. The effect of this was more often than not that when the Continental army or other campaigning regiments were on the march, farmers would hide their supplies. So ill equipped North American soldiers and underfed became a problem. In early January 1781, George Washington had experienced mutinies on the Pennsylvania line. And his troops, which were based outside New York, harassing the British, were very unhappy. Some people had in fact been executed. This actually would be repeated on his march to Yorktown from New York a few months later in the summer, because he again had a mutiny in Philadelphia on the way down by some officers, by some men who had refused to carry on marching. They hadn't been paid in years, basically. So that's one reason why the Spanish silver was important. The second one is the French. The French had a very wealthy colony in the Caribbean. They produced a lot of sugar, but the sugar was normally sent back to France and the planters would be paid in France and have the silver banked in France. So there was not much specie silver specie in Saint Domingue. So Savadra gets sent. He meets with General De Grasse. General De Grasse arrives with a great fleet of 20 ships of the line, more men, more supplies, and with orders to Quen and Payne. But he's been told to pay everybody for his supplies in French treasury notes. These treasury notes, you get given the treasury note and you've got to go back to France to get it off the treasury, so it's not real money. So he tries to borrow money off the French planters, and the French planters provide zero. So Saavedra, during his meetings with Zagras, provides or agrees to provide half a million silver pesos, half a million silver dollars and some other French requests for repairing the fleet, he doesn't have the money there. So they all have to go back through Havana on the way up to North America to claim the money. Now I need to backtrack a little bit for two weeks. I've explained the money. But during the two weeks that they're in Saint Domingue, De Grasse and Saavedra agree a key document which is in the French archives and also the Spanish archives. It's called the De Grasse Saavedra Convention, which is a campaigning agreement for the next nine to 12 months of how the Spanish and the French will collaborate militarily in their campaigns. The first piece is that Spain will help the French to go in full force with 28 ships of the line to North America. This allows them to achieve local superiority in ships. The British have got around 20. And the Spanish will also send some ships to the line to protect the French possessions in Saint Domingue from any British attacks from marauding British naval vessels, interfering with commerce, et cetera in the Caribbean. So that's one element. So de Grasse, under this agreement, is able to go in full force. He also borrows some regiments from Saint Domingue to take an army of 3,500 men to bolster the eventual campaign in Yorktown. And lastly, on his way north, they sail past Savannah and they pick up half a million silver pesos, which couldn't be found anywhere else in the Caribbean. Saavedra takes an afternoon and he goes and appeals to the Treasury Regiment Treasuries or the treasurers of the Regiment Savannah, and to the wealthy people in Havana who provide literally half a million silver pesos that couldn't be found anywhere else in one afternoon. So the French fleet is able to go really quickly to North America and occupy the strategic bay of Chesapeake Bay, which is where an army headed by Cornwallis, a British army of 7,000 men, had ended up waiting either to campaign or to be taken aboard a Royal Navy fleet to evacuate them. That never happens because the French arrive and blockade the entrance to the bay. So during this campaign, the English realize they've been wrong footed and they send a fleet down from New York with 19 ships of the line and they engage with the French. De Grasse sails out and defeats the British in what's called the battle the Second Battle of the Capes in North America, or the English call Battle of the Chesapeake. The British are routed and from then on, it's really game over for this army of 7,000 men at Yorktown that have been surrounded on land by two armies that have been sent down from New York. The French army and the Continental army under Washington. So what happened in Yorktown? There was a siege surrounded by 18,000 men, half of them French, half of them Continental army. Half of the French men had come off the fleet. All of the money had come off the fleet. So you can just see by these numbers that overwhelmingly there is no argument to make that the Continental army could have achieved this victory without French overwhelming military aid financed by the Spanish.
- [37:17]
B
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C
Well, yes, because, you know, your town leads to the British Parliament deposing Lord north, who was the prime minister at the time. The Parliament eventually votes to try and defeat the North Americans with military means. So the war is essentially over in North America, although it's kind of developed into kind of a weird situation where nothing happens or nothing big happens for about a year and a half until the official end of the war. We're talking about October 1781, Battle of Yorktown, the war. The initial peace treaty is signed in January 1781 and the final full treaty signed in Versailles in September 1783. So there's another year and a half of the war that actually carries on outside of North America, which is critical to the negotiating parties that will negotiate towards the end of 1782. So what happens? The British abandoned their attempt to submit the Americans militarily. And what happens is that the European powers then go all up against each other in the Caribbean. Even for Britain, North America, although a big territory, was not nearly as interesting as, for example, the income that Jamaica produced from its sugar. And the Jamaica lobby in the Parliament, I think was around 25% of the MPs. So the British stop overstretching their navy and gather a huge force to what they know will be an attempt to thwart an attempt to take Jamaica. Admiral Rodney is sent out with a huge fleet, around 36 ships of the line, all repaired and fully manned and fully stocked, to try and disrupt the joining of the Spanish and the French in the Caribbean. We're talking early 1782. De Grasse has left North America, he's gone back to the Caribbean and he's eventually under the De Grasse Saavedra Convention, going to end up in Hayti, or Saint Domingue as it was called, then joining up his 34 or so ships of the line with around 11 Spanish ships of the line, taking them to around 45 ships to the line and a combined army of around 15, 20,000 men to have a go at Jamaica. So the British are well aware of this. By this stage they're aware that someone called Saavedra is around. They've heard his name, they've probably intercepted correspondence. There were spies everywhere as well in France and in the uk. So the Spanish and French are gathering in Saint Domingue, which is a two day sailing to the west from, from. Sorry, they are beginning to concentrate in Saint Domingue. But Saavedra has been gathering his forces and waiting for supplies in the Windward Islands, in Fort Royal, in Martinique. And the English fleet was sent out by the English under Rodney arrive in Sav Lucia. Now the British had taken Saulucia crucially earlier in the war as a means of snooping on the French. Saint Lucia and Martinique are about 25 miles apart, so the English are unable to intercept the supplies that come in for De Grasse. But when De Grasse begins to sail northwards to join the gathering forces in Saint Domingue, the British spy on him and what happens is the largest naval battle of the 18th century takes place in some islands called the Saints. The Battle of the Saints involves around 33 French ships of the line and 36 British ships of the line. And it's a resounding victory for Rodney, who destroys and captures around seven or eight French ships and captures France's most famous at the time and aggressive Admiral De Grasse. So although the French still had enough ships combined with the Spanish to probably have another go, they had been decapitated. So there's a lot of confusion in Saint Domingue as the French defeated ships come in amongst the war council there. So this was a huge battle and it changed the direction of the war. It removed the impetus of the campaigning from 1781. There'd been Pensacola and then there'd been Yorktown, and Jamaica was going to be the next. So what happens is no one senior enough has got the authority or the grit to say, let's carry on with what we've got. So they decide to send Saavedra back to France as an emissary and explainer in chief of what's happened. This is where Saavedra's role as advisor in the French court, where he meets all the key ministers, the war minister, the navy minister, the foreign minister. He meets Louis xvi. News has arrived of this fantastic person called Saavedra. From the last year. De Grasse had written how Saavedra had bent over backwards to provide the French with everything they needed. And this news has traveled, so he's treated with exceptional respect. Sauve spends a couple of weeks in France before he then travels on with fresh correspondence, fresh plans from the French that he will present to his own ministers and the king. And this takes us into the end of June 1782. What happens then is that the courts will continue to threaten Jamaica. But what happens is there's another defeat. The Spanish try and take Gibraltar. They besieged Gibraltar for the last three years, which has been a huge headache for the British, because it was one of the reasons the British fleet was divided and unable to achieve dominance on the seas. They had to continuously resupply Gibraltar. So this siege has been important. But there is a. A climax, let's say, in this siege in which the Spanish and the French are heavily defeated in September 1782. And by that stage, they've been defeated at the Battle of the Saints. They've been defeated in this final grand assault on Gibraltar, and they have Jamaica left as the main bargaining chip. So Jamaica again becomes the next operation to be done. What happens is that the Spanish and French continue to gather forces, this time in Cadiz. They assemble around 40 ships of the line. They assemble men. But the French are really half hearted by this stage. They're using this threat to encourage England to come to the negotiating table. The British are exhausted as well. Everybody's exhausted by this war financially, and they all want to end it. So negotiations have been carried on in secret between the French and the English. Also, the Americans have been sending negotiators to Paris all these negotiations were taking place in Paris and in late 1782, to the surprise of the French in this parish, and the Spanish, the Americans agree. Peace with the British or a preliminary peace with the British. Now, this puts a panic into the Spanish and the French, because if this is signed and done, it will leave the Americans potentially out of being a belligerent against the British and leave the Spanish and French alone. So this concentrates everybody's minds and leads to horse trading of islands. The Spanish are not able to take out Gibraltar back, but they're able to keep Menorca, which they had taken. They're able to keep east and West Florida. And the French are more or less left untouched in their possessions in North America. And a preliminary peace is signed in January 1783. So that pretty much is what happens. Not much in North America, but a lot of horse trading to end the war.
- [47:45]
B
Now, obviously that is the focus of the book, focusing on Saavedra in and around the American Revolutionary War. But perhaps to conclude our discussion, can you give us just a brief overview of what he got up to after this treaty?
- [47:56]
C
Yeah, he had a very interesting second stage and unfortunate because of what happened too. First of all, he got sent to Venezuela as Intendant of Caracas, which was like a local finance minister combined with the person that was the governor. So the intendant was the person that really ran the colony. He was very successful there. He expanded the population, he expanded trading, and is seen as. As a savior of Venezuela by some in later years. He spends four years there, but goes back to Madrid in late 1788 because what had happened, his best friend, Bernardo de Galvez, who by that stage become Viceroy of Mexico, he dies of, I think, amoebic dysentery. The uncle de Galvez, he also dies of old age. And this Galvez clam, which had in the background vertebrated the Spanish campaigns, disappears. So Saavedra's left in the position that he goes back to Madrid. And Carlos III, who had been a very successful king for 20 years, also passes away in late 1789. But as a result of his reputation, his son, the new king, Carlos iv, makes him a counsellor of war on the Royal Council. He spends around seven or eight years quietly making reports and minding his own business. He doesn't like intrigues in the court. But what happens in 1789 is that the French Revolution starts and eventually the French king will be executed, with which absolutely blows apart what had been the Bourbon alliance. At the end of the day, the two dynasties were from The Bourbon family, the Spanish and the French. And this has been the underpinning of the French Spanish alliance during the 18th century. So on the execution of the French king, suddenly the English and the Spanish are France. But it's not great for the Spanish because the French invade northern France. And due to a lot of political turmoil in the court of Madrid between pro French and pro English factions, eventually the pro French faction achieves control. But Spain is then cut off from one of its major sources of finance, the Spanish silver coming from South America, because the Royal Navy is preeminent. And so in all of this chaos, Saavedra's talents are well known. And at some point, because of the chaos in the court, he is made finance minister and prime minister very briefly, and he attempts to manage the chaos. But unfortunately the two technocrats that are put in place, which is Saavedra and another guy called Hovyllanos, the factions that are pro French, it is said that they are poisoned. No one has ever had any proof, but both Hovaianos and Saavedra mention it. There have been big biographies on hovaijanos written that dedicate a lot of time to this. But what happens is that they're too ill to continue and are. Saavedra self banishes himself from Madrid in 1799, and Javaijanis is actually incarcerated on the island of Mallorca because he put up much more resistance to being removed. So during this time, chaos reigns, you know, the Treaty of Ames, the peace, the rejoining of the war, the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, where the Spanish fleet is completely or effectively destroyed. And during this time as well, Napoleon has taken over France from the revolutionary regime. And in 1808, France invades Spain and deposes the King. And this is a famous painting by Goya called Dos de Mayo, where the French start executing people in Madrid. They take Madrid, take the king. The King and his son are put in custody in Bayonne in France. But the Spanish people revolt against this situation and it becomes very difficult for the French to control Spain. So the north part of Spain is taken and so is Madrid. But the French want to continue south and take Seville. As the French army begins its march down south, Saavedra, who is retired and not very well, health wise, because of this poisoning that he had suffered seven years, eight years earlier, is summoned by the people of Seville to become president of what was called the Junta of Seville, a council made up of the leading lights of Seville. And amazingly enough, because of his experience in logistics in the Caribbean. And in the campaign against Algiers, he's well known as an incredibly effective administrator. He raises from scratch an army of around 28,000 men. Around 12 of them are regular Spanish troops who were in a garrison near Gibraltar, but the rest are volunteers. Some of them are even bull herders that go around with lancers. You know, the whole thing was absolutely amazing. So this army is raised in Seville. It goes to march northeast to intercept the French army of around 24,000 regular troops and deliver the first defeat in Europe that a Napoleonic army had experienced in the entire Europe. Battle of Bailen, it's called. And the Spanish resistance and will to fight against the French grows as a result of this. There will be another four or five years of war beyond this before the French are finally defeated. The Duke of Wellington will also be part of the picture. He lands in Portugal and becomes part of the campaigning against the French. But the French are eventually defeated and thrown out of Spain in 1813, Saavedra, during this time, has been regent of the Spanish court. Briefly. In the only town that wasn't occupied by the French, there was a siege of Cadiz in southwest Spain. That went on for three or four years. He's been regent and a minister there. And he then retires from this brief role and goes to North Africa, to the Spanish small city of Ceuta, where he spends his time until the French leave in 1814. He then goes back to Seville, where he passes away in 1819 at the ripe age of 73. Wow.
- [55:44]
B
Well, lots going on there and lots of detail that you were able to figure out from the diaries and the other sources. So thank you for taking us through that. Have you found another diary or something that you're investigating next? Now that this book is done, is there anything you're currently working on you want to give us a sneak preview of?
- [56:02]
C
Well, as you know, history research gives you or yields or doesn't yield. But I am very interested in the age of the Pacific discoveries, which, as we know in the uk, Captain Cook is the most famous British navigator. But in fact, in the 1760s, during which Captain Cook was sent out to map the Pacific, there were several British expeditions sent out by the Admiralty under Anson and Fay, had captured Manila and many maps of the Spanish. And this was the intellectual property of the day. And what I'd love to find is some smoking gun where I can see how the British, who took over the narrative because they made their discoveries famous through Captain Cook, used Spanish maps that had been in Manila for hundreds of years. The Spanish colony of the Philippines had had continuous contact with western Mexico in the Manila galleon had had an annual trip for 250 years. So the British I think used Spanish maps And the accuracy of British maps were not only compounded by the incredible navigational skills of British captains, particularly Captain Cook but also by the invention of the maritime chronometer. The C clock allowed for navigational accuracy on longitude that had never been achieved before. So this is kind of a big nebula for me and I am starting to sail into it. If I find something that I can put together that's where I'll be looking at to do something.
- [58:03]
B
Well that certainly looks interesting to investigate so best of luck with that. And while you are exploring there listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Francisco de Saavedra's American Revolutionary War the Spanish Contribution to the Battle of Yorktown published in 2025. James, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [58:21]
C
Thank you Moran. It's been a pleasure.