♪ Voice: The King has decided that the principal objective of his arms in America during the war with the English is to drive them from the Gulf of Mexico and the banks of the Mississippi, which should be considered as the bulwark of the vast empire of New Spain.

[Bernardo de Gálvez] ♪ Narrator: Bernardo de Gálvez-- the bold, young governor of Spanish Louisiana-- saw an opportunity in the American Revolution to take back West Florida for his king, even before Spain had entered the war in 1779.

Kathleen DuVal: Bernardo de Gálvez had big ambitions for Spain, and he had big ambitions for himself.

He believed that war against Britain would be his chance to push Spanish colonies even farther into North America, past Louisiana, into the rest of the Gulf Coast, the Appalachians, perhaps most of Eastern North America.

Narrator: As soon as Gálvez heard Spain had officially entered the war, he left New Orleans and rallied an army that reflected the extraordinary diversity of the Gulf Coast-- Spaniards, Frenchmen, Acadians, Irishmen, Black and biracial men from Africa and the Americas, Choctaws, Houmas, Alabamas, men from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Hispaniola, and a handful of volunteers from the United States.

♪ DuVal: Gálvez began to take British posts.

He took Baton Rouge, Natchez, and then sailed with his militia and took the post of Mobile.

Narrator: By the spring of 1781, Gálvez's only objective left in British West Florida was its capital and stronghold--Pensacola.

♪ It was defended by local Black and White militiamen; British, German, and Loyalist soldiers; and hundreds of Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Muscogee Creeks who opposed any imperial expansion that threatened their lands in the southeastern interior.

♪ Gálvez landed his army and began a siege.

For a month and a half, Spanish guns edged closer and closer to the heart of the British defenses.

[Cannon fires] Finally, on May 8, 1781, a shell hit the British gunpowder magazine.

[Explosion] The explosion killed almost a hundred men, mostly Loyalist troops, and blew a wide hole in the fort's walls.

Gálvez's men poured through the gap, and within hours, the British commander surrendered.

Spanish rule was restored in West Florida and with it Spanish control of the Gulf of Mexico.

♪ DuVal: West Florida is the first nonrebelling colony that Britain loses.

After the Spanish victory at Pensacola, many, many people in Britain think it's time to stop this war before it gets any worse.