Battle of Baton Rouge (1779)

Battle of Baton Rouge
Part of the Gulf Coast campaign
Detail from a 1776 map showing British West Florida
Date September 12–21, 1779 Location Baton Rouge, then British West Florida, now Louisiana Result Spanish victory
Belligerents
Spain	Great Britain Waldeck-Pyrmont mercennaries
Commanders and leaders
Bernardo de Gálvez	Alexander Dickson (POW)
Strength
398 regulars 400 militia	400 regulars 150 militia
Casualties and losses
1 killed 2 wounded	4 killed 2 wounded 375 captured 30 died of wounds in captivity

 Great Britain

The Battle of Baton Rouge was a brief siege during the Anglo-Spanish War that was decided on September 21, 1779. Baton Rouge was the second British outpost to fall to Spanish arms during Bernardo de Gálvez's march into British West Florida.

Spain officially entered the American Revolutionary War on May 8, 1779, with a formal declaration of war by King Charles III. This declaration was followed by another on July 8 that authorized his colonial subjects to engage in hostilities against the British. When Bernardo de Gálvez, the colonial Governor of Spanish Louisiana received word of this on July 21, he immediately began to plan offensive operations to take British West Florida.

On August 27, Gálvez set out by land toward Baton Rouge, leading a force that consisted of 520 regulars, of whom about two-thirds were recent recruits, 60 militiamen, 80 free blacks and mulattoes, and ten American volunteers headed by Oliver Pollock. As they marched upriver, the force grew by another 600 men, including Indians and Acadians. At its peak, the force numbered over 1,400, but this number was reduced due the hardships of the march by several hundred before they reached Fort Bute.

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