Capture of Fort Bute

Detail from a 1776 map showing British West Florida

Date	September 7, 1779
Location	Fort Bute, then British West Florida, now East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana
Result	Spanish victory

Belligerents

Spain

Waldeck-Pyrmont mercenaries

Commanders and leaders

Bernardo de Gálvez

Captain von Haake (POW)

Strength

1,430 regulars, militia, and natives

23 grenadiers

Casualties and losses

None

1 killed,
16 captured

The Capture of Fort Bute signalled the opening of Spanish intervention in the American Revolutionary War on the side of France and the United States. Mustering an ad hoc army of Spanish regulars, Acadian militia, and native levies under Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent, Bernardo de Gálvez, the Governor of Spanish Louisiana stormed and captured the small British frontier post on Bayou Manchac on September 7, 1779.

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 secretly plan offensive operations. Gálvez, who had been planning for the possibility of war since April, intercepted communications from the British at Pensacola indicating that the British were planning a surprise attack on New Orleans; he decided to launch his own attack first. To that end, he concealed from the public his receipt of the second proclamation.

Fort Bute (30°19′25″N 91°08′13″W / 30.32361°N 91.13694°W / 30.32361; -91.13694) was located on Bayou Manchac, about 115 miles (185 km) up the Mississippi River from New Orleans, on the far western border of British West Florida. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Dickson was charged with the defense of the Baton Rouge district, which included Fort Bute, Baton Rouge, and Fort Panmure (modern Natchez, Mississippi). The British had begun sending larger numbers of troops to the area following George Rogers Clark's capture of Vincennes, which had exposed the weak British defenses in the area. At Dickson's disposal in August 1779 were 400 regulars, including companies from the 16th and 60th Regiments, a recently-arrived company of grenadiers from the German state of Waldeck, and about 150 Loyalist militia.

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