Tea at Trianon: The American Revolution in Louisiana and West Florida

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, August 2, 2026

The American Revolution in Louisiana and West Florida

From Fellowship and Fairydust:

A few years ago, I was having lunch with my uncle when he said he had joined the Sons of the American Revolution. “But in the 1770s, our ancestors were already in Louisiana,” I said. “It belonged to Spain. How did we have an ancestor who fought for America?”

It turns out, we didn’t. We had an ancestor—a French immigrant to Louisiana—who fought for Spain. From 1779-1781, Spain aided the American cause by ousting the British from their holdings in West Florida, which included Pensacola and Mobile as well as the eastern bank of the Mississippi River from Manchac to Natchez. The name of the colony still resonates today in the “Florida Parishes,” the eight parishes of the State of Louisiana that were once part of West Florida.

After the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, the fledgling United States campaigned to secure the support of European allies, especially Britain’s longtime enemies, France and Spain. Though the King of Spain was unwilling to form an alliance, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Galvez, privately supported the American cause. He granted loans to American traders shipping military provisions northward from New Orleans and provided covert support to their convoys, which had to pass the British-held settlements on the eastern bank in order to reach American territory.

In 1777, the U.S. Congress rejected a plan to launch a full-scale assault against West Florida. But the Committee of Commerce (formerly the Secret Committee, the first American organization devoted to espionage) knew they had the tacit support of Governor Galvez in New Orleans. So they decided to send a small party of men down the Mississippi under the command of Captain James Willing, ostensibly to convey “public dispatches” to officials in Louisiana.

His real mission was to secure the river. (Read more.)