Francisco Saavedra de Sangronis
Encyclopedia
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
government official and soldier
Soldier
A soldier is a member of the land component of national armed forces; whereas a soldier hired for service in a foreign army would be termed a mercenary...
whose work in Cuba during the American Revolutionary War laid the foundations for the defeat of British forces in Florida and at Yorktown.
Early career
Francisco Saavedra was born in SevilleSeville
Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...
, Spain, in 1746, and trained as a doctor. He served alongside Bernardo de Gálvez
Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez
Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Viscount of Galveston and Count of Gálvez was a Spanish military leader and the general of Spanish forces in New Spain who served as governor of Louisiana and Cuba and as viceroy of New Spain.Gálvez aided the Thirteen Colonies in their quest for independence and led...
in Spain's military campaign at Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
in the 1770s, and through him changed career to work in Spain's Ministry of the Indies, principally as a financial planner. In 1780 he was sent to try to sort out the Spanish administration at Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
in Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, with the additional task of working alongside Gálvez once more, to retake Florida from British control. When the ship taking him to the Caribbean was captured by the British, Saavedra passed himself off as a merchant, and was allowed free movement within Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
(the British being completely unaware that just two years earlier he had been involved in planning for a future Spanish invasion of the island). He took the opportunity to find out all he could about Jamaica's ports, defences etc. A thoughtful and prescient man, he recorded in his diary in 1780:
“What is not being thought about at present, what ought to occupy the whole attention of politics, is the great upheaval that in time the North American revolution is going to produce in the human race.”
Saavedra and Yorktown
In January 1781 he was finally released by the British, and began work in Havana. After making initial recommendations for administrative changes, over the next few months he helped to organise, and actually took part in Gálvez' successful siege of Pensacola, the key British base in FloridaFlorida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
. On his return he found that his recommendations had been accepted by the Spanish government, and key officials had been replaced. In July, at the request of the Minister (José de Gálvez
José de Gálvez
José de Gálvez y Gallardo, marqués de Sonora was a Spanish lawyer, a colonial official in New Spain and ultimately Minister of the Indies . He was one of the prime figures behind the Bourbon Reforms...
, Bernardo's uncle), Saavedra, who spoke and wrote French fluently, met in the French colony of St. Domingue with Admiral de Grasse
François Joseph Paul de Grasse
Lieutenant Général des Armées Navales François-Joseph Paul, marquis de Grasse Tilly, comte de Grasse was a French admiral. He is best known for his command of the French fleet at the Battle of the Chesapeake, which led directly to the British surrender at Yorktown...
to discuss the best ways of using the large French fleet he had brought across the Atlantic, and they agreed a plan for the following year, known as the Grasse-Saavedra Convention. First priority was to aid the French and American forces in the United States, preferably by attacking the British force in Virginia under Lord Cornwallis
Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis
Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis KG , styled Viscount Brome between 1753 and 1762 and known as The Earl Cornwallis between 1762 and 1792, was a British Army officer and colonial administrator...
. Next was to regain control of Caribbean islands captured by the British. The final goal of the plan was the capture of Jamaica, by far the richest British possession in the West Indies. To finance phase 1, Saavedra obtained 100,000 pesos from the Spanish treasury in neighboring Santo Domingo. The Spanish had planned to finance the French and North Americans with pesos shipped through Veracruz from the mines in Mexico. The ships had not arrived, and then, finding that most of the Government money from Havana had been sent on to Spain, he appealed to Cuban citizens, who raised a further 500,000 pesos in a matter of hours.
Later career
Over the next few months, while De Grasse went ahead with the plan, Saavedra made detailed preparations for the invasion of Jamaica. The defeat of the French fleet at the Battle of the SaintesBattle of the Saintes
The Battle of the Saintes took place over 4 days, 9 April 1782 – 12 April 1782, during the American War of Independence, and was a victory of a British fleet under Admiral Sir George Rodney over a French fleet under the Comte de Grasse forcing the French and Spanish to abandon a planned...
in April 1782 was a major setback, but preparations continued. However, by the end of 1782 the Spanish government decided to abandon what looked likely to be a very costly project. From 1783 to 1788, Saavedra served as intendant of Caracas
Caracas
Caracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...
, following which he returned to Spain and became first a member of the Supreme War Council, then in 1797 Finance Minister, and the following year, Minister of State. However, his health was failing, so shortly afterwards he retired to Andalucia, only to come back to service in 1810 when Napoleon's French forces invaded Spain. He died on 25 November 1819.