French, British and Spanish Fort
Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville visited the area circa 1700. France retained Baton Rouge until the British took control of the city in 1763.
In 1779, during the American Revolutionary War, the British erected a dirt Fort Richmond on the banks of the Mississippi River. Bernardo de Gálvez, Spanish Governor of Louisiana, arrived at Baton Rouge on 20 September 1779 and found three hundred British troops garrisoning Fort Richmond. In the Battle of Baton Rouge (1779), engineers under Spanish Governor Gálvez quickly constructed a siege line, enabling the Spanish troops to shell Fort Richmond; the British surrendered the next day. The Spanish garrisoned the fortification and renamed it Fort San Carlos.
Read more about this topic: Pentagon Barracks
Famous quotes containing the words british, spanish and/or fort:
“The great British Library—an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or “pure English, undefiled” wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought.”
—Washington Irving (1783–1859)
“Ferdinand De Soto, sleeping
In the river, never heard
Four-and-twenty Spanish hooves
Fling off their iron and cut the green,
Leaving circles new and clean
While overhead the wing-tips whirred.”
—Mark Van Doren (1894–1973)
“No, no. God will not damn a lunatic’s soul. He knows that the powers of evil are too great for those of us with weak minds.”
—Garrett Fort (1900–1945)