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.
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Famous quotes containing the words british, spanish and/or fort:
“I ... would rather be in dependance on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation upon earth, or than on no nation. But I am one of those too who rather than submit to the right of legislating for us assumed by the British parliament, and which late experience has shewn they will so cruelly exercise, would lend my hand to sink the whole island in the ocean.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Ferdinand De Soto, sleeping
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While overhead the wing-tips whirred.”
—Mark Van Doren (1894–1973)
“The newspapers are the ruling power. Any other government is reduced to a few marines at Fort Independence. If a man neglects to read the Daily Times, government will go down on its knees to him, for this is the only treason these days.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)