Battle of Baton Rouge (1779) - Aftermath

Aftermath

When informed that Dickson had surrendered Fort Panmure, its commander was irate, believing Dickson had surrendered Panmure to get better terms of surrender. Isaac Johnson, a local justice of the peace, wrote that "In the mighty battle between Governor Gálvez and Colonel Dickson, the Spaniards only lost one man and some say not one, the English lost twenty-five and the commanding officer wounded his head on his tea table".

The victory at Baton Rouge cleared the Mississippi River estuary entirely of British forces and put the lower reaches of the river firmly under Spanish control. Within a few days of Gálvez' victory, American and Spanish privateers captured several British supply ships on Lake Pontchartrain, including the remarkable capture of one ship carrying 54 Waldecker troops and ten to twelve sailors by a sloop crewed by 14 native Louisianans.

Gálvez was promoted to brigadier general for his successful campaign, and his exploits were immortalized in the poetry of Julien Poydras. He immediately began planning an expedition against Mobile and Pensacola, the remaining British strongholds in West Florida, which would culminate in the capture of Pensacola, the West Florida capital, in 1781.

Baton Rouge remained in Spanish hands for the rest of the war, and Britain ceded both West and East Florida to Spain in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. It would not become American territory until 1810.