This Spanish Officer Besieged the British During the American Revolution, Giving George Washington Time to Plan a Pivotal Attack

Bernardo de Gálvez indirectly contributed to the Continental Army’s victory at the 1781 Siege of Yorktown. A rare painting of him is now on view at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery

Alicia Ault | Museums Correspondent

July 7, 2026 1:05 p.m.

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During the American Revolution, Bernardo de Gálvez was the right man in the right place at the right time. A lifelong soldier then serving as the governor of Spanish Louisiana, Gálvez jumped into action after Spain entered the war in 1779, siding with France and the United States against Great Britain. He led the patriots to victory on multiple occasions and paved the way for the decisive American win at the 1781 Siege of Yorktown. But Gálvez is an oft-forgotten player in the complex history of the nation’s founding.

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery hopes to jog America’s collective memory by displaying a portrait of Gálvez. On July 2, just ahead of the celebration of the country’s 250th birthday, the museum put a rare 1781 oil painting of the Spanish governor on display in “Out of Many,” an ongoing exhibition that celebrates individuals who influenced American history and culture between 1600 and 1900. The work offers visitors the opportunity “to recognize the place of many different cultural and ethnic groups in the foundational history of the United States,” curator Taína Caragol says.

Featuring a portrait of Gálvez has long been on Caragol’s wish list. In 2025, the Portrait Gallery secured a long-term loan of the painting from Iberdrola, a Spanish energy company that boasts a rich collection of art. Iberdrola also oversees the Unveiling Memories project, which promotes greater recognition of Spanish and Hispanic contributions to American independence.

Gálvez’s portrait was painted by José Nicolás de Escalera, a late-18th-century Cuban artist known for his religious pieces and likenesses of eminent figures. In the work, Gálvez looks resplendent in a brocaded Spanish military uniform with embroidered sleeves that signify his recently awarded rank of lieutenant general. Pinned to his left breast is a cross that he received when he was knighted by Charles III of Spain in 1777. Gálvez holds a letter from his father, Matías de Gálvez, congratulating him on an earlier military promotion.

Matías, captain general of Guatemala and later viceroy of New Spain, wrote to his son, saying, “The happiness of your conquests is due to God and your advancement to the king; be thus grateful to both majesties to count on the blessing of your loving father.”

The younger Gálvez had ascended to the governorship of Louisiana in 1777, at age 30. Louisiana was crucial to the Spanish Empire’s fortunes and imperial desires, says Larrie D. Ferreiro, a historian at George Mason University and the author of Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It. In the late 18th century, New Orleans was the focal point for Spanish merchants transporting goods from the Caribbean. Spain wanted to maintain control of the Gulf, as well as shipping up and down the Mississippi River.

But the British were encroaching on this territory through fortified outposts in Baton Rouge, Mobile and Pensacola, all located in the recently formed colony of British West Florida.

The French had a vested interest in trade along the Mississippi, too. After losing the Seven Years’ War a decade and a half earlier, France had ceded most of its North American colonies to the British. Now, the French wanted revenge.

France and its ally Spain moved in lockstep when it came to Britain. Thanks to spies in New Orleans and elsewhere, “they knew that the Americans were eventually going to rebel against the British,” Ferreiro says. The European nations’ plan “was to foster unrest and supply the Americans.” Doing so would distract British forces and “keep the British on the back foot,” the historian adds.

Initially, Gálvez helped facilitate the transfer of supplies and munitions up the Mississippi to the rebels. Then, in June 1779, Spain declared war on Britain. Gálvez recruited a band of soldiers, including Cubans, Mexicans, Spaniards, Creoles, Acadians, Native Americans and free Black Americans, to fight alongside him. Later that year, the men marched up to Baton Rouge, where they routed the British from their outpost. Then in 1780, Gálvez and his troops captured Mobile—another important British holding—after a two-week siege.

Pensacola was the last target standing. A major port for the British Empire’s Caribbean trade, the town was a “dagger in the heart of Spanish trade,” Ferreiro says.

The Spanish wanted Pensacola for themselves, and Gálvez “was their guy,” the historian explains—not necessarily because of his military experience, but because he could be trusted, in the absence of formal direct communication, to carry out the wishes of the king. “He knew what the crown was after,” Ferreiro says.

In March 1781, Gálvez and his multicultural band of troops sailed into Pensacola Bay. At the end of the two-month-long siege, the British surrendered.

Gálvez’s victory bought George Washington time to plan the Continental Army’s attack on Yorktown, Virginia, in the fall of 1781. After their defeat at Pensacola, the British no longer had “much in the way of naval forces in the Caribbean,” Ferreiro says—a fact that allowed the French to move much of their fleet from that region up to the Chesapeake Bay to assist the rebels.

The sieges in British West Florida and Virginia “really have to be thought of in the same paragraph, if not the same sentence, because the victory at Yorktown really was the result of the victory at Pensacola,” even if Gálvez himself wasn’t present for the British surrender at Yorktown, Ferreiro says.

Gálvez and his contributions to the American Revolution are perhaps best known in the South, where cities, streets and plazas are named in his honor. Overall, however, the Spanish military leader has not been as widely acknowledged as many other Europeans who fought alongside the Americans, such as the Marquis de Lafayette.

In 2014, Congress granted Gálvez honorary citizenship, recognizing his key role in helping to establish the U.S. That same year, a portrait of him was hung in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee room. It was painted by the Spanish artist Carlos Monserrate and is a modern reproduction of a circa 1784 Gálvez portrait attributed to Mariano Salvador Maella.

Caragol says that this later portrait was likely inspired by the de Escalera painting now on display at the Portrait Gallery. By 1784, Gálvez had become a heroic figure in Spain, briefly returning home after the Revolution’s end, only to be recalled to America and eventually serve as the viceroy of New Spain. He died of an illness in Mexico City in 1786, at age 40.

The de Escalera painting was essential in establishing Gálvez’s image, says Caragol. Now, visitors can view that portrait in person and gain a clearer sense of what Gálvez represents.

Caragol says that she hopes viewers gain an understanding of the Revolution “in broader terms,” realizing that the fight for independence wasn’t solely an American cause. In truth, people from all over the world offered the patriots assistance in overthrowing the British.

Alicia Ault | | Read More

Alicia Ault is an independent journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Medscape Medical News, WebMD and Wired. She splits her time between St. Petersburg, Florida, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, exploring the rich variety of food, music, art and culture on offer in those cities.