But
the Provincials suffered so miserably by sickness afterward, that very
few ever returned to their native land again."
This is all that Colonel Putnam's contemporary, Humphreys, has to say of
the most eventful episode of his hero's career, but it seems to the
present writer (who has personally investigated the British and Colonial
invasion of Cuba "on the spot") that the subject is worthy of more
extended notice. The English expedition against Havana was occasioned by
the King of Spain, Charles III, having entered into what was known as
the "family compact" with Louis XV of France, by which the Bourbons were
to support each other against British rapacity and aggrandizement, as
they styled it.
England had long looked covetously upon Havana, which the Spaniards
themselves called the "Key of the New World," situated at the mouth of
the Gulf of Mexico and (in the hands of a strong power) then controlling
the seaboard of territory at present comprised in the South Atlantic
States of our Union. So she hastened to seize the capital of Cuba, the
"Pearl of the Antilles," and early in June, 1762, the surprised and
frightened inhabitants were informed that a fleet of sixty ships-of-war
had landed more than 20,000 men at the little port of Cogimar, a few
miles to the east of picturesque and formidable Morro Castle.
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