Ferdanando de Leyba found himself in a tough spot in the spring of 1780. As lieutenant governor of the Spanish colonial province of Louisiana, the 45-year-old army captain had quietly supported the rebellious American colonists from his headquarters in St. Louis while avoiding open antagonism from the British, whose territory nominally extended all the way to the east bank of the Mississippi River, just across from him.
Isolated St. Louis was a pawn in the global battle of empires that stretched from Europe to North America to Asia. But Leyba wasn’t thinking about the global stage. He needed to prepare for an imminent attack.
Leyba’s assignment to St. Louis in 1778 seemed like a good opportunity for advancement. He was an experienced soldier from a noble family who had served the king of Spain as knights and military men since the 16th century, and Leyba had begun his own military career at the age of sixteen. After commanding a tiny fort in Arkansas, where his wife and children were miserable, he suffered a breakdown in his health and was forced to return to New Orleans to recuperate. The opportunity in St. Louis was a chance to restore his fortunes and reputation. His essential task was to negotiate with the many Native American nations around St. Louis to keep them allied with Spain instead of Great Britain. In addition, he oversaw life in this small but busy trading town that had a population of around 700 people, a quarter of whom were enslaved. Most of the other inhabitants were of French or French-Canadian descent.
The St. Louisans did not take well to Leyba. They found him dour and harsh, unlike his predecessor, Francisco Cruzat. Yet Leyba was helpful to the American commander George Rogers Clark when Clark visited in 1778, seeking to resupply his troops after a successful sweep through the Ohio Valley. St. Louis merchants refused to extend credit to Clark, but Leyba stepped in and guaranteed Clark’s notes. The result of the guarantee was Leyba’s personal financial ruin when the Virginia government failed to pay Clark’s notes. The stress of this ruination, Leyba believed, contributed to the death of his wife in 1779. By 1780, Leyba, a widower with two young daughters, was disliked by the inhabitants he was supposed to manage and had minimal support from his Spanish superiors in New Orleans.
The Prelude
The previous year, Spain had thrown off its pretense of neutrality and openly joined the war against Britain. With that action, St. Louis lay exposed as a vulnerable target. It had been founded for trade, not farming, since it was situated near the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, with easy access for travel in any direction. But to a military man like Leyba, easy access from all directions looked like danger.
If the British launched an attack downriver from their well-manned forts at Detroit and Michilimackinac (near present-day Mackinaw City, Michigan), St. Louis would be the first target. A dilapidated fort north of St. Louis, near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, had been its only previous fortification, but it had been abandoned due to flooding.
Anticipating an attack, Leyba wrote to the territorial governor in New Orleans, Bernardo de Galvez, asking for reinforcements and money to build up the town’s defenses. As Stephen Kling Jr., Kristine Sjostrom, and Marysia Lopez describe it in their exhaustive history of the battle, The Battle of St. Louis, The Attack on Cahokia, and the American Revolution in the West, Galvez’s reply was a diplomatically worded kiss-off: “I am infinitely sorry that I cannot come to your aid and hope that your zeal and activity will overlook no means by which you may avoid confrontation.” In other words, Leyba and St. Louis were on their own.
Leyba knew warfare. He had fought against Britain in the Seven Years’ War, including the Battle of Havana in Cuba, where he was captured and held for three months as a prisoner. But he also knew that war on the frontier would be different from war in Europe.
While the attack on St. Louis may be described as the British versus the Spanish, in reality, the British would have little involvement in the actual attack. Carolyn Gilpin writes in the Missouri Historical Review that in the West, “Britain contracted out the fighting to its ally tribes. The overall strategy and funding were British, but the moccasins on the ground were native.” If there was an attack on St. Louis, it would not be British regulars or Loyalist militia fighting, but whatever war parties the British Indian Department had recruited from the many Native nations in the central part of the continent.
Compensation for these Native war parties came in the form of gifts from the colonial powers, such as medals, trade goods, and most importantly, guns, powder, and ammunition for use against traditional enemy tribes. As commander of the St. Louis post, Leyba was familiar with this practice. He relied on such gifts to buy peace from the neighboring tribes and to secure their assistance in military operations. In this era, relations with Native nations often came down to a bidding war, with each power trying to put together a package of gifts sufficient to win trading rights.
But in wartime, there was another incentive for warriors to join a raid: plunder. The Indian Department would have promised the Native allies a relatively free rein in carrying off the spoils of battle, including prisoners to be enslaved or ransomed. A successful attack on St. Louis could mean not just a military defeat, but the destruction and depopulation of the town itself.
This article was orginally printed in the July/August 2026 issue of Missouir Life.
To read the rest of the story you can purchase the July/August 2026 issue here.
Opener image: We have superimposed elements from the Battle of St. Louis onto what you can find at the site today.
Photo illustration: Rachel Goodbee
