15. The Spanish attacked the British along the Mississippi
After Spain entered the war against the British Empire troops from Spanish Florida and Louisiana attacked British outposts in the Mississippi Valley. The British were forced to surrender Mobile, Natchez, and Baton Rouge to Spanish troops. West Florida was then a British possession, which was conquered by Spain after the Battle of Pensacola in 1781. The British struck back by attacking the Spanish possessions in Nicaragua using a force dispatched from Jamaica. When yellow fever struck the British force was so weakened that the expedition was abandoned and the troops were withdrawn to Jamaica. The expedition included a young British naval officer named Horatio Nelson.
Nelson fought with distinction during the campaign, but as the tropical diseases struck the expedition he was one of the first to become ill, and was evacuated. After Nelson was removed from the British fortifications at San Juan the remaining British withdrew after blowing up their works. The entire San Juan expedition cost the British more than 2,500 casualties, making the campaign one of the most costly of the war. Following the success of the Spanish in Nicaragua, another Spanish force seized the Bahamas from the British. Nelson suffered from recurrences of the malaria he contracted during the San Juan expedition for the rest of his life, which was cut short against the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar in 1805.