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10 Fig. 7. In Précis du traité de paix, another French engrav- ing by Nicolas Ponce (Paris, ca. 1784), medallions depicting notable battles of the Revolutionary War, such as Trenton and Monmouth, ame winged Victory trumpeting a scroll of heroes' names that includes Gálvez among the likes of Lafay- ette, Rochambeau, Benja- min Franklin, and Horatio Gates, victor of Saratoga. wife Feliciana, who had hispanized her name by then, insisted on accompanying him, trading her comfortable life among New Orleans's creole gentry for the hardships of a military camp, where she gave birth to their first son, Miguel. In early April 1782 Gálvez had under his command more than 9,000 men, and news arrived that the allied French fleet had arrived at Martinique. But on the 12th the French encountered 37 warships under the command of Admiral Sir George Rodney, and everything changed. e Battle of the Saints le Great Britain's navy the mis- tress of the Caribbean. Deprived of the essential French forces, Gálvez had no choice but to postpone the expedition against Jamaica. In January 1783 news arrived that prelimi- nary articles of peace had been signed in Paris the previous November, and in September, Spain and the United States signed separate peace treaties with Great Britain, essentially ending the War of the American Revolution. Bernardo de Gálvez and his family departed for the Iberian Peninsula, where he spent almost a year waiting for a new assignment. Like a lion in a cage he tried to keep him- self busy as an adviser on American affairs and also found time for scientific pursuits like testing a "Method for direct- ing aerostatic machines." e experiment, which took place in the Manzanares River near Madrid, was reported in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 26 In 1785 Gálvez was appointed governor general of Cuba but his stay in the island was meant to be a short one. Only months after his arrival in Havana he was promoted to arguably one of the most powerful positions in the Spanish empire, in many respects second only to the king: viceroy of New Spain, a territory that included today's Mexico, Gua- temala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and the states of Florida, the southern parts of Alabama and Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington in the United States. From the very beginning, Gálvez displayed a new style of government. His reputation as a military hero, his youth, even his wife's beauty and charm and the vice royal couple's THE CAPITOL DOME