Spain entered the Seven Years' War [1756-1763] on the side of France-belatedly, yet with time enough to lose the Philippines and Havana to the British. At the treaty table, Charles III's negotiators were told that they could redeem Havana with one or the other of two colonies: Puerto Rico, of sugar planting potential, or Florida, which (except for the one walled city through which the Crown poured silver) was in the hands of lndians. At a time when France was about to console Spain with the gift of Louisiana, opening up new opportunities west of the Mississippi, Spain sacrificed her interests east of the Mississippi to her interests in the Caribbean. Spain's colony on the East Coast of North America had endured two centuries of hard lessons in realism. Step by step, Florida had surrendered its 16th-century continental claims, its mid-17th-century sphere of influence, and its late 17th-century ecumene. This time, in the greatest test of their loyalty, the floridanos and their servitors would be asked to relinquish the city itself, with its inner sanctum, the Castillo. The period of the mission provinces was fading from the colony's communal memory. It seemed as though the heathen and the heretics had won. (Bushnell SS)