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Montiano recaps two months of scouting (F16)

Source: Nonfiction Chronology #308

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On January 31, Montiano collected his notes from the past two months.* He wrote everything to Guemes and sent the launch to take it to Havana.* As usual, he explained his reason for including so many details; he wanted Guemes to decide how to protect St. Augustine and arrange for provisions needed to do so.* He pointed out that certain needs were impossible to fulfill locally.*
To help Guemes picture the scene even better, he described the St. Johns Riveroften referred to as the Picolata River by the natives.* He said it was a tributary of the ocean.* He said it was three quarters of a league wide, according to three different engineers who had measured it accurately.* The river entered La Florida over the St. Johns bar, and exited at Apalacheeor the southern coastaccording to the belief of the most experienced Indians.* 
Montiano told Guemes point-blank that he had no naval forces to oppose the enemy's.* If he did, it would be easy to bring them in over the same bar of St. Johns, then send them out to meet incoming enemy ships and punish them severely in order to guard Spain’s claim to La Florida.* Without a naval force, however, there was no way to prevent enemy takeover.* This, he told Guemes, was precisely why he had not sent a land force to fight the English.* If he did, the land-based troops would have no power against the English naval forces.* Any land attack would require a strong sea force as well.*
Montiano did some theorizing for Guemes.* Suppose, he said, the English followed through on their threat to blockade St. Augustine.* And suppose they attacked the Picolata and Pupo forts to force Montiano to send troops over to the river.* I don’t know why Montiano would say this, since the English already had those forts.* But suppose the English forced Montiano to send a large group of soldiers out of St. Augustine.* Montiano had no doubts that the English’s Indian allies would try to block communication between St. Augustine’s outside troops and the city.* It seemed they could easily do that, since they appeared to be mastered of the wilderness.*
If Montiano sent out troops and they were unable to return safely, then he would have very little manpower to prevent the English from assuming control of the St. Augustine harbor.* They could do that with the ships that were already in the channels from the St. Johns bar into the interior, which they would control as well.*
With this strategy, Montiano told Guemes, the English would easily take possession of St. Augustine.* There would be no one in town to defend it if he was forced to send troops out.* Did Montiano know this is what happened at Fort Caroline when Pedro Menendez settled the town?
Montiano acknowledged that it would be a rash and illogical decision to send troops out under those conditions.* But even if he got zealous and sent them anyway, they would get no glory for their valiant fighting because there would be no fight at all.* The English would control the entire St. Johns River with their heavy launches able to carry medium caliber guns.* Montiano’s troops didn’t have guns that could reach the boats.* With the river and bar under their control, the English could bring in more support at any time.* They would control coastal access from the islands they already occupied all the way to Puerto Real, 150 miles away.* 
Even if some of the English troops disembarked and allowed Montiano’s troops within gunshot range, Montiano reasoned, it could be just a trick to lure the Spaniards out into the open.* Then the English could jump into their small boats and quickly get out of gun range while the larger boats opened fire on the exposed Spaniards.* It would be pitiful, Montiano said.* If he lost the troops Guemes had sent him, St. Augustine would be in worse condition than before he even got the reinforcement.* This would not only upset the king, but sure be the beginning of the end for La Florida.*
These territorial matters were not the only reason Montiano wanted a sufficient protective force.* Suppose, he said to Guemes, neither of them received orders from the king suggesting that the English would control the seas with their ships.* Just as important was the well-being of the Spanish subjects in his jurisdiction.* Montiano’s first and foremost duty as a governor was to economize the rations so the people did not starve.* 
Montiano told Guemes frankly that nothing burns through rations quicker than sending out detachments.* A heavy detachmentsuch as sending 400 or 500 men through deserts, uncultivated thickets, impenetrable and dangerous woods possibly occupied by the enemywould require special supplies that could not be furnished without causing serious shortages in the future.* Not to mention the fact that the effort would most likely end in fruitless failure.*
Montiano was beside himself.* He told Guemes that in his efforts to maintain La Florida for the king, he has had to ask for Guemes’s assistance on several occasions.* This time was even more imperative than the priors.* Montiano begged Guemes to help by sending whatever was needed to fulfill the king’s intentions for La Florida.*
To add yet another huge reason that Guemes should direct more attention toward St. Augustine, Montiano reminded him that the outpost had not received a paycheck in four years.* The agent who went to collect it at the beginning of 1737, Don Pedro de Escobedo, was never seen again.* Sad rumors floated around St. Augustine that Escobedo had been shipwrecked or captured by the English.*
Montiano begged again for Guemes’s help.* Again, he swore his dedication to preserving the outpost with his utmost passion and firmness, even to the point of sacrificing his life for it.* He had given an oath, and he was going to honor it.* He closed the letter by relaying the sad story of the garrison at Pupo missing in action and probably dead.*