Only eight people have ever received honorary U.S. citizenship, and one of them, added in 2014, is a Spanish nobleman most Americans have never heard of. This episode follows Bernardo de Galvez from a small village in Spain through military academy, combat in Portugal at 16, frontier warfare against the Apache, and a disastrous assault on Algiers, to his post as governor of Spanish Louisiana.

We explore how Galvez won over French Creole New Orleans, worked with Oliver Pollock to smuggle supplies up the Mississippi to the American rebels, intercepted British plans to attack New Orleans, and launched his Gulf Coast campaign through Baton Rouge, Mobile and the siege of Pensacola. We then look at his brief, complicated tenure as Viceroy of New Spain amid famine and typhus.

• Why Spain backed the American rebels for strategy rather than democratic ideals
• How frontier fighting alongside Opata allies shaped Galvez’s adaptable tactics
• The intercepted British orders that led Galvez to strike first in 1779
• How capturing Pensacola removed British staging grounds on the Gulf Coast
• His legacy in Galveston, the 2014 portrait in the Senate and honorary citizenship