Upon the ruins of San Carlos there was fixed a tablet announcing: “In the year 1718, on the eighteenth day of September, Monsieur Desnard de Champmeslin, Commander of His Most Christian Majesty, captured this place and the Island of Santa Rosa by force of arms.” Thus did the Pensacola of Arriola, after having been a shuttlecock in the cruel game of war—captured, recaptured and captured again within four months—perish utterly in the throes of a convulsion and the glare of a conflagration; a fate which may be traced to the intrigues of Cardinal Alberoni, the ambitious and crafty minister of Philip V., resulting in a war in which Spain, without an ally, was confronted by the united arms of France, Great Britain, Holland and Austria. “I quickened a corpse” was the vain boast by which he expressed the change he had effected in Spanish policy, one of the many disastrous consequences of which was the ending in fire and blood of a little settlement on the far-off shores of the new world. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VI. Sketch of Island Town—Its Destruction—The Third Pensacola—The Cession of Florida by Spain to Great Britain—Appearance of Town in 1763—Captain Wills’ Report—Catholic Church. On February 17, 1720, five months after the destruction of Pensacola, a treaty of peace between France and Spain was signed. But it was not until early in January, 1723, that Bienville, under orders from the French government, formally restored Pensacola to the Spaniards, or rather its site and surroundings. Of the first settlement of the Island town there exists no account, but it is probable it began immediately after the destruction of the Pensacola of Arriola. Its origin may be accounted for by the natural precaution of Governor Metamoras upon his recapture of that place and preparation for a struggle with the French, to remove the non-combatants to a place of safety, or rather the safest in the vicinity, and there was none possessing such great advantages as Santa Rosa island. It was a narrow, uninhabited strip of land, separated from the main land in its western portion by three miles of water, rendering a settlement there comparatively free from the danger of surprise by the Indians. The deepest water for landing on the bay-side, and a supply of fresh water obtainable by digging wells, would naturally determine the location of the settlement; and these conditions were met by a place about two miles from the western point of the island, not far from the present bay-wharf of the life-saving station. The progress the settlement made in the course of a quarter of a century is presented by the annexed engraving, which is taken from a sketch made in 1743. The artist, Don Serres, who was a resident during that year, came there in the service of the Havana Company in a schooner with a cargo for the town.