His first step was to put Fort Boyer in condition to resist an attack, by repairing it, mounting additional guns and placing an ample garrison in it. This preparation had hardly been accomplished, when, early in September, 1814, the British commanders made a combined attack upon it by land and water. The former was repulsed, and the latter resulted in the destruction of the _Hermes_, Percy’s flag ship, and the drawing off of the other vessels in a crippled condition. After the inglorious expedition, the British fleet and land forces retired to Pensacola—a result hardly in keeping with the vaunts of Percy and Nicholls in their several proclamations issued in August. Pensacola having lost all claim to neutrality, as well by being under the British flag, as by becoming a refuge for the hostile Indians who declined to bring themselves within the terms of the treaty which General Jackson had made with the Creeks after the victory at the Horse Shoe, he resolved to advance upon it. He had previously written Maurique a letter reminding him of the peaceful relations between Spain and the United States, expostulating with him upon his permitting the British to make Pensacola the base of their operations, and allowing it to be an asylum for the hostile Creeks, naming two of them especially, McQueen and Francis, whose strange adventures will be mentioned in a future page. To this mild expostulation the governor made an ambiguous and insulting reply, ending with the threat “that Jackson should hear from him shortly.”[54] The correspondence occurred just before the Percy and Nicholls’ attack on Fort Boyer, and doubtless it was their bombastic prediction of success which prompted old Maurique to send Jackson so defiant reply. General Jackson, however, did not wait longer than the last days of October, 1814, for the execution of the Spanish governor’s threat. Having collected his forces at Fort Montgomery, on the twenty-seventh he took up his line of march for Pensacola, the Indian trail referred to in an early chapter being its guiding thread. The troops consisted of the Third, Thirty-ninth and Forty-fourth infantry, Coffee’s brigade, a company of Mississippi dragoons and part of a West Tennessee regiment, numbering three thousand effective men, besides a band of friendly Choctaws.