Fernando de Leyba

Lieutenant Governor of Upper Louisiana from 1778 to 1780

Lieutenant Colonel Fernando de Leyba y Córdova Vizcaigaña (July 24, 1734 – June 28, 1780) was a Spanish Army officer who served as the third lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana from 1778 until his death in 1780. He successfully defended the village of St. Louis during the American Revolutionary War.

Little is known of Fernando de Leyba's life until his appointment to the lieutenant governor's position on June 14, 1778. Immediately upon his appointment to the post, he was ordered by Bernardo de Galvez to keep abreast of events occurring in the American Revolutionary War, and to keep any correspondence with an American chief secret and report it at once to him. He met George Rogers Clark barely two months later, when Clark, fresh from his victory at Kaskaskia, visited St. Louis and met with the governor. Fearing an attack from Detroit, Clark suggested that De Leyba fortify the town; upon being notified of this, Galvez responded that De Leyba would have to make do on his own, as no fortifications would be provided. After war was declared on Great Britain, the British launched a retalitory strike on the provincial capitol of Upper Louisiana. Given fair warning, De Leyba managed to raise 1000 piastres, including 400 of his own money, for the construction of Fort San Carlos. Already deep in debt from his gifts to the Indians, De Leyba could ill afford paying for the entire fortification on his own. In any event, one tower was completed, with part of a second also built. This was enough to repel the enemy, who attacked St. Louis on May 26, 1780.

De Leyba's health was already deteriorating and on June 28, 1780, he died. His after action report on the battle of St. Louis would not reach Galvez unitl after De Leyba's death, yet the governor was sufficiently impressed enough to recommend De Leyba for promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel, posthumously. Afterwards, many of the villagers from the area around St. Louis began to blame him for their troubles, writing anonymous letters to the government in New Orleans detailing his supposed misbehaviors. Some people began calling him a "Spanish Benedict Arnold". In 1831, one historian Judge, Wilson Primm, wrote a lecture in which he stated that the governor had not only sold the gunpowder stores to the enemy, he had acted in a cowardly manner during the engagement and deliberately impeded the defense of the village. Supported by accounts made by survivors some fifty years after the battle, these accusations were accepted by many historians for much of the nineteenth century, and it is only recently that some have begun to reconsider the role De Leyba played in the defense of the American frontier.