The English expedition against Havana was occasioned by the King of Spain, Charles III, having entered into what was known as the "family compact" with Louis XV of France, by which the Bourbons were to support each other against British rapacity and aggrandizement, as they styled it.
England had long looked covetously upon Havana, which the Spaniards themselves called the "Key of the New World," situated at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico and (in the hands of a strong power) then controlling the seaboard of territory at present comprised in the South Atlantic States of our Union.

So she hastened to seize the capital of Cuba, the "Pearl of the Antilles," and early in June, 1762, the surprised and frightened inhabitants were informed that a fleet of sixty ships-of-war had landed more than 20,000 men at the little port of Cogimar, a few miles to the east of picturesque and formidable Morro Castle.
Quickly, then, the Captain-General assembled the "Junta of Defense," composed of men most eminent in military affairs in Havana, and placed before them the situation.[1] They resolved upon a spirited defense, even though their soldiers were insufficiently armed and they had no defensive works save the Morro, then about a hundred years old, and its companion fortress called the Punta, between which two forts lay the deep and narrow entrance to the harbor.

This harbor was blocked by some big war-ships, and a chain was stretched across the mouth, but the English did not even essay an entrance, having landed their troops to the east, and first marching upon the Morro from Cogimar and the town of Guanabacao, which they took quite easily, and then sweeping over the Cabanas hills, where the Spaniards later built the vast fortifications which they should have constructed sooner for the defense of their capital city.
[Footnote 1: From _Nociones de Historia de Cuba_, by Dr.Vidal Morales; Havana, 1904.] The Provincials arrived the last of July, and landed to the west of Havana, where stands a small fort known as the Torreon of Chorrera, which was defended with much valor, but compelled to surrender.
Afterward, however, they were transported to the Cabanas hills, and there, on the site of the fortifications (above which, in 1904, the American flag last waved in token of possession in Cuba), Israel Putnam and his Provincials joined the British troops.

And they were welcome, beyond a doubt, for nearly half the British army was incapacitated through fevers, and many men had died.
[Illustration: Fort near Havana where the Colonials landed.] The arrival of the sturdy Colonials gave the besiegers of the Morro new strength, and fresh courage, and within a few days they were called upon to assist at carrying the castle by storm.

The English had been a long time sapping toward the fortress walls, and a breach having been opened near the bastion, the combined assailants poured through in an invincible flood.