[7] Captain Antonio Salgado commanded a Spanish column of 300 regular troops, backed by the free black militia under Francisco Menéndez and allied Seminole warriors consisting of Indian auxiliaries.

[9][10] Located two miles north of St. Augustine, Fort Mose was established in 1738 by the Spanish as a refuge for fugitive slaves escaping from the colonies of Georgia and South Carolina.

Forty-five years earlier, in 1693, King Charles II had ordered his Florida colonists to give all runaway slaves from the Virginia Colony freedom and protection if they converted to Catholicism and agreed to serve Spain.

[12] The maroons were commissioned as Spanish militia by Governor Manuel de Montiano and put under the command of Captain Francisco Menéndez, a mulatto or creole of African-Spanish descent, who had escaped from slavery in the colony South Carolina.

[12][13][14] At the outbreak of the War of Jenkins’ Ear in 1739, General James Oglethorpe, governor of Georgia, encouraged by some successful raids made by the British and their Indian allies in the frontier, decided to raise a significant expedition to capture St. Augustine, capital of Spanish Florida.

[2] Approaching St. Augustine, a British party under Colonel John Palmer, composed of 170 men belonging to the Georgia colonial militia, the Highland Independent Company of Darien, and auxiliary native allies, rapidly occupied Fort Mose, strategically sited on a vital travel route.

At dawn on June 14, Captain Antonio Salgado commanded Spanish regulars, and Francisco Menéndez led the maroon militia and Seminole Indian auxiliaries, in a surprise attack on Mose.

[4] The Spanish victory at Fort Mose demoralized the badly divided British forces and was a significant factor in Oglethorpe's withdrawal to Savannah.