New Spain. In 1772, Gálvez returned to Spain with his uncle, José de Gálvez. Later, he was sent to Pau, France, where he served with the Royal Cantabria regiment, an elite Franco-Spanish unit, for three years. There, he learned to speak French, which would serve him well when he became governor of Louisiana. Gálvez was transferred to Seville in 1775, and then participated in Alejandro O'Reilly's disastrous expedition to Algiers, where he was seriously wounded during the Spanish assault on the fortress that guarded the city. Afterward he was appointed a professor at the military academy of Ávila and promoted to lieutenant colonel; he was made colonel in 1776. Spanish governor of Louisiana On 1 January 1777, Bernardo de Gálvez became the new governor of the formerly French province of Louisiana, the vast territory that would later become the object of the Louisiana Purchase. The colony had been ceded by France to Spain in 1762, ostensibly as compensation for the loss of Florida to Britain, after Spain was urged to enter the Seven Years' War on the French side. In November 1777, Gálvez married Marie Félicité de Saint-Maxent d'Estrehan, the Creole daughter of the French-born Gilbert Antoine de Saint-Maxent and the Creole Elizabeth La Roche, and young widow of Jean Baptiste Honoré d'Estrehan, the son of a high ranking French colonial official. This marriage to the daughter of a Frenchman won Gálvez the favor of the local Creole population. They had three children, Miguel, Matilde, and Guadalupe. As governor, Gálvez enacted an anti-British policy, taking measures against British smuggling and promoting trade with France. He damaged British interests in the region and kept it open for supplies to reach George Washington's army during the American Revolutionary War. He founded Galvez Town in 1779, promoted the colonization of Nueva Iberia, and established free trade with Cuba and Yucatán. Galvez Street in New Orleans is named for him. In 1779, Gálvez was promoted to brigadier. American Revolutionary War In December 1776, King Charles III of Spain decided that covert assistance to the United States would be strategically useful, but Spain did not enter into a formal alliance with the U.S. In 1777, José de Gálvez, newly appointed as minister of the Council of the Indies, sent his nephew, Bernardo de Gálvez, to New Orleans as governor of Luisiana with instructions to secure the friendship of the United States. On 20 February 1777,