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The Revolutionary War’s Charlie Wilson: A Spanish Spy Chief Funded the Siege of Yorktown, Helping Washington Win
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Everyone knows the American Revolution was won at Yorktown in 1781, when Cornwallis’s Army was trapped, but almost no one knows that victory depended on a Spanish intelligence operative who raised 500,000 pieces of silver in Havana in just 24 hours, convincing Cuban residents to liquidate their jewelry, gold ornaments, and diamonds to fund the French fleet's journey to trap Cornwallis. Francisco de Saavedra was Spain's ultimate shadow architect, operating like a CIA station chief or Charlie Wilson funneling weapons to topple Soviet Afghanistan, coordinating resources across the Caribbean through the Council of the Indies while gathering intelligence on British naval movements. The…