At that time, it need hardly be said, neither England nor the Empire were prepared to listen; twelve months later, they may well have wished that they had. The year 1707 saw no great victories in the north and, in the south, two disasters. The first was when on 25 April Galway’s motley force of some 15,000 men was heavily defeated at Almansa, some sixty miles southwest of Valencia, by a greatly superior army of French and Spaniards under King Louis’s leading general the Duke of Berwick, the natural son of King James II of England by the Duke of Marlborough’s sister Arabella.169 At a single blow Valencia, Murcia and Aragon were lost to the allies. Worse still, perhaps, they were therefore unable to supplement the forces of Prince Eugene when, in July, he attacked Toulon. Eugene was almost as great a general as was his chief, the Duke of Marlborough; it is sad indeed that his last venture in the Mediterranean should, through no fault of his own, have cast something of a shadow over his reputation. If his attempt on Toulon proved a failure, this was due entirely to his two principal allies, the Emperor Leopold and the Duke of Savoy. Leopold had at the critical moment seen fit to detach some 13,000 men to attack Naples; Savoy for his part had shown himself to be weak and indecisive–so much so that by the time Eugene eventually landed on Provençal soil on 26 July the battle was already as good as lost. Ten thousand men were needlessly sacrificed. It was perhaps some consolation to know that, rather than allowing Toulon to fall into allied hands, the French had deliberately scuttled their squadron of some fifty sail in its harbour; the fact remained that their principal southern port, which should have been Eugene’s for the taking, had been forfeited through sheer inefficiency and muddle, and the English fleet was still deprived of the one thing it needed more than any other: a good, safe harbour in the Mediterranean where it would be protected from winter storms, where its provisions and supplies could be safely stored and where its ships could be properly refitted.
As things turned out, it did not have to wait much longer. Minorca, the furthest of the Balearic Islands to the northeast and consequently the nearest to France, had long been an object of interest to the British navy; and in the summer of 1708 Major-General James Stanhope–who had been sent to Spain as Minister, but who had some months before succeeded Galway as Commander-in-Chief–received orders from Marlborough to take the island’s capital, Port Mahon. Supported by a fleet of thirty-four ships under Admiral Sir John Leake–who had hastened to Minorca from Sardinia, where he had been bombarding Cagliari170 –he landed in Minorca on 14 September with about 1,200 British, 800 Spanish and 600 Portuguese troops. It was another fortnight before he was ready to attack. A road had to be constructed to carry the guns and provisions the mile from his landing-place to his first objective, Fort St Philip; even then, the fort’s commanding position overlooking the harbour made it almost impregnable. Stanhope dealt with the problem by offering generous terms for its surrender and threatening to slaughter the entire garrison if these were not accepted. The French and Spanish commanders might even then have continued to resist, had it not been for the large number of women and children who had taken refuge there. They therefore decided to surrender–a decision they were later to regret. Both were subsequently imprisoned, and the Spanish commander killed himself.
Other forts quickly followed St Philip’s example, the speed of Stanhope’s progress being due largely to the goodwill of the local population, who had had quite enough of both French and Spaniards: the magistrates of Mahon willingly handed over the keys to the city as soon as the invaders approached. By the end of the month the entire island was effectively in British hands. It was to remain so, with a short intermission between 1756 and 1763, for very nearly a century. To Stanhope it mattered little that the island, like Gibraltar, had technically surrendered to King Charles III of Spain, who was indeed formally proclaimed as its king on 8 November. ‘England,’ he wrote, ‘ought never to part with this island, which will give the law to the Mediterranean both in time of war and of peace.’ To emphasise the fact, he left a garrison consisting entirely of British troops, all the Spanish and Portuguese being returned to Spain to assist King Charles. By June 1709 he had spent £11,000 on the island’s defences.
To Galway on the Spanish mainland, meanwhile, matters were looking increasingly grave. He tended to blame his reverses principally on his Portuguese troops–at Almansa they had been a distinct liability–and early in 1708 marched them back to their homeland. They were replaced by Germans made available by the recent armistice in Italy, under their commander Count von Starhemberg, but even then it proved impossible to stop the imperialists taking Tortosa, so cutting communications between Barcelona and Valencia. Not until 1710 was any progress made, when the allies marched for the second time on Madrid. The city fell on 23 September, but once again Charles failed to hold it: by the end of the year he had to retreat to Catalonia. Even there, his hold was tenuous enough: in January 1711 the French captured Gerona.
Then, just three months later on 17 April, the Emperor Joseph I died in Vienna at the age of thirty-three–this time it was unquestionably smallpox–and the entire European political scene was transformed overnight. Joseph had succeeded his father, Leopold, in 1705, had done much to reform the Empire’s chaotic finances and had warmly espoused the claims of his younger brother Charles to Spain. But Charles was now not just a Spanish claimant; he was the obvious successor to his brother on the imperial throne. The Grand Alliance had been formed only in order to prevent a single family, the Bourbons, from becoming too powerful; if Charles were to succeed to the Empire–as indeed he did, being elected in the following year–the Habsburgs threatened to be more powerful still, with all their dominions once more united as in the days of his great-great-great-great-uncle Charles V. Inevitably, many months were to pass before the European powers were able to come to terms with the new situation; it was not until New Year’s Day 1712 that negotiations began between the allies and France in the Dutch city of Utrecht.
Before we leave for Utrecht, however, we must return briefly to Minorca and to Gibraltar, whose status remained ambiguous. In England the Whigs, who had dominated the first half of Queen Anne’s reign,171 had been replaced by a Tory government, and the new ministry had decided that the Emperor Charles VI was now a far more serious danger than the Bourbons had ever been and no longer merited British support. Besides, the Bourbons too were now ready for peace. The war in the north was threatening France with disaster–Marlborough was still carrying all before him–and King Louis was increasingly anxious to come to terms. Concessions would therefore have to be made, preferably–Louis being Louis–with other people’s property; and what concessions could be more acceptable to the British than the acknowledgement of their claim to Gibraltar? On 31 May the King informed Queen Anne: ‘On a parole du Roi d’Espagne de laisser aux Anglais Gibraltar pour la sûreté réelle de leur commerce en Espagne et dans la Méditerranée.’172
In fact, he had nothing of the kind, but Philip was in no position to complain. Hitherto he had been a good deal more fortunate than his grandfather: the war in Spain against Charles and his allies had been moderately successful. But for how long would his luck hold? The succession of Charles to the Empire meant that the latter would henceforth have all its resources at his disposal. There were also rumours that Prince Eugene might be sent to take over the command in Spain, and Philip was all too well aware that he had no generals with half the Prince’s experience or brilliance to set against him. Finally, if France and Britain made a separate peace, he would be deprived of all French military support. He saw that he had no choice, and so he reluctantly informed King Louis that he was ready to offer the British both their recent conquests.
Peace negotiations were quietly and discreetly set in train: Britain recognised Philip V as King of Spain, while Spain and France were obliged to accept that Minorca and Gibraltar would remain in British hands. At first Louis kept quiet about Minorca. The Rock was of little strategic value to him; the island, on the other hand, was only a day’s sail from Franc
e and, as he had recently seen, could be used as a springboard for an attack on Toulon and his Mediterranean coast, so he had no intention of handing it over unless he had to. What he did not know was the admonition that had been given to the British negotiators before they left for Utrecht: that they were to insist that ‘Gibraltar and Port Mahon, with the island of Minorca, be for the future annexed to the Crown of these realms’–and not to take no for an answer.
There was still a little trouble with the Dutch. They had played their part in the taking of the Rock in 1704, and they had provided an important part of its garrison ever since. They had understandably expected to be rewarded; now, equally understandably, they felt betrayed. At first they refused to withdraw their troops from Gibraltar, even threatening to continue the war alone. But no one took them too seriously. The truth was that they desperately needed British support to protect them in the Netherlands–and both they and the British knew it.
What is generally known as the Treaty of Utrecht was in fact a whole series of treaties in which, after a European upheaval that had lasted for eleven years, France and Spain attempted once again to regulate their relations with their neighbours. Most of the subjects upon which agreements were reached do not concern us here. Where the future of the Mediterranean was concerned, however, both countries made major concessions. France and Spain both formally recognised Duke Victor Amadeus II of Savoy–who happened to be King Philip’s father-in-law–as King of Sicily, his northern dominion extending to include the formerly French city of Nice. Spain in addition accepted the transfer to the Empire of the formerly Spanish areas of Italy and the Netherlands, and effectively handed over Minorca and Gibraltar to Britain. She did not, however, do so unconditionally. Although the treaty conferred on the British Crown perpetual property rights over part of the present territory of Gibraltar (Britain has shamelessly extended it since), provided that the Catholic religion should continue to be freely exercised and that Jews and Moors should be prohibited from settling there, the ultimate sovereignty over the Rock she explicitly reserved to herself.173 What is rather less well known is that she also put her name to the so-called asiento agreement, by which she gave the British the exclusive right to supply her overseas colonies with African slaves, at the rate of 4,800 slaves a year for thirty years.
The Emperor Charles fought on until 1714, and the final peace had to be signed without him. It was essentially on his behalf that the great struggle had continued for the past twelve years, and by distancing himself from the peacemakers he did his Empire a lasting disservice. His interests were not altogether ignored during the long negotiations at Utrecht, but since they were fundamentally opposed to those of France, Bourbon Spain and the United Provinces–as the Dutch now called themselves–while Britain remained largely indifferent, it was inevitable that they should have been to some degree neglected. Nevertheless, when the negotiators returned to their homes, Charles found himself master not only of the body of his Empire but also of the Catholic Netherlands, Milan, Naples and Sardinia. He was hardly in a position to complain, but with a modicum of diplomatic finesse he could probably have done better still.
And the Spanish throne? This was of course the most important question of all, the original casus belli, the reason for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men across the continent. It was at last resolved–as it by now virtually had to be–in favour of Philip. His kingdom had been drastically amputated–though he would certainly not miss the Low Countries, which had long been a millstone round the Spanish neck. Anyway, there were compensations. He kept Spanish America and all the wealth that it brought him, and he was, thenceforth and for the next thirty years, to rule uncontested as King Philip V of Spain.174
Where he must stand condemned is in his treatment of the Catalans. Despite the fact that they had been staunch champions of Charles of Habsburg, in Article XIII of the Anglo-Spanish Treaty Philip formally accorded to them, by reason of his respect for the Queen of Great Britain, a complete amnesty and all the privileges at that time enjoyed by the Castilians, ‘of all the peoples of Spain, that which the King cherished most’. It was plain from the start, however, that he had no intention of forgiving them for what he considered their disloyalty, and early in 1713 he had demanded their unconditional submission. They not surprisingly had refused, and had set up a provisional government of their own; whereupon in July 1714 Philip had sent a detachment of troops to invest Barcelona. The city fought back, and indeed held out for nearly two months; even after the besiegers had been joined by a French army under the Duke of Berwick and a French fleet, it refused to surrender. On the night of 11 September there was a general assault. The Catalans doggedly defended every street, often every house, until they could fight no more. The survivors were sold into slavery, and the standards of Catalonia were, by the King’s orders, burned in the public market by the common hangman.
Whether Philip V ever felt remorse for his treatment of the Catalans is doubtful. He soon, however, had cause to regret his surrender of Spanish Italy. Soon after the death in 1714 of his first wife, Maria Louisa of Savoy, he married the twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Farnese, niece and stepdaughter of the Duke of Parma. The new Queen–undistinguished by beauty, education or experience–began as she meant to continue. Before she even reached Madrid she picked a quarrel with the Princesse des Ursins–who had travelled half-way across the country to meet her–on the stairs of a wayside inn and bundled her unceremoniously, alone and shivering, over the snowy Pyrenees and back to France. On arrival in the capital she immediately summoned her uncle’s agent, a highly intelligent if unscrupulous churchman named Giulio Alberoni, the son of a gardener in Piacenza. From that day all French influence vanished from the Spanish court; it became Italian through and through, and Alberoni–whom just three years later she persuaded Pope Clement XI to appoint a cardinal–quietly set to work on the general reconstruction of Spain, with particular reference to the creation of a fleet.
Since Queen Maria Louisa had left three sons, Elizabeth could have little hope of the Spanish throne. Her long-term objective was therefore to ensure her succession after her uncle’s death to Parma and Piacenza, and also perhaps to Tuscany by virtue of her descent from the Medici. Nor was she alone in desiring it. The Emperor Charles was still unhappy with the recent dispensations. He was particularly riled by the grant of Sicily to the house of Savoy, and was known to be in contact with Victor Amadeus with a view to exchanging it for the island of Sardinia. Elizabeth and Alberoni were equally determined that he should do nothing of the kind: Sicily, once it had become part of the Empire, would constitute a permanent threat to Spain’s Mediterranean coast. They first moved, however, against imperial Sardinia. In August 1717 an expedition sailed from Barcelona to Cagliari, and by the end of November the island was theirs. Only then, emboldened by this easy success, did they decide to move directly on Sicily. On 1 July 1718 Spanish troops were landed near Palermo, where they received a warm welcome–giving strength to the Spanish argument that both islands, having been in the possession of Aragon since the thirteenth century and thus for more than a hundred years before that kingdom’s union with Castile, were far more Spanish than much of Spain.
And so at that time they were; but the argument was unlikely to appeal to Charles VI, and Charles had just concluded what was rather misleadingly described as the Quadruple Alliance with Britain and France.175 The Empire had no navy, but Britain did; and so it was that a British fleet under Admiral Sir George Byng hastened to Sicily, where it totally destroyed the Spanish fleet off Cape Passero, at the island’s southeast corner. Unfortunately Britain was not at that time at war with Spain; she was acting only on behalf of her ally the Emperor. Byng’s action thus created a tidal wave of violence, the effects of which were felt throughout Europe, as far away as the Sweden of Charles XII and the Russia of Peter the Great. Victor Amadeus, too, was loud in his protests, but he had to submit to the inevitable. The Kingdom of Sicily was taken from him and given to Charles; that of Sardin
ia was granted to him in its stead. Where Britain was concerned, Alberoni’s rage was such that he launched a second Armada, a threat which in London was taken very seriously indeed. On 17 December 1718 Parliament declared war; less than a month later France followed suit.
The Armada, when it sailed in the summer of 1719, proved no more successful than its famous predecessor: it ran into storms in the Bay of Biscay and was wrecked off Finisterre, never even reaching English waters. A separate expedition headed for Scotland and actually landed a Spanish force in the Western Highlands–of which, however, the clans soon made short shrift. More serious for Spain, and a good deal more surprising, was the arrival of a French army under the Duke of Berwick. Philip V had difficulty in believing that his own country would take up arms against him, or that Berwick would march against his old friend, but he was soon disillusioned. There was nothing much he could do about it, since his army was away in Sicily. He had to watch, powerless, while Catalonia was invaded and Vigo occupied.
Alberoni, the ultimate author of all these misfortunes, could no longer hold out. In December 1719, the victim of a conspiracy led by his old patron the Duke of Parma, he was dismissed and banished from Spain. In foreign affairs he had been an adventurer and an intriguer, impatient and over-ambitious; domestically, on the other hand, he had shown himself a fine administrator, and although primarily a patriotic Italian he had worked hard and on the whole effectively for the benefit of his adopted country. After his departure there seemed no reason to continue hostilities, and Philip hoped for favourable terms. He was disappointed. Britain, France and the Empire refused absolutely to listen to him until Spain too had joined the Quadruple Alliance–which on 17 February 1720, with extreme reluctance, she did.
The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean Page 49