Spain's Road to Empire

by Henry Kamen

  After Utrecht the Bourbon government set itself two clear priorities: to reclaim initiative for the state in matters of war finance; and to recover control of exterior trade. Both questions were related, for they involved sources of revenue. The loss of the Italian territories delivered a mortal blow to the international network that had previously enabled Spain to conduct its imperial business in Europe. In return, of course, the loss also reduced the enormous costs that maintenance of the European empire had caused till then. In effect, the new government wrote off that part of the state debt that went to foreign financiers. Working from zero, and with the help of a new bureaucracy organized on the French pattern, Philip V's government achieved a spectacular rise in tax income, derived almost entirely from national rather than overseas sources.15 Spain by the mid-eighteenth century had reached the curious position of being an imperial power whose strength no longer lay in the empire but in its own internal assets. Spain had for all practical purposes liberated itself from its empire.

  Perhaps the most startling development in this unusual scenario was the creation of a new military capacity. The Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt had stripped proud Spain not only of its European empire but of segments of its metropolitan territory, and during the war years it had completely lost its foothold in North Africa. Despite these reverses, the War of Succession enabled the government to bring into existence an autonomous war machine that it had never before possessed. The integration of the eastern provinces into a national state gave Spain's administration, for the first time in its history, the material resources to pursue the belligerent policies favoured by Philip and his advisers. There were three main consequences: treasury receipts rose, administrative control increased, and a new army and navy were created.

  All the reforms had been made possible thanks to measures initiated by the French during the War of Succession. Subsequently, from around the year 1715, the king's chief ministers – who happened to be Italians, Cardinal Giulio Alberoni from Piacenza and José Patiño from Milan – dreamed, with the active encouragement of the king, of restoring Spain's power on the international scene. In 1715 the British representative in Madrid, George Bubb, was of the opinion that ‘the revenues of Philip V exceed by one third those of his predecessors, and his expenses do not come to one half’. The government's own confidential figures suggest that this assessment was correct.

  The creation of a new army and navy was an impressive achievement. During the centuries of world predominance the nation, like others in Europe, had no permanent military forces and recruited armies only when required. Now, for the first time in its history, it began to maintain a powerful standing army. The new Bourbon army, recruited with great difficulty because of the objections everywhere (especially in the Crown of Aragon) to military service, inevitably involved important administrative and fiscal reforms. We have seen that the poor condition of the Spanish forces in the War of Succession made it necessary at every stage to have the support of foreign troops and foreign generals. Philip had decreed a few limited reforms during the war, mainly in order to obtain recruits. But the problem of securing a good standing army remained unresolved. Fortunately, many of the foreign soldiers and officers who had served in the war continued their career under the Spanish crown. As a result, in the 1720s up to one third of the infantry of Spain consisted of foreigners who chose to continue the old tradition of serving the Spanish crown. In 1734 there were thirty thousand foreigners in service, mainly Belgians, followed in number by Swiss and then by Irish.16In effect, the astonishing number of Belgians serving in the Spanish army meant that the famous Army of Flanders had reconstituted itself in the peninsula. The annual cost of the army in 1725 was nearly five and a half million escudos, a massive sum that had no precedent in the history of the Spanish treasury.17 Of this, three-fifths went to finance the army in Catalonia.

  The need to garrison the fortresses of the peninsula adequately, to maintain security in the provinces of the peninsula that had lost their fueros, and to contribute towards external military expeditions, all served to make it essential that Spain have a permanent force. There is no reliable calculation of the army's size. Official figures suggest that it reached its peak in 1734, when it had thirty thousand men; but the British representative in Madrid, Sir Benjamin Keene, reported at around the same date that it actually totalled seventy thousand. A few years later he put the total even higher. ‘The king of Spain’, he reported, ‘has upon paper and in his imagination one hundred and fifty thousand men, of which thirty thousand are militia. His regular troops I believe may be computed at seventy thousand effective men, of which about nineteen battalions are in the garrisons of Oran and Ceuta.’18

  The navy owed its existence manly to José Patiño. As we have seen, at the beginning of the century the naval resources of the Spanish crown were severely limited. During the War of Succession, the country was totally dependent in naval matters on the protecting hand of France. Not a single Spanish warship took part in any of the naval actions of the war. Successive Spanish failures at key points of the campaign can be explained largely in terms of France's inability to overcome the naval supremacy of the British and Dutch. The count of Bergeyck, a Belgian who became chief minister of Spain in 1711, was the first to be seriously concerned with naval recovery. In his correspondence with the French Navy minister Pontchartrain, he proposed an ambitious plan that would draw on French resources. Philip took a close interest in the subject. ‘I have revealed the plan only to the king’, wrote Bergeyck in 1713, ‘It has been necessary to keep it secret because of the jealous attitude of the English ministry.’ In February 1714 Philip created a new naval officer corps, and abolished all the old profusion of titles by which commanders of the various fleets were known, instituting in their place a standard superior rank of ‘Captain General of the Sea’.

  Bergeyck's plan was never put into effect. The real creation of the navy may be dated to Patiño's appointment as intendant of Cadiz in 1717. From that period, the amount of money set aside by the government for the navy rose spectacularly. In 1705 only 79,000 escudos was spent on the navy, by 1713 the figure had risen eighteen times, to more than 1,485,000 escudos. And the cost kept rising. In his first year in charge of the navy, 1717, Patiño spent three times more than had been spent in 1713. He also held the posts of president of the House of Trade (the Casa de la Contratación) of Seville, and intendant of the area, so he had virtually total powers over policy. He used them wisely to found dockyards and to promote shipbuilding. ‘Ever since I returned to this country’, Keene wrote in 1728, ‘I observed with the greatest concern the progress Patiño was making towards a powerful marine. That idea is so strong in him, that neither the subsidies paid to the emperor nor the misery of the Spanish troops nor the poverty of the household and tribunals can divert him from it.’ Patiño paid for the building of ships in Biscay and Cadiz, promoted support industries, and reformed naval administration. At the time of his death the navy totalled thirty-four warships, nine frigates and sixteen smaller vessels. Without these ships neither the great expeditions of Alberoni nor the king's enterprise of Oran would have been possible.

  However, there continued to be major defects that affected future events in the history of Spain's navy. Keene observed in 1731 that ‘their naval officers do not deserve that name’. It was a long time before efficient officers and pilots could be trained. Though vessels were being built in Catalonia, Andalusia and Vizcaya, most of the ships used in naval expeditions tended to be purchased from France or hired from private owners. For example, the fleets that took part in the Mediterranean expeditions of 1717 and 1718 were not for the most part constructed in Spain. Thanks principally to the contracts that the government made with French captains,19 Spain was able to convert itself overnight into a major naval power. Quick solutions turned out to be the most practical ones. They gave the country the appearance of strength, but little more. In practice, Spanish ships turned out to be excellent as transport vessels but disastr
ous as a fighting force.

  Early in 1717 preparations were being made in Barcelona for a naval expedition that Alberoni claimed was being directed against the Turks. Patiño, who was in charge of the military preparations, strongly advised the king that no action against a distant objective such as Naples was advisable. In July 1717, Philip and Queen Elizabeth Farnese (whom he had married in 1715 after the death of his first wife) signed instructions for the fleet to set out for the occupation of Sardinia.20 There was no doubting the strength of the force that sailed. About one hundred vessels, among them 9 ships of the line and 6 frigates, transported 8,500 infantry and 500 cavalry under the command of the marquis of Lède, a Belgian general who in subsequent years also commanded many of Spain's expeditionary forces. The vessels sailed in detachments from mid-August. By the end of September, the island was under Spanish control.

  The success of the venture seems to have converted Alberoni to the selective use of force. Spain, thanks to the work of Alberoni and Patiño over the last few years, now disposed of a valuable instrument that the emperor lacked totally: naval power. In June 1718 the cardinal wrote to a correspondent in Italy that ‘there can be no system of security in Italy without tranquillity. A good war is necessary, until the last German has been driven out.’21 No sooner had the European powers recovered from the surprise of the Sardinia expedition, than yet another fleet was launched from Barcelona in June 1718. Twelve ships of the line, seventeen frigates, seven galleys, two fireships and two hundred and seventy-six transports, transported thirty thousand men and eight thousand cavalry across to Sardinia, where provisions were taken on board. The fleet then made for Sicily, where the forces landed near Palermo on 1 July.

  Spain's return to an imperial role under the Bourbons was deceptive, fragile and in the long run disastrous. No better evidence of it can be found than in the famous incident at Cape Passaro. The naked Spanish aggression in Sardinia and Sicily in 1718 greatly alarmed the European powers that had agreed upon, and now wished to preserve, the conditions of the Treaty of Utrecht. In August 1718 Britain, France, the Empire and Savoy formed a Quadruple Alliance against Spain. A British fleet of twenty-one warships under Admiral Sir George Byng was sent to Naples to protect the interests of the emperor against the Spanish naval expedition. The British ambassador in Madrid warned the government to call off its venture. A defiant Alberoni shrugged off the warning and said, ‘Do what you wish!’ On the morning of 11 August Byng located the Spanish fleet, twelve newly constructed warships, and seventeen frigates under the command of Antonio de Gastañeta, off the east coast of Sicily, at Cape Passaro. The British vessels began to engage the Spanish ships one by one. By nightfall the Spanish fleet had ceased to exist. Of its twenty-nine vessels, nine were captured and six sunk; only fourteen escaped. Gastañeta and his admirals were captured and later set ashore at Catania.22

  Declarations of war followed, by Britain in December and by France in January 1719. The duke of Berwick headed an army of twenty thousand men that crossed the Basque frontier in April 1719. The general appointed to lead the Spanish forces was the Italian general the Principe Pio, marquis of Castelrodrigo, who was summoned from his post as governor in Barcelona. The bulk of the Spanish forces was concentrated in Pamplona, while the king and the Principe Pio headed a detachment that attempted to relieve the besieged fortress of Fuenterrabía. With very little effort, the French occupied Fuenterrabía (18 June) and San Sebastián (17 August), and by the end of August were in possession of the three Basque provinces of Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa and Álava. The startled Basques, on finding that they had been occupied by the man who abolished the liberties of Catalonia, hastened to make their peace and even negotiated conditions for a hypothetical integration of their provinces into the French state. They would accept becoming French, they said, provided their fueros were preserved. Berwick, however, had received no instructions about such an eventuality, and ignored the offer, which if accepted would have fundamentally changed the course of Spain's entire subsequent history.

  The British meanwhile in August made an expedition by sea to the shipyards at Santoña, on the northern coast, where they took pains to destroy all the vessels under construction. They also invaded Galicia in a campaign that was clearly punitive – like the French invasions – with no intention of conquest. At the end of September they captured the port of Ribadeo, landed five thousand men and went on to occupy Vigo, Pontevedra and other towns.23 They stayed only four days in Ribadeo, but remained in Vigo for four weeks. A defenceless Galicia suffered severe damage to property and crops, and no attempt was made by English officers to prevent looting. The conflict, which came to an end the following year, was a sham war with little other purpose than to demonstrate to Spain that it could operate as a military power only with the permission of the French or the British. Spain was forced to join the Quadruple Alliance in February 1720 and take part in the peace talks that began informally at Cambrai in 1722 but did not officially begin until 1724. In August 1722 Fuenterrabia and San Sebastián were formally returned. The arrangement laid down by the Alliance at Cambrai (1724) was intended to bring peace to the Mediterranean. Philip was to return Sardinia and renounce the conquest of former Spanish territories, the emperor was to abandon his claim to the Spanish Crown, and Spain's claim to the succession in the duchies of Parma and Tuscany would be recognized.

  No sooner had his forces put into effect their withdrawal from Sicily in the summer of 1720, than Philip used other available forces from the peninsula to mount another rapid expedition. The objective this time was the North African fortress of Ceuta, Spanish territory that had been besieged since the year 1694 by the sultan of Morocco, Muley Ismael. Ceuta had an exceptional symbolical value, as the only territory still held by Spain in North Africa (Oran had been lost during the War of Succession). It also had a very substantial material value, for without Ceuta the crown would (technically) cease to be able to collect the income from the famous ‘bull of the Crusade’, one of its biggest sources of revenue.24 A force of sixteen thousand men, commanded by the marquis of Lède, was organized by Patiño to sail from Cadiz. It landed near Ceuta early in November, and began a military operation designed to drive back the sultan's forces. The Ceuta garrison was strengthened, and the men returned safely to Spain.

  Several years later, in 1732, a similar campaign was directed against Orán. The king's eldest son by Elizabeth Farnese, the Infante Charles, had just been successfully installed by international agreement as ruler of the Italian duchies of Parma and Piacenza. Encouraged by the event, the king proceeded with a plan that he had been considering even before his son's departure to Italy. He intended to recover the African fortress of Oran, lost to the Muslims as a result of the defection of the commander of the Spanish galleys during the war of Succession. His admiral the marquis of Mari was instructed to take three warships to Genoa and pick up two million pesos deposited with banks there in the king's name. The money was to be used to hire vessels for the Orán fleet.

  The expedition was put into the hands of Patiño, who as usual carried it out with scrupulous efficiency. A military force of thirty thousand men on twelve warships, seven galleys and a large number of transport vessels, under the command of the count of Montemar, José Carrillo de Albornoz, sailed from Alicante on 15 June 1732 and crossed the straits to Africa. Information about its objective was kept secret until the moment of sailing, when Philip issued a decree in Seville confirming the operation. Resistance in Oran was minimal; both the fortress and the neighbouring town of Mers-el-Kebir were occupied after a period of six days. News of the success arrived in Seville on 8 July, and gave rise to the inevitable festivities: the whole cathedral tower was decorated with fireworks. But Benjamin Keene was suspicious of the possible threat to British interests in Gibraltar and the Mediterranean, and doubted whether the campaign had really been successful, since the loss of Spanish lives was (he reported) as high as three thousand men.

  The rapid expeditions to Africa, which reclaimed ou
tposts that had been Spanish over twenty years before, were intended to enhance security at the entrance to the Mediterranean and make up for the loss of Gibraltar. But they also set in motion once again a distant dream of the Spanish imperial imagination. By securing Oran, as he had secured Ceuta twelve years before, Philip V gave new life to one of the most permanent dreams of the Spanish political élite: the maintenance of an empire in North Africa. The vision of a southern frontier had obsessed Cardinal Cisneros and it continued to obsess many Spaniards. Frustrated in the attempt at maintaining world hegemony, the ruling élite realized suddenly that there were imperial possibilities nearer at hand. As a politician declaimed over a century later in the Cortes in Madrid: Africa, in the testament of Isabella the Catholic; Africa, with Cisneros in Oran; Africa, with Charles V in Tunis; Africa, a dream in which the whole peninsula joins, from Lisbon to Cadiz, from Cadiz to Barcelona!’25

  Bit by bit, it seemed, the lost heritage would be regained. And the opportunities did not cease to present themselves. The scenario became yet more complex when in the following year, 1733, Spain was dragged into a war over the succession to the throne of Poland. French diplomacy, which had in the past worked hard to maintain the peace, now worked equally hard to persuade Spain to go to war against Austria, whose candidate was in possession of the Polish throne, contested also by a candidate of France. In a ceremony at the Escorial in November 1733, a so-called Family Pact was signed between the Bourbons of France and Spain. In February Philip V sent Spanish troops to northern Italy to back up the French troops which had invaded the Austrian territories there. Charles, now aged eighteen, was made nominal commander of the Spanish forces.

  Seeing that the French were in control of the situation in northern Italy, Philip V decided to change his plans. The troops under the count of Montemar were now ordered to go south and occupy the formerly Spanish territories of Naples and Sicily. From its naval bases in the western Mediterranean, Spain had little difficulty in backing up the military expedition. A large fleet of twenty Spanish warships, accompanying a force of sixteen thousand men, sailed from Barcelona for Italy. It was a rapid and wholly successful campaign. Most of the inhabitants of the south had never accepted Austrian rule and greeted the Spaniards with enthusiasm. As soon as he reached Neapolitan territory, Charles in March 1734 issued a general pardon to all citizens of the kingdom, confirmed their laws and privileges, and promised to remove all taxes imposed by the Austrians. The bulk of the Imperial forces saw that fighting would be hopeless, and refrained from offering resistance.