In 1887, however, Stanley and assorted Brits formed part of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition which came up the Congo and through what is now Kinshasa on its way to what is now South Sudan. During the process, Stanley attacked the village at Yambuya in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and took it over as a base.
In the First World War, although we weren’t invading the then Belgian Congo (since the Belgians were our allies it would have been both impolite and pointless), the Royal Navy did find itself having to trek through large parts of it to get the gunboats HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou onto Lake Tanganyika to face German ships there. They went as far as they could on the railway from South Africa and disembarked on 6 August 1915. It then took them until 26 October to reach the lake.
Congo, Republic of the
The Republic of the Congo is not, confusingly to some, the same place as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. You could sort of call the Democratic Republic ‘South Congo’, and the Republic ‘North Congo’, and that might make it easier to understand because the Republic is a bit more north and the Democratic Republic is a bit more south. Both territories are next to the Congo River and while the Belgians used to control what became the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the French used to control this bit.
As we have already noted, the anti-slaving patrols of our navy’s West Africa squadron spent a fair amount of time focusing on the Congo area, and also operated along the coast of what is now the Republic of Congo.
The area was controlled by France from the late nineteenth century through much of the twentieth century, but it was never Vichy-controlled, so we didn’t invade it.
We did have about 350 British soldiers stationed in Brazzaville in May 1997, but not as any kind of force invading the Republic of Congo. They were there to get Commonwealth and European citizens out of Kinshasa, capital of the neighbouring country of Zaire as it then was, or the Democratic Republic of Congo as it now is, if a crisis there worsened.
Costa Rica
Costa Rica lies north of Panama and south of Nicaragua. When part of the Spanish Empire, it seems to have received a lot less attention from us than other parts of Spain’s American Empire. Not, I expect, that the locals were disappointed about that.
Nevertheless, armed Brits have spent time in and around it. Sir Francis Drake sailed the waters off Costa Rica’s Pacific coast in the late sixteenth century. His ship, the Golden Hind, was beached for a week at Cano Island and the nearby Drake Bay is, not surprisingly, named after him. Assorted privateers and pirates from Britain spent time in the area doing what pirates do. George Shelvocke, for instance, dropped in on Cano Island in 1721.
We’ve also seen action on Costa Rica’s Caribbean Coast. In 1747, for instance, a force of English baymen and locals from the Mosquito Coast attacked and destroyed Fort San Fernando in the Matina area of Costa Rica.
Croatia
As you lie in the heat of the summer sunshine, gazing out at the turquoise Adriatic Sea, the UK seems such a long way away and it is hard to imagine that British armed forces could ever have made part of Croatia their home. We’re used to the idea of the Venetians running up and down the coast building in that amazing golden local stone, but if we associate the country with Britons and war at all, we tend to think of blue berets and the recent break up of Yugoslavia. There were indeed British forces in Croatia at that time, including, for instance, a unit based at Divulje airbase at Split, whose hospitality I enjoyed on at least one occasion.
In fact, Britain has a much longer military association with Croatia and, improbable though it sounds, there is a small bit of Croatia that has been, at least for a while, British.
As early as the fourth century, Magnus Maximus, who was later to enter Welsh legend as Macsen Wledig, led an army from Britain into mainland Europe to seize the imperial throne. And he specifically recruited more Brits for an attempted invasion of Italy. But the forces of Theodosius advancing from the east won a significant victory over forces from the army of Maximus at Siscia, present-day Sisak in Croatia, and Magnus Maximus himself was captured and killed at Aquileia in northern Italy shortly afterwards.
Many British holidaymakers know the beautiful Croatian islands, and will have their favourite spot. Vis lies one of the furthest from the Croatian mainland, and it is perhaps for this reason that on two occasions in our history we have chosen to make it a British base.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Adriatic was a vital strategic area both commercially, because of the trade routes that ran through it, and strategically, because of its location on the southern flank of Napoleon’s extending power base. It was too tempting a target for the Royal Navy. In 1807 we seized control of the 14-mile-long island of Vis, or Lissa as it was then known, and built a naval base at Port St George.
Using Vis as a base we then proceeded to raid French positions and allies in and around the Adriatic, occupying a few that took our fancy, such as the Ionian Islands (see Greece). Unsurprisingly, the French found this rather irksome and, in March 1811, a leading French naval commander, Rear Admiral Bernard Dubourdieu, led a sizeable task force of six frigates, plus other ships and hundreds of soldiers, towards Lissa with the intention of ending Britain’s stay on the island. Perhaps unwisely, Dubourdieu decided personally to lead a boarding attempt on the British commander’s ship HMS Amphion. The British then launched a load of musket balls at point blank range at the French, which killed Dubourdieu and many of his officers, rather weighting the odds against the French. The result of the battle was a decisive victory for Britain, leaving us free to roam up and down the Adriatic at will for the rest of the war, working with our Austrian allies to destroy French influence in the area. In May 1811, Alceste and Belle Poule chased a French brig into Porec harbour and landed men and guns on a nearby island to fire on and sink the brig. In August 1813, landing parties from HMS Eagle and HMS Bacchante attacked Rovinj and captured or destroyed twenty-one vessels there. And in 1814, we forced the surrender of lots of prime real estate along the Adriatic coast at Zadar, Kotor (see Montenegro) and even Dubrovnik, something to think about if you ever wander through Dubrovnik’s gorgeous streets today.
This was not to be our last stay on Vis. The nineteenth century turned into the twentieth century, and another little corporal set off on his own European tour. In 1941, Hitler’s blitzkrieg smashed its way through Yugoslavia, of which Croatia was then a part. It was the beginning of our return to Vis, in what was to become one of the most interesting, but least known aspects of our Second World War effort. We’ve all heard about the invasions of France and Sicily, but who knows about our landing in Croatia?
Up until 1943, the Italians had been the occupying power. When Italy dropped out of the war, Tito’s partisans took over a number of the Croatian islands and, to prevent the Germans moving in, we decided to base forces again on our old home, Vis. This time round our forces consisted of a couple of commando units, the Highland Light Infantry and some other troops. Together, they were rather grandly known as Land Forces Adriatic. There were also the motor gunboats of the 61 Motor Gun Boat (MGB) Flotilla, and Allied planes flying off an airstrip carved out of the vine-covered countryside.
The base was the same as in the Napoleonic Wars and, in many ways the mission was similar. The gunboats spent much of their time attacking and sometimes just seizing supply ships. The Royal Navy also transported commandos and partisans in assorted raids on targets up and down the coast that many Britons have more recently visited on holiday. Operation Detained targeted Solta; Operation Endowment went to Hvar; Operation Farrier attacked Mljet; and the delightfully named Operation Flounced was aimed at Brac. Several more ambitious plans for attacks in the Adriatic area were formulated and then shelved as the focus of the war shifted elsewhere; nevertheless, at a crucial period of the war, British forces on Vis had distracted the enemy, made him feel unsafe in what was then his own backyard and ultimately played a key role in facilitating the final partisan victory in Yugoslavia.
It
’s all well worth thinking about, if you ever get to wander today though the vineyards, pine trees and citrus orchards of Vis.
One final slightly random effect of the Second World War was that we ended up occupying the beautiful Croatian city of Pula, with its lovely stone buildings and Roman amphitheatre, for a couple of years after the war, as part of the process to settle border disputes with Italy. A British battalion of the 26th Guards Brigade helped US troops control the territory.
The last time we attacked targets in Croatia was during the war after Croatia declared independence. For instance, on 21 November 1994, two Jaguars from 54 Squadron bombed Udbina air base, at that time held by rebel Croatian Serbs.
Cuba
We’re so used to thinking of Cuba and Castro, and perhaps of the Bay of Pigs invasion, that many will be surprised to know that not only did we once launch a full-scale invasion of Cuba, but that we actually once controlled a part of Cuba. Not for very long, admittedly, but we did control it for a time.
We had already had plenty of practice at attacking Cuba by the time we took it over.
Drake was sailing the waters off Cuba in the sixteenth century and, rather bizarrely, he may be linked to the mojito. The origins of the mojito are hotly debated, or at least as hotly as you can debate the origins of a cocktail. Some suggest it may be derived from a nineteenth-century drink called El Draque, perhaps named after Drake, and others go as far as suggesting that Drake himself invented it. I personally have no idea whether any of this is true, but they’re jolly stories and the idea of Drake stylishly sipping a cocktail makes a change from all that looting, burning and pillaging.
Talking of which, in 1662, English admiral and pirate Christopher Myngs, who could probably fairly be called Myngs the Merciless due to his rather unsavoury reputation, captured, looted, sacked and briefly occupied Santiago de Cuba.
And in 1741, guess where we invaded? Yes, we stormed ashore at Guantanamo Bay itself. Obviously this was before all the barbed wire and orange prisoner suits. Admiral Edward Vernon arrived with 4,000 soldiers and eight warships, intending to march on Santiago de Cuba again. We even briefly renamed it Cumberland Bay. Imagine if the Americans were running a facility at Cumberland Bay; it would sound more like a bed and breakfast. But the locals weren’t very friendly to us, nor were the local diseases, and Vernon was forced to withdraw.
In 1748 we were back again. In the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, Rear Admiral Sir Charles Knowles tried to send his squadron straight into the harbour of Santiago de Cuba and the Spanish defenders, not surprisingly, expressed their lack of enthusiasm through the medium of artillery. With two ships disabled, hundreds of men dead and 200 wounded, Knowles limped off. Later in the year he was back in Cuban waters for the Battle of Havana. Though it wasn’t quite as disastrous as the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, it wasn’t a glowing success either, and Knowles ended up being reprimanded in a court-martial. After that there were assorted duels involving Knowles and some of his subordinates.
Finally, in 1762 our time had come at last. On 6 June (yes, 6 June, just like D-Day) a huge British fleet arrived off Havana with large numbers of ships, and thousands of sailors and soldiers. The expeditionary force landed and we rapidly realised we had a problem with the heavily defended Morro fortress. A bitter and fiercely fought siege, with attacks and counter-attacks, dragged on through June and July, until finally Havana surrendered in August. We lost thousands of men in the fighting and even more were killed on this expedition by disease. Out of the 11,000 men who first landed and the subsequent 3,000 reinforcements, only 3,000 were available for action by the end.
A big chunk of Cuba was ours. But only until the year after. In 1763, in a bit of an anti-climax on the Cuban invasion front, we gave it and Manila (see Philippines) back to the Spanish in exchange for Florida and Minorca.
Cyprus
Yes, we’ve still got troops on the island of Cyprus, and yes it’s a beautiful place with a complex and sometimes troubled history. But did you know Richard the Lionheart invaded Cyprus?
In April 1191, Richard was heading for the Holy Land when he was hit by a storm and his fleet was scattered. In the days before modern communications this, as you can imagine, was a major problem, especially since he’d lost his treasure ship, and his sister and his bride-to-be, Berengaria. We don’t know whether he was more upset about losing the treasure or his bride-to-be. Anyway, when he finally discovered where they all were, it turned out they were off Cyprus, so, not surprisingly, that was where he went.
The local ruler was a not very nice man called Isaac Comnenos, a minor Byzantine royal who had rebelled against the Byzantine Empire and who reputedly enjoyed the traditional warlord hobbies of raping, defiling and robbing. He had made (as it would turn out, from Isaac’s point of view) the unfortunate decision to be less than respectful and helpful to assorted members of Richard’s fleet and Berengaria herself. Richard was unamused. He arrived in Limassol in May 1191 and eventually took the whole island. According to tradition, Richard had Isaac bound in silver chains because he had said he wouldn’t bind him in iron chains. Richard married Berengaria on 12 May 1191 in the Chapel of St George at Limassol, and she was crowned the same day. Maybe it was not the happiest of marriages though, since when Richard finally got back to England, Berengaria didn’t join him. So, one for the pub quizzes here as Berengaria is traditionally known as ‘the only English queen who never set foot in England’.
Our first period in control of Cyprus was about as illustrious as Richard and Berengaria’s love life. Richard left on 5 June, after a shorter stay on the island than some British tourists go for these days, and rapidly decided to sell the island to the Knights Templar. After a rebellion in 1192, the knights sold the island to Guy de Lusignan.
Our second period in control was quite a lot longer and had some better bits, although quite a few difficult bits as well. It all came about because the Ottoman Turks, who controlled the island at the time, needed our help against the Russians. In 1878 they handed over control of the island to us, though technically it remained part of the Ottoman Empire. The first British forces landed in Larnaca on 8–9 July 1878 and by 12 July we had reached Nicosia. Technically, Cyprus remained part of the Ottoman Empire, but in 1914, with us and the Turks at war, we dropped the ‘technically part of the Ottoman Empire’ and annexed it.
Cyprus became independent in 1960.
Czech Republic
Generally, armed Brits haven’t spent that much time roaming the area of what is now the Czech Republic, but we have spent some time there.
For instance, we didn’t get officially involved in the Thirty Years War that ravaged central Europe for, well, about thirty years, but plenty of Brits did get involved on a semi-official level with some government support. For example, in 1620 a Scot, Sir Andrew Gray, started raising a regiment in London and Scotland to fight with the Bohemian-Moravian army. He ended up with ten companies, including 2,500 musketeers. They then headed for Bohemia to fight off the advancing Imperial and Bavarian troops, not, unfortunately for them, with huge success. They lost a lot of men, and Gray’s regiment consisted of only 300 troops by the time they left and headed for Upper Palatinate.
During the Second World War, we spent quite a lot of time bombing targets in occupied Czech territory linked to the German war effort, such as the Škoda works near Plzen. SOE also dispatched many missions to the area. Chicheley Hall (in Buckinghamshire) was SOE’s Special Training School No. 46 and was used from 1942 to 1943 to train Czechoslovaks. The most well known of SOE’s Czech operations was the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in 1942 during Operation Anthropoid. After the killing, the Nazis murdered many and conducted the notorious massacre at Lidice.
Denmark
There have, of course, been plenty of Danes who have invaded Britain over the centuries. But there has been a certain amount of traffic in the other direction as well. In 1700, for example, we bombarded Copenhagen with our allies. And while pretty much everybody know
s of Wellington and Waterloo, what a lot of people don’t know is that, before heading off to Spain, Wellington had some urgent business in Copenhagen to attend to.
The trouble all began with Napoleon and something rather delightfully called The League of Armed Neutrality. Basically, in our war with Napoleon we reckoned we had the right to board anybody’s ships to check for French contraband. However, the League of Armed Neutrality (or Second League of Armed Neutrality since there was something similar going on during the American War of Independence) disagreed. Strongly. With Denmark joining the league, and with many European ports closed to British trade due to an embargo encouraged by France, we got a bit nervous and told the Danes to get out of the league. The Danes refused and the Royal Navy was on its way. In the Battle of Copengahen in 1801, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker’s fleet, with Nelson playing a prominent role, defeated the Danish fleet, and soon after the Danes became more interested in negotiations.
The situation remained fluid, and by 1807 we were nervous again. This time, with Napoleon’s advance across Europe, we were afraid that Napoleon might drop in on the Danes and use Denmark and its navy against us. We decided we would get in first. We assembled a fleet and an army of 25,000 men, and demanded Denmark form an alliance with us, while Napoleon told the Danes to fight Britain or he would invade. The Danes refused our demands and our second attack on Denmark in a decade was on. Wellington, or Arthur Wellesley as he then was, and the British troops landed and we defeated the Danes at the Battle of Køge. Then, when the Danes still refused to give up, the Royal Navy bombarded Copenhagen with guns and rockets, killing over 2,000 civilians and destroying large numbers of buildings. Eventually, the Danes were forced to agree to surrender their navy.
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded Page 7