THE ANGLO-PORTUGUESE ALLIANCE WAS ESTABLISHED 648 YEARS AGO

 

The Anglo-Portuguese alliance was born out of converging strategic interests: An alliance between France and Castile in 1369 had caused great concern at the English court. Through the alliance with Castile, which had one of the largest fleets in Western Europe, France had access to Castilian sea power. Therefore closer union with Castile’s western neighbor Portugal was a logical step to counter this threat. 

 

Added to this was a dynastic interest as the Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt, had a legitimate claim to the throne of Castile through his wife, Constance, daughter of Pedro I (1334-1369). With military victory in the Iberian Peninsula and a Plantagenet on the Castilian throne, it would only be a matter of time before France would be forced to the negotiating table. 

 

The treaty was signed on June 16, 1373 between King Edward III of England and King Fernando and Queen Leonor of Portugal. It established a treaty of "perpetual friendships, unions [and] alliances" between the two nations. 

Battle of Aljubarrota from A Batalha graphic novel by Pedro Massano, 2014.

 

In the aftermath, England sent a failed expedition to Portugal in 1381-2 under Edmund of Langley in an attempt to push Castile out of the war. Undisciplined English troops caused outrage by raiding Portuguese towns and killing inhabitants whilst exclusion from Portuguese-Castilian peace negotiations in 1382 drew English resentment. 

 

After the death of King Fernando I, Joao of Aviz sent ambassadors to England to request permission to recruit mercenaries. The Portuguese ambassador Fernando Afonso de Albuquerque, Master of the Portuguese military order of Sant'Iago da Espada succeeded initially in raising only a modest force of approximately 800 Anglo-Gascon troops. Nevertheless these soldiers would play a laudable role in the eventual defeat and withdrawal of Castilian forces from Portugal particularly with their contribution to the victory over Castilian troops at the battle of Aljubarrota (14th August 1385). 

Treaty of alliance between king Edward III of England and Fernando I of Portugal, 16th June 1373 (British National Archives: E 30-275)

Joao I was recognized as the undisputed King of Portugal, putting an end to the interregnum of the 1383–1385 Crisis. The Treaty of Windsor in 1386 established a pact of mutual support between the countries.

 

Although not invoked until several centuries later, the terms of the alliance were to be called upon during the 18th and 19th centuries when Portuguese independence was again threatened. In 1762 Anglo-Portuguese forces successfully defeated a Spanish invasion force and again during the Peninsula war of 1808-1814, Anglo-Portuguese troops under the Duke of Wellington thwarted Napoleon’s attempts to conquer Portugal, most notably at the battle of Buçaco (27 September 1810) which allowed Viscount Wellington and Portuguese General Luís do Rego Barreto to resume the retreat of their 52,000 men into the previously fortified Lines of Torres Vedras, a contiguous line of fortifications extending from the Tagus River to the ocean.  

Brigadier-General Robert Craufurd and the 52nd at Buçaco, 27th September 1810 by Christa Hook. The Royal Green Jackets Museum, Winchester.

 

 

 

COLONIZATION, WARS AND SLAVERY: HOW THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE STARTED IN 1518

Bartolomé de Las Casas explained how the African transatlantic slave trade actually started in the West Indies: In August 1518, for 25,000 ducats, Flemish Baron Laurent de Gorrevod, of H.R.E Carlos V’s private Council, granted a license to abduct and transport 4,000 Africans from islands situated in the Gulf of Guinea to the Antilles to the brothers Centurione, Genoese bankers in Seville. These bankers, in turn, sold their license to various settlers, making a profit of some 275,000 ducats (Historia de Indias, 1527-1547, Book III).

Théodore de Bry, African slaves working in mines in the New World

In 1528 a similar license was granted to Bartholomeus Welser, a powerful German banker of Augsburg who claimed to descend from Byzantine general Flavius Belisarius! Carlos V provided the Welsers with privileges within the African slave trade as a reward for their financial contributions to his Imperial election in 1519. In 1523 they started their own production of sugar in Santo Domingo and were granted the entire Venezuela in March 1528. 

 

The number of sugar mills boomed, and so did the number of grants to traffic enslaved Africans from West African chiefdoms in exchange for brass and guns. “As a result, the Portuguese, who had long been capturing black slaves in Guinea, for whom the Spanish paid good prices, increased the trade by whatever means possible and the Africans themselves, seeing the demand, warred among themselves to sell slaves to the Portuguese”.

A King (Oba) of Benin receiving Portuguese traders in the 16th century by Angus McBride. According to Duarte Pacheco Pereira (Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, 1506), the Benin Oba “was usually at war with its neighbors and takes many captives, whom we buy at 12 or 15 brass bracelets each."

 

Some of the enslaved Africans “escaped their misery by fleeing to the woods and from there cruelly attacked the Spaniards” such that “no small Spanish settlement was safe…”.

At the end of the 1540s, Las Casas, who had promoted the replacement of Indigenous slavery by African slavery, eventually changed his mind. He recognized that the Portuguese actions against Africans in Guinea were no less unjust than the Spanish against Indigenous Americans in the New World.

BATTLE OF ROCROI, May 19, 1643: TWILIGHT OF THE TERCIOS

At Rocroi, 22-year old Louis Duc d'Enghien defeated the Spanish Army of Flanders led by experienced General Francisco de Melo and Maestre de Campo Paul-Bernard de Fontaines. This decisive victory took place only five days after the accession of young Louis XIV, late in the Thirty Years' War. It is considered the turning point of the perceived invincibility of the Spanish tercio.

 

The Habsburgs had 27,000 men, the French 23,000. The French army attacked, but the infantry in the center were bested by the Spanish. The cavalry on the French left, advancing against Enghien's orders, was also thrown back. But the cavalry on the French right, under the command of Jean de Gassion, routed the Spanish cavalry opposite. 

 

Enghien was able to follow this up by attacking the exposed left flank of the Spanish infantry. Spanish cavalry made a successful counter-attack to drive off the French cavalry, but were checked by the advance of the French reserve.

 

Enghien now carried out a huge cavalry encirclement, sweeping behind the Spanish army and smashing his way through to attack the rear of the Spanish cavalry, which was still in combat with his reserves. The Spanish horse was put to flight, leaving the Spanish infantry to carry on the fight.

The French were twice repulsed by the stubborn Spanish squares, so Enghien arranged for his artillery and captured Spanish guns to blast them apart. The German and Walloon tercios fled from the battlefield, while the Spanish remained on the field with their commander, repulsing four cavalry charges by the French and never breaking formation, despite repeated heavy artillery bombardment. Enghien then offered surrender conditions just like those obtained by a besieged garrison in a fortress. Having agreed to those terms, the remains of the two tercios left the field with deployed flags and weapons. Enghien himself had conceived and directed the decisive victory. 

Battle of Rocroi by Ugo Pinson

The total Spanish losses were about 7,000 dead, wounded, or captured. French losses were about 4,000.

The Battle given at Rocroi proved to be a resounding victory for the French Royal army under the Duc d’Enghien. Until then, the tercios were considered invincible. Combining a force of trained pikemen and the fire of the arquebusiers, the tercios were the tool of Spanish domination in Europe throughout the 16th and the first half of the 17th century. 

 

To defeat them, the impetuous Duke of Enghien compensated for his numerical inferiority by his speed of maneuver and by making extensive use of his cavalry, routing the opponent’s own mounted forces, before falling back on the tercios’ rear and attacking them from all sides. The Army of Flanders lost most of its forces, including Maestre de Campo Paul-Bernard de Fontaine and 250 flags. This stunning victory against the renown Spanish tercios was unprecedented.

 

While Spain continued to use tercios, other European nations moved away from them, and even Spain was modifying them before they were eventually consigned to the memories of a glorious time in Spain's past.

 

A majority of historians, including myself, consider that this is clearly the beginning of the end of the Spanish predominance in Europe and of the tercios: There is one more Bavarian-Imperial victory at Tuttingen in November of the same year. At Montijo the next year the Portuguese defeated the Spaniards. At Nördlingen in 1645 the French defeated the Imperials. At Lens in 1648 once again Condé defeated the Spaniards. In 1654 at Arras this time it was Turenne who defeated the Spaniards. The last Spanish victory against the French was at Valenciennes in 1656, but 3 years later at Les Dunes Turenne crushed the Spaniards and this victory led to the Treaty of the Pyrenees. Thus, the only clear Spanish victory after Rocroi was Valenciennes and the last one. 

APOCALYPTIC DESTRUCTION OF PORT ROYAL, HOME OF THE JAMAICA STATION, June 7, 1692

“I found the Ground rowling and moving under my Feet, upon which I said, Lord, Sir, what’s this? Governor John White replied very composedly, being a very grave Man, ‘it is an Earthquake, be not afraid, it will soon be over’. But it increased, and we heard the Church and Tower fall; upon which, we ran to save ourselves. I quickly lost him, and made towards Morgan’s Fort, which being a wide open Place, I thought to be there securest from the falling Houses: But as I made toward it, I saw the Earth open and swallow-up a Multitude of People, and the Sea mounting-in upon us over the Fortifications”-Reverend Emmanuel Heath, Rector of Saint Paul’s church, 1692.

Fate of Port Royal by Robert W. by Nicholson for National Geographic, February 1960 edition.

English Admiral William Penn had captured Jamaica from Spain in 1655. As an attack from Cartagena was always possible, construction of Fort Cromwell began to defend the harbor in 1656. By 1692 five forts defended the port. A town was founded in the vicinity of the cay and the settlement was soon populated by an array of sailors, merchants, craftsmen and prostitutes. Originally called Point Cagway, it became Port Royal with the Restoration of Charles II in 1660; at the same time Fort Cromwell was renamed Fort Charles. From 1668, Royal Navy warships began to be permanently stationed there in what became the Jamaica Station. 

Henry Morgan enters Port Royal triumphantly in 1671 by William Gilkerson (1936-2015).

 

Although Port Royal was designed to serve as a defensive fortification guarding the entrance to the harbor, it assumed much greater importance. Its well positioned location within a well-protected harbor and its flat topography surrounded by deep water close to shore, made it an ideal place for loading, unloading and servicing of large ships. Ships' captains, merchants, and craftsmen established themselves in Port Royal to take advantage of of the trading and outfitting opportunities. As Jamaica's economy grew and changed between 1655 and 1692, Port Royal grew faster than any town founded by the English in the New World, and it became the most economically important English port in the Americas. In the early 1690s, Henry Morgan’s port city was home to 7,000-10,000 people, almost half directly involved with privateering.

Contemporary engraving of the Port Royal's 1692 disaster

 

By 1692, the dense city, the largest and most affluent English town in the Americas at this time, had 2,000 buildings, including brick buildings of up to 4 storeys. At the time, Francis Hanson wrote that there was more wealth per resident in Port Royal than in London!

Then, it all came crashing down, literally: At 11:43 am on Saturday 7th of June 1692, the hub of the British Caribbean was hit by a devastating earthquake, causing 33 of the city’s 52 acres to sink straight down into the liquefied substrate beneath the buildings in a matter of just 3 minutes. The town was hit by a tidal wave shortly after the earthquake ended and many people who had been half buried by the quake were drowned. The 32-gun, 5th rate HMS Swann was carried by the tsunami over the top of many houses, before crashing on the roof of Lord Pike’s mansion. She sank in middle of the ruins. In the 1980s, the shipwreck was identified underwater at the ends of Lime and Queen Streets by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology. 

Destruction of Port Royal by Andrew Howat

 

An estimated 2,000 people were killed on that day, with 3,000 more dying in the chaotic aftermath from injuries, the ensuing pillaging, hunger and disease. What was left of Port Royal, once connected to the rest of the island by a narrow strip of land, was now an island. The Palisadoes cemetery, where Henry Morgan had been buried just 4 years before, was one of the parts of the city to fall into the sea; his body has never been subsequently located. Of the five forts that once protected the island, only Fort Charles remained. The loss of Port Royal was a sudden, catastrophic event that forever changed the English Caribbean. 

Port Royal before the 1692 earthquake by Peter Dunn

-Read more on Port Royal’s history: https://jamaicaportroyal.com/archaeology.html and check out this National Geographic documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1VLUevIWIs

MILITARY LEADER OF THE DAY: GENERAL FRANCISO JAVIER CASTAÑOS

By Eric G. L. Pinzelli,
November 23, 2018
 

Castaños (1758-1852) was only 10 years old when King Carlos III first granted him the rank of captain of infantry. As a young officer he went to study at the Seminar of Nobles, and later completed his training at the Academy of Barcelona.
Castaños was Alexander O'Reilly’s brother in-law, and went with him to Prussia to learn from Friedrich the Great's military institution.
In 1794 Castaños served in the army of Navarre, under general Ventura Caro (see our previous post about the War of the Pyrenees: https://www.facebook.com/groups/768183316680632/permalink/1209132945918998/). At the peace of 1796 he was made marechal-de-camp, and in 1798, a lieutenant-general. Castaños was later banished from Madrid by Manuel Gody. In 1808, when the French first invaded Spain, he offered his services to the Supreme Junta, and was made commander of the army that was sent to oppose the French led by general Dupont. He marched against them with 40,000. After Cordova was taken by the French, they were beaten back at the battle of Bailén (July 1808), the first ever open field defeat of a Napoleonic army.
Castaños was later heavily defeated at the battle of Tudela on November 23, 1808 and lost much of his influence. However, in 1811 the Regency, named him commander of the 4th Spanish army, and captain-general of Estremadura, Old Castile, Galicia, and other provinces. He commanded the lines at St. Roche and the principal Spanish army. He then participated in Wellington’s campaigns, the siege of Burgos (1812) and the battle of Vittoria (1813). When Napoleon returned from Elba, Castaños was placed at the head of an army of 70,000 Spaniards to assist the allies; but that assistance was not wanted, and Castanos retired from the frontiers of France.
Castaños finally resigned his command to general Luis Lacy y Gautier in the summer of 1816. From then, he took an active part in public affairs during the reigns of Fernando VII and Isabel II. Castaños died at Madrid in 1852 at age 94.
Source: A New Biographical Dictionary, of 3000 Contemporary Public characters, 1825.
Illustration: General Castaños, Madrid, 1808, by Dionisio A. Cueto.