The Battle of Cape Passaro, 11 August 1718 by Richard Paton (oil on
canvas, 1767).
Painting of battle showing Spanish flagship Real San Felipe (centre)
being bombarded by British ships.
For various reasons
His Majesty could not join the alliance [between Hanover, the Emperor and
Poland] as King, but that would not prevent the British fleet in the Baltic
from operating in support of that alliance, and applying the right to
self-defence as it has done against Sweden in the past and still does, even
though His Majesty has not declared war on the King of Sweden.
George I’s Hanoverian chief minister, Count
Bernstorff, in 1718, on why George could not provide an official guarantee to
use the Royal Navy against the Russians.
Very shortly after the Utrecht Settlement, it became clear
that the new geopolitical architecture of Europe was designed to contain the
old threat – from France – and not the emerging challenges in northern and
southern Europe. By the end of the decade, it became clear that the biggest
danger to Britain’s security came from the rising power of Tsar Peter the Great
in the Baltic, and the resurgence of Spanish ambitions in the Mediterranean. In
both cases, the threat was as much to the overall balance of power as to the
position of the Royal Navy; indeed, because neither Madrid nor St Petersburg
hesitated to play the Jacobite card, the Protestant Succession in Britain
itself was also in peril. The two theatres were separated by huge distances,
and yet the problems were interconnected, not least because two of the most
important European powers, France and Austria, had interests in both spheres.
In each case, the use of naval power provided a tempting but as it turned out
insufficient solution. In the end, the balance in the Mediterranean and – less
successfully – the Baltic, and with them Britain’s naval supremacy, could only
be safeguarded through skilful diplomacy. Stanhope’s grand design for Europe
provided for the time being, at least, a collaborative framework within which
British interests were secured. He responded to the unfamiliar challenges not
by drawing in his horns, but by broadening Britain’s strategic perspective.
Britain’s policy in the Mediterranean after 1714 aimed at
‘double containment’. Stanhope preached the need to guard against the revival
of French power, especially an attempt to reunite the Spanish and the French
crowns. But he was also profoundly concerned about Spanish ambitions to rebuild
her Mediterranean empire at Austrian expense, especially in Italy. At the same
time, Britain sought to restrain the Austrians: the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles
VI, the sometime ‘Charles III’ of Spain, was still smarting from the loss of
his own claim to the Spanish throne; and he still had a substantial following
among Catalans opposed to Castilian domination. Finally, Britain had her own,
narrower agenda in the region: holding on to Gibraltar and Minorca (two key
naval bases retained at Utrecht); to exploit the Asiento, or the right to trade
in slaves with the Spanish colonies; and to consolidate her trade with Spain.
The instruments available to pursue these interests were limited: a Royal Naval
squadron and the bases at Minorca and Gibraltar, but no ground forces worth speaking
of. What Britain lacked in brute coercive power would have to be made up
through diplomatic manoeuvre, bribery, persuasion and bluff. Moreover, she
would not just react to threats, but seek to forestall them.
While Louis XIV still lived, a fresh struggle with France
for control of the Mediterranean could not be ruled out. After his death in
1715, Spain soon emerged as the principal threat. For Elizabeth Farnese, the
second wife of the King of Spain, was concerned to find suitable inheritances
for her children; Philip’s family by his first wife would succeed in Madrid.
This could only be achieved in Italy, at Austria’s expense. But first Philip’s
chief minister and a close confidant of Elizabeth, Cardinal Alberoni, needed to
neutralize the Royal Navy; only then could a combined naval and ground assault
on the Austrians take place. To that end, Alberoni granted Britain favourable
terms in a new commercial treaty in December 1715. He hoped thereby to win over
merchant and colonial interests in London, and give them an incentive to oppose
a military confrontation with Spain. This was a clever strategy: not only was
there a large overseas trade at stake, but British manufacturing exports to
Spain and Portugal were steadily expanding, almost the only European market
where that was still the case.
Confrontation with Spain thus made no commercial sense at
this point. Indeed, the Tory MP for Scarborough later complained, after the
outbreak of hostilities, that he had ‘carefully looked over all the treaties
before them but found not one article in them for security of the English
commerce and desired that in this address they would mention it to His
Majesty’. If Stanhope refused to turn a blind eye to Spanish ambitions in the
western and central Mediterranean, it was because strategic concerns mattered
more to him. He responded to Alberoni’s advances with his own vision for a
geopolitical reordering of the Mediterranean. Stanhope envisaged a set of
interlocking exchanges and guarantees. The Emperor, Charles VI, should forgo
his claim to the Spanish crown; in return he would be confirmed in possession
of his territories in Italy and the Netherlands. At the same time, Charles
should offer the Savoyards Sardinia in exchange for Sicily. This would create
greater contiguity for both states, and thus strengthen them in their
respective barrier functions. Spain would have to renounce her more extensive
claims in Italy, but Elizabeth Farnese’s son, Don Carlos, would secure the
reversionary interest on Parma, Tuscany and Piacenza: they would fall to him
after the reigning Duke died. Britain, for her part, was willing to surrender
Gibraltar if that would lead to a stable settlement; after all, bases were a
means to an end, not the end itself.
Stanhope was therefore prepared to make sacrifices for a
lasting settlement in the Mediterranean. Elizabeth Farnese, however, would not
accept anything less than the return of all or at least a major part of the
former Spanish European empire. In 1717 the Spaniards seized Habsburg Sardinia in
a coup de main. It was clear that Spain would have to be coerced, and in order
to do so Stanhope had to embed his Mediterranean strategy within a broader
European vision. French cooperation was clearly essential, another argument in
favour of the alliance which Stanhope pursued with such success in 1716.
Equally important were the Austrians, with whom relations were also restored in
1716–17. But Stanhope had to take into account not only Britain’s bilateral
relations but also the relations of her allies with third parties. Of
particular worry was the distraction caused by the resumption of hostilities
between the Austrians and Turks in 1716. It was for this reason that British
and Hanoverian observers looked to a rapid Austrian victory. As Schulenburg remarked
to Görtz, news of Habsburg successes ‘had revived the low spirits here’ and
would have ‘a very positive effect for His Majesty’s interest in all areas’ –
that is, in the Baltic and the Mediterranean. Britain therefore also helped to
mediate the Peace of Passarowitz in July 1718, between the Emperor and the
Turkish Sultan.
All this involved a widening of British diplomatic horizons.
Of course, the connection between the northern and western balances had already
been grasped by Marlborough; and the need to relieve the Emperor of the Turkish
threat had been a consideration in London since the Nine Years War. Still,
Britain had hitherto never really had a holistic eastern policy, designed to
see issues in the round rather than in isolation. This was a function not so
much of ignorance as of institutional blinkers, resulting from the division of
foreign affairs into a Northern and a Southern department. This was bad enough
in the case of relations with France, where British statesmen were well aware
of the ways in which Mediterranean and northern affairs could interconnect. But
it was critical in the case of Austria, Russia and Turkey, which were
peripheral to both departments. A modern observer would have noted that there
was a distinct lack of ‘joined-up government’ in British foreign policy.
Coherence had to be supplied by an individual, either the monarch or a dynamic
chief minister, as Stanhope was.
The Spanish problem, however, remained. Taking advantage of
Britain’s preoccupation in the Baltic, and hopeful that her commercial
diplomacy had made the cost of war unacceptably high to London, Spain continued
her Mediterranean advance. There was little the Austrians, who had no navy
worth speaking of, could do about this beyond appealing to Britain and France for
help. Counter-measures were hampered by the paralysing effect of the Whig
split, which the Spanish ambassador to London exacerbated wherever he could. In
Parliament, Walpole not only opposed the Baltic policy, but also tried to block
approval of the money supply for the Mediterranean fleet, on the grounds that
it would lead to war with Spain. Stanhope was acutely conscious of these
constraints. In mid February 1718, he wrote of his determination ‘to hide from
foreign nations if possible our nakedness’.
But it was the Spanish invasion of Sicily, and the expulsion
of the Austrian garrison, in July 1718, which finally forced Britain’s hand.
Shortly afterwards, Daniel Defoe summed up the resulting strategic threat to
the British position in the Mediterranean. ‘If the present Spanish King sets up
a superiority of his naval power,’ he wrote, ‘Sicily, in such a hand, would be
like a chain drawn across the mouth of the Levant Sea.’ ‘Great Britain,’ he
went on, ‘cannot acquiesce in letting Spain possess Sicily without giving up
her trade to Turkey and the Gulph of Venice… to Gallipoli for oil, to Messina
and Naples for silk; and in a word her whole commerce of the Mediterranean.’
Defoe concluded by asking, ‘How long shall we be able to carry on our
navigation and commerce with our people in Jamaica, Barbados etc., if the naval
strength of Spain shall be suffered to grow to such an immoderate and monstrous
pitch?’ As if all this was not bad enough, there were also fears of an attack
from New Spain on the British in the Carolinas. In George’s mind, the looming
Spanish hegemony in the Mediterranean and the confrontations with Sweden,
Prussia and increasingly Russia in the Baltic seemed to blend into one
continuous encircling front against him. He was enveloped not only in Britain
and America but in Hanover as well. Something drastic needed to be done.
Within a month, the Mediterranean squadron of the Royal Navy under Admiral Byng attacked and annihilated the Spanish fleet off Cape Passaro. Since Britain and Spain were not yet at war, this action, as the naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan noted, was the ‘destruction not of an actual but of a possible rival’. It was a preventive strike designed to eliminate a potential threat to British interests at an early stage. As Sunderland remarked to the Duke of Newcastle on hearing the news, ‘there is now a thorough end put to the Cardinal’s great projects and to the rising power of Spain at sea.’ Likewise, the Hanoverians around the King welcomed the news of the Spanish defeat as a relief not only in the Mediterranean. ‘Clipping Spain’s wings in Italy,’ Schulenburg hoped, would ease Britain’s situation in the Baltic: ‘it would be very convenient for us to be secure from that side while we are being threatened by some terrible catastrophe from the opposite corner [of Europe]’ – that is, the Baltic. Military action was accompanied by active diplomacy. The Hanoverians, especially Bernstorff and Bothmer, were very active in helping to bring about the Quadruple Alliance of August 1718, by which Charles VI joined the Triple Alliance of Britain, France and the United Provinces with a view to containing Spain. Through a combination of coercive and collaborative instruments, the Spanish advance in the Mediterranean had been contained, and the rise of a naval rival forestalled.
All the same, many in the political nation and in the public
sphere at large were profoundly ambivalent about the triumph at Cape Passaro.
Rather than retrospectively sanction the operation, one critic, Lord Strafford,
announced that ‘before they approved the sea fight, they ought to be satisfied
whether the same happened before or after the signing of the Quadruple
Alliance.’ He therefore moved that Byng’s instructions should be laid before
Parliament. Likewise, Walpole – still determined to make mischief for his
rivals in the ministry – argued that ‘the giving sanction… to the late
measures, could have no other view, than to screen ministers, who were
conscious of having done something amiss, and, who having begun a war against
Spain, would now make it the Parliament’s war.’ Instead of applauding, he
continued, Parliament ‘ought to show their entire dissatisfaction with a
conduct that was contrary to the laws of nations, and a breach of solemn
treaties’. Stanhope responded to these charges robustly. He made clear that
Cape Passaro had been an act not merely of tactical but also strategic
preemption. It was aimed, first of all, at stopping Spain from breaking out of
the constraints of the Utrecht Settlement, rebuilding their Mediterranean
empire and perhaps even reuniting the French and Spanish thrones. Secondly,
Stanhope argued, ‘it was high time for Great Britain to check the naval power
of Spain’. Better to confront it now than later. Indeed, rather than disavowing
Byng, Stanhope stressed that the Admiral was following royal instructions. The
King, in turn, had ‘acted by the advice of his Privy Council; that he was one
of that number; and he thought it an honour to have advised His Majesty to
these measures’, which he believed to be necessary in the national interest.
All the procedures, in short, had been followed. The ministry were all in this
together. Stanhope spoke with such passion and eloquence that most were
persuaded.
War was formally declared between Britain and Spain in
December 1718, followed by a French declaration of war on Spain in January
1719. Three months later, the French launched a successful invasion of northern
Spain, supported by a diversionary British operation in Galicia. Meanwhile, the
Royal Navy drove the Spaniards from the western Mediterranean. Despite the fact
that all three combatants had extensive colonial holdings, this was essentially
a European war, fought in Europe for European ends. Spain tried to unseat
George by sponsoring a Jacobite invasion of Scotland in April 1719. James III,
however, was unable to make a landfall, and the rebellion under the Earl of Mar
soon fizzled out. The unequal contest lasted less than a year. In December 1719
Alberoni was dismissed and in early 1720 Spain made her peace with the
Quadruple Alliance. All Spanish–Austrian differences were referred to a future
Congress at Cambrai, which would meet early in the new decade. Perhaps
fortunately for those who had begun the war in such legally dubious
circumstances, it had ended well.
Exultant Whigs saw in this outcome not only a vindication of
their policies but also a guarantee of their domestic political ascendancy. As
Newcastle wrote to Stanhope in October 1719, he could not ‘apprehend that we
have anything to fear’ in new elections. He believed that their ‘merit of
having settled a universal peace in Europe’ would ensure the King’s ‘hearty
adherence to the Whig interest’. Likewise Stanhope saw ‘the prospect of seeing
a peace both in the south and the north before next spring’. ‘This good
situation,’ he added, ‘will probably put our friends in good humour at our
opening the Parliament.’ Indeed, it would be advisable ‘to make the best use
and advantage possible of this good humour’ by pushing through contentious
domestic measures such as the Peerage Bill. Not everybody shared this optimism.
It was true, as Schulenburg noted in August 1718, that ‘once re-established,
the tranquility of the south will add great lustre to the King our master, I
wish I could say the same for the north, and in order to render the happiness
of the King complete, the submission of the P[rince of Wales] must round off
these grand projects. I hope it without believing.’
For in the Baltic, Britain-Hanover faced a massive new
threat to her interests: Russia. Ever since the turn of the century, when Peter
the Great’s ambition erupted on to the European scene, British statesmen and
publicists had watched the growth of Russian power with apprehension. By
promoting Russia through the provision of naval expertise, England and later
Britain seemed to have nurtured a potential rival. As the Whig pamphleteer
Daniel Defoe wrote in 1705, the example of Russia ‘may serve to remind us, how
we once taught the French to build ships, till they are grown able to teach us
how to use them’. By 1718, the British representative in Russia, James
Jefferys, was warning that ‘The improvements he [Peter] has made, by the help
of English builders, are such as a seaman would think almost impossible for a
nation so lately used to the sea.’ The Russians, he lamented, had now ‘built
three sixty-gun ships, which are in every way equal to the best of that rank in
our country’. Some time later, in April 1719, Jefferys asked Stanhope ‘whether
it will be for the interest of Great Britain to be a spectator of so growing a
power as this, especially at sea, and brought about by her own subjects’. As
the Swedish empire in the Baltic disintegrated and the Russians advanced into
Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Mecklenburg, unease turned to alarm.
British policy was driven by strategic, not economic
considerations. Indeed, there was a strong commercial lobby which wished to
avoid war with Russia at all costs. As one Hanoverian reported in the autumn of
1719, there were many ‘English merchants who trade with Russia [who] have made
representations to the Regents that they have more than two million pounds
sterling worth of assets which they would risk losing if one hastily [
brusquement ] declared war on the Muscovites’. There were also merchants who complained
of Swedish depredations against British commerce, and so these economic
considerations had a way of cancelling each other out, in that a breach with
either country would be economically costly. Moreover, Britain had an
existential reason to fear Peter. Ever since the failed rebellion of 1715,
Jacobites had swarmed across Europe armed with letters of introduction from
James III, many of them to Russia. Their expertise was welcomed there with open
arms. Supporters of the Pretender trained Peter’s army, built and led his navy,
and one even served as his personal physician. As relations with Britain
deteriorated, these men gained ever greater prominence. Throughout 1716, they
tried to mediate a peace between Sweden and Russia, so that either or both sides
would be free to attack George. In 1718, they tried again, this time with a
view to bringing Spain into the alliance as well. Of course, whether Britain
was compelled to oppose Peter because of his support for Jacobites, or whether
he felt obliged to support them because of British hostility, is a moot point.
Ministerial measures had partly helped to create the threat they sought to
contain.
The main instrument of British policy in the Baltic would
have to be the Royal Navy, if possible with Dutch support. ‘By all I can learn
here of the state of affairs in the north,’ Stanhope wrote in late May 1719, ‘I
think it would be of the utmost consequence if we could appear with a joint
force in that sea sufficient to give weight to our mediation.’ One method considered
by Stanhope was a surprise attack on the Russians by sea, if necessary without
formal declaration of war. He wanted to inflict a ‘Cape Passaro’ on them, a
phrase which in those days had something of the quality that ‘Copenhagen’ had
for the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century navy. Clearly, the strategy of
pre-emption, which had served so well against Spain in 1718–19, was infectious.
But Stanhope knew that – as in the Mediterranean – military instruments alone
would not suffice. If Russia was to be contained, a fundamental rethink of
policy in the Baltic was required. Fortuitously, an opportunity was now at
hand.
In December 1718, Charles XII was killed in action in
Norway, to almost universal relief; his more moderate sister Ulrica Eleonora
succeeded to the throne. This was the moment for a rapprochement with Sweden,
in order to restore it as a bulwark against Peter the Great. The choice of
envoy to Sweden fell upon Lord Carteret. This was significant, because it shows
the extent to which the King was swayed by foreign political considerations
rather than just party ones. Carteret’s family background was Tory, albeit
loyal; he himself had a voting record in Parliament as a Hanover Tory. But what
really recommended him to George was his firm European orientation and his
linguistic skills. Schulenburg described Carteret thus: ‘He is a young nobleman
who has very good qualities, and much more politeness and obligingness towards
foreigners than is usual among islanders and free peoples [ les peuples libres
]. He speaks French, which has enabled him to get to know the King, who values
him for his merits.’ He finished by saying that ‘if so far he has not, properly
speaking, belonged to any party, he was far from being odious to the Whigs and
Tories’, both of whom were now assiduously courting him. Of course, it did
Carteret no harm that he was on good terms with some of the King’s Hanoverian
ministers, particularly Görtz, and seems to have been regarded with a good deal
of suspicion by the Prince of Wales; Caroline confessed to her lady-in-waiting
Mrs Clayton that ‘I am afraid of him’. He even got on with the famously
cantankerous and suspicious Admiral Norris.
Carteret finally set off for Sweden in May 1719, accompanied
by ‘three secretaries, two chaplains, three chefs, a pastry-chef [ confiseur ]
and several other servants’. By the time he arrived, Sweden was in dire straits
and on the verge of invasion by the Tsar. Only Britain, Carteret argued, now
stood between Russia and the total domination of the Baltic. If nothing was
done, he warned Robethon in late July 1719, ‘the Tsar will be absolute master
of Sweden and of the Baltic, which would not be in Britain’s interest nor that
of the whole of Europe’. For this reason Carteret repeated over and over that ‘we
ought for the sake of our own interests as English [sic] men not to stand by as
unconcerned spectators but prevent their ruin if possible.’ Moreover, Carteret
warned that failure to prop up Sweden might well lead to a Russo-Swedish
rapprochement at Britain’s expense. Given the determination of the Swedish
parliament – the Senate – to come to terms with Russia, this was perfectly
possible. ‘If they had made peace with the Tsar, or even should be upon good
terms with him while he remains in the Baltic,’ he wrote, ‘they may in
conjunction not only affront in these seas, but also give us trouble at home.’
In other words, they might support a Jacobite invasion. This was not just about
state interests, he argued, but also about the preservation of the ‘Protestant
cause’, something which he knew to be dear to George’s heart.
Predictably, the chief stumbling block was Bremen and
Verden. George would have been happy to trade the duchies for an ‘equivalent’.
His Hanoverian diplomats, however, soon realized that the Swedes were insisting
‘on the restitution of the duchies of Bremen and Verden without an equivalent’.
Despite their parlous situation, the Swedes were determined to maintain their
footing in Germany. Indeed, the presentation of Carteret’s credentials in Stockholm
led to an immediate row. The President of the Swedish Chancery, Count
Cronhielm, quickly spotted that the list of his monarch’s titles therein was
incomplete because it did not include the two duchies. All this put Carteret in
the very difficult situation of appearing to press George’s Electoral ambitions
at the expense of the British interests he was sent to represent. He did not
doubt that the duchies could be secured if George ‘would give more and engage
himself to do more for them than they are worth’. This price would be an
alliance, subsidies, military and naval assistance ‘to reduce the Tsar to his
ancient limits’.
In spite of these tensions, Carteret worked closely with the
King’s Hanoverian servants. The Electoral minister in Stockholm, Count
Bassewitz, proved a useful source of information at the Swedish court, and
Carteret was careful to coordinate most of his moves – particularly the
delicate matter of bribing Swedish politicians – with him. He summed up the
extent of his cooperation with the Hanoverian when he reported to Stanhope that
‘I have obeyed your lordship in giving Mr Bassewitz all the assistance and
support I can, & I believe he will say that I have not been unuseful to his
negotiation. I shall take care in forming the defensive alliance to follow your
lordship’s instructions in relation to the guaranty of the Provinces in Germany
and of the Duchy of Sleswick.’ What is further remarkable here is that this is
not a dispatch to the King, but between two British ministers, indicating the
extent to which Hanoverian concerns were part of their remit. But then as
Carteret remarked, he believed ‘the Electoral interests are inseparable from
the royal ones’ in Sweden. Both shared the overriding aim of containing Russia.
In the end, the Swedes conceded the loss of Bremen and Verden, essentially
because they had no choice. ‘Our success,’ Carteret reported, ‘is owing chiefly
to the Tsar. He at the gates of Stockholm has reasoned the best for us.’
Wisely, he did not crow about his victory in Stockholm, but rather sought to
conciliate the browbeaten Swedes and motivate them for the coming showdown with
Russia. ‘I am never for pushing a victory too far,’ Carteret remarked sagely.
