With the festering wound of the Treaty of Utrecht, Felipe V placed himself in the hands of the fifty-one-year-old Italian Giulio Alberoni, to recover the power lost by Spain both in the Mediterranean and in northern Europe. The ambitious cleric, who received his orders directly from the kings, clashed from the beginning with the Administration and the nobility, giving the reign a “wonderful aspect of confusion and disorder,” as the British minister stationed in Spain sarcastically observed. This internally, because facing the outside he proposed to squander in record time, with the meticulousness of a Swiss watchmaker, the Navy and the army that the Bourbons were rebuilding.
The Italian was against going to war, but held, like most at court, that Utrecht had unfairly deprived Spain of its influence in its natural realm. In June 1717 a fleet of a hundred ships He left Barcelona with the excuse of hunting Turkish ships, but by surprise he fell on Sardinia. From there the Spanish troops spread to Sicily, taking advantage of the fact that the Habsburgs lacked naval power.
In the middle of the operations, Felipe V suffered a new episode of the mental illness that had plagued him since adolescence, probably a bipolar syndrome. Suicidal thoughts, lack of interest in his existence, and sleep disturbances turned the King into a wimp. He refused to change his clothes and neglected his hygiene. The Monarch was determined that he would die right there, so much so that, in October of that year, he asked to make a will. Many denounced that the Italians and the queen were poisoning him to shape an à la carte inheritance. Nothing is further from reality; the madness of Felipe V was genuine.
Although the King’s mind was a vervain, the conquest of Sicily and Sardinia went from strength to strength. What Alberoni did not count on was the direct opposition of his French cousins, who since the death of the Sun King had delegated the regency to an old acquaintance of the Spanish monarch. The Duke of Orleans, a relative of the King of Spain, had fought in the War of Succession until the seed of mistrust grew in Felipe V. The aversion between relatives took the form of an international conspiracy against Spain. Following the attack on Sicily and Sardinia, France led a coalition made up of the Holy Roman Empire, Great Britain and the Netherlands, which destroyed the bulk of the Spanish Mediterranean fleet near Syracuse (Sicily). The naval defeat, where the Royal Navy acted treacherously without declaring war, suddenly cut off the limbs of the reborn Spanish navy.
Operation in Scotland
Giulio Alberoni, who was elevated to cardinal, decided to answer that felony with a landing in the British Isles. Where military expeditions had failed during the heyday of the Spanish Empire, Philip V’s minister sought to prevail with very limited resources. Every gear in the attack on England clicked into place. cardinal’s mind with the mathematical accuracy expected by someone who has never set foot on a battlefield. A small force would attack Scotland as a diversion, while a larger army, reinforced by Swedish troops, would land on the southwest coast, where James’s many Catholic supporters Francis Edward Stuartknown as “the old suitor», they would rise up against King George I.
It seemed like a seamless plan, except that everything went horribly wrong. The unexpected death of Charles XII, the last warrior king of Sweden, left Spain without its only ally on the eve of the attack. The distraction force, made up of 307 marines, successfully left Pasajes, but not the main fleet, which was dismounted by a storm off Cape Finisterre. The infantrymen continued on alone towards Inverness, oblivious to the series of unfortunate events that had wiped out their comrades.
At the beginning of April 1719 they landed on the coast of Scotland and, under the command of Colonel Nicolas de Castro Bolañoentrenched themselves waiting for them to join their ranks the highland clans, in the Eilean Donan castle, an emblematic fortress used in the filming of films such as ‘Braveheart’ and ‘The immortals’. They waited for help in vain. Most clans were shocked by what had happened in Finisterre, and with the loss of the castle soon after, only a madman would want to join the decimated command of foot soldiers. And that’s exactly what it was the bandit rob roy, outlawed and mistreated by the English, who responded to the call of the Spaniards like flies to honey. Rob Roy planned with the Spanish a dog-faced attack against the common enemy.
View of Eilean Donan Castle from Lake Alsh.
The decisive meeting took place in what has since been called ‘Pass of the Spaniards’. For three hours the Spanish, four hundred Jacobites, and forty men of Rob Roy’s clan fought something like a fight, more like a siege. The Highlanders were the first to retire., after their leader was injured. They were followed by the Jacobites and, finally, by the Spanish marines, who escaped taking advantage of the confusion of the night. Their odyssey ended the next day, when they discovered that they were once again surrounded. They were taken to Edinburgh, where they met with those who had been prisoners in Donan Island. Spain and Great Britain would agree to his return months later.
Felipe V’s old friend was reluctant to fight against the Spanish, so he tried to keep the number of casualties to a minimum and ordered his troops not to capture the King under any circumstances.
Despite the happy ending of the 307 infantrymen, who miraculously suffered hardly any casualties, the disastrous operation added to a bag of defeats against the Quadruple Alliance, including an invasion from France that penetrated the Basque Country region. Without much effort, the Duke of Berwick took Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa and Alava, taking advantage of the fact that Alberoni had been in a tug of war for months with the Basques on account of customs. Felipe V’s old friend was reluctant to fight against the Spanish, so he tried to keep the number of casualties to a minimum and ordered his troops not to capture the King under any circumstances, although they did capture Alberoni if he came within range. Harassed by his countrymen and relatives, Felipe V fell into depression and soon abandoned his plans.
The French invasion and a British raiding campaign on the Galician coasts collapsed the country’s defenses. The Kings stripped Alberoni of all his charges by decree at the beginning of December 1719 and ordered him to leave Madrid without even going through the royal office. They did not want to see him even in painting. Alberoni left Madrid giving a loud dooro.