Spanish invasion of Portugal (1762)

Taking advantage of the mountainous terrain, the guerrilla bands inflicted heavy losses on the invaders and practically cut off their communication lines with Spain, causing a shortage of essential supplies.

The British government apologized to the Portuguese king, José I, by sending a special delegation to Lisbon,[16] yet the captured vessels were not returned, as demanded by France (Pombal had previously informed Pitt that he did not expect it).

Together with some militias and ordnances (respectively a kind of Portuguese military institution of 2nd and 3rd line), gangs of civilians armed with sickles and guns attacked the Spanish troops, taking advantage of the mountainous terrain.

[41] In another example, the Portuguese Corregidor of Miranda reported in August 1762 that the invading forces in the north had experienced a mortal hatred from the countrymen, who have made them war, and do not spare neither soldiers nor sutlers...and initially even killed defectors, accusing them of being spies.

He owed this defeat to the appearance of fair (p.249) ..."[47]On 26 May, another part of the Spanish army that had marched from Chaves towards the province of Minho (Oporto being the final goal), engaged in battle with the Portuguese ordnances at the mountains of Montalegre and the outcome was similar: the Spaniards had to retreat with losses.

A contemporary document notes that it was impossible to walk in the mountains of the province of Trás-os-Montes because of the nauseating odour of countless Spanish corpses, which the peasants refused – motivated by pure hate – to bury.

A contemporary account published in British press during this invasion is quite revealing: "The Spaniards, instead of advancing boldly to face their enemies, content themselves with dispatching flying parties from their camp, who commit unheard of barbarities among the small villages; robbing and murdering the inhabitants; setting fire to their crops, and not even sparing the sacred furniture belonging to their chapels.

Since the enemy was gathering troops and ammunitions in the region of Valencia de Alcántara, near Alentejo – preparing a third Spanish invasion – Lippe chose to take preemptive action by attacking the invader on his own ground, in Estremadura.

In the beginning of the second invasion, A British observer – after describing the Portuguese soldiers as the "wretched troops" he ever saw, who were "often five days together without bread, and the horses without forage" – wrote he was apprehensive that Lippe, overwhelmed by difficulties, ended up asking for resignation.

[87][88] Facing an overwhelming combination of 24,000 Spanish and 8,000 French,[89] and poorly commanded by an incompetent, the octogenarian Palhares (whose substitute sent by the government did not arrive on time), the remaining 1, 500 men surrendered with honours of war,[90] after a symbolic resistance of nine days (25 August).

The initial Franco-Spanish success in Beira benefited from the strong popular opposition to the regime of the Marquis of Pombal,[92] the ruthless Portuguese prime minister; but the massacres and plunder perpetrated by the invaders – especially by the French – soon incurred the peasants' odium.

[95] As explained by Spanish prime minister Godoy: All the Portuguese, in accordance with the fundamental laws of the country, were soldiers and defenders of the realm until 60 years of age...poured into the roughs, in the heights, in the ravines ... waged a war of guerrilla, causing many more losses on the enemy than the regular [Anglo-Portuguese] troops.

He got to Abrantes and posted a detachment under Burgoynne at Niza and another one under the Count of Santiago near Alvito, to obstruct the passage of the river Tagus at Vila Velha; so that when the invading army came up, they found all these strategic positions occupied (and all boats taken or destroyed by the Portuguese).

But la Lippe sent an immediate reinforcement to Count de Santiago, and the combined allied force under Loudoun defeated the chasing Spanish troops at the River Alvito (3 October 1762), and escaped to Sobreira Formosa.

As noted by the eminent British military historian Sir Charles Oman: "Throughout Portuguese history the summons to the levy en masse had always been combined with another measure, from which indeed it could not be disentangled-the order to the whole population to evacuate and devastate the land in face of the advancing enemy.

(...) When Spain had made her last serious assault on Portugal in 1762... the plan had work[ed] admirably..."[111] Indeed, the Portuguese soldiers and peasants turned the Province of Beira into a desert: populations abandoned villages, bringing with them everything that was edible.

[115][116][117] It exploited to the full both the Portuguese capital's geographical situation (which could always receive provisions by sea), and the erosion of the Franco-Spanish army through starvation caused by a scorched earth strategy and the collapse of its logistic lines[118] (attacked by the guerrilla and other irregular forces).

[141] These figures are corroborated by sources close to the Spanish crown: both the Austrian ambassador, Count of Rosenberg, and the Secretary of the Danish embassy, Federico de Goessel, sent independent reports to their governments estimating that - excluding the prisoners and deserters (which were not included in the following number) - Spain had suffered 12,000 deaths in the war against Portugal.

"[148]Comparatively, during the Napoleonic campaign to conquer Portugal a few years later, in 1810–1811, the French army of Massena lost 25,000 men (of whom 15,000 dead from starvation and disease plus 8,000 deserters or prisoners) to the Anglo-Portuguese of Wellington and guerrillas.

[161] American historian Lawrence H. Gipson (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History): "Lippe meanwhile had concentrated fifteen thousand British and Portuguese Troops at Abrantes, called 'the Pass to Lisbon'.

With the coming of the autumnal rains and with his army not only ravaged by disease and other ills but greatly reduced as the result of desertions, General Aranda found it impossible to remain in the desolate mountainous country that he was confined.

[163] Meanwhile, admirers of Aranda anticipated his victory -taken for granted-, such as the humanist and reformer Stanislaw Konarski, who, writing from distant Poland, and ignoring the Franco-Spanish disaster, composed an ode in Latin in his honor, praising the generosity and humanism of the winner of Portugal towards the inhabitants of Lisbon surrendered to his feet.

[170] When Lippe eventually returned to his own country – praised by Voltaire in his famous Encyclopedia, and covered with prestige in Britain, and all Europe – the King of Portugal offered him six cannons of gold (each weighing 32 pounds), a star studded with diamonds, among other gifts, as a sign of gratitude for the man who had saved his throne.

Indeed, after her defeat in the last invasion, Spain felt compelled to reorganize her troops in order to conquer a portion of Portuguese territory that could be changed by her huge colonial losses at the hands of the British.

The Portuguese, commanded by Rolim Moura, also successfully resisted a Spanish army sent from Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolívia) to dislodge them from the right bank of the Guaporé River (Fortress of S. Rosa or Conceição), the "gate" for the gold-rich Province of Mato Grosso (1763).

The talents of the German Count de La Lippe who commanded them, and the assistance of the British, enabled this force to resist the Spanish army, who retired at the close of the campaign, after sustaining considerable loss as well as from the regulars as the peasants".

[citation needed] Besides, the Bourbon numerical superiority was mainly apparent as they had to split their forces in order to sustain the conquered strongholds, look for food, chase the guerrillas, escort supply convoys from Spain, and build roads.

[citation needed] According to several contemporaries, the huge human losses experienced by the Spaniards during the invasion of Portugal, contributed to discredit Spain:[201] "Through a Compact Family / the sword he drew / thus, it was believed that the world he was going to conquer.

Spanish historian José de Urdañez pointed out that: "as the best biographers of the Aragonese count [Aranda] have explained, 'under the cover of rigor, the material and moral failure that this war had been to Spain was camouflaged before the people.'

There is, nevertheless, a high qualified exception -the great Novelist and Dramaturge Benito Pérez Galdós, who wrote a tale about the battle of Bailén, where a personage, D. Santiago Fernández, describes sarcastically his participation in the campaign of 1762, fiercely defending his master, the marquis of Sarria: "...

Joseph I of Portugal . Confronted with the Franco-Spanish "ultimatum" of 1762 to betray his alliance with Britain, he said "it would affect him less, though reduced to the last extremity, to let the last tile of his palace fall, and to see his faithful subjects spill the last drop of their blood, than to sacrifice, together with the honour of his crown, all that Portugal holds most dear..." [ 22 ]
The 1755 Lisbon earthquake horrified Europe, sparking a debate about the nature of its causes among the main European philosophers, mainly between Voltaire and Rousseau: Providential or natural? The famous pamphlet A Spanish Prophecy , published in 1762 in Madrid, intended to prove that all the carnage suffered by the Portuguese during the earthquake, tsunami and ensuing fire, were divine punishment for their alliance with the British heretics. [ 26 ] British help included 6,000 barrels of meat, 4,000 of butter,1,200 sacks of rice, 10,000 quarters of flour and £100,000 for relief (while Spanish and French money offers were refused) [ 27 ]
The region of Trás-os-Montes was the main theater of operations during the first Franco-Spanish invasion of Portugal (May–June, 1762).
William, Count of Schaumburg-Lippe , allied supreme commander, and one of the best soldiers of his time. [ 69 ] [ 70 ] Outnumbered in a proportion of three to one, he successfully met the challenge. [ 71 ] He trained intensively the Portuguese army in a record time, and chose to use small units against the flanks and rear of the invader's big battalions (taking advantage of the mountainous terrain). He destroyed the enemy's will to fight by starvation, the bleeding of his forces in a guerrilla warfare, and by an exhausting war of marches and counter marches (the so-called " Fantastic War "). [ 72 ] [ 73 ]
The Province of Lower Beira was particularly devastated during the second Franco-Spanish invasion of Portugal (July–November, 1762). A self-destructive scorched earth strategy was the price of the Portuguese victory. [ 79 ]
Battle of Salvaterra de Magos won by Spanish and French troops, led by the Count of Aranda , against the Portuguese in September 1762
John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun 2nd in command to the Anglo Portuguese army. Painting by Allan Ramsay
Portrait of John Burgoyne by Joshua Reynolds . 1766 Depiction of Brigadier-General John Burgoyne . Leading an allied force of 3,000 cavalry, two-thirds of whom were Portuguese, [ 103 ] he was decisive in the defeat of the Franco-Spanish troops in Europe, [ 104 ] [ 105 ] during the Seven Years' War: "French and Spanish armies overran Portugal... The British and Portuguese under Count de la Lippe Buckeburgh and Burgoyne defeated them and drove them into Spain." [ 106 ]
The Duke of Wellington . In 1810, during his campaign against Masséna in Portugal, a British observer noted that "Wellington is acting upon the plans of Comte La Lippe ". [ 119 ] Several modern historians like Guedela note that "... Count Lippe's methods of making war in 1762 wouldn't be forgotten by Wellington in 1810–11: Wellington had previously read about the Ordenanca and the 1762 war between Portugal and Spain. The King of Portugal ordered his people to attack the Spanish invaders. The inhabitants of villages fled as the Spaniards approached, in the same scorched earth methods used by Wellington in 1810." [ 120 ]
General Dumouriez , French hero who, in 1792, defeated the Prussians at the battle of Valmy and the Austrians at the battle of Jemappes . He was also the main Bourbon chronicler of the Franco-Spanish invasion of 1762: [ 45 ] [ 135 ] "It is with astonishment we read in the page of History that the Spaniards have almost always been beat by the Portuguese...this contempt [toward the Portuguese]...is itself the fundamental cause of that continual disgrace which the Spaniards have suffered whenever they have carried their arms into Portugal." [ 136 ]
Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia , a painting by Adolph Northen . The Russians in 1812, similarly to the Anglo-Portuguese in 1762, did not need to win one single battle to defeat the invading army -Indeed, they lost all the battles and all the main cities of the Russian empire (including Moscow).Yet, and again like the Anglo-Portuguese in 1762 and 1810, [ 152 ] [ 153 ] the Russians, using a scorched-earth policy and the guerrillas to disrupt the enemy's supply lines, compelled Napoleon to retreat with an even greater proportional loss than that experienced by Aranda in Portugal in 1762.
Portrait of Count of Aranda , by Francisco Jover y Casanova . A brilliant Spanish statesman, whose experience as ambassador in Lisbon and writings about the inevitability of invading Portugal would grant him the command of that disastrous invasion: "The autumnal rains now setting in, D'Aranda found himself harassed on all sides by the peasantry, his provisions exhausted;...he dismantled the few fortresses that he had taken, and made a hasty retreat into Spain. This campaign was humiliating enough..." [ 159 ]
The city of Castelo Branco , used by the Bourbons as Headquarters and Hospital site. Fleeing before an inferior enemy, and leaving behind all their many wounded and sick in the hands of the Anglo-Portuguese, represented a severe blow in Spain's prestige, as well as the end of the second invasion of Portugal.
High Alentejo, where the third failed Bourbon invasion occurred.
Burgoyne's 16th Light Dragoon (British). The British decisively stiffened the resistance of the Portuguese army: "The Count of Lippe, assisted by the energy of the Portuguese Minister , quickly formed the Portuguese troops into a disciplined army". [ 174 ]
Charles III of Spain . He wrote to his Plenipotentiary Grimaldi during the peace negotiations in Paris, end of 1762: "I'd rather lose my dignity than to see my people suffer". [ 199 ] It was during the invasion of Portugal -the main Spanish contribution to the Seven Years' War - [ 9 ] [ 200 ] that Spain suffered the highest human toll (around 25,000 soldiers). [ 14 ] The surrender of Havana , represented 11,670 losses, including 5,000 of the garrison captured before being deported back to Spain.
Portrait of Voltaire , who like other contemporary intellectuals, criticized the invasion of 1762. He attributed the Anglo-Portuguese victory over the Franco-Spaniards entirely to the genius of Count Lippe . He classified the Spanish Attempt of defeating Britain by invading Portugal, as "the greatest political stroke that modern history records". [ 211 ] Adam Smith , in its turn, considered the invasion a biased economical tactic, since it was based on the premise that England would not survive without the gold of Portugal.
The Attack on Nova Colonia in the River Plate in 1763, under the command of Captain John Macnamara