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Siege of Mazagan

With the British and the Portuguese distracted with war, the Sultan of Morocco, Mohammed bin Abdallah, in loose ‘support’ of his French and Spanish allies, raised 3000 soldiers to lay siege of the Portuguese fortress of Mazagan located on the west coast of Morocco.

On July 10th, the Sultan forces arrived at Mazagan and engaged in a brief artillery dual with the defenders. Only a few dozen deaths were inflicted on both sides, before the Moroccans settled into a siege lasting for two months.

During the ordeal only one, small Portuguese merchant ship with meager supplies of foodstuffs arrived. They brought word of the Spanish and French invasion, and left with several citizens to inform the Portuguese and the British of the siege.

On September 12th, hungry and fearful that help would not arrive in time, the inhabitants surrendered Mazagan to the Moroccans under the promise of being fed and allowed to peacefully evacuate when assistance arrived. The Moroccans accepted this arrangement as the Sultan wanted the town to be intact.

Three ships, one Portuguese and two British arrived on September 23rd, originally with the intent to resupply and reinforce the fortress, only to find that they were too late. The Sultan kept his word and arrangements were made for the Portuguese citizens of Mazagan to be evacuated to Brazil with their belongings on British and Portuguese ships.

Organizing the evacuation allowed the British the opportunity to open diplomatic talks with the Sultan. The British attempted to get Morocco to switch sides and re-allow British ship trade and use of Moroccan ports for harbor and repair, by offering British support in the re-conquest of Ceuta from Spain.

The Sultan however refused. He thought the British would lose the war, and did not want to invoke the ire of both Spain and France. He also considered his current arrangement with France to be more profitable that what the British proposed.

Nevertheless, the British and the Sultan did come to a mutual agreement of rules of engagement that the British reluctantly accepted. During the war, British and Portuguese prisoners (and any prior Christian slaves) would be “inexpensively” ransomed back to Britain, after a work period of six months. British observers were allowed to bring food to pay for the care of prisoners, and verify that they were treated well. The work British sailors did was focused on road and lighthouse construction along the Atlantic coast. The British at least acknowledged that lighthouse construction and maintenance could be a benefit to future trade and navigation.

To increase the revenue from the British ransoms, Morocco offered to take many British and Portuguese prisoners off French and Spanish hands. This was frequently accepted as then they no longer had to endure the expense of guarding or caring for them. The prisoners when then be moved to the Atlantic coast, work for a while and then put back into British hands.

Britain, for its benefit, apart from an earlier repatriation of sailors than they might have gotten otherwise, the Sultan agreed to crack down on slave raids and piracy, and to cease the enslavement of Europeans altogether. (This was already becoming offset by trade on reopened trans-Saharan routes.) Britain also obtained an unofficial route of gathering intelligence on French and Spanish Mediterranean activates. By 1762, the Moroccans would generally cease their opportunistic attacks on British shipping, with the exception of two ‘seizures’ (for the sake of appearances) containing food and paychests, whose food cargo was redirected to the prisoner work camps, while the ships were later released filled with the ransomed prisoners.