The Three-Years War (1780-1783) (cont.)
The Luso-French Maritime War (1780-1782) ( 6 of 7)
Atlantic Theatre (1780-1782) (cont.)
Maritime Escalation & Congo Region Combat
The objective delineated by Admiral Castro was the following; the Portuguese Navy and the Merchant Fleet would act towards maintaining trade routes and delaying a potential French amphibious offensive until the vulnerable entry points in the Metropolis were properly fortified with coastal defenses. To this end, the Portuguese Army pledged its resources to accelerate construction and arming on the ground, not expecting a land expedition from the French thanks to Spanish neutrality. Should the defenses be completed in time, an amphibious invasion would be likely deemed impractical and the Portuguese would be able to sign white peace with Paris. Moreover, decisive battles were to be avoided at all costs.
Prospects for the war were worrying, however. As already stated, technological and industrial ceilings limited construction speed in Portugal. It could take years to complete the necessary protections and both navies could in the meantime be eliminated by combat. As for the fleet itself, the Merchant Navy ships compensated the absence of the Indian and South Atlantic squadrons enough for the present forces to reflect the same might that was aimed to reach that of the Russian Imperial Fleet, but the French armada, built up to surpass the British still surpassed the Portuguese one almost two-to-one.
An interesting hypothesis was proposed by the war room; the tense political situation in France could mean that a decisive battle would have a determining effect in French morale, as big ships were expensive to replace and people in France were angry enough at the King for starving them.
King Joseph II, however, opposed this hypothesis. He maintained his determination not to aggravate the French economy, especially at the risk of his own forces, though this was mostly motivated by an humanitarian perspective that was not shared by his cabinet and war room. Even so, orders were pushed through to avoid frontal combat.
Eventually, maritime warfare factually begun, with Portuguese squadrons patrolling for weaknesses in French ships and these, in answer, beginning to attack Portuguese ships in the Atlantic as well. Portuguese government tried unsuccessfully through diplomacy to get the French to stop but the French were adamant that Portugal and Great Britain were allies and therefore in war together with them.
In October 1781, following the defeat in Chesapeake of Cornwallis at the hands of the Americans and French, enough French ships were relieved for the French to send a naval task force of 10 warships against Luanda in an attempt to capture the town and push the Portuguese away from the Congo region. French interest in the Congo region had been spiked since the end of the 4th Luso-Kongo War, when the international enclave of Cabinda was established thanks to a Franco-Dutch diplomatic intervention to ensure the free interaction of the West with the Congo Basin regardless of the stardom of Portuguese presence in the area. Scientific pursuits had increased in number since explorers under the Lencastre tenure mapped the western branches of the Congo River, as well as a possible source of the Zambezi, and the first pharmacies and laboratories were opened in Luanda.
There was thus a modernized interest in capturing the region. The strategy to hurt Angola was sound, though, due mostly to the fact that Intel provided by Admiral Struffen as he made his way around the Cape to India suggested that the most aged squadron in the Portuguese Navy was stationed there, with some old warships still featured after old galleon designs.
The Angola-Congo territory, however, under the leadership of Duke Lencastre and Marquis Henry, had developed their land defenses significantly after the Fourth Luso-Congo War, with the main naval entry point of Luanda being garrisoned by two brigades made up of veterans of the war with the Manikongo and the city itself comprising of a bay with a hilled fort armed by coastal defenses unrivalled in the basin.
The brutal battle of Luanda lasted for weeks, with the ten ships repeatedly trying to break the stubborn resistance from the neutral base in Cabinda. At one point, the aged galleons on the Portuguese side were so damaged they got stuck in the bay and were fed through boat from the harbor with ammunition and crew, forming a wooden wall of old bronze cannons desperately trying to fight off the various, more agile French ships. The Marines conducted the effort heroically, making use of their amphibious training to man the wrecked boats, scrapping the bottom of the barrels to fire just one more shot.
Meanwhile support continued from the shore, with people rallied to carry guns to the hill and fire at the French, miss them or not. Marquis Henry continuously sent rations from his northernmost territory to Luanda.
Portuguese Luanda defended itself against the attacking French despite its aged ships thanks mostly to natural defenses, low sea width in the bay and a strong support from land
The town’s defenses proved too strong and when a Portuguese naval force from Brazil arrived in the area it was able to defeat the French in the naval battle off the coast of Angola. The French force lost 2 ships and 5 other ships were damaged in the fighting while the Portuguese lost 3 ships. The French force was forced to withdraw and retreat to Cabinda again and plan another offensive. The new Manikongo, Pedro V, however, was allied to the Portuguese as well as the main diplomatic force in the region and threatened to nullify Cabinda’s neutrality and kick off the French himself if the fighting continued. This left the remaining French possessions in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean unprotected from both Portuguese and British attacks.
“Fantastic! Now my bay is filled with broken ships - just what I wanted! Would someone please get the crane?!”
-Duke Lencastre, yelling at his captains after the lengthy battle of Luanda
The Nightmare at Sea & The Catastrophe of Cantabria
In December 1781, a French naval force of 25 ships started attacking Portuguese shipping off the St. Vincent Cape, where the routes to Brazil and West Africa laid, and throughout the Lisbon-Azores area, where the supply lines to the North American theater crossed. At this particular point in time, the Anglo-French fighting was focused further north, meaning the French had a small window of opportunity to attack Portugal provided they could clear a sea path immediately.
The French fighting, however, was impaired by winter sea storms assailing the North Spanish coast, where the main Franco-Luso sea path was located, and while a similar force was based in Marseille in the Mediterranean, it was currently fighting the Gibraltar squadrons of the English and could not reliably ensure a southern path. Therefore, throughout December, January and February, French fighting limited itself to harassing commerce with small unfocused squadrons and scouting the naval path from their base in La Rochelle. Moreover, traditionally a slavery port, the naval base had undergone a period of recession following the repeal of slavery in Portugal and England, not to mention the increasing famine in the countryside made financial matters more unstable. The port could only outfit a few expeditions at a time compared to its prime, hurting the offensive further.
Even so, on 3 March 1782, the 25 French ships gathered at La Rochele under Admiral François de Grasse, just returned from his victories in New York. He had initially intended to further his grand plan against the British in America by sailing south and, in collusion with the Spanish colonies, conduct an attack on Jamaica where the English held a major sugar plantation arguably more important than the Thirteen Colonies themselves. The evolution of the war, however, presented the French with a shift of fate; back in 1779, the British king himself, George III, had declared to Lord Sandwich that the Caribbean possessions took priority in protection, resulting in a gradual built up of English forces there.
In November 1781 upon arriving in Saint Domingue, François was given a red flag to interrupt the plan and sail back home on the grounds of the overwhelming enemy presence and the positive situation in mainland America, instead focusing back in Europe where his leadership was needed to conduct an offensive on Lisbon.
Thus the French began their more direct assaults on Portuguese waters. It was then that begun the worst period of the war for the Portuguese, with the French captains successfully interrupting trade lines and attacking convoys. Throughout March and early April, the Portuguese lost a small fortune in captured cargo ships and the Lisbon-London supply lines were effectively cut.
Admiral François de Grasse
1723-1788
The French Admiral led the French offensive from the naval base at La Rochelle
Admiral’s François offensive was spectacular, interrupting the most important profit line for Portugal north of Lisbon and seizing dozens of small convoys. The sheer capital speculation caused by this sent the Chamber of Commerce into a frenzy, unable to contact its assets in Hamburg and beyond. The month of November of 1781 was nicknamed “The Nightmare at Sea” due to the merchant terror of setting sail from Oporto to England and more as well as the seemingly powerlessness of their English allies to put a stop to it.
The Nightmare at Sea
Purple: French Offensive
Black: Portuguese main commerce lines
French Operations effectively cut an artery of Portuguese profits, forcing the weaker country to play on French terms
In reality, however, the effective damage was limited due to a number of factors; the French naval base, as already stated, was unfit to feed a larger scale offensive, meaning some of the French were able to force Portuguese vessels into surrender without a ball to load their frightening cannons with, but of course this bluff only went so far, and the anxiety leading to this month had been so great that many interested parties had withdrawn their exchanges through the Biscay Bay anyway or took the longer route to England and Ireland.
It still needed a mobilized effort to break this faux blockade; the Frota Mobilizada, possessing over 50 small-scale war vessels (the most impressive ships were watered down versions of Castro Model second-rates and barely numbered four or five), initiated its wide-spanning screening offensive on the Biscay Bay. Throughout December, amidst winter storms and the cold, the large but weaker fleet engaged the 25 French warships at open sea in a wide-width battle that would last weeks and weeks (being truthfully composed of a series of indirect skirmishes meant to render French efforts to snip Portuguese commerce ineffective).
To join the Portuguese containment of the French operation was a small force of British vessels from their own blockade closest to the combat area. At the peak of the long battle, over 100 ships were in one way or other involved in this particular sea area, playing hide-and-seek with one another while allowing the Portuguese commerce to seep through the rear.
Battle of Biscay Bay
Vice-Admiral Bernardo Esquivel and Admiral Grasse fought the vital, long spanning sea battle of the Biscay Bay across several weeks, which screened the heavier French fleet into a smaller, contained sea area away from the commerce vessels
December and January were the months this battle lasted and were filled with dread for the Portuguese side, on which its entire self-protection and market profits hinged. Should the screening fail, the French would be allowed to continue playing cat and mouse with the British Fleet and endanger the stability of the Portuguese empire, which depended almost entirely on maintaining its own expensive logistics through commerce profits. The Frota Mobilizada was motivated but outmatched, barely possessing the firepower needed to fight French ships to a standstill.
However, what ended up occurring omened the outcome of the war itself; the Portuguese merchant vessels, being smaller and recently fit, were faster and more flexible than the French warships and thus able to hit-and-run the French giants for days on end. The French main advantage was the targeting of the commerce lines, but if the Portuguese fleet convoyed it while harassing the heavy ships it could escort the merchants and skirmish the enemy at the same time making use of its superior speed and numbers, meaning the French could neither catch up with the Portuguese or bait them.
At one point, nearing the 24th of December, Admiral Grasse attempted a grand blockade by overlapping its ships over the commerce line before sailing southwards, as if to net the Portuguese, but the Frota Mobilizada merely responded by counter-bombarding French ports while escorting the ships in the coast gap left behind by the French. Similar strategic blunders continued to occur throughout early January, including an attempt to amphibiously invade Northern Portugal with assailants botched by Winter sea storms.
It was still, however, considered the darkest period of the war not for the French, but for the Portuguese, as there was a genuine widespread fear that the naval screening would fail, and French soldiers would be landing on northern beaches before long. The ports worked around the clock to support the logistical nightmare that was the screening, which ships repeatedly assailed the enemy, retreated, restored strength at the ports and came back to the task in a cyclical manner. There was hardly a day when the shipyards at Oporto and Viana do Castelo weren’t operating in repairs or replenishment, which contributed to an atmosphere of panicked labor throughout the country where the people could directly see the casualties and damage the screening was taken.
This knife-cutting atmosphere came to a climax on the 16th of January, when the HMS Miguel, a minor frigate that took part in the screening and took heavy combat damage as part of the ship rotation maneuver, shipwrecked at Vienna itself. After days and days of struggling through the waves to return to safe port, the vessel came within barely a mile from shore and the people of Viana were treated to the sight of the battered ship falling apart just before reaching safety, drowning many of its sailors and forcing the survivors to take the lifeboat ashore.
This event became iconic to the war, turning to life a fear many had in the mainland that their best efforts would be for naught. The scene of the ship barely failing to complete its route after harsh weeks of enduring storms and battles was witnessed by many Viana residents and workers, who had vigils on the Montedor Lighthouse[1] who sounded the alarm to the town whenever a ship from the screening was sighted and became a topic of pessimistic or romantic art in the late 1700s and early 1800s not to mention, later on, the birth of Realism.
‘Queda do Arcanjo Miguel’ Painting Series
The circumstances surrounding the sinking of the ship were iconic to the Three Years War and immortalized in several paintings across separate art ages
The impact of this era went beyond paintings; the dawn of sea-set epic opera which after 1815 spawned musical works by composers like André da Silva Gomes, who had to send off his adoptive sons to war and created (ITTL) ‘Noite no Mar’ as a requiem to the battles with the French Navy, were based on the feelings of terror, anxiety and doom preceding the ongoing period of rise in political forces which were argued that had their roots not in the Napoleonic Wars, but in the Three-Year War. These works, which used combinations of string and drum harmonies to simulate the scale of sea battle escalation as well as the terror onshore and out in the sea, not to mention their ultimate importance to everyone’s lives, would later on impact the works of close-by artists like Fernando Sor in Barcelona, who composed some of his (ITTL) guitar plays detailing the terrors his compatriots endured in Zaragoza and other northeastern Spanish cities as a result of Napoleonic invasions.
The battle had to continue regardless of popular terrors, however, and so it did throughout January. Admiral de Grasse grew increasingly frustrated with his inability to deliver a decisive blow and discontentment with his performance began to grow amongst his captains; they were being endlessly stalled by a force of more numerous but smaller ships aided by bad weather while also being constantly threatened by British fleet searches for them. Both La Rochelle and Paris soon began to demand from De Grasse a decisive confrontation so, on 12th of January, he decided to sally out a grand sea offensive to overwhelm the pipsqueak fleet, ‘British threats be damned’.
This, however, proved to be the ultimate mistake; even if the French ships were being unexpectedly held back, they held the long-term advantage of firepower and sailor numbers, meaning that simply enduring the initial period of hardships would ultimately yield a window of opportunity in the latter winter months to safely overwhelm the Portuguese Navy. The political pressure hailing from inner France, at the time boiling with revolutionary movements and famine, pushed the offensive onward, however, into forcing de Grasse to try his luck in the current conditions.
The result was the Battle of Cantabria; on 21 January 1782, a powerful node of de Grasse’s fleet, comprising of eight battleships, sailed along the length of the northern Spanish coast and met, near Santander, the corresponding Portuguese force tasked with screening them. The Portuguese expected to engage the French as usual, hitting and running until the French assault became unsustainable and returned to La Rochelle. Headed by minor captains and rear-admirals, the force also was short on supply and farther away from home ports than the French themselves (the Bay of Biscay was geographically Franco-Spanish territory with little history of Portuguese naval war activities).
The French, however, under orders from de Grasse and fed up with the status quo of the overlapping ‘Battle of Biscay Bay’, fully engaged and gave pursuit to the Portuguese vessels, who had hoped to bluff the French into avoiding conflict. Led by the HMS César, the French force attempted to take advantage of prevailing winds in the middle of bad weather to push their heavier vessels over the lines of the lighter Portuguese ships.
In one of the most vicious naval slugfests of recent history, the Frota Mobilizada squadron, comprised of just 15 ships of third and fourth rate ships amounting to little over 300 cannons against 8 third and second-rate ships with an overwhelming 500 guns, had its long-range mobility advantage completely nullified by French initiative and daring maneuver, and thus forced to fight the French wooden hulks at medium to close range. Lasting over six hours, the affair was one of the ugliest scuffles in the history of the Portuguese Navy (and merely a footnote in French Naval history, which was ripe with battles with the Royal Navy and the Spanish), and strategically speaking the victory was all but assured to the French. Should they crush this force, a hole would be punctured through the Portuguese screening that would allow a narrow oversea offensive against Portugal itself even if the rest of the whole battle line was uncompromised. [2]
They were successful, but this was the extent of their success.
The factor that ultimately decided the development of this slugfest were the following:
- The Portuguese lighter fleet had an architectural advantage stemming from Castro’s reforms, meaning that their smaller ships were abnormally powerful, and their heavier ships were abnormally mobile, with the main core advantage result being that of a greater nuclear flexibility of forces;
- The Portuguese sailors, though less numerous, hailed from native and catholic Irish communities well-trained schools belonging to the Merchant Navy and motivated by the ‘Nightmare at Sea’ psychological factors. The French sailors, albeit also well trained, faced untraditional circumstances and a lack of personal stake in the offensive, meaning they were willing to take less risks and staying longer in the fight;
- The French desperation was strong, but it could not overturn the undeniable conditions that turned the Battle of Biscay Bay into a bog in the first place, namely the winter weather and the poor tactical conditions themselves, so the smaller conflict at Cantabria was equally detrimental to their attack;
- There was a complex unbalance in centralized leadership between the two sides. The Frota Mobilizada was better organized to fight along a greater length of naval line, decentralizing authority and skill in preparation for a naval screening instead of a concentrated battle. This meant that, in the event of being ambushed and disorganized, the Portuguese ships were better prepared to act out in the interest of the echelons at expense of the greater battle itself (accepting losing the possibility of decisive breakthroughs for long term battle sustainability), and this was the exact scenario they were facing at Cantabria, albeit at a different scale of authorities. The French, on the other hand, had been fighting to take advantage of their greater resources, investing in a breakthrough, meaning their captains were less prepared to act independently;
The result was a massively inefficient offensive. The French ships, packing more firepower, were unable to align their broadsides effectively despite the enclosed range and thus exchanged a far inferior fire rate than optimally possible. The French sailors, packing greater numbers, were unable to maneuver and fight their enemies on equal grounds, with the tighter Portuguese ships being more adapted to the sea conditions and their men more motivated to fight to the last drop of blood.
This growing catastrophe became obvious as soon as the French ships became both unable to keep the majority of the Portuguese ships locked in close-range, as their more mobile vessels kept escaping and sailing around them while their heavier ships were surviving direct bombardments before escaping, sometimes without central orders yet contributing to a collective goal. The longer the battle lasted, the clearer it was the French ships were losing organization and the harder the battle plan fell into disarray.
This did not mean the Portuguese were unscathed; they lost half their forces by the last stages of the battle while the French ships still fought on and many of their ammunitions were spent. The long term strategic advantage, however, was slipping from French hands because they were wasting far more resources and lives fighting a smaller force than it should ever be necessary.
This culminated into the unthinkable; at 21:52, the HMS César, a major element of the French squadron, blew up unexpectedly after sustaining hours and hours of gradual damage trying to bring down the enemy. This was a major blow to both the French forces and their morale; the initial plan predicted a swift, crushing blow over the ambushed Portuguese screening ships and, instead, the battle dragged out for hours, they faced unexpectedly motivated resistance and one of their warships was now completely destroyed.
‘Catastrophe Cantabrique’
The prolonged fighting with the ‘Frota Mobilizada’ led to the destruction of the HMS César, a powerful French warship that should have not had so much trouble against Merchant Fleet volunteers
The destruction of the César was a major morale blow to the French Navy stationed at La Rochelle. While it was a single ship among twenty-five, the French offensive had maintained its motivation based mostly on the fact that their sheer weight had allowed them to endure the hornet tactics of the enemy and that the eventual victory was assured by the advantage of firepower. Therefore, should they just persist, their more powerful fleet would overwhelm the enemy’s numerical advantage and make it to Lisbon, so the French had the theoretical long-term advantage.
The loss of the first heavy ship to the tactics of prolonged, safely played low firepower interceptions by the Portuguese, therefore, was a clear sign that this was untrue and that the Frota Mobilizada held the advantage at long term even if their small elements were ambushed like in the Battle of Cantabria. This meant it didn’t matter how the French went at it with their current resources or how much they focused their movement; it was not possible to break through the current enemy fleet.
Moreover, following the destruction of the César, other French warships further north were also forced back to La Rochelle after heavy close-range fighting. While they were not sunk, they were exhausted and the British Fleet, which had loomed in the Channel all winter, took advantage of de Grasse’s missteps to tighten its blockade on the French mainland.
On 27 February 1782, French Foreign Minister Vergennes, at the time stationed in Madrid to negotiate the conditions of Spanish neutrality, offered the Spanish the securement of their Caribbean possessions, including Florida, so as to cease their plans to resume hostilities on Gibraltar and Portugal. This was pressured by their naval losses in the Bay of Biscay against the Portuguese Navy, which threatened to compromise the gains they obtained in North America, as well as by the economic situation of France itself; over the years preceding the war, Portugal had become an increasingly important importer of goods to French stability and the heads of state feared that continuing the war would break the fragile financial situation for good.
De Grasse’s defeat, however, was still heavily frowned on and the admiral had to file for martial court, where he successfully sued to be cleared of blame. With the fighting in Biscay however, Luso-French hostilities in the Atlantic were finished as a whole as well.
[1] iOTL The Montedor lighthouse was only constructed in 1910, but here the shipyard development in Viana spawned an earlier construction of the lighthouse in the late 1770s.
[2] When Napoleon came to power he would use the historical sea battle with the Portuguese as one of recent examples that would motivate Napoleon into believing it was possible to do the same in the Channel
Note:
The Luso-French Maritime War was a significant war and major challenge for the Portuguese Empire. It was the first time the Portuguese were being tested by a European power after the fiasco of the 7 year war in which the Portuguese had to be bailed out by the British. The Portuguese Empire of 1782 was not the same country from 20 years earlier. This was a country that had re-built its navy and armed forces. Instituted major and complete overhaul of its naval and army officer and troop training and recruitment. While the Portuguese were not as powerful as the French it had one advantage on its side, that France was also fighting the British forces throughout the world and could not devote its full force on the Portuguese. But was the Portuguese rebuilding enough? Would the Portuguese navy and armed forces be ready to meet and defend the country? Those were the major questions not only on the minds of the people but the nobles, government and merchants. Questions/Comments
Note regarding posting of this section. The Luso-French Maritime War is over 40 pages and will be divided in approximately seven sections.
Note that iOTL the Portuguese were able to sit out this war. But growth of Portuguese Empire, the recent betrothal of British King's eldest daughter to the Portuguese king and the refusal of the Portuguese to bow down to the French threat meant it would be forced to fight .
So we now come to the conclusion of the war with France, what have the French learned? First when they got over the shock, they had to reasses the situation. They had just suffered repeated defeats and while they had been bested by continued British and now Portuguese navies the French decided there was no reason to continue with a war they had no chance of winning and if they continue it might weaken France even more.
Please return on May 03 as we post the 7th and final part in The Three-Years War (1780 -1784) - The Luso-French Maritime War (1780-1782).
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