First Cevallos expedition

Prelude

In January 1762, Spain joined France against Great Britain in the Seven Years' War, in accordance with the Third Pacte de Famille. The plan was to attack Portugal, which had been neutral up to then, but which was an important economical ally of Great Britain. On May 5 Spain invaded European Portugal and also decided to attack Portugal in South America, and in particular to take the long disputed Colonia del Sacramento and the Portuguese territories beyond the right bank of Guaporé River, the nowadays Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.

The expedition in 1762

In the first days of January 1762 the frigate Victoria commanded by Carlos José de Sarriá, sailed from Cadiz to Buenos Aires with orders for the Governor of Buenos Aires, Pedro Antonio de Cevallos, to attack and take Sacramento.

He started preparations and in September 1762 he had assembled enough men and ships to launch an attack. The fleet sailed across the Rio de la Plata, and disembarked on September 14. It was a powerful army of almost 4,000 men (including 1200 Indians since September 27). The siege of the city started on October 5.

The relations between Cevallos, who commanded the army, and Sarria, who commanded the fleet, were very bad. After disembarking the army and without approval of Cevallos, Sarria sailed his fleet of 16 ships back to Buenos Aires.

Luckily for the Spanish, the Portuguese were ill prepared (they had only 400 infantry men plus 367 irregulars), and on October 31, 1762, Vicente da Silva, the governor of the city, capitulated.

The sinking of the Lord Clive and the Victoria

Great Britain, which was now officially at war with Spain, did not participate in these battles, but the East India Company had plans to conquer Spanish territory in South America and bought two old warships from the Admiralty. The biggest ship was HMS Kingston which was renamed Lord Clive (60-gun), the other ship was the Ambuscade (40-gun).

The small squadron, under the command of Robert MacDouall left Lisbon on August 30 and was joined in Rio de Janeiro by two Portuguese warships (among which was the frigate Glória, 38-gun) transporting 500 foot soldiers, and five storeships. On November 2, the squadron sailed from Rio de Janeiro towards the mouth of the Río de la Plata to attack Buenos Aires and Montevideo, but soon abandoned the project because Spanish defenders on both cities were fully alerted and well prepared.

On January 6, 1763, MacDouall decided to attack and retake Colonia do Sacramento also in Spanish hands. The HMS Lord Clive, the HMS Ambuscade and the Portuguese Gloria anchored near the city and started bombardment, but they received unexpected strong resistance from the city gun battery. After three hours of fire exchange, a fire erupted on the Lord Clive, it quickly extended and ship's santabarbara blew up, it sunk immediately . There were 272 fatalities on board, including the expedition's commander Captain Robert MacDouall. HMS Ambuscade and Gloria were badly damaged too, and retired from combat.

However, while the Portuguese did not lose any ship, the Spaniards lost their main ship, the frigate Victoria. As soon as the Anglo-Portuguese fleet arrived, the Spanish fleet fled without firing a shot, into the near island of São Gabriel (the Victoria, the Santa Cruz and the San Zenón). Here the Spaniards sank the Victoria, with all its artillery and gunpowder, to avoid capture. The naval officers were immediately arrested and later tried under the accusation of cowardice in a war council (1766), by Spanish authorities.

The expedition in 1763

Still in control of Sacramento, Cevallos marched his army in the spring of 1763 to the east and took on April 19 the fort of Santa Teresa (with 400 defenders), near the present-day city of Chuy on the Uruguay-Brazilian border and the little fort of San Miguel (with 30 defenders), a few days later.

On April he also conquered most of the vast and rich territory of the so-called "S.Peter´s Continent" (the present day Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul), where the Portuguese had only up to 1,000 men (soldiers and militia). São José do Norte and the capital – S. Pedro do Sul- were abandoned and occupied without a fight. Here Cevallos learned that peace had been signed and that the war was over.

However the attempt to conquer the small territory still held by the Portuguese in Rio Grande (Rio Pardo and Viamão), ended with a Spanish defeat at the Battle of St. Barbara (January 1, 1763), when a force of 230 Portuguese dragoons surprised a Spanish army of 500 Spaniards and 2,000 Indians, coming from Misiones to support Cevallos: seven cannons, 9,000 heads of cattle and 5,000 horses were captured.

Aftermath

The victorious Cevallos expedition contrasted with a general framework of Spanish defeat in all other theaters of the Seven Year War. As Spanish historian Manuel Fernández Álvares put it:

"In January 1762, Spain opened hostilities with England [and against Portugal on 5 May 1762]. However, the effects were very different from those expected. (…)The outcome: the Loss of Havana and Manila [and most of the Rio Negro Valley in North Brazil] while our army engaged an unfortunate ground campaign against Portugal. Only the conquest of Colónia do Sacramento by Pedro Cevallos, from Uruguay, put a positive note on the Spanish side, but however, had no influence on subsequent agreements that ended the war."

Actually, Colonia do Sacramento and the near territories were under Spanish control until the Treaty of Paris (1763), after which Sacramento was restored to the Portuguese while Rio Grande do Sul would be reconquered by Portugal a few years later (war of 1763-1777). Only the forts of San Miguel and Santa Teresa, in present-day Uruguay, remained Spanish.

Linking the first and second Cevallos expeditions

After signing the Treaty of Paris, which imposed the Status quo ante bellum, Spain returned to Portugal Colonia del Sacramento, but not the huge territory of Rio Grande do Sul.

This way, from 1763 onwards, there would be an unofficial war between the two Iberian countries (called the "silent war", because of the secret orders given to the Portuguese, in this year, to engage an irregular warfare against the Spaniards in the Rio Grande territory). This territorial war (1763-1777), ended with the Treaty of San Ildefonso, after the second Cevallos expedition (1777).

Its final outcome was, on the one hand, the Portuguese military conquest of most of the current Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul (South Brazil, 282 000 km2) and Roraima (North Brazil, 224,000 km2), in 1776, as well as the capture of the great Spanish ship St. Augustine (with a garrison of 550 men, in 1777); and on the other hand, the (definitive) Spanish conquest of Colonia del Sacramento (a semi-circle with radius of 3 km, in Uruguay) and the tinny island of Santa Catarina (South Brazil, 424 km2) in 1777, both by Cevallos at the head of the largest Spanish military expedition ever sent to the New World.