No practical experience of artillery and fortification could have been better than Phillip’s participation in the siege and reduction of El Morro – ‘the most difficult since the invention of artillery’. And at the time there was no more pre-eminent teacher of the theory of artillery than the renowned Isaac Landmann in Paris. It is probably no coincidence that after Phillip’s return from France, Augustus Hervey enthusiastically promoted his credentials as a very good naval officer who combined theoretical knowledge with much practical experience – ‘le Theorie avec beaucoup de Pratique’ as he quaintly described it. Hervey would have been well aware of the likely sources of Phillip’s theoretical and practical knowledge – the former gleaned from Isaac Landmann and the latter obtained firsthand at Havana. And in the next decade, Phillip acknowledged his artillery experience, referring modestly but probably disingenuously to his ‘own little knowledge as a field engineer’.
CHAPTER 4
MERCENARY
Phillip’s service in the Portuguese navy, his secret charts and his surveillance of the South American coastline
Whatever the truth about Phillip’s espionage activities in France in 1773–74, or the origins of his friendship with Isaac Landmann, by August 1774 he was back in London, deep in negotiation with Augustus Hervey about another assignment, involving more leave of absence, this time in service with the Portuguese navy. The two persons who were primarily responsible for this career move were Hervey, who encouraged and facilitated it, and Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty, who approved it.
The immediate cause of Phillip’s service in the Portuguese navy was the war in South America between Spain and Portugal known as the Third Colonia War (1773–77). That war eventually led to the creation of the Republic of Uruguay, but the origins of the conflict can be traced to the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. Before then, Portugal and Spain divided the known world between them according to a line drawn by Pope Alexander VI down the centre of the Atlantic ‘one hundred leagues west of the Azores or Cape Verde Islands’. New lands discovered to the west of that line belonged to Spain while those to the east belonged to Portugal. Under this Papal division, the bulge of South America would have been awarded to Spain. But by 1494, Portugal had discovered that part of the South American mainland now named Brazil. The Portuguese King therefore had good practical reasons to argue that the line of demarcation should be adjusted to the west, and in 1494 the Treaty of Tordesillas prescribed a new line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, ensuring that Brazil would become Portuguese territory.
But this arbitrary line did not resolve all differences. To start with, there was constant disagreement about where precisely the line ran. Not only was the precise length of a league a matter for debate, but there was no consensus about the starting point in the Cape Verde Islands – the most westerly island or the most easterly? There was also no consensus about the particular parallel of latitude along which the measurement should be made, or even a precise way of calculating it. Unsurprisingly, there were constant boundary disputes in places where political or commercial advantage outweighed other factors.
One source of constant disagreement, of invasion and counterinvasion, was Colonia do Sacramento on the north shore of the Plate estuary – a hundred miles west of Montevideo and almost opposite where Buenos Aires now stands. Colonia was actually to the west of the line, in Spanish territory. But in 1680 the Portuguese boldly annexed it and founded an outpost there that was an invitation to trouble. For the next 100 years Colonia was the ‘apple of discord’ between the two Iberian nations. It was also a place in which Britain had a vested interest. For Colonia, part trading post and part Portuguese convict colony, was a foothold with access to Spanish markets in South America. And the Plate estuary was the confluence of three great rivers – the Paraguay, the Paraná and the Uruguay. Silver, cattle and hides were shipped down these rivers and slaves shipped upriver to the Spanish mines and agricultural enterprises in the hinterland.
For these reasons, Colonia became an important location for illicit trade with Spanish merchants. Whitehall connived at the trade, and even encouraged it. In 1761 the British ambassador reported that among the goods brought back by the Portuguese Rio fleet ‘there are 4,000,000 cruzadas in silver, the produce of the trade at Nova Colonia in the river of Plate. This silver the government has ordered to be conveyed with the greatest secrecy not to give umbrage to the court of Spain’. And a few years later, when it was thought that the actions of the Portuguese prime minister were endangering British commerce at Colonia, the same ambassador said, ‘The clandestine trade carried on … in the Brazils with the Spanish colonies, so very advantageous and profitable to this nation, will be infallibly lost … Consequently the consumption of British manufactures at Buenos Aires, and in the Spanish colonies adjoining the Colonia do Sacramento in the River of Plate, will be considerably lessened and diminished.’
Britain’s commercial interest lay in the continuance of Colonia in Portuguese control, as a base from which its clandestine trade with Spanish merchants might continue. If Spain took control of Colonia, British access would be denied and its valuable trade diminished. Access to South American ports was already extremely difficult. Spanish colonies were strictly off limits, and the Portuguese jealously guarded their Brazilian ports against all comers including Britain, and especially at Rio de Janeiro. In 1768 during the visit of the Endeavour to Rio de Janeiro, the Viceroy of Brazil forcefully explained to Captain Cook that although British ships were permitted to enter Portuguese ports in Europe, Asia and Africa, access to Portugal’s ports in the Americas was prohibited ‘because on the contrary follows the ruin of our Commerce’. Only foreign ships requiring repairs or provisioning were permitted entry.
In late August 1774, at Hervey’s behest, Phillip attended on Pinto de Souza, the Portuguese ambassador in London with a letter of introduction. It was an official letter, written by Hervey on behalf of the Admiralty, extolling Phillip as a ‘très bon officier de Marine’ and adding that although he was a lieutenant he well deserved a command. Hervey had become known as the ‘hero of Havana’ after the Seven Years War and was well known in Lisbon. History now remembers him more famously as ‘the English Casanova’ whose published journal sets forth with startling frankness his amorous encounters with the ladies of the Mediterranean. His conquests included ‘princesses, marchesas, countessas, a Portuguese royal duchess, the wife of the doge of Genoa and several nuns’. He and Lord Sandwich were significant figures within the Admiralty and both were members of the Society of Dilettanti.
When the diplomatic protocols were complete, the Portuguese King José was quite convinced by the recommendations of Hervey and Pinto de Souza. His Minister for Marine and Colonies, Mello e Castro, relayed an offer from Lisbon that was passed on to Phillip and Hervey as his patron and proposer. The offer included a captain’s commission at double the remuneration received by Portuguese officers. Phillip’s additional request for half pay when on the Portuguese retired list was too ambitious and was politely refused – Portuguese officers did not retire so long as they were able to serve. This was a highly satisfactory outcome from Phillip’s perspective but Hervey went further still, revealing the strength of his patronage by reiterating to the ambassador that Phillip’s pretension was to be a captain of a ship of the line which, he added deftly, ‘in England, makes a great difference’.
Portugal had been an ancient ally of Britain ever since the fourteenth century, when English archers on their way to the Crusades helped overthrow the Castilian assault on the Portuguese throne. But during the 1760s tensions over access to trade in South America had led to a hardening of the relationship. Since at least 1767 Britain had begun to contemplate and prepare for the possibility of war in both Spanish and Portuguese America. Phillip’s role would enable him to satisfy the administration’s demand for information on South America, information that it had been seeking to obtain through more formal channels for some time. In 1767, for examp
le, the British ambassadors to Spain and Portugal both received almost identical instructions relating to South America. The instructions to the latter were marked ‘most secret’. Those to the former were as follows:
apply yourself with diligence to procure the most exact information concerning the strength and weakness … the state of the military and fortifications, the points which may be supposed to be most open to attack, and the inclinations which may be expected to be found in such provinces in such cases. You will, likewise, procure any maps or charts of those provinces, either manuscript or printed, together with plans of their towns and fortifications, which you will transmit to us together with your opinion how far each is to be depended upon.
In the parlance of espionage, Phillip would be a sleeper. He would acquire the confidence of the Viceroy, make charts of the coastline and investigate the country’s economic production. In his role in the Portuguese navy, he would have an unparalleled opportunity to survey thousands of miles of the South American coastline, to make observations and to report on the economies and policies of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies along the coast. His experience equipped him to assess accurately the effectiveness of fortifications, the layout of harbours and all the points of vulnerability. And his suitability was enhanced in other ways. Phillip was a linguist, intelligent and well travelled; he was subtle and discreet, his judgement measured. These qualities endeared him to the Portuguese Viceroy in Brazil, the Marquis of Lavradio, who later revealingly said of Phillip:
He gives way to reason and does not, before doing so, fall into those exaggerated and unbearable excesses of temper which the majority of his fellow countrymen do, more especially those who have been brought up at sea … saying what he thinks, but without temper or want of respect.
The Lords of the Admiralty, including Sandwich and Hervey, formally approved Phillip’s service in the Portuguese navy on 1 December 1774. After final arrangements were made with the Portuguese, Phillip sailed for Lisbon from Falmouth, Cornwall on the regular packet service carrying the Post Office mail destined for British embassies, colonies and outposts in the Mediterranean. At that time, Lisbon was a famously sensual and complex city, unlike any other in Europe. The literary grand dame Rose Macaulay described it as ‘a city of churches, convents, gold and jewelled ornaments, abject poverty, negro slaves, priests, friars, sumptuous processions, superstition, squalor, corruption, women eating sweets and playing guitars at windows, and rich galleons sailing in from Brazil’. The past successes of Portugal’s merchants and navigators had ensured Lisbon’s place as one of the great cities of the age and one of the undisputed capitals of Europe’s overseas trade. Although its dominance of the Asian trade routes had declined with the rise of the Dutch and English East India companies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Portugal’s South American territory was vast and rich. And Lisbon itself was uniquely placed to prosper because it was the entrêpot through which all riches of Brazil were funnelled before they were exported throughout Europe.
On arrival at Lisbon, Phillip was promoted to the rank of captain and the terms of his appointment, including his double pay, were recorded in a commission from the King. On 25 January 1775 a public announcement was made that he had been granted permission to go to Salvaterra de Magos, the royal hunting lodge 30 miles up the Tagus River. This was unusual but Phillip was a prize recruit. History does not record what Phillip did at Salvaterra, what entertainments he witnessed or what passed between him and the Portuguese monarch, but it would not be the only time that he received a royal audience before embarking on a major undertaking.
By April Phillip was in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro had recently become the centre of colonial administration and the seat of the Viceroy, the Marquis of Lavradio. Its most distinctive physical feature then as now was its harbour – then the finest in the known world. The headlands at the entrance to the harbour were guarded by the fortresses and batteries of Sao Joao at the base of Sugarloaf and Santa Cruz beneath Papagaio Peak. These headlands were like sentries, beyond which the unfolding expanse of Guanabara Bay stretched for twenty miles.
The cultural atmosphere that Phillip encountered in Rio de Janeiro in 1775 was different from that which he had known in Protestant northern Europe. The indigenous Indian peoples and the African slaves were easy converts for the Jesuit missionaries. And the Portuguese colonialists, remote from the security and worldliness of home, were intensely pious. A pervasive religiosity, even more fervent and confronting than in Lisbon, marked out the local society. The bells of the churches sounded morning, noon and night. Religious images, statues and icons were ever present. And at each intersection in the city stood a pole on which hung a crucifix or saint’s image before which passers-by genuflected. Away from the crowded streets, behind the shutters of the private homes in which the colonial administrators and the wealthy merchants lived, there was the usual contrast. In his elegant chambers in the Viceroy’s palace, Lavradio hosted regular meetings of the Scientific Society. And there was always the opera to attend. In Phillip’s case, there was also a new language to learn and within twelve months, he spoke and wrote Portuguese fluently.
Lavradio was a cultivated man who took an immediate liking to Phillip. He was no doubt encouraged by the recommendation from Mello e Castro that Phillip brought with him. The Minister for Marine and Colonies announced that he had received from London ‘conspicuous information concerning Phillip’s intelligence, ability and character, in which together he excelled all other of his countrymen recruited’. The source of this information was probably Hervey. Mello e Castro added that Phillip was an officer in whom Lavradio could confide, even suggesting that he might be retained in Rio de Janeiro for the constant benefit of his advice. Lavradio did not take long to form his own favourable assessment. Within weeks of Phillip’s arrival, he described him in official despatches as a man of honour, one willing to conform to Portuguese custom and to respect authority. In turn Phillip handled himself wisely, lavishing praise on the enthusiasm and discipline of the city’s volunteer guard and giving Lavradio the impression of being interested in continuing permanently in the service of Portugal.
Colonia do Sacramento is 1200 miles south of Rio de Janeiro. In 1775 it was a garrison outpost of about 2000 officials, soldiers, sailors, assorted smugglers and villains, free settlers and degredados – convicts, exiles, deportees, deserters and other undesirables who could be compelled to serve as soldiers. Apart from the Governor’s house, the church, the hospital and the barracks, there were few amenities. And as the Spanish progressively tightened their blockade, the port, commercial houses and surrounding farms almost all ceased to function. At Buenos Aires on the southern side of the Plate estuary, Spanish soldiers and sailors waited for the signal to cross the water and overwhelm the tiny Portuguese outpost. On the northern side, in the hills behind Colonia, Spanish cannon was trained on its fortifications.
Not surprisingly, morale was low and food was scarce. By 1775 the settlement had become entirely dependent on intermittent supplies of food and firewood brought in by sea. In April, the Governor Da Rocha complained bitterly to Lavradio that Colonia was not a fortified refuge but ‘a prison and the ruin of its inhabitants’. To make matters worse, the hardships and dangers were exacerbated by the usual rigours and unpleasantness of such a place. Whether as a soldier or convict, a term of seven years’ service at Colonia was regarded as a punishment. Against the odds, Portugal sought to hang on grimly to this outpost. And almost continuously from October 1775 to December 1776, Phillip was the commodore of the Portuguese naval forces at Colonia. Initially this involved only his ship the Pilar but during 1776 the frigates Nazaré and Nossa Senhora da Gloria were also within his command. In August 1776, Lavradio reported that the presence of the three vessels ‘had effectually put a stop to all the acts of daring which [the Spanish] had practised’.
Phillip kept the peace, kept the sea lanes open and kept the Spanish commanders in check. Unrestrained, the Spaniards would swoop o
n Portuguese fishing and trading vessels, seizing goods and slaves and diminishing fragile Portuguese resources. Like coastal patrol operations all over the world, the circumstances required firmness and sound judgment, and occasionally courage. He was determined to extract good manners from the masters of Spanish vessels and to have them conform to the naval conventions that usually prevailed among civilised nations. More than once he showed that he was not afraid to act, opening fire on the enemy and causing great anxiety to the nervous Portuguese Governor Da Rocha, who feared Spanish reprisals. Phillip gave the forlorn community time, but the situation could not last.
In December 1776 Phillip was ordered to leave Colonia and rendezvous with the Portuguese squadron at Santa Catarina. Colonia was soon overrun by Spanish forces. Governor Da Rocha was predictably blamed, taken back to Lisbon, tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Fortunately for him, or perhaps unfortunately, his sentence was commuted to transportation to a convict settlement – from which he never returned.
These were momentous times. Britain was now embroiled in a costly revolutionary war with her thirteen American colonies and was unlikely to assist Portugal while engaged in her own dire conflict in North America. Spain took advantage of Britain’s distraction and conceived a massive offensive against Portugal in South America, to be spearheaded by a naval and military strike at the island of Santa Catarina and at Colonia on the Plate estuary. In late 1776, an armada of over 100 ships assembled at Cadiz under the command of Admiral Casa Tilly and more than 10,000 Spanish soldiers and 8500 seamen soon sailed for South America. The proposed name of the territory that Spain intended to capture was ‘La Plata’. The overall military commander and the would-be Viceroy was Zeballos.
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