Spanish–Portuguese War (1776–1777) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Spanish–Portuguese War (1776–1777)
Part of the Spanish–Portuguese wars
Date February 1776 to 24 February 1777 Location South America Result First Treaty of San Ildefonso
Belligerents
Spanish Empire	Portuguese Empire
Commanders and leaders
Antonio de Cevallos Vértiz y Salcedo	João Henrique Böhn [pt] Robert MacDouall Jorge Hardcastle
Strength
1,450 initially 9,000 expeditionary corps	6,000

The Spanish-Portuguese War, also known as the Second Cevallos expedition, was fought between 1776 and 1777 over the border between Spanish and Portuguese South America.

Portuguese attack

Map of Portuguese and Spanish territories in the region of Rio Grande do Sul, 1775.

In the previous Spanish-Portuguese War 1762–1763, Spanish forces had conquered Colonia del Sacramento, Santa Tecla, San Miguel, Santa Teresa and Rio Grande de São Pedro in the First Cevallos expedition.

Colonia del Sacramento was returned to Portugal in the Treaty of Paris, but Santa Tecla, San Miguel, Santa Teresa and Rio Grande de São Pedro remained in Spanish hands.

The Portuguese squadron in 1777, commanded by Robert MacDouall, by José Custódio de Sá e Faria.

The Portuguese started assembling troops and harassing the Spanish in 1767. Over the years, the Portuguese built up an army of 6,000 men, considerably more than the 1,450 Spanish troops in the area. The matter escalated in February 1776 when two Portuguese fleets under Robert MacDouall and Jorge Hardcastle landed troops near the fortress of Rio Grande de São Pedro, and started shelling the Spanish fort. A Spanish fleet under Francisco Javier Morales drove off the Portuguese fleet after a three-hour battle in which the Spanish fleet suffered 6 men killed and 24 wounded, and the Portuguese lost two ships.

However, the Portuguese land forces advanced on the fortified position, and the Spanish commander, Juan José de Vértiz y Salcedo, was forced to withdraw and give up the entire Rio Grande area.

Peace

On 24 February 1777, King Joseph I died, and his daughter and successor Maria I dismissed Pombal and concluded on 1 October the First Treaty of San Ildefonso with Spain.

Spain returned the island of Santa Catarina to Portugal and recognised Rio Grande de São Pedro as Portuguese territory but kept the strategically-important River Plate port town of Colonia del Sacramento, which the Portuguese had founded in 1680, with the rest of the Banda Oriental (Uruguay), and also kept the Misiones Orientales. In return, Spain acknowledged that the Portuguese territories in Brazil extended far west of the line that had been set in the Treaty of Tordesillas.

In the Treaty of El Pardo, signed on 11 March 1778, Spain gained Spanish Guinea (Equatorial Guinea), which would be administered from Buenos Aires from 1778 to 1810 and was held by Spain until 1968.

Aftermath

One of the results of the war was that the Portuguese remained neutral when the American War of Independence became a global war in 1778 with the entry of the French and the Spanish in 1779. The Portuguese were bound to the British by treaty but disappointed by the lack of British support against Spain, Portugal did not itself enter the war. Instead Portugal joined the First League of Armed Neutrality in 1781, to resist British seizures of cargo from neutral ships.

See also

In Spanish: Segunda expedición de Cevallos a Río Grande para niños

• Military history of Spain
• Military history of Portugal
• List of wars involving Spain
• List of wars involving Portugal
• Portuguese Armed Forces
• Spanish Armed Forces
• Spanish special operations
• Spanish military orders
• Spanish Military Hospital Museum
• M1752 Musket
• Service rifle
• List of battle rifles

Sources

• Guerras entre España y Portugal en la cuenca del Río de la Plata
• EXPEDICIÓN A LA COLONIA DEL SACRAMENTO (1776 - 1777)