First Cevallos expedition


The First Cevallos expedition was a series military actions between September 1762 and April 1763, by Spanish colonial forces led by Don Pedro Antonio de Cevallos, Governor of Buenos Aires, against Portuguese colonial forces in the Banda Oriental area on the aftermath of the failed Spanish and French Invasion of Portugal, as part of the Seven Years' War.
The Portuguese territory of Colonia do Sacramento was conquered by the Spanish in September 1762; an attempt by an Anglo-Portuguese squadron to retake the city failed. At the beginning of 1763 the Spanish launched an expedition to the Rio Grande do Sul which was conquered by April. News of the end of the war however forced the Spanish to halt their advance.

Background

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 economic 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 Rondonia.

Campaign

First invasion of Colonia de Sacramento

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. 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 sixteen ships back to Buenos Aires. Fortunately for the Spanish, the Portuguese were ill-prepared, and on October 31, 1762, Vicente da Silva, the governor of the city, capitulated.

Second invasion of Colonia de Sacramento

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 British Admiralty. The biggest ship was which was renamed Lord Clive and carried 60 guns, the other ship was Ambuscade which carried 40 guns.
The small squadron, under the command of Captain Robert McNamara of the East India Company left Lisbon on August 30 and was joined in Rio de Janeiro by two Portuguese warships 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 in both cities were alerted and well prepared.
On January 6, 1763, MacDouall decided to attack and retake Colonia do Sacramento also in Spanish hands. Lord Clive, 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 Lord Clive, it quickly extended and ship's magazine blew up and sunk immediately. There were 272 fatalities on board, including the commander Captain Robert McNamara. Ambuscade and Gloria were badly damaged too, and retired from combat.
However, while the Portuguese did not lose any ships, 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. Here the Spaniards sank 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, by Spanish authorities.

Spanish offensive into the Rio Grande do Sul

An initial attempt to conquer the small territory still held by the Portuguese in Rio Grande, ended with a Spanish defeat at the Battle of St. Barbara on 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.
Still in control of Sacramento, Cevallos marched his army the following month and took the fort of Santa Teresa on February 19, near the present-day city of Chuy on the Uruguay-Brazilian border and the little fort of San Miguel, a few days later.
In April Cevellos also conquered most of the vast and rich territory of the so-called "S.Peter´s Continent", where the Portuguese had only up to 1,000 men. 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.

Aftermath

The victorious Cevallos expedition contrasted with a general framework of Spanish defeat in all other theaters of the Seven Year War notably the failure of the invasion of Portugal and the loss of Havana, and Manila. As Spanish historian Manuel Fernández Álvares put it:
As admitted by the king of Spain Carlos III when the news arrived:
Actually, Colonia do Sacramento and the near territories were under Spanish control until the Treaty of Paris, after which Sacramento was restored to the Portuguese while Rio Grande do Sul would be reconquered by Portugal a few years later. 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. This territorial war, ended with the Treaty of San Ildefonso, after the second Cevallos expedition.
Its final outcome was, on the one hand, the Portuguese military conquest to Spain of most of the current Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul and Roraima, in 1776, as well as the capture of the great Spanish warship St. Augustín and the Santa Ana ; and on the other hand, the Spanish conquest of the strategically important town of Sacramento and the small island of Santa Catarina in 1777, both by Cevallos at the head of the largest Spanish military expedition ever sent to the New World.