Chapter 5 - BRITISH DOMINION
 

In the seventeenth century Britain had made uneasy use of Port Mahon to defend her trade. In the eighteenth she occupied Minorca by force for strategic reasons. These arose from her struggle with France for world empire, particularly in America. Thus, indirectly, the first tenuous threads were woven linking America with this small Mediterranean island.

The British navy had long coveted Minorca's sheltered and capacious harbour for use as a winter base. The complete naval supremacy in the Mediterranean it enjoyed during spring and summer no longer held during the winter storms. In 1694, when William III took the unpopular step of sending the main fleet to Cadiz with orders to winter there, its officers had protested at its poor shelter and lack of facilities, pressing the claims of Port Mahon anew.

With the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1700 the way lay open to annex Minorca. Port Mahon would be invaluable as a base from which to send allied troops and war materials from Italy into Spain. In addition, the Duke of Marlborough, with that wider strategic view that befitted a great commander, knew that a strong British Minorca lying athwart the great French naval base of Toulon would prevent a junction between France's Mediterranean and Atlantic fleets (the latter based in Brest). Yet there were further delays, including an abortive attack on Toulon itself in 1707.

In the early winter of that year the murderous act of a fellow Englishman shook the Council of the Admiralty and the secretary of state, Sunderland, into action. Admiral Sir Clowdesley Shavell was returning to England as usual with his squadrons to winter and refit.
He missed the English Channel altogether in a storm, and his ships were smashed against the Bishop and Clerks' Rocks in the Scilly Isles, with the loss of nine hundred officers and men. He himself, being of powerful physique and a strong swimmer, reached the shore alive. As he lay gasping exhausted in the darkness, an islander snatched off his jewelled rings, and murdered him with a knife lest he should live to tell the tale.

At last, on 13 July 1708, Marlborough wrote the long-awaited letter to Major-General Stanhope, commander-in-chief of the British forces in Spain and envoy extraordinary to Charles III of Spain. It contained Admiralty authority to secure Port Mahon for Britain forthwith, the moment and method being left to commanders on the spot. Marlborough added a postscript in his own handwriting confirming his strong views on the role of the navy in war: 
'I am so entirely convinced that nothing can be done effectually without the fleet, that I conjure you to take Port Mahon.'

Minorca fell to the British ten weeks later, on 30 September 1708, as the result of a combined operation under General Stanhope and Admiral Sir John Leake (who had succeeded Shovell). Stanhope had long pressed for the event, and the navy had advocated it for sixty years. From then onwards, little Minorca was assuming a new role - a vital centre pawn on which could depend the future of North America, the West Indies and even India.

The condition of Minorcans at the time of the expedition was pitiful in the extreme. They seemed to be prone to misfortune and travail. Not only had they shared with all Spain half a century of misery and poverty under the rule of the epileptic Charles II ('The Bewitched') of Spain, but at the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession suffered the further agonies of a civil war.
For Spain had two kings: the seventeen-year-old Philip V of Anjou (grandson of Louis XIV of France) firmly seated in Madrid, and the fifteen-year-old Pretender Charles III (Britain's nominee from Austria), clinging precariously to Barcelona and the Catalan coast. 

Minorcans were predominantly in favour of Charles, but the castles at Mahon and Fornells were held by pro-Philip forces.
In October 1706 Charles's supporters gathered at the village of Mercadal in the shadow of Monte Toro, and proclaimed him their king, repeating the same declaration the following day at Ciudadela. Retribution came speedily, from Philip's General Davila, who invaded the island and ruthlessly put down the rebellion. He 'liquidated' the Minorcan intelligentsia and nobles, proscribed the national dress, desecrated the churches and denied the rights of Christian burial to the dead.

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