Upper Glen Shiel from Sgurr na Ciste Duibhe. The combined jacobite-Spanish forces were out-manoeuvred when the Royal Navy destroyed their weapons magazine in the ever-so-slightly-exposed castle at Eilean Donan.
WHEN Philip V of Spain, in preparation for his larger assault on France, annexed the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, a British fleet led by Sir George Byng upset his plans by defeating him at the Battle of Cape Passaro on 11th August, 1718.
Smarting at London’s intervention, the following year Philip despatched an armada commanded by an Irish exile, the Duke of Ormonde, to Scotland’s west coast. His aim was to install a friendlier King than George I in the form of the ‘Old Pretender’, James Stuart, whose father James II had unwillingly abdicated in 1688.
However, a storm prevented Ormonde’s fleet reaching the British Isles. A second, smaller force of Jacobites and Spanish marines was defeated at Glen Shiel on June 10th, 1719, after the Royal Navy destroyed their ammunition, stored in the castle on Eilean Donan.*
Britain replied by capturing the Spanish town of Vigo in October, and Philip finally abandoned his ambitions, signing the Treaty of The Hague on 17th February 1720.
‘Jacobites’ is the term for followers of the Old Pretender, James Stuart, from the Latin for James, Jacobus. His own rebellion had failed in 1715; his son Charles (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) rebelled again in 1745 against George II, and was defeated.
Précis
King Philip of Spain’s claim to the French throne set off the War of the Quadruple Alliance in 1714, dragging Britain in by threatening the Mediterranean. He attempted to replace George I with James Stuart, the ‘Old Pretender’, but Philip’s armada went astray in a storm, and a small Jacobite-Spanish force was defeated at Glen Shiel in the Scottish Highlands. (59 / 60 words)
