What a Difference

What a difference a day makes, actually ten days.

What Cape? What battle? I hear you mutter querulously.

As you can see, Cape Passaro marks the southern tip of Sicily. The battle? Well you can’t have a battle without a war and this was the War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718 – 1720), one of those wars I didn’t learn about at school. It was Britain, France, Austria, and the Dutch Republic versus Spain. This alliance was formed on 2nd August 1718 and, although Britain and Spain were not formally at war on 11th August, a Spanish fleet fired on Admiral Byng’s fleet giving him a casus belli. Admiral Byng decisively carried the day.

Hitler did not heed Napoleon’s Russian adventure; no more did Philip V of Spain recall the fate of the Armada 130 years previously. His aim was to overthrow George I and install the Old Pretender on the British throne and he persevered. After some shipwrecks a pitiful Spanish force landed on the west coast of the Highlands in 1719 and with scant support from their Jacobite allies were defeated.

The shifting alliances in Europe for the last thousand years can be bewildering. Have you seen Albert Lamorisse’s 1956 film, Le ballon rouge? Albert wrote the script, directed and produced the film. He cast his son, Pascal, in the lead role. It won many awards but is the only short film (34 minutes) to have won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Albert Lamorisse’s other achievement was to invent the board game Risk in 1957. It’s a rather nasty game often ending in tears but its MacGuffin is a macrocosm of European history.

The War of the Quadruple Alliance is the only instance in the 18th century of Britain and France being on the same side. When they joined arms again, in the 19th century, in Crimea Lord Raglan invariably said ‘the French’ when he meant ‘the enemy’. Some of our politicians think the same today.