Russian Minorca

[Gary Oswald]

Minorca was held (mostly) by Great Britain from the War of the Spanish Succession to the American War of Independence when it fell to a joint French-Spanish assault in 1781.

Prior to that in 1775 Minorca and Gibraltar were garrisoned with Hanoverian troops to free up the British garrisons to fight in the usa (which caused outrage in Britain at the time) and the admirality seems to have given up on being able to hold on to Minorca during this war by the time SPain delcraed war in June 1779.

In late 1779 the British Ambassador to Russia (James Harris) made the suggestion to Lord North's government that they offer Minorca to Russia while they still held it because they'd rather lose territory to their friends than their enemies and Lord North's government gave him permission to make the offer around early 1780. What exactly the british wanted in return is unclear, Lord Stormont claimed merely to want Catherine's goodwill if her ceasefire plan to come into action and she acted as a mediator between the sides but some russian sources suggest it was part of yet another plea for Russia to join the war on Britain's side (in particular that Harris wanted Catherine to threaten France into a seperate peace).

In any case Catherine made the offer public, Britain was humiliated and backed away from the offer and Catherine then declared the league of armed neutrality to Britain's outrage. Minorca fell to the spanish a year later and the war was all but over by the end of 1781. A this point it's too late for Britian to really win.

But well according to Harris (who admittedly obviously has an agenda here given how humiliating to him personally the scheme's failiure was) the Russians were interested in purchasing Minorca.

He said in 1782 'Why this project failed I am still at a loss to learn. I never knew the Empress incline so strongly to any one measure as she did to this, before I had my full powers to treat, nor was I ever more astonished than when I found her shrink from her purpose when they arrived. I imputed it at the same time, in my own mind, to the rooted aversion she had for our Ministry, and her total want of confidence in them; but I since am more strongly disposed to believe that she consulted the Emperor (of Austria) on the subject, and that he not only prevailed on her to decline the offer, but betrayed the secret to France, and that it thus became public. I cannot otherwise account for this rapid change of sentiment in the Empress, particularly as Prince Potemkin (whatever he might be in other transactions) was certainly in this cordial and sincere in his support, and both from what I saw at the time, and from what has since come to my knowledge, had its success at heart as much as myself.'

So I have elsewhere joked about the idea that giving provinces to russia when you think you might lose them otherwise becomes official british policy and is copied by the russians so that in classic asterix style soon all of the russian empire is owned by britian and all of the british empire by russia.

But let's just assume Catherine doesn't change her mind, she goes through with the nominal purchase of minorca before the french and spanish invade it. At this point Russia has ports in the black and baltic seas but it has no chance of holding minorca by force and the spanish probably refuse to recognise the sale as they'd argue britain had no right to sell it.

Does Minorca still get invaded in this scenario and France and Spain just ignore any russian complaints or are they too wary about pissing off the russians to go for it and it stumbles on as russian until the french revolution?

 

[Thande]

A very interesting WI. I think a significant question is whether, if the Franco-Spanish preemptively invade, Russia becomes 'properly' at war with those powers (to Britain's theoretical advantage), or if that's just a diplomatic fiction.

There was of course the Russo-Spanish dispute over the Nootka Sound/Oregon Country (as it would become) at this time, which might play a role.

 

[Md139115]

This just sounds like something someone would do in a computer game just to screw up the enemy.

 

[Gary Oswald]

A very interesting WI. I think a significant question is whether, if the Franco-Spanish preemptively invade, Russia becomes 'properly' at war with those powers (to Britain's theoretical advantage), or if that's just a diplomatic fiction.

There was of course the Russo-Spanish dispute over the Nootka Sound/Oregon Country (as it would become) at this time, which might play a role.

Which of course is a question the French and Spanish will be asking themselves before they do anything.

Russia doesn't want to piss those powers off to the point of a shooting war (which is probably why Catherine did u-turn on the offer) so will only buy Minorca if they predict the reaction, however angry, will fall short of that.

Likewise Spain and France will only go ahead with an invasion if they think Russia can take the loss on the chin and not react by marching an army through Germany.

Of course both sides could be wrong when they think that. People do misjudge these things.

An interesting consequence might be if France was fine with Russia holding it but Spain wasn't.

 

[Jophiel]

This just sounds like something someone would do in a computer game just to screw up the enemy.

It's called bordergore. Basically imagine Britain taking over Aragon, Basque and Catalonia to prevent France expanding into Iberia.

Russia would probably lose this in the next war they get into, as they can't really power project that far into the Med.

 

[Gary Oswald]

Russia would probably lose this in the next war they get into, as they can't really power project that far into the Med.

This is very late but I'm going to come back to this.

In the original post, I essentially posited two scenarios if Russia agree to buy it 1) Spain and France don't accept the sale and Minorca is conquered by them before the Russians can actually garrison it leading to a diplomatic crisis and 2) they do accept the sale and it remains russian until the 1790s when Revolutionary France grabs it.

There is however a third scenario, I hadn't thought of. In between those two wars in OTL there were no major western european wars. But Russia did fight Persia, Sweden, Poland and the Ottomans. Would any of those have the capabilities to conquer Minorca? Russia is going to be limited in what it can do to defend it but OTOH it's not going to be a major threat to any of them, are they going to want to strip troops from the front lines to attack it let alone demand it in a peace deal? I think we can rule our Persia and Poland which leaves only the turks and the swedes. Obviously you can't rule out the Swedish King deciding to recruit Madagascan pirates to take minorca and crown a jacobite there but it's a long way from the baltic.

So I tend to think the only option of it falling in a war prior to the revoloutions for the Ottomans to go for it in 1788 as russia being able to force the straits from both sides would be a threat, given that Istanbul itself was threatened by the Russian/Austrian advance in that war.

Especially because it could lead to something cool like John Paul Jones leading a Russian navy around the North sea to relieve Minorca from siege by the corsairs of algiers.