…of the Rio de la Plata in 1806 and 1807.
"On 13 September 1806 Prime Minister William Grenville and his ministers in London received a dispatch from Brigadier-General William Carr Beresford in Buenos Aires informing them of the capture of that city on the preceding 27 June by the small detachment of 1,635 troops under his command, which had been transported to the Rio de la Plata from Cape Town by a squadron of six warships and five transports commanded by Commodore Sir Home Popham.1 The expedition had been carried out entirely on the initiative of Popham. He had commanded the fleet which had transported the forces under General David Baird that had captured Cape Town from the Dutch some months before, and he had persuaded Baird to provide the detachment under General Beresford for the expedition to the Rio de la Plata. The unexpected and unlooked for success of this expedition provoked a spasm of activity from the Government in London to take advantage of the situation. A force of a little more than 4,000 troops under the command of Sir Samuel Auchmuty sailed from England directly for the Rio de la Plata on 9 October. In addition, in the belief that the moment had come for decisive blows to be struck against the Spanish Empire, plans were drawn up for wide-ranging expeditions against Chile, Mexico and the Philippines.
Brigadier-General Robert Craufurd was given command of a force of 4,000, with instructions drafted by the Secretary of State for War and Colonies, William Windham, to sail for Chile in a fleet commanded by Admiral Sir George Murray, with the object of capturing Valparaiso and other ports and reducing the whole of that country to British rule. Murray intended to take his fleet to Chile by way of Cape Town and Port Jackson (Sydney) in New South Wales, in accordance with advice from Grenville's brother, Lord Buckingham, who had urged him to "advert very particularly to the advantage of ordering Murray to carry Crawford's force direct from their rendezvous [at Cape Town] through Bass's Straits to refresh at New South Wales—Port Jackson; and to exchange their less active men for the seasoned flank companies of the New South Wales corps; and to take with them 100 convict pioneers, who will invaluable, as seasoned to work in the sun".2 Once he had gained control of Chile, Craufurd was instructed to establish "an uninterrupted communication" with General Beresford in Buenos Aires, "by a chain of posts or any other adequate means " between Valparaiso and that city.
In a memorable phrase, the Hon. John Fortescue characterized this in his magisterial History of the British Army as "one of the most astonishing plans that ever emanated from the brain even of a British Minister of War". "Military officers," he wrote, "by incapacity and misjudgement have frequently placed Ministers in situations of cruel difficulty, but it may be doubted whether any General has ever set them a task so impossible as that prescribed, not in the doubt and turmoil of a campaign but in the tranquility of the closet, by Windham to Craufurd…"
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