In April 1848 the Ejército del Sur was under the command of General Francisco Javier Álvarez de Toledo widely held to be the single worst general in Spain. Meanwhile Espartero also had preparations to manage on land before the first shots were fired. Such warfare would not bring either power to her knees but it was something, and every lost shipment would be another blow to the enemies resolve. The squadrons in Havana and Manilla would have the, in many ways easier, tasks of seizing British and Dutch merchant shipping respectively. On the advice of Admiral Nicolás Barradas, Spain's most senior naval officer Espartero ordered the construction of three new frigates and a man'o'war to bolster the Armada Española in home waters. The tactic used to such damning effect against Napoleon's France was just as deadly against Isabella's Spain. Whether the British landed men at Gibraltar, or some strip of Spanish coastline or even bullied Portugal into allowing the passage of an Army Espartero was confident Spain could win on land, but the very fact that the British might land soldiers anywhere meant Spain had to be strong everywhere.Įqually galling, if less dramatic was the possibility of a naval blockade cutting off the Spanish ports from the outside world. The Dutch Navy, though formidable, was unlikely to leave its home waters and the Prussians scarcely had a fleet at all. The Duque de la Victoria, now comfortably returned to his stately townhouse in Madrid and possessing both the Presidency and the War Ministry was an Army officer, but he knew that in this war Spain's greatest danger lay at sea. As it was, the government of Lord Stanley focused on the greater strength of France leaving Baldomero Espartero some breathing room.
Had the Armada Española still been the great force it had been in the previous century the British might have diverted their attentions to the Iberian peninsula.
Spain was unfortunate to be at war at all, but her location and her relative military weakness were not entirely without compensations. Spanish soldiers of the Austro-Prussian War.