Capture of Gibraltar 1704
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 4 August 1704 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1704 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | Early modern (1500–1799) | derived from year |
| Location | Gibraltar | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | War of the Spanish Succession | Wikidata P361 |
| Coordinates | 36.1397, -5.3539 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The capture of Gibraltar by Anglo-Dutch forces of the Grand Alliance occurred between 1 and 4 August 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession. (see All dates in the annotations) Since the beginning of the war the Alliance had been looking for a harbour in the Iberian Peninsula to control the Strait of Gibraltar and facilitate naval operations against the French fleet in the western Mediterranean Sea. An attempt to seize Cádiz had ended in failure in September 1702, but following the Alliance fleet's successful raid in Vigo Bay in October that year, the combined fleets of the "Maritime Powers", the Netherlands and England, had emerged as the dominant naval force in the region. This strength helped persuade King Peter II of Portugal to sever his alliance with France and Bourbon-controlled Spain, and ally himself with the Grand Alliance in 1703 as the Alliance fleets could campaign in the Mediterranean using access to the port of Lisbon and conduct operations in support of the Austrian Habsburg candidate to the Spanish throne, the Archduke Charles, known to his supporters as Charles III of Spain.
Prince George of Hesse-Darmstadt represented the Habsburg cause in the region. In May 1704 the prince and admiral George Rooke, commander of the main Grand Alliance fleet, failed to take Barcelona in…
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Capture of Gibraltar (revision 1370608722), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
Nearby battles
- Great Siege of Gibraltar 1779 · 0 km
- Second siege of Gibraltar 1315 · 1 km
- First siege of Gibraltar 1309 · 1 km
- Sixth siege of Gibraltar 1411 · 1 km
- Thirteenth siege of Gibraltar 1727 · 1 km
- Third siege of Gibraltar 1333 · 1 km
Other battles of the War of the Spanish Succession
- Battle of Speyerbach 1703
- First Battle of Höchstädt 1703
- Siege of Bonn (1703) 1703
- Siege of Guadeloupe 1703
- Siege of Kehl (1703) 1703
- Battle of Blenheim 1704
- Battle of Málaga (1704) 1704
- Battle of Schellenberg 1704
- Siege of Colonia del Sacramento 1704
- Siege of Landau (1704) 1704
All 61 battles of the War of the Spanish Succession →
Browse more: battles in Gibraltar · Europe · Early modern battles