Brandenburg caper war
The Brandenburg Pirate War from 1680 to 1681 was a pirate enterprise directed against Spain with the aim of collecting backward Spanish subsidy payments from the Northern War , which had recently ended .
Starting position
Brandenburg-Prussia's coffers were empty after the long war against Sweden. Therefore, there was not enough money to maintain the Kurbrandenburg Navy , which had been built up since the war . The Crown of Spain owed the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm a total of 1,800,000 thalers in war aid. Since the Spaniards refused to pay, Benjamin Raule offered to bring in the equivalent by hijacking Spanish ships.
A fleet of six frigates with 20 to 60 cannons each, a fire and a supply ship with 600 sailors and 300 soldiers was equipped. This ran under the orders of the Brandenburg fleet commander Claus von Bevern in the summer of 1680 from Pillau to the North Sea to hunt down Spanish ships. Denmark, which also demanded money from Spain, opened the Oresund to the Brandenburg Association.
Course of the pirate enterprise
The Brandenburg Association succeeded in capturing the Spanish warship Carolus Secundus with 52 cannons and valuable cargo before Ostend and bringing it to Pillau, where it arrived on October 18, 1680 and the cargo was sold for 100,000 thalers.
Since the Spaniards in the English Channel were now warned and accordingly vigilant, a new Brandenburg unit consisting of five frigates ran out into the Atlantic . He brought up two Spanish galleons off the Mexican-American coast and sold their cargo in Jamaica .
Spain then let a fleet run out to destroy the Brandenburg association. The former Carolus Secundus , who was hijacked at the beginning and now renamed Margrave of Brandenburg , had in the meantime been made ready for sea. She ran from Pillau on July 20, 1681 as the new Brandenburg flagship for further operations against Spanish ships. In association with two smaller ships, she succeeded in capturing another Spanish ship near Glückstadt .
In the meantime the other Brandenburg association sailed home with the two prizes . On September 30, 1681, near Cabo de São Vicente , he came across a superior Spanish ship formation, twelve galleons. After a two-hour sea battle and a loss of 40 men, the Brandenburg ships retreated to Lagos . From there they returned to Pillau at the end of 1681.
Due to the lack of success and the protests of the other European powers, Elector Friedrich Wilhelm finally stopped the pirate enterprise.
literature
- Samuel Buchholz : Attempt a history of the Churmark Brandenburg , fourth part: new history, Berlin 1767.
- Friedrich Förster: Friedrich Wilhelm, the Great Elector, and his time: A history of the Prussian state during the duration of his government , Verlag von Gustav Hempel, Berlin 1855.
- Hans Szymanski: Brandenburg-Prussia at sea 1605-1815. A contribution to the early history of the German Navy , Leipzig 1939.
- Kurt Petsch: Seafaring for Brandenburg-Prussia, 1650-1815. History of naval battles, overseas branches and state trading companies , Osnabrück 1986.
- Stamm, Malte: The Colonial Experiment. The slave trade in Brandenburg-Prussia in the transatlantic area 1680-1718, Univ.-Diss., Düsseldorf 2013 (URL: http://docserv.uni-duesseldorf.de/servlets/DocumentServlet?id=26169 )
- Hans Georg Stelzer: Provided with wonderful harbors. Brandenburg-Prussian seafaring three hundred years ago , Frankfurt / Main 1981. ISBN 3550079524 .
- Otto Glaser: The Dutch in Brandenburg-Prussian cultural work , Berlin 1939.