Gibraltar

choi

Stephen Brumwell, When the Rock Was a Hard Place; In 1781, the British sailed to save Gibraltar from Spain and France. In doing so they made an error that helped Gen. Washington win at Yorktown. Wall Street Journal, Apr 4, 2018
https://www.wsj.com/articles/gib ... rd-place-1522793891
(book review on Roy Adkins and Lesley Adkins, Gibraltar; The greatest siege in British history. Viking, 2018)

Note:
(a) Book authors' website says, "We are husband-and-wife authors based in south-west England, near Exeter in Devon."
(b) "striking set-piece clashes"
(i) set (n.1): "Set piece is from 1846 as 'grouping of people in a work of visual art"
https://www.etymonline.com/word/set
(ii) set piece (n): "a precisely planned and conducted military operation  <an offensive set piece that caught the enemy off guard>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/set-piece

choi

(c) "British captured it [Gibraltar] from Spain in 1704. The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht permanently ceded Gibraltar * * * to Great Britain * * * when the country [Spain] declared war on Britain in June 1779, its alliance with France was conditional upon a French commitment that Gibraltar be restored to Spanish rule."
(i) Gibraltar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltar
(section 1 Name; Quote: "In 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succession [1701–1714], a combined Anglo-Dutch fleet, representing the Grand Alliance, captured the town of Gibraltar on behalf of the Archduke Charles of Austria in his campaign to become King of Spain [he failed, but later became Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor (1711-1740) ]")

Tariq
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Tariq
(pronunciation)
(ii) Treaty of Utrecht
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Utrecht
(signed in in the Dutch city of Utrecht in 1713)

Quote: "Before Charles II of Spain died in 1700, having no Hapsburg heirs, he had named Philip, the Duke of Anjou, a French Bourbon, as his successor. Philip was the grandson of Charles' half-sister, Maria Theresa of Spain [1638 – 1683; first wife of Louis XIV of France; Maria Theresa of Austria lived in the next century] and Louis XIV of France. However, Philip was also in line for the French throne, and the other major powers (countries) in Europe were not willing to tolerate the potential union of two such powerful states [France and spain (with colonies)]. Essentially, the treaties allowed Philip to take the Spanish throne as Philip V in return for permanently renouncing his claim to the French throne

(iii) American Revolutionary War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War
("In 1777, the British launched an invasion from Quebec under John Burgoyne, intending to isolate the New England Colonies. Instead of assisting this effort, Howe took his army on a separate campaign against Philadelphia, and Burgoyne was decisively defeated at Saratoga [click and new page titled 'Battles of Saratoga' has a map showing British movement] in October 1777.  Burgoyne's defeat had drastic consequences; France formally allied with the Americans and entered the war in 1778, and Spain joined the war the following year as an ally of France but not as an ally of the United States")

choi

(d) "London's decision to send Vice Adm George Darby to relieve the hard-pressed [Gibraltar] garrison resulted in a second successful breaching of the blockade in April 1781, but Darby's absence from the Breton [adj: of Brittany; n: inhabitant or language of Brittany] port of Brest allowed a substantial French flotilla to leave unopposed and eventually contribute to the force that enabled Washington and Rochambeau to snare the British army at Yorktown. 'While Darby's convoy sailed to save Gibraltar,' the authors write, 'across the Atlantic Britain lost America.' "
(i) Brest, France
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brest,_France
(map)
(ii) French navy's movement: from Brest to Haiti to Chesapeake to off Yorktown.
(A) Siege of Yorktown (continued). National Park Service, undated
www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/hh/14/hh14b1.htm
("BATTLE OF THE VIRGINIA CAPES. The Count de Grasse left Cape Francais, on the northern coast of Haiti in the West Indies, for the Atlantic coast and Chesapeake Bay on August 5[, 1781]. He had reached the West Indies in April [1781], after a 38 days' crossing of the Atlantic from Brest, France [De Grasse departed Brest on Mar 22, 1781 -- the day he was promoted to rear admiral when he was almost sixty years old: www.encyclopedia.com for de Grasse]")
* Battle of the Chesapeake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Chesapeake
(also known as the Battle of the Virginia Capes; Sept 5, 1781)
* Siege of Yorktown (Sept 28 – Oct 19, 1781)
(B) Grasse
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Grasse
(pronunciation)
(C) Jonathan R Dull, The French Navy and American Independence; A study of arms and diplomacy, 1774-1787. Princeton University Press, 1975, at pages 224-225
https://books.google.com/books?i ... asse%22&f=false
("Military historians are generally so infatuated with the sound of cannon * * * Battles not fought are often just as critical, the untouched convoy or escaping fleet often [being] a great defeat for the opposing strategist [the British here]. By these criteria the British reinforcement of Gibraltar in April 1781 was one of the [American Revolutionary] war's decisive operations. * * * Vice-Admiral George Darby's fleet of 28 of the line was overwhelmingly superior in cannon to the combined French squadrons of 26 of the line which sailed from Brest. * * * Instead, Darby was off Ireland awaiting the provisioning ships for Bibraltar from Cork while de Grasse and Suffren were passing safely to the south. * * * For such strategic ineptitude the British cabinet could have no excuse. The blockade of Gibraltar was so loose that with a willingness to accept occasional losses it could have been replenished by unescorted merchantmen")
(iii) Rochambeau
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Rochambeau
(pronunciation)

was an army general of France.