The Napoleonic Wars expand to South America.…

The Napoleonic Wars expand to South America.

Britain had achieved naval supremacy with the victory at the battle of Trafalgar and France within the European continent.

Home Riggs Popham, commissioned by prime minister Pitt in 1805 to study the military plans being proposed by Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda to the British Government, had then persuaded the authorities that, as the Spanish Colonies were discontented, it would be easy to promote a rising in Buenos Aires.

After co-operating with Sir David Baird in recovering the Cape of Good Hope Station from the Dutch in June 1806, he leads the British invasions of the Río de la Plata on Buenos Aires by General William Carr Beresford's brigade of fifteen hundred men with his squadron.

The British expeditionary force of seventeen hundred men lands on the left bank of the Río de la Plata on June 23, 1806, and invades Buenos Aires, which has been abandoned by the Viceroy.