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The Siege of Porto Ferrajo was a French attempt to force the surrender of the Tuscan fortress town of Porto Ferrajo (now Portoferraio) on the island of Elba following the French occupation of mainland Tuscany in 1801 during the French Revolutionary Wars. The Tuscan garrison was heavily outnumbered, but received significant support from British Royal Navy forces who controlled the Mediterranean Sea and ensured that supplies reached the garrison and that French supply convoys were intercepted. The French began the siege with 1,500 men in May 1801, later reinforced to more than 5,000, but could not make an impression on the fortresses defences, instead seeking to starve the defenders into submission with the support of a squadron of French Navy frigates operating off the coast. The presence of a small British naval squadron in the region rendered this plan impractical and additional British reinforcements under Rear-Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren and Lieutenant Colonel George Airey strengthened the defenders to the point that sallies could be made against French offensive positions. The French subsequently lost all of the frigates sent to blockade the port to patrolling British warships in a series of one-sided engagements, giving the British local dominance that allowed them to maintain the fortress. Despite a number of naval actions and one significant land engagement, the siege dragged on inconclusively for the summer and early autumn of 1801, and when the first articles of the Treaty of Amiens were signed in October, the town was still under Tuscan control, although the provisions of the final agreement, signed in March 1802, granted the island to France. ==Invasion== In 1800, French First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte advanced into Italy, achieving victories against the Austrian Empire at the battles of Marengo and Hohenlinden. After a year of warfare, the French and Austrians signed the Treaty of Lunéville on 9 February 1801, which divided Northern Italy between the states and awarded the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to the French.〔Chandler, p. 258〕 Included in this division was the island of Elba in the Ligurian Sea off the Western Italian coast, which at that time was shared between Tuscany and the Kingdom of Naples. On 28 March 1801, the Treaty of Florence was signed between Naples and France, officially turning the entirety of Elba over to French control, although it had not yet been surrendered by its Neapolitan and Tuscan commanders.〔Gardiner, p. 75〕 Although the Ligurian Sea was by this stage largely French territorial waters, after the Royal Navy had destroyed the French Mediterranean Fleet at the Battle of the Nile off Egypt in 1798, the British in fact controlled it and the whole Mediterranean Sea.〔Gardiner, p. 39〕 By 1801 British bases at Gibraltar, Minorca and Malta allowed British naval forces to cruise throughout the sea largely unopposed; their presence forced the remnants of the French fleet based at Toulon to make short journeys between French bases to avoid interception and capture. It was therefore not until a large French squadron under Rear-Admiral Honoré Ganteaume briefly asserted regional naval superiority that a French expeditionary force was able to secure Elba.〔Woodman, p. 159〕 They sailed from Piombino on 2 May 1801 with 1,500 men under General Jean Victor Tharreau, who landed unopposed at the Neapolitan town of Porto Longone.〔Clowes, p. 450〕 The invasion force rapidly spread across the island, meeting no resistance as the entire Neapolitan portion and almost all of the Tuscan region surrendered before them. Soon, all that remained in Tuscan hands was the fortress port town of Porto Ferrajo on the northern coast. This was a powerful defensive position, and the Tuscan commander Carlo de Fisson rejected Tharreau's demands that he surrender. The presence of two British frigates, HMS ''Phoenix'' and HMS ''Mermaid'', off the port, buttressed de Fisson's position.〔James, p. 95〕 Tharreau responded by laying siege to the fortress. The sudden departure of the two frigates in the face of Ganteaume's squadron, which bombarded the town on 6 May before being forced to retire following the outbreak of typhus on board the squadron, encouraged Tharreau.〔Musteen, p. 32〕 The small French frigate ''Badine'' subsequently blockaded Porto Ferrajo, with the intention of starving the defenders into surrender. Three more frigates ''Carrère'', ''Bravoure'' and ''Succes'', under the overall command of Captain Jacques-François-Ignace Bretel, soon arrived to augment ''Badines'' blockade.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Siege of Porto Ferrajo」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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