23 February 1719: The main Spanish invasion force under James Butler, Duke of Ormonde which aimed to land in England and put James Francis Edward Stuart on the throne began to depart from Cadiz. The following day a smaller expedition under George Keith, Earl Marischal and bound for Scotland departed from Pasaia. On 18 March, the main invasion fleet would be scattered in a storm and the invasion of England cancelled. Marischal’s expedition would sail onto the Isle of Lewis before arriving in Kintail on 12 April, marking the beginning of the 1719 Spanish-backed Jacobite rising.
23 February 1744: A French fleet that was to escort an invasion force from Dunkirk to Essex was scattered in a storm shortly after leaving the port of Brest. The same storm also wrecked the transport ships at Dunkirk. Charles Edward Stuart had recently arrived at Dunkirk and was to accompany the invasion with the objective of putting Charles’s father James Francis Edward Stuart on the British throne. Louis XV would cancel the invasion plans on 28 February.
23 February 1746: Brigadier Walter Stapleton and his force of over 1,300 began to invest Fort Augustus at the southern end of Loch Ness. His artillery had to be brought 30 miles from Inverness through thick snow and it would take until the 26th before the guns were in place to bombard the fort.
23 February 1746: Major-General John Campbell of Mamore wrote to Captain Mackenzie of the bomb vessel Serpent which was on Loch Linnhe requesting that he remain there to defend Fort William as intelligence suggested that the Jacobites were preparing to attack the fort.
