Question: The Raid on Manila of January 1798 was a Royal Navy false flag military operation during the French Revolutionary Wars intended to scout the strength of the defences of Manila, capital of the Spanish Philippines, capture a Manila galleon and assess the condition of the Spanish Navy squadron maintained in the port, a major invasion of the Spanish Philippines had been planned from British India during 1797, but had been called off following the Treaty of Campo Formio, it was signed on which date, (27 Vendémiaire VI) by Napoleon Bonaparte and Count Philipp von Cobenzl as representatives of the French Republic and the Austrian monarchy, respectively?
Context: The Macau Incident was an inconclusive encounter between a powerful squadron of French and Spanish warships and a British Royal Navy escort squadron in the Wanshan Archipelago (or Ladrones Archipelago) off Macau on 27 January 1799.  The incident took place in the context of the East Indies campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars, the allied squadron attempting to disrupt a valuable British merchant convoy due to sail from Qing Dynasty China.  This was the second such attempt in three years; at the Bali Strait Incident of 1797 a French frigate squadron had declined to engage six East Indiamen on their way to China.  By early 1799 the French squadron had dispersed, with two remaining ships deployed to the Spanish Philippines.  There the frigates had united with the Spanish Manila squadron and sailed to attack the British China convoy gathering at Macau. The Treaty of Campo Formio (today Campoformido) was signed on 18 October 1797 (27 Vendémiaire VI) by Napoleon Bonaparte and Count Philipp von Cobenzl as representatives of the French Republic and the Austrian monarchy, respectively.  The treaty followed the armistice of Leoben (18 April 1797), which had been forced on the Habsburgs by Napoleon's victorious campaign in Italy.  It definitively ended the War of the First Coalition and left Great Britain fighting alone against revolutionary France. Vice-Admiral Robert Plampin (1762 – 14 February 1834), was a British Royal Navy officer during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, serving in the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, but best known for his time as commander of the British colony of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic during the period when former Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was imprisoned there.  Born into a Navy family, Plampin went to sea at age 13 and fought throughout the American Revolutionary War, based principally in the Caribbean Sea.  During the French Revolutionary Wars, Plampin served in a number of ships with mixed success, once being involved in a shipwreck and twice serving ashore during sieges.  After the Peace of Amiens, Plampin took command of the ship of the line HMS "Powerful" and operated successfully in the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.  In 1816, following the defeat and capture of the French Emperor, Plampin was placed in command of the squadron at the Cape of Good Hope, which also had responsibility for Saint Helena, which Plampin regularly visited and had numerous conversations with Napoleon. The First Battle of Algeciras was a naval battle fought on 6 July 1801 (17 messidor an IX of the French Republican Calendar) between a squadron of British Royal Navy ships of the line and a smaller French Navy squadron at anchor in the fortified Spanish port of Algeciras in the Strait of Gibraltar.  The British outnumbered their opponents, but the French position was protected by Spanish gun batteries and the complicated shoals that obscured the entrance to Algeciras Bay.  The French squadron, under Contre-Admiral Charles Linois, had stopped at Algeciras "en route" to the major Spanish naval base at Cadiz, where they were to form a combined French and Spanish fleet for operations against Britain and its allies in the French Revolutionary Wars.  The British, under Rear-Admiral Sir James Saumarez, sought to eliminate the French squadron before it could reach Cadiz and form a force powerful enough to overwhelm Saumarez and launch attacks against British forces in the Mediterranean Sea. The Treaty of Amiens (French: "la paix d'Amiens") temporarily ended hostilities between the French Republic and Great Britain during the French Revolutionary Wars.  It was signed in the city of Amiens on 25 March 1802 (Germinal 4, year X, in the French Revolutionary calendar), by Joseph Bonaparte and the Marquess Cornwallis as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace".  The consequent Peace of Amiens lasted only one year (18 May 1803) and engendered the only period of general peace in Europe between 1793 and 1814.  Under the treaty, Britain recognised the French Republic; the British parliament had dropped England's historical claim to the now-defunct French Kingdom only two years previously.  Together with the Treaty of Lunéville (1801), the Treaty of Amiens marked the end of the Second Coalition, which had waged war against Revolutionary France since 1798. The Raid on Manila of January 1798 was a Royal Navy false flag military operation during the French Revolutionary Wars intended to scout the strength of the defences of Manila, capital of the Spanish Philippines, capture a Manila galleon and assess the condition of the Spanish Navy squadron maintained in the port.  Spain had transformed from an ally of Great Britain in the War of the First Coalition into an enemy in 1796.  Thus the presence of a powerful Spanish squadron at Manila posed a threat to the China Fleet, an annual convoy of East Indiaman merchant ships from Macau in Qing Dynasty China to Britain, which was of vital economic importance to Britain.  So severe was this threat that a major invasion of the Spanish Philippines had been planned from British India during 1797, but had been called off following the Treaty of Campo Formio in Europe and the possibility of a major war in India between the British East India Company and the Kingdom of Mysore. Captain Edward Cooke, (14 April 1772 – 25 May 1799) was a Royal Navy officer of the late eighteenth century who was best known for his service during the French Revolutionary Wars.  Cooke gained notoriety in the first year of the war as a junior officer when he was entrusted with the surrender negotiations of the French port city of Toulon, Cooke's success under threat of execution led to the British occupation of the city and the ensuing Siege of Toulon.  Cooke was promoted for the successful negotiations and given command of the large captured French frigate HMS "Sybille" in the Indian Ocean in 1798 he led a successful bloodless raid on the port of Manila in the Spanish Philippines and the following year tracked down and engaged the powerful French raiding frigate "Forte" off the mouth of the Hooghly River at the Action of 28 February 1799.  In the ensuing battle "Forte" was captured but Cooke was struck by grape shot resulting in a lingering death from his wounds.  He would die in Calcutta on 25 May and was interred with full military honours. The Mediterranean campaign of 1798 was a series of major naval operations surrounding a French expeditionary force sent to Egypt under Napoleon Bonaparte during the French Revolutionary Wars.  The French Republic sought to capture Egypt as the first stage in an effort to threaten British India, and thus force Great Britain to make peace.  Departing Toulon in May 1798 with over 40,000 troops and hundreds of ships, Bonaparte's fleet sailed southeastwards across the Mediterranean Sea.  They were followed by a small British squadron under Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson, later reinforced to 13 ships of the line, whose pursuit was hampered by a lack of scouting frigates and reliable information.  Bonaparte's first target was the island of Malta, which was under the government of the Knights of St. John and theoretically granted its owner control of the Central Mediterranean.  Bonaparte's forces landed on the island and rapidly overwhelmed the defenders, securing the port city of Valletta before continuing to Egypt.  When Nelson learned of the French capture of the island, he guessed the French target to be Egypt and sailed for Alexandria, but passed the French during the night of 22 June without discovering them and arrived off Egypt first. The Croisière de Bruix (or Bruix' expedition of 1799) was the principal naval campaign of the year 1799 during the French Revolutionary Wars.  The expedition began in April 1799 when the bulk of the French Atlantic Fleet under Vice-Admiral Étienne Eustache Bruix departed the base at Brest, evading the British Channel Fleet which was blockading the port and tricking the commander Admiral Lord Bridport into believing their true destination was Ireland.  Passing southwards, the French fleet narrowly missed joining with an allied Spanish Navy squadron at Ferrol and was prevented by an easterly gale from uniting with the main Spanish fleet at Cádiz before entering the Mediterranean Sea.  The Mediterranean was under British control following the destruction of the French Mediterranean Fleet at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798, and a British fleet nominally under Admiral Earl St Vincent was stationed there.  Due however to St. Vincent's ill-health, operational control rested with Vice-Admiral Lord Keith.  As Keith sought to chase down the French, the Spanish fleet followed Bruix into the Mediterranean before being badly damaged in a gale and sheltering in Cartagena. The Battle of Mahé was a minor naval engagement of the last year of the French Revolutionary Wars, fought on 19 August 1801 in the harbour of Mahé in the Seychelles, a French colony in the Indian Ocean.  Since the demise of the French Indian Ocean squadron in 1799, the Royal Navy had maintained dominance in the East Indies, controlling the shipping routes along which trade flowed and allowing the rapid movement of military forces around the theatre.  French First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte had long-harboured ambitions of threatening British India, and in 1798 had launched an invasion of Egypt as an initial step to achieving this goal.  The campaign had failed, and the French army in Egypt was under severe pressure by early 1801, partly due to the presence of a British squadron acting with impunity in the Red Sea.
Answer: 18 October 1797