Minorca and the cost of split commitments

After Byng withdrew to Gibraltar, the garrison at Fort St Philip eventually surrendered. A follow-on British squadron could not draw enough troops because available forces were tied to the Hanoverian Army of Observation and other overseas commitments. Britain had considered hiring 50,000 Russian soldiers and hoped to assemble a force of roughly 100,000 men from Russian, Hanoverian, Brunswick, and Hessian troops to protect the King's separate Hanoverian territory. That plan left expeditionary troops unavailable when the Mediterranean crisis arrived. The choice between continental and maritime strategy was therefore also a choice about which ready forces Britain could employ.