Lezo married in Peru in 1725. In 1730 he returned to Spain and was promoted to chief of the Mediterranean Fleet; with this force he went to the Republic of Genoa to enforce the payment of two million pesos owed to Spain that had been retained in the Bank of San Jorge. Deeming the honor of the Spanish flag to be at stake, de Lezo threatened the city with bombardment. In 1732, on board the "Santiago", he and José Carrillo de Albornoz commanded the enormous expedition to Oran and Mers-el-Kébir with more than 300 ships and around 28,000 troops, comprising infantry, cavalry and artillery. In the Battle of Aïn-el-Turk they recaptured the cities lost to the Ottoman Empire in 1708. After the defeat, Bey Abu l-Hasan Ali I managed to reunite his troops and surrounded the city of Oran. de Lezo returned to its aid with six ships and 5,000 men and managed to drive off the Algerian pirate after a difficult fight. Dissatisfied with this, Lezo took his 60-gun flagship into the corsair's refuge of Mostaganem Bay, a bastion defended by two forts and 4,000 Moors, inflicting heavy damage on the forts and town. In the following months he established a naval blockade, preventing the Algerians from receiving reinforcements from Istanbul and thereby gaining valuable time for the securing of Oran's defense, until an epidemic forced him to return to Cádiz. In 1734 de Lezo was promoted by the king to Lieutenant General of the Navy. He returned to South America with the ships "Fuerte" and "Conquistador" in 1737 as General Commander of the Spanish fleet stationed at Cartagena de Indias, in modern-day Colombia. He took up his new post just prior to the conflict between Great Britain and Spain that would become known as the War of Jenkins' Ear and that would later be subsumed into the War of Austrian Succession. In the early stages of the conflict, the British Admiral Edward Vernon undertook attacks on various Spanish outposts in America. One such attack involved the capture of Portobelo (Panama), the dismantling of its fortifications and the subsequent withdrawal of British forces having left the place defenceless. Admiral Vernon tested Cartagena de Indias on three separate occasions. Both Vernon and Edward Trelawny, the British governor of Jamaica, considered the Spanish gold shipping port to be a prime objective.