The impress of two eighteen-pound shot, low down on the eastern curtain, are now to be seen,
made from a battery placed on Anastasia Island by General Oglethorpe, who attempted by a regular siege to take the city. The bombardment was continued twenty days; but, on account of the lightness of the guns, and the distance, little damage was done. The siege lasted thirty-eight days, when the Americans withdrew their troops, and returned to Georgia.
General Oglethorpe returned two years after this, taking Fort Moosa, four miles distant, upon a broad river flowing under the fort; then advanced to the gates of St. Augustine, where he gave the garrison an invitation to march out and fight, which they declined.
In 1740 the castle is described as “being built of soft stone, with four bastions, the curtains sixty yards in length, the parapet nine feet thick, the rampart twenty feet high, casemated underneath for lodgings, arched over and newly made bomb-proof; and they have for some time past been working on a new covert way, which is nearly finished. The ordnance consisted of fifty pieces of cannon, sixteen of which were brass twenty-four-pounders. Thirteen hundred regular troops composed the garrison, also militia and Spanish Indians. In addition to this, the town was intrenched with ten salient angles, on each of which were cannon.”
In 1769 it is again described as being completed “according to the modern taste of military architecture, and might be justly deemed the prettiest fort in the king’s domain. It is regularly fortified with bastions, half-bastions, and a ditch; has also several rows of Spanish bayonet along the ditch, forming so close a chevaux-de-frise with their pointed leaves as to be impregnable. The southern bastions were built of stone.”
The fort now, as then, is situated in the north-eastern extremity of the old town, directly fronting the entrance to the harbor. On the west side is a broad and deep trench, or moat, connected with the moat around the castle extending across the town to the St. Sebastian River. This trench was used to flood the moat around the fortress, from the St. Sebastian River, and also to be filled with water when required, in order to obstruct the approach of assailants from the southern direction. On the south side of this trench very strong earth-works were erected, continuous with portions of massive walls on each side the city gate, which is now the best relic that exists in Europe or America—thus acknowledged by tourists who have visited St. Augustine. The form of the work is a polygon, consisting of four equal curtains, on the salient angles, on three of which are bastions, or turrets, the one at the north-east corner having disappeared. The moat around the castle is inclosed by the internal barrier, a massive wall of coquina, which also extends around the barbacan, following its entrant and reëntrant angles. An outer barrier extends around the inner, following in parallel lines the various flexures. Although a mound of earth is now raised against this outer barrier, inclosing the fort, there is little doubt, from observation of the remains, that the approaches to the castle were guarded, as in the Middle Ages, by an abatis, scarp and counter-scarp, frise, and all the defenses then employed, the traces of which are still extant. The barbacan in front of the entrance—called in modern phraseology the sally-port—is the only remaining specimen of a defensive work of the kind in this country, and to the present time has been an enigma to all visitors, which some tourists have committed the blunder of calling a demi-lune. This particular will be recalled by a reference to Scott’s “Betrothed,” which describes the castle of the “Garde Douloreuse.” Traces of the “outer barrier gate” remain, also the draw-bridges, and machinery by which they were worked. Every thing is preserved but the “Warder’s Tower” over the gate; the steps remain to prove the former existence of the tower. The draw-bridge, and even the pulleys by which it was raised, are there; also the ponderous portcullis, as an illustrated monument of Sir Walter Scott’s description in regard to ancient castles.
The following Spanish inscription is to be seen over the sally-port in alto-rilievo: