THE PRISON OF THE FORT HAS A SINGLE ENTRANCE, WHICH OPENS INTO A GUARDROOM. MASSIVE ARCH CONSTRUCTION MADE THE ROOMS OF THE FORT “BOMB” PROOF.
Relief came at last to St. Augustine in 1693, and with it came another Governor, Don Laureano de Torres. To lessen the chances of famine in the future, the Florida officials resolved to plant great crops of maize nearby. They found men to plow the broad, field-like clearings around the fort, and acres of waving corn soon extended almost up to the moat. Proudly they reported this accomplishment to the Crown. The reaction was not what they expected. On December 14, 1693, a royal order was promulgated prohibiting thenceforward the sowing of maize within a musket shot of the castillo. A very large army, said the War Council, could hide in the cornfield and approach to the very bastions without being seen by the sentries.
To Governor Torres belongs the credit for completing the seventeenth century part of the castillo. Somehow he found the means for carrying on Quiroga’s beginning, for putting in place the last stones of the water defenses—bright, yellow rock that was in strange contrast to the weathered gray of masonry already a quarter of a century old. This monumental pile of stone, on which Cendoya planned to spend some 70,000 pesos and which Salazar estimated would cost a good 80,000 pesos were it to be built elsewhere, by 1680 had already cost 75,000 pesos. When Cabrera completed the main part of it 7 years later, expenditures had reached 92,609 pesos. By the time Torres put on the finishing touches in 1696, the mounting costs of Castillo de San Marcos must have totaled close to 100,000 pesos, or approximately $150,000.
And what did completion of this citadel mean? Only a year later, gaunt Spanish soldiers slipped into the church and left an unsigned warning for the Governor: If the enemy came, they intended to surrender, for they were dying of hunger.
DEFENDING SAN MARCOS
The Castillo de San Marcos was a typical example of European design transplanted to the Western Hemisphere. It was a style of fortification evolved from the medieval castle. There was no great change in siegecraft and fortification until the gunpowder cannon came into use, but when that weapon did make its appearance the military engineers found themselves in a predicament. The towering walls of the ancient castles were conspicuous targets for the skilled artillerist. Adamant stone walls that had splintered the powerful crossbow shaft and resisted for days on end the pounding of the catapults tumbled into rubble after a roaring bombardment from heavy siege cannons. So the engineers lowered their targetlike walls, and in front of them they piled thick and high hills of earth to stop the cannonballs before they could hit the stone. Yet, because those walls still had to be too high for the scaling ladders, the surrounding moat was retained. Circular towers common to the older castles eventually gave way to the more scientific bastion, an angular salient from which the pikemen, harquebusiers, and artillerists could see to defend every adjacent part of the fort walls. The ultimate result was a rather complicated series of straight walls and angles—a sort of defense-in-depth plan—and in the center of it could usually be found the garrison quarters and the magazines.
Fortification was a remarkably exact science, and one that was universally respected. “Many ... arguments,” wrote an eighteenth-century expert, “might be alledged to prove the usefulness of fortified places, were it not that all the world is convinced of it at present, and therefore it would be needless to say any more about it.” A fort, however, can never win a victory. Primarily a defensive weapon, it protects vital points and delays the invader. It can also be, as was the case with the historic fort in Florida, a citadel and a pivot of maneuver for colonial troops.
For most defense problems, there was an answer in the book, though the brilliance of the engineer might well be measured by his ingenious use of natural defenses, as was the case at Castillo de San Marcos. There were as many different kinds of forts as there were uses for them. They promoted and protected trade, they guarded the pass into a country, or, like San Marcos, they secured the country from invasion. The following dogma, written three-quarters of a century after the castillo was started, might have referred specifically to the fort at St. Augustine: “In small states ... which cannot afford the expense of building many fortresses, and are not able to provide them when built with sufficient garrisons and other necessaries for their defence, or those whose chief dependance consists in the protection of their allies; the best way is to fortify their capital, which being made spacious, may serve as a retreat to the inhabitants in time of danger, with their wealth and cattle, till the succours of their allies arrive.”
To attack a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century fort, the enemy had first to cross natural barriers, advance over level ground where he was exposed to fire from almost every part of the fortification, drive the defenders from the outer works, cross the moat, and then, if there were any of him left, scale the main walls and fight the rest of the defenders hand to hand. It was no easy job. His approach to within striking distance generally involved the laborious digging of zigzag trenches up to the outworks. Meanwhile, his artillerymen tried to get their guns close enough to breach the walls.