So ended the first and last attempt to take Gibraltar in the rear. But still the Spanish army lay encamped before the town, and the siege was kept up for six months with a loss of ten thousand men. No other attack was made during that war, though the war itself raged elsewhere for seven years more, till it was closed by the treaty of Utrecht, in which Gibraltar was finally ceded to Great Britain.
But the Spaniards did not give it up yet. In 1727 they renewed the struggle, and besieged the place for five months with nearly twenty thousand men, but with the same result as before, after which it had rest and quiet for half a century, till the time of the Great Siege, which I am now to describe.
It seems beginning a long way off to find any connection between the siege of Gibraltar and the battle of Saratoga; but one followed from the other. The surrender of General Burgoyne (who had marched from Canada with a large army to crush the Rebellion in the Colonies) was the first great event that gave hope, in the eyes of Europe, to the cause of American independence, and led France to join it openly, as she had before favored it secretly. Spain followed France, having a common hatred of England, with the special grievance of the loss of Gibraltar, which she hoped, with the help of her powerful ally, to recover.
In such a contest the chances were more evenly balanced than might be at first supposed. True, England had the advantage of possession, and if possession is nine points of the law, it is more than nine points in war, especially when the possessor is intrenched in the strongest fortress in the world. But as an offset to this, she had to hold it in an enemy's country. Gibraltar was a part of the territory of Spain, in which the English had not a foot of ground but the Rock on which they stood; while it was much nearer to France than to England. Thus the allied powers had facilities for attacking it both by land and sea, and brought against it such tremendous forces that it could not have held out for nearly four years, had it not been for the British power of resistance, animated by one of the bravest of soldiers.
To begin with, England did not commit the folly by which Spain had lost Gibraltar—in leaving it with an insufficient garrison. It had over five thousand troops in the fortress—a force by which it was thoroughly manned.
But its power for defence was doubled by having a commander, who was fitted by nature and by training for the responsibilities that were to be laid upon him. George Augustus Eliott was the son of Sir Gilbert Eliott, of Roxburghshire, where he was born in 1718. Scotch families in those days, like those of our New England fathers, were apt to be large, and the future defender of Gibraltar was one of eleven children, of whom but two were daughters, and of the nine sons George was the youngest. After such education as he could receive at home, he was sent to the continent, and entered the University of Leyden, where, with his other studies, he acquired a knowledge of German, which was to be of practical use to him afterward, as he was to serve for a year in a German army. But France was the country that then took the lead in the art of war; and from Holland he was sent to a famous military school in Picardy, founded by Vauban, the constructor of the French fortresses, where he learned the principles which he was to apply to the defence of a greater fortress than any in France. He gave particular attention also to the practice of gunnery. As Napoleon learned the art of war in the artillery school of Brienne, so did Eliott in the school of La Fère. An incidental advantage of this French education was that he acquired the language so that he could speak it fluently, a knowledge which was of service to him afterward when he had so much to do with the French, even though it were as enemies.
From France Eliott travelled into other countries on a tour of military observation, and then enlisted for a year in the Prussian army, which was considered the model in the way of discipline. Thus equipped for the life of a soldier, he returned to Scotland, where (as his father wished that he should be further inured to the practice of arms), he entered a Welsh regiment then in Edinburgh as a volunteer, and served with it for a year, from which he went into the engineer corps at Woolwich, and then into a troop of "horse grenadiers," that, under his vigorous training, became famous as a corps of heavy cavalry. When it was ordered to the Continent, he went with it, and served in Germany and the Netherlands, where he took part in several engagements and was wounded at the battle of Dettingen.
In this varied service Eliott had gained the reputation of being a brave and capable officer, but had as yet no opportunity to show the extraordinary ability which he was afterward to display. He had, however, acquired such a mastery of the art of war, that he was fitted for any position. In those days, however, promotion was slow, and he had served in the army (which he entered at the age of seventeen,) forty years, and was fifty-seven years old, and had yet reached only the grade of a Lieutenant-General, when, in 1775, he was placed in command of the fortress of Gibraltar. This was four years before the siege began, by which time he was a little turned of sixty, so that he was familiarly called "Old Eliott." But his good Scotch frame did him service now, for he was hale and strong, with a heart of oak and a frame of iron; asking no indulgence on account of his years, but ready to endure every fatigue and share every danger. Such was the man who was to conduct the defence of Gibraltar, and to be, from the beginning to the end, its very heart and soul.[4]
PLAN OF GIBRALTAR.