The number killed on the side of the enemy we have not been able to learn exactly. It has been learned only by some circumstances, that in the review made two days after the taking of the place, the enemy had lost more than a thousand men, among whom were sixteen officers. Among those officers, was a sargento-mayor of Drapert’s regiment, who was killed on the day of the assault by an arrow; and the commandant of the regiment of Chamal, who was killed by a musket ball, as he was watching with a glass the approach from the tower of Santiago. The vice-admiral[25] was drowned when coming ashore in a small boat which overturned; and the same accident caused the death of some sailors and soldiers.
The forces of the enemy consisted of fifteen hundred European soldiers, chosen from Drapert’s regiment, and from the battalion of the volunteers of Chamal; two artillery companies of sixty men apiece; three thousand European sailors, fusileers and well disciplined; eight hundred Sepoys, with muskets, forming two battalions, and fourteen hundred of the same troops destined for the fascines. That formed an army of six thousand eight hundred and thirty men.
The two mortar batteries, which, as has been said, were of different caliber, threw more than five thousand bombs into the city.[26] The land batteries and those of the ships fired more than twenty thousand shots from twenty-four pounders, and ruined the city in many places. The enemy sent about twenty-five shells, which set fires in five different places; and if all diligence had not been employed, the city, or the greater part of it, would have been in ashes. Manila, December 23, 1762.
[1] See Report of the War Department for 1903 (Washington, 1903), iii, pp. 434–446: “Historical Sketch of the Walls of Manila.” [↑]
[2] “The English knew as much of the weakness of that city as the Spaniards themselves, because of the voyages that they made there annually. There was (and the same was true in 1766 and 1767) the greatest freedom of going everywhere, of seeing and visiting everything. When I left that city, I could easily have given an idea of the plan of the fortifications of that place. The Spaniards were without distrust in this regard. The English knew besides that the garrison was very weak, and composed of Mexican soldiers, good enough indeed, but of little skill in the military art, as they had never fired a gun; and composed, in a word, of soldiers, sufficient to impose on Negroes, but incapable of opposing well disciplined troops, accustomed for some years to fighting in India.” See Le Gentil, ii, p. 236. [↑]
[3] Cf. with this statement the letter by Baltasar Vela, S.J., post, pp. 288–295. [↑]
[4] This was Lieutenant Fernando Arcaya. See Sitio y conquista de Manila, p. 36. [↑]
[5] Ferrando (Historia de los PP. dominicos, Madrid, 1871, iv, p. 621), says that the first summons for surrender from Cornish and Draper demanded the immediate delivery of eight million escudos, the equivalent of four million pesos. [↑]
[6] “After consulting the royal assembly of these islands the governor replied: ‘Gran Bretaña must know already that fear and threats are not the securest method nor the most fitting means to celebrate treaties with the noble servants of the Spanish sovereign. History has shown the world that Spaniards know how to die like good men for their God, for their king, and for their fatherland, but never to yield in the face of danger, much less to be intimidated by arrogant threats. Go, then, and bear this message to your chiefs; and tell them that we here are ready in any event to sell our lives dear.’ ” See Ferrando, iv, p. 621. [↑]