THE blow so suddenly and effectually levelled at the Spaniards seems for a time to have paralyzed their energies. But about the beginning of December they recovered themselves to some extent, and the besieged could see a large body of their men busily engaged in making fascines, with a view to the reconstruction of their batteries. It was also ascertained that the allied Governments of France and Spain had determined upon concentrating in front of Gibraltar a force which should render resistance impossible; that several French regiments were to be despatched to the assistance of the besieging army; and the conduct of the operations entrusted to the Duke of Crillon, who had recently gained a high reputation by his conquest of Minorca.

Meantime, General Elliot and his officers main{71}tained their composure. Every precaution was taken against surprise; and the weak points of the fortifications, as indicated by the enemy’s fire, were assiduously strengthened.

But before resuming our narrative of the siege, we must pause to record an example of that generous courtesy which sometimes relieves the horrors of war. Among the Spanish officers taken prisoner was one Baron von Helmstadt, an ensign in the Walloon Guards. He was dangerously wounded in the knee, and when the English surgeons informed him that amputation was necessary, he resolutely refused to submit to it. The operation, he said, was seldom successful in Spain; and for himself, he was then engaged to be married to a lady, and would rather risk his life than present himself before his betrothed in a mutilated condition. Apprised of this dangerous effusion of a false sentiment, General Elliot visited the baron, and used every argument to dissuade him from adhering to so rash a determination. His lady-love, said the general, very sensibly, would not esteem him the less for having received an honourable wound in the service of his country. As to the operation being fatal, he could assure him that the contrary{72} was the case; he knew that the English surgeons were almost always successful; and, for his better assurance, he introduced into his chamber several “mutilated convalescents.” The governor’s generous attention had so great an influence on the baron, that he consented to the operation, which was performed with great skill, and resulted most favourably. As the baron’s lady-love would doubtless have considered a lover with one leg better than no lover at all, we are convinced she would often have blessed General Elliot for his chivalrous interposition, but that, unfortunately, the baron afterwards died of some internal disease.

The New-Year’s Day of 1782, says our historian, was remarkable for an action of gallantry which is worthy of being rescued from oblivion. An officer of artillery at one of the batteries observing a shell whizzing its way towards his post, got behind a traverse for protection. This he had scarcely done before the shell fell into the traverse, and instantly entangled him in the rubbish. A soldier named Martin, seeing his distress, bravely risked his own life to save his officer, and ran to extricate him. His efforts proving useless, he called for assistance; and another soldier joining him, they succeeded in

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MAP OF GIBRALTAR

AT THE TIME OF THE GREAT SIEGE.

(From an Old Engraving.)

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extricating their officer. Almost at the same moment the shell burst, and levelled the traverse to the ground. For this courageous action, Martin was deservedly rewarded and promoted.

 

The defenders of the Rock now watched with intense interest the preparations of the enemy, in whose lines the greatest activity was visible. They could note the almost daily arrival of fresh troops, until the whole shore of the Bay, from Carteia to the heights of San Roque, was covered with tents. Thousands of workmen, under cover of night, pushed the approaches nearer and nearer to the beleaguered fortress. Heavy guns bristled from every point of vantage, and hour after hour poured out their fell contents of shot and shell. It was obvious, too, that the huge men-of-war at Algesiras were being equipped as batteries of a new and formidable character. The eagerness of the besiegers was stimulated by the arrival in their camp of two French princes of the blood, the Count of Artois and the Duke of Bourbon; the enemies of Great Britain everywhere turned their attention towards the great fortress which, as they confidently believed, would soon cease to be occupied by her soldiers.{74}

It may not be uninteresting if we borrow from Captain Drinkwater’s pages a record of the operations of a few days, with the view of giving the reader some idea of the incidents which characterize the course of a great siege:—

The 1st of March, he says, a flag of truce went to the enemy, in answer to one from them some days before. The Spanish officer who received the packet informed us that Fort St. Philip, in Minorca, had surrendered on the 5th of February. The succeeding day, a “carcass” set fire to the enemy’s 13-gun battery, which continued blazing for two hours. On their attempting to extinguish the fire, we plied them so briskly, that several were killed and most of them driven from their work; but their usual gallantry at last prevailed. This is an honourable tribute to an enemy who fought with considerable courage and perseverance.

At night they raised a place d’armes at the western extremity of their 13-gun battery; these defensive works demonstrating that they were determined to provide as much as possible against another sortie. The following night they repaired the damage done by the fire. The carpenters of the navy, on the 4th, laid the keel of one of the new gun{75}boats. The 6th, six rows of tents, ten in each row, were pitched in the rear of the second line of the enemy’s camp, near the horse-barrack. A large party was also employed in making a road from the beach to the barrack, and others were engaged in landing shells and different ordnance. These, with other appearances, showed that the enemy were in earnest in their prosecution of the siege.

On the other hand, General Elliot unweariedly engaged the garrison in repairing, and putting in the best order of defence, the upper batteries and other works which had suffered from the storm of fire directed against them.

On the 8th, the enemy raised one face of the eastern redoubt several fascines in height. The day following, Lieutenant Cuppage, of the Royal Artillery, was dangerously wounded on the Royal battery, from a splinter of a small shell, which burst immediately after being discharged from the rock gun above and in the rear of the Royal battery; this was the second accident of the same nature. On the 11th a frigate and xebec passed to the west, with six topsail vessels, supposed to be part of the late Minorca garrison. On the night of the 13th the enemy traced out a work within the western place d’armes of the{76} St. Carlos Battery, apparently with an intention of extending the epaulement. The firing on both sides was now considerably increased; that from the enemy amounted to about five hundred rounds in the twenty-four hours.

In the course of the 25th a shot drove through the embrasures of one of the British batteries, took off the legs of two men, one leg of another, and wounded a fourth man in both legs; so that “four men had seven legs taken off and wounded by one shot.” The boy who was usually posted on the works where a large party was employed, to inform the men when the enemy were directing their guns towards them, had been chiding them for their disregard of his warnings, and had just turned his head towards the hostile lines, when he observed this shot on its dreadful path, and called to them to beware. Unfortunately, his caution was too late; the shot entered the embrasure, with the fatal result we have described. It is strange that this boy should have been so keen-sighted as to distinguish the enemy’s shot almost immediately after it quitted the gun. But another boy in the garrison possessed an equal, if not a superior sharpness of vision.

Passing on to the 11th of April, we find that on{77} that day the garrison obtained information as to the exact nature of the preparations which were being made for conquering their stubborn resistance. They learned that the Duke of Crillon was in command, with twenty thousand French and Spanish troops, in addition to those who had previously formed the besieging force; that the besieging operations were directed by Monsieur d’Ar?on, an eminent French engineer; and that Admiral Don Buonaventura Moreno was prepared to support the attack with ten men-of-war, besides gunboats, mortar boats, floating batteries, and other vessels. Next day the enemy’s cannonade was of a peculiar character; from six in the morning until sunset a single gun or mortar was discharged every two or three minutes. Our British soldiers remarked that, as the day was the anniversary of the bombardment, the Spaniards were probably keeping it with prayer and fasting, and the minuteguns were intended to express their sorrow at the expenditure during the past twelvemonth of so many barrels of powder and rounds of cartridges without any result!

On the 28th of May the enemy sent in a flag of truce. Before the object of it was known, the governor remarked to the officers near him that{78} he supposed the duke had arrived, and had sent to summon the garrison to surrender. His reply, he said, would be brief, “No—no;” and he hoped his officers would support him. The summons, however, was not made, and the laconic answer, therefore, was not given. But it is due to the Duke of Crillon to record his courtesy. He wrote to General Elliot to acquaint him with the arrival of the French prince, and in their name to express their high estimation of his courage and character. The letter was accompanied by a present of fresh fruits and vegetables, with ice, game, and other luxuries for the use of his staff. He knew, said the duke, that the governor lived wholly upon vegetables, and if informed of the description he preferred, he would furnish a daily supply. The governor replied in suitable terms; but while accepting the Spanish commander’s gifts, begged of him to send no more, as he made it a point of honour to share with the meanest of his fellow-soldiers both want and plenty.

In planning a combined attack by land and sea upon the Rock, the besiegers felt it was necessary to guard against the destruction of the naval force by the batteries of the fortress before it could get near enough to render any service. But how was the{79} fire of the English guns to be silenced? It occurred to M. d’Ar?on that what was wanted was a number of fireproof batteries, which could take up and maintain a position in the Bay, regardless of the cannonade delivered against them by the garrison. In the construction of these floating castles M. d’Ar?on exhausted all his ingenuity. There were ten of them, each armed with fifteen heavy guns, and their structure was as follows:—On the larboard side they were six or seven feet thick, made of green timber, bolted and cased with cork, iron, and raw hides. Inside they were lined with a bed of wet sand, and in case they should nevertheless take fire, currents of water were poured through them by a system of pumps and channels, so that, should any red-hot shot pierce the vessel and open up any one of the ducts, the water would pour forth instantly and extinguish the flames. As an additional protection, each tower was covered with a slanting bomb-proof roof, capable of being raised or lowered at pleasure, by means of machinery, from which, it was calculated, the balls would glide harmlessly into the sea. In fact, the devices for the protection of the besiegers seem to have been more numerous and more skilful than those for the attack of the besieged. We{80} must add that these ponderous floating batteries were masted and rigged, so as to sail like frigates.

It must not be thought that General Elliot had made no provision against the coming storm. He was a man fertile in expedients, and it would appear that his engineer-officers were as able as they were zealous; so that at all the exposed points new works of great strength were thrown up, and the fortifications were everywhere repaired and put in order. A fleet of gunboats was got ready in the Bay; a body of Corsicans, under the leadership of a nephew of the celebrated Paoli, had arrived to offer their services; and some vessels loaded with ammunition had run the blockade, and refilled the magazines of the fortress. The garrison reposed the most absolute confidence in their commander, and after so protracted a siege had come to think of themselves as invincible. Nor was their confidence lessened by the news which reached them of Admiral Rodney’s great victory over a French fleet in the West Indies. For some time the governor had looked on very calmly at the new works raised by the Spaniards across the isthmus and along the shore, but as they had been pushed forward to an inconvenient position, he thought the moment had come for administering

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LARBOARD AND STARBOARD SIDES OF A SPANISH BATTERING-SHIP.

(From on Old Engraving.)

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a stern rebuke. He therefore opened upon them a cannonade of red-hot shot, which in a few hours involved the greater portion in names.

This contemptuous demonstration so annoyed the Duke of Crillon, that, though his lines were incomplete, he ordered a general bombardment. It began with a volley of about sixty shells from the mortar boats; then all his artillery, numbering one hundred and seventy pieces of heavy calibre, joined in the feu d’enfer; while nine line-of-battle ships hurled their broadsides as they sailed along the sea-front. The attack was repeated on the following day, in the hope apparently of terrifying the garrison by revealing the formidable nature of the preparations made for their destruction. While the air echoed with the hurtling missiles, the astonished soldiers saw through the occasional gaps in the smoke-clouds a vast press of sail coming up from the westward; it proved to be the combined fleets of France and Spain. Such an accumulation of force, by land and sea, could not fail to surprise, though it did not alarm, Elliot and his veterans. The armada, beneath which, to use the expression of an old poet, “the waters groaned,” consisted of 47 sail of the line, and 10 battering-ships, regarded{82} as impregnable and invincible, carrying 212 guns, besides frigates, xebecs, bomb-ketches, cutters, gun and mortar boats, and smaller craft for disembarking men. On the land-side the batteries and works were of the most formidable character, mounting 200 pieces of heavy ordnance, and protected by an army of nearly 40,000 men, under the command of a general of experience and ability, and animated by the presence of two princes of the royal blood of France, with other eminent personages, and many of the Spanish grandees. No such naval and military combination had been attempted in Europe since the days of the Armada; and it was not unnatural that the Spaniards should anticipate from it a decisive triumph. They seem, however, to have put their faith more particularly in the battering-ships; and so great an enthusiasm was excited, that to hint at their possible failure was considered a mark of treason.

General Elliot was in nowise shaken from his usual calmness by this tremendous display of force. His garrison at this time (September 1782) numbered about 7500 men, of whom 400 were in hospital. These he distributed so as to guard most efficiently the points at which the enemy’s attack would probably{83} be delivered. The fortifications were carefully examined, and additional works erected wherever they could be of service. Though the Spaniards poured on the garrison an incessant storm of shot and shell, the governor, in order to husband his resources, permitted but little firing in return, except when it was necessary to silence or destroy some particular battery. The troops under his command were few in number, it is true, but they were veterans, inured to war, who had been long accustomed to the effects of artillery, and gradually prepared to meet the supreme ordeal that now awaited them. His subordinates were officers of approved courage, intelligence, and discretion; eminent “for all the accomplishments of their profession,” and enjoying the entire confidence of the men under their orders. And the spirits of all were animated by the ease with which former attacks had been defeated, as well as by the success attending some recent experiments of firing red-hot shot, which, on this occasion, would enable them, they hoped, “to bring their labours to a period, and relieve them from the tedious cruelty of another vexatious blockade.”

In critical circumstances, men, the sagest and coolest, are apt to be influenced by trivial incidents,{84} which they convert into good or evil omens; and such is especially the case when life and liberty are the stakes for which they are about to c............