The twelfth siege of Gibraltar was fought between September 1704 and May 1705 during the War of the Spanish Succession. It followed the capture in August 1704 of the fortified town of Gibraltar, at the southern tip of Spain, by an Anglo–Dutch naval force led by Sir George Rooke and Prince George of Hesse-Darmstadt. The members of the Grand Alliance, the Holy Roman Empire, England, the Netherlands, Pro-Habsburg Spain, Portugal and Savoy, had allied to prevent the unification of the French and Spanish thrones by supporting the claim of the Habsburg pretender Archduke Charles VI of Austria as Charles III of Spain. They were opposed by the rival claimant, the Bourbon Philip, Duke of Anjou, ruling as Philip V of Spain, and his patron and ally, Louis XIV of France. The war began in northern Europe and was largely contained there until 1703, when Portugal joined the confederate powers. From then, English naval attentions were focused on mounting a campaign in the Mediterranean to distract the French navy and disrupt French and Bourbon Spanish shipping or capture a port for use as a naval base. The capture of Gibraltar was the outcome of that initial stage of the Mediterranean campaign.
At the start of the siege, Gibraltar was garrisoned by around 2,000 Dutch, English, Austrian and pro-Habsburg Spanish troops facing a besieging force of up to 8,000 French, pro-Bourbon Spanish and Irish troops. The defenders were able to hold off the numerically superior besieging force through exploiting Gibraltar's geography and the small town's fortifications, though they were frequently short of manpower and ammunition. The besiegers were undermined by disputes between the French and Spanish officers and terrible conditions in their trenches and bastions, which led to outbreaks of epidemic disease and undermined morale. Sea power proved crucial, as the French navy sought unsuccessfully to prevent the Grand Alliance shipping in fresh troops, ammunition and food. Three naval battles were fought during the siege, two of which were clear defeats for the French and the last of which resulted in the siege being abandoned as hopeless after nine months of fruitless shelling. The outcome was disastrous for the French and Bourbon Spanish side, which was said to have lost 10,000 men against only 400 for the Grand Alliance.
Background
The loss of Gibraltar in August 1704 posed a strategic threat to the rule of the Bourbon claimant to the Spanish throne, Philip V of Spain. It was not only, as a later Spanish writer put it, "the first town in Spain to be dismembered from the domination of King Philip and forced to recognise Charles," but it also potentially had great value as an entry point for the Grand Alliance armies. Its possibilities were recognised immediately by the Alliance forces' leader Prince George of Hesse-Darmstadt, who told Charles in a letter of September 1704, that Gibraltar was "a door through which to enter Spain". An army landed at Gibraltar could advance rapidly along the coast to Cádiz, supported by naval forces, and capture the major port. From there, it was a relatively short distance to Seville, where the Habsburg claimant Charles could be proclaimed king, following which the Alliance could march to Madrid and finish the war.
Gibraltar itself had been largely emptied of its population, most of whom left the town after its capture and had moved to temporary accommodation elsewhere in the Campo de Gibraltar. Only a few dozen Spaniards and a small community of neutral Genoese remained. The town was garrisoned by a motley assortment of Alliance forces, consisting of around 2,000 British and Dutch marines, 60 gunners and several hundred Spanish, mostly Catalans, followers of Charles of Austria. They were supported by Sir George Rooke's Anglo-Dutch fleet consisting of 51 ships of the line operating in the Strait of Gibraltar. The Alliance had two significant disadvantages – limited supplies and a pressing need for their ships, which had already been at sea for six months, to be repaired and reprovisioned.
As soon as Gibraltar was captured, the Alliance set about preparing for a Bourbon counter-attack. The Alliance fleet sailed a short distance across the strait to Tetuan in Morocco, where it took on fresh water. On 22 August, a French fleet was sighted in the strait but began to withdraw after being spotted. Rooke caught up with the French off Málaga on 24 August and attacked, in a bid to prevent the French from slipping past him and attacking Gibraltar. The two fleets were evenly matched but the French ships were faster and had more ammunition than the confederates. They did not manage to make this advantage count, however, and the Battle of Vélez-Málaga was effectively fought to a draw. No ships were sunk but both fleets took very heavy casualties with around 3,000 killed or wounded on each side, including the French commander. The Anglo-Dutch fleet was hampered by a shortage of shot and gunpowder, much of which had already been used in bombarding Gibraltar during the operation to capture it, and Sir George Byng's squadron was forced to pull back when it ran out of ammunition. The rest of the fleet was dangerously low on ammunition but fortunately for the confederates, the French withdrew the following day, leaving the Anglo-Dutch fleet to limp back to Gibraltar.
Having dealt with the French naval threat, Rooke left as many men, guns and supplies at Gibraltar as he could before sailing for home. He split off part of his fleet, leaving Admiral Sir John Leake with 18 ships to patrol the strait and the Portuguese coast. The Spanish had already mobilised their forces and at the start of September the Marquis of Villadarias, the captain-general of Andalusia, arrived in the vicinity of Gibraltar with an army of 4,000 men. Villadarias planned to increase his force to 12,000, consisting of 9,000 Spaniards and 3,000 Frenchmen. The Two Crowns force was also supplemented by many of the civilian refugees from Gibraltar.
Siege
Hesse set about improving Gibraltar's defences to make it as difficult as possible for the enemy to mount a frontal attack. The town is set on the western side of a rocky peninsula connected to the Spanish mainland by a narrow sandy isthmus. The north side of the Rock of Gibraltar presents a vertical cliff; the only access to the town was via a narrow strip, only about 400 feet (120 m) wide, which was blocked by the heavily fortified curtain wall known as the Muralla de San Bernardo (later the Grand Battery). The prince sought to reduce this strip even further by flooding it, forcing any attackers to use a narrow path between the Rock and the inundated area or to advance along the narrow shoreline. He set up cannon in five batteries along the north side of Gibraltar: on the Old Mole, to provide flanking fire from the west; on the Baluarte de San Pablo (later North Bastion) and on the Landport curtain walls, to provide direct fire onto the isthmus; on the Baluarte de San Pedro (later Hesse's Demi Bastion), to provide flanking fire from the east; and in a Round Tower, on a clifftop spur overlooking the isthmus (later the site of Forbes' Batteries), from where fire could be directed onto enemy troops on the far side of the inundated area. A "bomb ship" was also installed off the Old Mole, carrying a heavy mortar to provide additional flanking fire from the west.
Although Hesse was confident that he would be able to hold Gibraltar against the numerically superior Franco-Spanish force, he was undermined by political disputes between Habsburg and English commanders. There was widespread anger among the English marines in Gibraltar over the fact that they had been forbidden from returning home with Rooke's fleet. There was a particularly poisonous relationship between the English Colonel Edward Fox and Habsburg Colonel Henry Nugent, whom Hesse had appointed as governor of Gibraltar. The two men had fought on opposite sides during the Williamite War in Ireland; the Protestant Fox had gone on to serve Queen Anne, while the Catholic Nugent had joined the service of Charles of Austria. Hesse wrote that Fox was "furious at being under my orders and at not being allowed to leave for England. His respect for the Governor I have appointed is even less. There is confusion everywhere. Orders are not carried out, and the officers are the first to make trouble . . ."
The besieging French and Spanish forces were reinforced on 4 October when 19 French warships "great and small of the line of battle" escorted troop ships carrying 3,000 men with heavy guns and supplies of ammunition to a landing point near the ruined Roman town of Carteia at the head of the Bay of Gibraltar. This brought the number of soldiers under Villadarias's command to some 7,000, which Hesse estimated consisted of eight Spanish and six French battalions of foot plus nine cavalry squadrons. Most of the French ships left on 24 October, to the surprise of the defenders, though six remained behind to blockade Gibraltar.
After the reinforcements had settled in, the Spanish began digging siege lines and trenches towards the confederate positions. The first attack came on 26 October when Spanish guns opened fire on the confederate defences around the Round Tower, causing considerable damage. A French force carried out a simultaneous raid of Gibraltar's harbour, burning the bomb ship. Villadarias then carried out a heavy bombardment of the San Pablo bastion using 27 guns and 16 mortars, which managed to breach it. Among the casualties were the two feuding colonels, Fox and Nugent, who were killed on successive days. At the same time, an epidemic disease broke out among the Gibraltar garrison, reducing their effective numbers to about 1,300 men.
The position of the garrison looked increasingly precarious. Hesse sent a message to Admiral Leake at Lisbon requesting his urgent assistance after the appearance of French ships in the bay. After receiving the message on 21 October, Leake set sail at once, bringing more supplies for the defenders. In the meantime, Hesse had to deal with an internal threat – a plot by several Spanish officers, aided by a number of Catholic clergymen and English officers, to betray the garrison. He wrote to Charles in mid-October to inform the Archduke of what had happened:
I've discovered a tremendous plot . . . I've had a man hanged who communicated with the enemy. Clergymen persuaded him, though he had been convinced and had confessed under torture, to take everything back . . . assuring him I would not have him hanged. They went so far as to give the delinquent poison so that he would reveal nothing more . . . It's all very confused and difficult to sort out. [Colonels] Gonzalez and Husson and some clergymen are the principals . . . though against the two named I have taken no action . . . for lack of definite proof. Friar Santa Maria will give you personally a long account of the business . . . I will not confront Gonzalez and Husson unless it becomes a matter of absolute necessity . . .
Charles wrote back advising Hesse to carry out a court-martial with independent judges to avoid any suspicion of prejudice. As the accused were Habsburg subjects, a court-martial consisting of English and Dutch officers – who did not owe allegiance to Charles – was convened to adjudicate the case. The English officers who were implicated in the plot appear to have been sent back to England; their fate is not recorded. Gonzalez was convicted and on 23 February 1705, "being guilty of high treason [he] was shot in the face of the whole garrison."
Assault on the east side
The pro-Bourbon Spaniards, meanwhile, were planning to carry out a surprise attack. Simón Susarte, a Spanish goatherd who had fled Gibraltar after its capture by Anglo-Dutch forces several few months earlier, told Villadarias that there was a secret route by which the east side of the Rock of Gibraltar could be scaled. It required a climb of around 400 metres (1,300 ft), of which the upper section was near-vertical, but was passable with the use of rope and ladders via the Great Gibraltar Sand Dune. As the east side was considered virtually impregnable, only the west side was fortified; if the Rock could be climbed from the east, an attacker could evade the fortifications and descend directly into the town. The route was reconnoitred and found to be passable by a lightly armed force.
Villadarias decided to send a force of 2,000 men – nearly a third of his entire army – divided into two groups: an initial force of 500 to seize the heights at night, followed by a further 1,500 the following daybreak. The initial force set off at dusk on 11 November, led by Colonel Figueroa and guided by Susarte. They made it to the top of the Rock, reaching its southernmost peak near where O'Hara's Battery stands today, and descended part-way down the west side where they sheltered overnight in St. Michael's Cave. At daybreak they climbed the Moorish Wall, which extends up the west side of the Rock, and killed the English sentries in the lookout point at Middle Hill. A drummer boy bringing food to the lookout point saw the attackers and raised the alarm.
Hesse had anticipated an attack from the rear and to guard against such a possibility kept in reserve a roughly 300-strong mobile force led by his brother Heinrich. The mobile force consisted of an English company and two pro-Habsburg Spanish companies; the first comprised regulars under Captain Francisco de Sandoval and the second consisted of Catalan miquelets under Jaume Burguy. Heinrich's force immediately responded to the incursion and engaged the attackers at Middle Hill. Although Villadarias' troops had the advantage of height, they were effectively trapped against the precipice of the Rock and only carried three rounds of ammunition each as a result of travelling light, being unprepared for a pitched battle.