Delphi collected works o.., p.862
Delphi Collected Works of Grant Allen, page 862
The lions of the town itself, as distinguished from the wonders of its fortifications, are few in number. The Cathedral, the Garrison Library, Government House, the Alameda Gardens, the drive to Europa Point exhaust the list; and there is but one of these which is likely to invite — unless for some special purpose or other — a repetition of the visit. In the Alameda, however, a visitor may spend many a pleasant hour, and — if the peace and beauty of a hillside garden, with the charms of subtropical vegetation in abundance near at hand, and noble views of coast and sea in the distance allure him — he assuredly will. Gibraltar is immensely proud of its promenade, and it has good reason to be so. From the point of view of Nature and of Art the Alameda is an equal success. General Don, who planned and laid it out some three-quarters of a century ago, unquestionably earned a title to the same sort of tribute as was bestowed upon a famous military predecessor, Marshal Wade. Anyone who had “seen” the Alameda “before it was made,” might well have “lifted up his hands and blessed” the gallant officer who had converted “the Red Sands,” as the arid desert once occupying this spot was called, into the paradise of geranium-trees which has taken its place. Its monuments to Elliot and Wellington are not ideal: the mysterious curse pronounced upon English statuary appears to follow it even beyond seas; but the execution of the effigies of these national heroes may, perhaps, be forgotten in the interest attaching to their subjects. The residents at any rate, whether civil or military, are inured to these efforts of the sculptor’s art, and have long since ceased to repine. And the afternoon promenade in these gardens — with the English officers and their wives and daughters, English nursemaids and their charges, tourists of both sexes and all ages, and the whole surrounded by a polyglot and polychromatic crowd of Oriental listeners to the military band — is a sight well worth seeing and not readily to be forgotten.
But we must pursue our tour round the peninsula of the Rock; and leaving the new Mole on our right, and farther on the little land-locked basin of Rosia Bay, we pass the height of Buena Vista, crowned with its barracks, and so on to the apex of the promontory, Europa Point. Here are more barracks and, here on Europa Flats, another open and level space for recreation and military exercises beneath the cliff wall. Doubling the point, and returning for a short distance along the eastern side of the promontory, we come to the Governor’s Cottage, a cool summer retreat nestling close to the Rock, and virtually marking the limits of our exploration. For a little way beyond this the cliff rises inaccessible, the road ends, and we must retrace our steps. So far as walking or driving along the flat is concerned, the visitor who has reached the point may allege, with a certain kind of superficial accuracy, that he has “done Gibraltar.” No wonder that the seasoned globe-trotter from across the Atlantic thinks nothing of taking Calpe in his stride.
To those, however, who visit Gibraltar in a historic spirit, it is not to be “done” by any means so speedily as this. Indeed, it would be more correct to say that the work of a visitor of this order is hardly yet begun. For he will have come to Gibraltar not mainly to stroll on a sunny promenade, or to enjoy a shady drive round the seaward slopes of a Spanish headland, or even to feast his eyes on the glow of Southern color and the picturesque varieties of Southern life; but to inspect a great world-fortress, reared almost impregnable by the hand of Nature, and raised into absolute impregnability by the art of man; a spot made memorable from the very dawn of the modern period by the rivalries of nations, and famous for all time by one of the most heroic exploits recorded in the annals of the human race. To such an one, we say, the name of Gibraltar stands before and beyond everything for the Rock of the Great Siege; and he can no more think of it in the light of a Mediterranean watering-place, with, a romantic, if somewhat limited, sea-front, than he can think of the farmhouse of La Haye as an “interesting Flemish homestead,” or the Chateau of Hougoumont as a Belgian gentleman’s “eligible country house.”
For him the tour of the renowned fortifications will be the great event of his visit. Having furnished himself with the necessary authorization from the proper military authorities (for he will be reminded at every turn of the strict martial discipline under which he lives), he will proceed to ascend the Rock, making his first halt at a building which in all probability he will often before this have gazed upon and wondered at from below. This is the Moorish Castle, the first object to catch the eye of the newcomer as he steps ashore at the Mole, and looks up at the houses that clamber up the western slope of the Rock. Their ascending tiers are dominated by this battlemented pile, and it is from the level on which it stands that one enters the famous galleries of Gibraltar. The castle is one of the oldest Moorish buildings in Spain, the Arabic legend over the south gate recording it to have been built in 725 by Abu-Abul-Hajez. Its principal tower, the Torre del Homenaje, is riddled with shot marks, the scars left behind it by the ever-memorable siege. The galleries, which are tunneled in tiers along the north front of the Rock, are from two to three miles in extent. At one extremity they widen out into the spacious crypt known as the Hall of St. George, in which Nelson was feasted. No arches support these galleries; they are simply hewn from the solid rock, and pierced every dozen yards or so by port-holes, through each of which the black muzzle of a gun looks forth upon the Spanish mainland. They front the north, these grim watchdogs, and seeing that the plain lies hundreds of feet beneath them, and with that altitude of sheer rock face between them and it, they may perhaps be admitted to represent what a witty Frenchman has called le luxe et la coquetterie d’ imprenable, or as we might put it, a “refinement on the impregnable.” Artillery in position implies the possibility of regular siege operations, followed perhaps by an assault from the quarter which the guns command; but though the Spanish threw up elaborate works on the neutral ground in the second year of the great siege, neither then nor at any other time has an assault on the Rock from its northern side been contemplated. Yet it has once been “surprised” from its eastern side, which looks almost equally inaccessible; and farther on in his tour of exploration, the visitor will come upon traces of that unprecedented and unimitated exploit. After having duly inspected the galleries, he will ascend to the Signal Tower, known in Spanish days as El Hacho, or the Torch, the spot at which beacon fires were wont on occasion to be kindled. It is not quite the highest point of the Rock, but the view from it is one of the most imposing in the world. To the north lie the mountains of Ronda, and to the far east the Sierra of the Snows that looks down on Granada, gleams pale and spectral on the horizon. Far beneath you lie town and bay, the batteries with their tiny ordnance, and the harbor with its plaything ships; while farther onward, in the same line of vision, the African “Pillar of Hercules,” Ceuta, looks down upon the sunlit waters of the Strait.
A little farther on is the true highest point of the Rock, 1,430 feet; and yet a little farther, after a descent of a few feet, we come upon the tower known as O’Hara’s Folly, from which also the view is magnificent, and which marks the southernmost point of the ridge. It was built by an officer of that name as a watch tower, from which to observe the movements of the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, which, even across the cape as the crow flies, is distant some fifty or sixty miles. The extent, however, of the outlook which it actually commanded has probably never been tested, certainly not with modern optical appliances, as it was struck by lightning soon after its completion. Retracing his steps to the northern end of the height, the visitor historically interested in Gibraltar will do well to survey the scene from here once more before descending to inspect the fortifications of the coast line. Far beneath him, looking landward, lies the flat sandy part of the isthmus, cut just where its neck begins to widen by the British lines. Beyond these, again, extends the zone some half mile in breadth of the neutral ground; while yet farther inland, the eye lights upon a broken and irregular line of earthworks, marking the limit, politically speaking, of Spanish soil. These are the most notable, perhaps the only surviving, relic of the great siege. In the third year of that desperate leaguer — it was in 1781 — the Spaniards having tried in vain, since June, 1779, to starve out the garrison, resorted to the idea of bombarding the town into surrender, and threw up across the neutral ground the great earthworks, of which only these ruins remain. They had reason, indeed, to resort to extraordinary efforts. Twice within these twenty-four months had they reduced the town to the most dreadful straits of hunger, and twice had it been relieved by English fleets. In January, 1780, when Rodney appeared in the Straits with his priceless freight of food, the inhabitants were feeding on thistles and wild onions; the hind quarter of an Algerian sheep was selling for seven pounds ten, and an English milch cow for fifty guineas. In the spring of 1781, when Admiral Darby relieved them for the second time, the price of “bad ship’s biscuits full of vermin” — says Captain John Drinkwater of the 72nd, an actor in the scenes which he has recorded — was a shilling a pound; “old dried peas, a shilling and fourpence; salt, half dirt, the sweepings of ships’ bottoms, and storehouses, eightpence; and English farthing candles, sixpence apiece.” These terrible privations having failed to break the indomitable spirit of the besieged, bombardment had, before the construction of these lines, been resorted to. Enormous batteries, mounting 170 guns and 80 mortars, had been planted along the shore, and had played upon the town, without interruption, for six weeks. Houses were shattered and set on fire, homeless and half-starved families were driven for shelter to the southern end of the promontory, where again they were harried by Spanish ships sailing round Europa Point and firing indiscriminately on shore. The troops, shelled out of their quarters, were living in tents on the hillside, save when these also were swept away by the furious rainstorms of that region. And it was to put, as was hoped, the finishing stroke to this process of torture, that the great fortifications which have been spoken of were in course of construction all through the spring and summer of 1781 on the neutral ground. General Elliot — that tough old Spartan warrior, whose food was vegetables and water, and four hours his maximum of continuous sleep, and the contagion of whose noble example could alone perhaps have given heart enough even to this sturdy garrison — watched the progress of the works with anxiety, and had made up his mind before the winter came that they must be assaulted. Accordingly, at three A. M. on the morning of November 27, 1781, he sallied forth with a picked band of two thousand men — a pair of regiments who had fought by his side at Minden two-and-twenty years before — and having traversed the three-quarters of a mile of intervening country in swift silence, fell upon the Spanish works. The alarm had been given, but only just before the assailants reached the object of their attack; and the affair was practically a surprise. The gunners, demoralized and panic-stricken, were bayoneted at their posts, the guns were spiked, and the batteries themselves set on fire with blazing faggots prepared for the purpose. In an hour the flames had gained such strength as to be inextinguishable, and General Elliot drew off his forces and retreated to the town, the last sound to greet their ears as they re-entered the gates being the roar of the explosion of the enemy’s magazines. For four days the camp continued to burn, and when the fire had exhausted itself for want of materials, the work of laborious months lay in ruins, and the results of a vast military outlay were scattered to the winds. It was the last serious attempt made against the garrison by the Spaniards from the landward side. The fiercest and most furious struggle of the long siege was to take place on the shore and waters to the west.
And so after all it is to the “line-wall” — to that formidable bulwark of masonry and gun-metal which fringes the town of Gibraltar from the Old Mole to Rosia Bay — that one returns as to the chief attraction from the historical point of view, of the mighty fortress. For two full miles it runs, zigzagging along the indented coast, and broken here and there by water-gate or bastion, famous in military story. Here, as we move southward from the Old Mole, is the King’s Bastion, the most renowned of all. Next comes Ragged Staff Stairs, so named from the heraldic insignia of Charles V.; and farther on is Jumper’s Battery, situated at what is held to be the weakest part of the Rock, and which has certainly proved itself to be so on one ever memorable occasion. For it was at the point where Jumper’s Battery now stands that the first English landing-party set foot on shore; it was at this point, it may be said, that Gibraltar was carried. The fortunes of nomenclature are very capricious, and the name of Jumper — unless, indeed, it were specially selected for its appropriateness — has hardly a better right to perpetuation in this fashion than the name of Hicks. For these were the names of the two gallant officers who were foremost in their pinnaces in the race for the South Mole, which at that time occupied the spot where the landing was effected; and we are not aware that history records which was the actual winner. It was on the 23rd of July, 1704, as all the world knows, that these two gallant seamen and their boats’ crews made their historic leap on shore; and after all, the accident which had preserved the name of one of them is not more of what is familiarly called a “fluke” than the project of the capture itself, and the retention of the great fortress when captured. It is almost comic to think that when Sir George Rooke sailed from England, on the voyage from which he returned, figuratively speaking, with the key of the Mediterranean in his pocket, he had no more notion of attacking Gibraltar than of discovering the North-West Passage. He simply went to land England’s candidate for the Spanish throne, “King Charles III.,” at Lisbon; which service performed, he received orders from the English Government to sail to the relief of Nice and Villa Franca, which were supposed to be in danger from the French, while at the same time he was pressed by Charles to “look round” at Barcelona, where the people, their aspirant-sovereign thought, were ready to rise in his favor. Rooke executed both commissions. That is to say, he ascertained that there was nothing for him to do in either place — that Barcelona would not rise, and that Nice was in no danger of falling; and the admiral accordingly dropped down the Mediterranean towards the Straits — where he was joined by Sir Cloudesley Shovel with another squadron — with the view of intercepting the Brest Fleet of France, which he had heard was about to attempt a junction with that of Toulon. The Brest Fleet, however, he found had already given him the slip, and thus it came about that on the 17th of July these two energetic naval officers found themselves about seven leagues to the east of Tetuan with nothing to do. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the attack on Gibraltar was decreed as the distraction of an intolerable ennui. The stronghold was known to be weakly garrisoned, though, for that time, strongly armed; it turned out afterwards that it had only a hundred and fifty gunners to a hundred guns, and it was thought possible to carry the place by a coup-de-main. On the 21st the whole fleet came to anchor in Gibraltar Bay. Two thousand men under the Prince of Hesse were landed on what is now the neutral ground, and cut off all communication with the mainland of Spain. On the 23rd Rear-Admirals Vanderdussen and Byng (the father of a less fortunate seaman) opened fire upon the batteries, and after five or six hours’ bombardment silenced them, and Captain Whittaker was thereupon ordered to take all the boats, filled with seamen and marines, and possess himself of the South Mole Head. Captains Jumper and Hicks were, as has been said, in the foremost pinnaces, and were the first to land. A mine exploded under their feet, killing two officers and a hundred men, but Jumper and Hicks pressed on with their stout followers, and assaulted and carried a redoubt which lay between the Mole and the town. Whereupon the Spanish Governor capitulated, the gates on the side of the isthmus were thrown open to the Prince of Hesse and his troops, and Gibraltar was theirs. Or rather it was not theirs, except by the title of the “man in possession.” It was the property of his Highness the Archduke Charles, styled his Majesty King Charles III. of Spain, and had he succeeded in making good that title in arms, England should, of course, have had to hand over to him the strongest place in his dominions, at the end of the war. But she profited by the failure of her protégé. The war of the Spanish Succession ended in the recognition of Philip V.; and almost against the will of the nation — for George I. was ready enough to give it up, and the popular English view of the matter was that it was “a barren rock, an insignificant fort, and a useless charge” — Gibraltar remained on her hands.
Undoubtedly, the King’s Bastion is the center of historic military interest in Gibraltar, but the line-wall should be followed along its impregnable front to complete one’s conception of the sea defenses of the great fortress. A little farther on is Government House, the quondam convent, which now forms the official residence of the Governor; and farther still the landing-place, known as Ragged Staff Stairs. Then Jumper’s Bastion, already mentioned; and then the line of fortification, running outwards with the coast line towards the New Mole and landing-place, returns upon itself, and rounding Rosia Bay trends again southward towards Buena Vista Point. A ring of steel indeed — a coat of mail on the giant’s frame, impenetrable to the projectiles of the most terrible of the modern Titans of the seas. The casemates for the artillery are absolutely bomb-proof, the walls of such thickness as to resist the impact of shots weighing hundreds of pounds, while the mighty arches overhead are constructed to defy the explosion of the heaviest shells. As to its offensive armament, the line-wall bristles with guns of the largest caliber, some mounted on the parapet above, others on the casemates nearer the sea-level, whence their shot could be discharged with the deadliest effect at an attacking ship.
He who visits Gibraltar is pretty sure, at least if time permits, to visit Algeciras and San Roque, while from farther afield still he will be tempted by Estepona. The first of these places he will be in a hurry, indeed, if he misses; not that the place itself is very remarkable, as that it stands so prominently in evidence on the other side of the bay as almost to challenge a visit. Add to this the natural curiosity of a visitor to pass over into Spanish territory and to survey Gibraltar from the landward side, and it will not be surprising that the four-mile trip across the bay is pretty generally made. On the whole it repays; for though Algeciras is modern and uninteresting enough, its environs are picturesque, and the artist will be able to sketch the great rock-fortress from an entirely new point, and in not the least striking of its aspects.
