had gone out with a force to
attack Cadiz--finding that there was not much chance of success in
that direction--resolved, with Prince George of Hesse and
Darmstadt--who commanded the troops on board the fleet--to make an
attack on Gibraltar.

"On the 21st of July, 1704, the English and Dutch landed on the
neutral ground and, at daybreak on the 23rd, the fleet opened fire.
The Spaniards were driven from their guns on the Molehead Battery.
The boats landed, and seized the battery, and held it in spite of
the Spaniards springing a mine, which killed two lieutenants and
about forty men. The Marquis de Salines, the governor, was then
summoned, and capitulated. So you see, we made only a day's work of
taking a place which the Spaniards thought that they had made
impregnable. The professor made a strong point of it that the
garrison consisted only of a hundred and fifty men; which certainly
accounts for our success, for it is no use having guns and walls,
if you haven't got soldiers to man them.

"The Prince of Hesse was left as governor; and it was not long
before his mettle was tried for, in October, the Spanish army, with
six battalions of Frenchmen, opened trenches against the town.
Admiral Sir John Leake threw in reinforcements, and six months'
provisions. At the end of the month, a forlorn hope of five hundred
Spanish volunteers managed to climb up the Rock, by ropes and
ladders, and surprised a battery; but were so furiously attacked
that they were all killed, or taken prisoners. A heavy cannonade
was kept up for another week, when a large number of transports
with reinforcements and supplies arrived and, the garrison being
now considered strong enough to resist any attack, the fleet sailed
away.

"The siege went on till the middle of March, when Sir John Leake
again arrived, drove away the French fleet, and captured or burnt
five of them; and the siege was then discontinued, having cost the
enemy ten thousand men. So, you see, there was some pretty hard
fighting over it.

"The place was threatened in 1720 and, in the beginning of 1727,
twenty thousand Spaniards again sat down before it. The
fortifications had been made a good deal stronger, after the first
siege; and the garrison was commanded by Lieutenant Governor
Clayton. The siege lasted till May, when news arrived that the
preliminaries of a general peace had been signed. There was a lot
of firing; but the Spaniards must have shot mighty badly, for we
had