Great Siege of Gibraltar
On 21 June 1779, Spain declared war on Britain and immediately blockaded Gibraltar, the two-mile-long limestone promontory commanding the entrance to the Mediterranean. What followed was the longest siege in British military history: three years, seven months, and twelve days of siege works, bombardment, starvation, scurvy, and repeated attempts to storm or starve the garrison into surrender. That Gibraltar held shaped the entire peace settlement of 1783 in ways that echo to the present day. The garrison of roughly 5,000 British and Hanoverian troops under Lieutenant-General George Augustus Eliott faced a combined Franco-Spanish force that at its peak numbered over 40,000 men. The British garrison was resupplied three times by naval relief convoys. The garrison endured chronic food shortage and disease, but Eliott maintained discipline and improvised heated shot — cannonballs heated red-hot before firing — to set fire to the wooden floating batteries Spain launched in September 1782 in the climactic assault. Ten enormous armored vessels, thought by their engineers to be unsinkable, were destroyed. The grand assault failed utterly. Spain had entered the war principally to recover Gibraltar. Throughout 1782–1783, Spain pressed France to support a peace settlement transferring Gibraltar to Spain. France, exhausted and financially broken, was willing. But Britain refused absolutely. The Rock became the symbol around which British negotiators organized their position: they would yield the American colonies, accept independence they could no longer prevent, but would not yield Gibraltar. Spain ultimately accepted Menorca and both Floridas instead. Britain's successful defense of Gibraltar thus explains why Britain retained the Rock in the Treaty of Paris — and does so still.
- Year: 1779 CE
- Category: Military
