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Thirteenth Siege of Gibraltar
The Siege of Gibraltar of 1727 (thirteenth siege of Gibraltar, second by Spain) saw Spanish forces besiege the British garrison of Gibraltar as part of the Anglo-Spanish War.〔Simms p.198〕 Depending on the sources, Spanish troops numbered between 12,000 and 25,000. British defenders were 1,500 at the beginning of the siege, increasing up to about 5,000. After a five-month siege with several unsuccessful and costly assaults, Spanish troops gave up and withdrew. Following the failure the war drew to a close, opening the way for the 1728 Treaty of El Pardo〔Simms p.210-11〕 and the Treaty of Seville signed in 1729.
==Background==
On 1 January 1727 (N.S.) the Marquis of Pozobueno, Spanish ambassador to the Court of St. James's, sent a letter to the Duke of Newcastle explaining why the Spanish Crown believed that Article X of the Treaty of Utrecht (the Article which granted Britain perpetual control of Gibraltar under certain conditions) had been nullified by infractions by the British:
The letter was tantamount to a declaration of war. Spain, however, was not in a particularly advantageous position to capture Gibraltar in 1727. At the last attempt to retake Gibraltar in 1704, Spain had a strong Navy and the additional assistance of French warships. However, following their defeat at the battle of Cape Passaro and the capture of Vigo and Pasajes, the Spanish Navy was severely weakened. The Royal Navy had complete naval supremacy in the Straits, ruling out a Spanish landing in the south, and ensuring that the British garrison would be well supplied through a siege. Also, any attempt to scale the Rock from the east (as five hundred men under Colonel Figueroa, led by a local goatherd named Susarte, had done in 1704) was now impossible as the British had destroyed the path. The only option of attack open to the Spanish was along a narrow funnel (reduced in width by an inundation) that ran between the sea and the western side of the North Face of the Rock. This narrow strip of land would come under fire from three sides: Willis's battery to the east, the Grand Battery to the south, and the Devil's Tongue Battery on the Old Mole to the west.〔Jackson, W.G.F., pp.128–9〕
A number of Philip V's senior military advisers warned the King that the recapture of Gibraltar was, at the present, near impossible. The Marquis of Villadarias (who had led the previous attempt to capture Gibraltar in 1704) had warned that it would be impossible to take the Rock without naval support. The senior Flemish engineer, George Prosper Verboom, agreed with this opinion, and 'gave it as his considered opinion that the only plan with any possibility of success was of a seaborne attack from the south.'〔Hills, G., p.263〕 However, the King was impressed by the Count de las Torres de Alcorrín, Viceroy of Navarre, who vowed that he could: 'in six weeks deliver Spain from this noxious settlement of foreigners and heretics'.〔Coxe, W., Memoires of the Kings of Spain in the House of Bourbon...1700 to 1788. Vol. 2 (London: Longmans, Hurst, 1812), cited in Jackson, W.G.F., p.124〕 The disagreement between Verboom and de las Torres was to continue throughout the siege, indeed, so noticeably that later, when the siege was underway, a diarist within Gibraltar (the anonymous 'S.H.') wrote that a Spanish deserter had reported: 'that a dispute hath happen'd betwixt two Generals about storming us, upon which the one... is going to Madrid to complain to the King."〔S.H. (Anon.), 5 April 1727 (O.S.) p.11〕
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