SIEGES OF GIBEALTAR. 91 



Bock. The governor at that time, Vaseo Perez de Meira, was an avaricious and dishonest 

 man, who embezzled the dues and other resources of the place and- neglected his charge. 

 During the siege, a grain-ship fell on shore,* and its cargo would have enabled him to 

 hold out a long time. Instead of feeding his soldiers, who were reduced to eating leather, 

 he gave and sold it to his prisoners, with the expectation of either getting heavy ransoms 

 for them, or, if he should have to surrender, of making better terms for himself. It 

 availed him nothing, for he had to capitulate ; and then, not daring to face his sovereign, 

 Alfonso XI., he had to flee to Africa, where he ended his days. 



Alfonso besieged it twice. The first time the Granadians induced him to abandon it, 

 promising a heavy ransom ; the next time he commenced by reducing the neighbouring town 

 of Algeciras, which was defended with great energy. When the Spaniards brought forward 

 their wheeled towers of wood, covered with raw hides, the Moors discharged cannon loaded 

 with red-hoi balls. This is noteworthy, for cannon was not used by the English till 

 three years after, at the battle of Crec.y, while it is the first recorded instance of red-hot 

 shot being used at all.f It is further deserving of notice, that the very means employed 

 at Algeciras were afterwards so successfully used at the great siege. After taking 

 Algeciras, Alfonso blockaded Gibraltar, when the plague broke out in his camp; he died 

 from it, and the Rock remained untaken. This was the epoch of one of those great 

 pestilences which ravaged Europe. Fifty thousand souls perished in London in 1348 from its 

 effects ; Florence lost two-thirds of her population ; in Saragossa three hundred died daily. 

 The sixth attack on the part of the King of Fez was unsuccessful; as was that in 1436, 

 when it was besieged by a wealthy noble one of the De Gusmans. His forces were 

 allowed to land in numbers on a narrow beach below the fortress, where they were soon 

 exposed to the rising of the tide and the missiles of the besieged. De Gusman was 

 drowned, and his body, picked up by the Moors, hung out for twenty- six years from the 

 battlements, as a warning to ambitious nobles. 



At the eighth siege, in 1462, Gibraltar passed finally into Christian hands. The 

 garrison was weak and the Spaniards gained an easy victory. When Henry IV. learned 

 of its capture, he rejoiced greatly, and took immediate care to proclaim it a fief of the 

 throne, adding to the royal titles that of Lord of Gibraltar. The armorial distinctions 

 still borne by Gibraltar were first granted by him. The ninth siege, on the part of a 

 De Gusman, was successful, and it for a time passed into the hands of a noble who had 

 vast possessions and fisheries in the neighbourhood. Strange to say, such were the 

 troubles of Spain at the time, that Henry the before-named, who was known as "the 

 Weak," two years after confirmed the title to the Rock to the son of the very man who 

 had been constantly in arms against him. But after the civil wars, and at the advent 

 of Ferdinand and Isabella, there was a decided change. Isabella, acting doubtless under 



* On more than one occasion such wrecks have happened, as, for example, when a Danish vessel, laden with 

 lemons, fell into the hands of General Elliott's garrison, then suffering fearfully with scurvy, October llth, 1780. 

 A year before a storm cast a quantity of drift-wood under the walls. " As fuel had long been a scarce article, 

 this supply was therefore considered as a miraculous interference of Providence in our favour." (Vide Drinkwater's 

 " Gibraltar.") 



t The Romans, however, sometimes employed red-hot bolts, which were ejected from catapults. 



