Heathfield, GEORGE AUGUSTUS ELIOTT, LORD

Heathfield, GEORGE AUGUSTUS ELIOTT, LORD, the heroic defender of Gibraltar, was the tenth son of Sir Gilbert Eliott, third Bart. of Stobs, and was born at Wells House in Roxburghshire, on Christmas-day 1717. Having been educated at the university of Leyden, and at the French military college of La Fère and at Woolwich, he had his first experience of actual warfare in the war of the Austrian succession, in which he was wounded at Dettingen and fought at Fontenoy. Having been gazetted colonel of a regiment of light horse in 1759, he served at its head with the English contingent that assisted Frederick the Great against Austria in the years 1759 to 1761. In the following year he went out to Cuba as second in command under the Earl of Albemarle, and returned home with the rank of lieutenant-general. When, after the outbreak of the war with the American colonies, Great Britain became involved in hostilities with Spain as well, Eliott was sent out to put Gibraltar in a state of defence. His obstinate and heroic defence of this stronghold, from June 1779 to February 1783, against all the power of Spain, ranks as one of the most memorable achievements of British arms (see GIBRALTAR). On his return home he was in 1787 raised to the peerage as Lord Heathfield, Baron of Gibraltar—Heathfield being a Sussex estate which he had purchased in 1763. He died at Aix-la-Chapelle, 6th July 1790. Drinkwater's History of the Siege of Gibraltar is one of the best accounts of military heroism ever written.