But its power for defence was doubled by having a commander, who was fitted by nature and by training for the responsibilities that were to be laid upon him. George Augustus Eliott was the son of Sir Gilbert Eliott, of Roxburghshire, where he was born in 1718. Scotch families in those days, like those of our New England fathers, were apt to be large, and the future defender of Gibraltar was one of eleven children, of whom but two were daughters, and of the nine sons George was the youngest. After such education as he could receive at home, he was sent to the continent, and entered the University of Leyden, where, with his other studies, he acquired a knowledge of German, which was to be of practical use to him afterward, as he was to serve for a year in a German army. But France was the country that then took the lead in the art of war; and from Holland he was sent to a famous military school in Picardy, founded by Vauban, the constructor of the French fortresses, where he learned the principles which he was to apply to the defence of a greater fortress than any in France. He gave particular attention also to the practice of gunnery. As Napoleon learned the art of war in the artillery school of Brienne, so did Eliott in the school of La Fère. An incidental advantage of this French education was that he acquired the language so that he could speak it fluently, a knowledge which was of service to him afterward when he had so much to do with the French, even though it were as enemies. From France Eliott travelled into other countries on a tour of military observation, and then enlisted for a year in the Prussian army, which was considered the model in the way of discipline. Thus equipped for the life of a soldier, he returned to Scotland, where (as his father wished that he should be further inured to the practice of arms), he entered a Welsh regiment then in Edinburgh as a volunteer, and served with it for a year, from which he went into the engineer corps at Woolwich, and then into a troop of "horse grenadiers," that, under his vigorous training, became famous as a corps of heavy cavalry. When it was ordered to the Continent, he went with it, and served in Germany and the Netherlands, where he took part in several engagements and was wounded at the battle of Dettingen.