“SIR,--I received your Excellency’s letter of to-day’s date, and regarding the trench which has been opened as you say to attack the city of Gibraltar, I hereby answer, that what has been done has been on our own ground, to fortify those places where our batteries might be of good service, and as there belongs nothing to that fortress beyond its fortifications, as appears by the very treaties your Excellency alludes to; and your Excellency having taken possession of the towers within our jurisdiction, your Excellency may be fully assured that unless they are immediately abandoned I will act in the manner your Excellency insinuates to _me_, acquainting you at the same time that for besieging the fortress works less distant will be constructed, as you will learn in due time. “COUNT DAS TORRES. “CAMPO DE GIBRALTAR, _February 22nd 1727_.” This truculent answer clearly meant war, and so Clayton understood it; but anxious to do nothing to precipitate hostilities, he contented himself for the moment with firing one shot over the battery as an intimation that work must cease. For an hour he held his hand: then, as the Spaniards wholly disregarded the warning, his guns opened upon them. Thus commenced the second of the series of sieges in which British troops have successfully defended Gibraltar against heavy, sometimes well-nigh overwhelming odds. The first, begun a few months after our capture of the Rock, lasted from October, 1704, to April, 1705; the second continued from the 22nd of February till the 23rd of June, 1727; the third, or Great Siege, lasted nearly four years, from the 16th of July, 1779, to the 5th of February, 1783.