THE PROTECTORATE
AUTHORITIES.--Carlyle's _Letters and Speeches of Cromwell_ will
of course be consulted for this period. Clarendon's intellectual
greatness and his insight enable him to interpret the spirit of
events even when he is wrong in his facts. Cromwell's instructions
to Penn and Venables, the letters of all the officers concerned, and
the journals of the proceedings in San Domingo, have been collected
in the second volume of the Life of Penn. Blake's operations in the
Mediterranean and the ocean are to be made out from the papers in
Thurloe, his own letters, and the narratives of the capture of the
Plate Ships and the battle at Santa Cruz, published by order of
Cromwell's Parliament.
The Government of Oliver Cromwell was that of a usurper and, in the
strict sense of the word, a tyrant. He did not indeed use his power
with wilful cruelty, but by the very nature of the case he ruled by the
sword, and not by law. Still, usurper and tyrant as he was, his aim was
not the indulgence of any mere passion of his own. He was not only the
greatest man of his time, and one of the greatest of all time, but he
was thoroughly English in his wishes, his aims, and even prejudices.
The desire to give the nation, in return for the subversion of its
regular Government, a compensation which would take the form of an
extension of its national grandeur and the promotion of its interests,
had possibly something to do in framing his foreign policy. Yet there
was a wide difference between the course he followed and that which
commended itself, first to the Jacobins, and then to Napoleon. He did
not plunge England into a succession of wars in pursuit of glory and an
unattainable universal dominion, in order to divert it from discontent
with his own rule. He aimed at the things which the great majority of
Englishmen, whether Royalist or Puritan, knew to be consistent with the
true interests of England, and could approve. These were three. In the
first place, he undertook to teach foreign nations once more that they
must respect England--a lesson they had too much forgotten during the
weak rule of the Stuarts and the confusion of the Civil War. The old
rhyme has it, that
"Though his government did a tyrant's resemble,
He made England great and her enemies tremble."
In so far, he was doing what every Royalist would have wished to see
the king do. Then Oliver was resolved to obtain security for English
commerce on the sea, and on that point there were no differences of
opinion in the nation. Finally, he designed to obtain for England
that extension of her trade and that expansion of her colonial empire
after which the ambition of the nation was already straining. The
criticism that his schemes were too great for his resources is perhaps
well founded. Yet, had he lived to establish his Government firmly,
it is probable that he would not have asked the nation for more than
it could easily give. The sums spent by his Government on maritime
expeditions were not greater than those pilfered and wasted during the
reign of Charles II. But, however that may be, the fact remains that
Oliver first pointed out to England the course she was to follow in the
eighteenth century; and if he was wrong in practice, it was because the
principles of his foreign policy were in advance of their time.
There were two ways by which the Protector could carry out his
policy--by alliance with Spain or by alliance with France. The long war
between these two nations was still in progress--with growing success
and resources on the side of France, and daily increasing weakness on
the side of Spain. There were reasons which might seem to make it the
Protector's interest to ally himself with Spain. The growing strength
of France at her very doors was a menace to England. The weakness of
Spain would render her a dependent ally--that is to say, it would have
that effect if Spain were capable of being influenced by ordinary
considerations of policy. Then the close relationship between the
families of Stuart and Bourbon must always give the French monarchy a
leaning to the side of the opponents of the Protector's Government.
But Spain was not to be influenced in the way desired by England.
Before Cromwell could undertake to help the Spaniards against the
French, there were two concessions he was bound to demand from them.
The first was the exemption of Englishmen from the jurisdiction of
the Inquisition. The second was the admission of English trade to the
Spanish possessions in the New World. Pride and the blind obstinacy
with which the Spaniards, to their ruin, have always clung to their
most extreme pretensions, made it impossible for the King and Council
of Castile to yield what Oliver demanded. It is a well-known story that
when the Protector made these two concessions the price of his alliance
against France, the Spanish ambassador, Don Alonso de Cárdenas,
answered, "My master has but two eyes, and you ask him for both of
them." Spain, in fact, would rather fight on in hopeless, contumacious
obstinacy than yield up her right to protect the purity of her faith
and her pretension to retain the monopoly of the New World. Since,
then, Cromwell could not obtain his ends by treaty, he prepared to
extort them from Spain by force. He turned to the French alliance, and
made ready for war.
The attack on Spain was to be conducted on three lines. One does not
concern us, except in so far as it is necessary to remember that unless
England had possessed a superiority of strength at sea, she could
not have followed it. At a later period English troops were sent to
co-operate in the conquest of the Spanish Netherlands. But before this,
Spain had been attacked on the sea. Two expeditions were fitted out in
England. The first, under the command of Robert Blake, was to sail for
the Mediterranean, and, after disposing of certain preliminary duties,
was to attack Spain at home. The second, under the combined commands of
William Penn as general-at-sea, and of Robert Venables as general of
the land forces, was to fall upon the Spaniards in the New World. This
second expedition marks a notable epoch in our colonial history, and,
at the cost of somewhat forestalling the order of time, may be told as
an episode by itself.
According to all modern notions, the policy of Cromwell in fitting out
this expedition was eminently immoral. A great fleet carrying a force
of soldiers was sent out with orders to attack the Spaniards before a
declaration of war. But in the middle of the seventeenth century, and
in the circumstances, there was nothing even irregular in what the
Protector did. It is necessary to understand in their main lines the
relations of European States to Spain in the New World, and to do that
we must look back for a moment. At the close of the fifteenth century,
the almost simultaneous voyages of Columbus across the Atlantic and
of Vasco da Gama round the Cape of Good Hope had appeared to give the
Crowns of Spain and Portugal the rights of previous discovery over the
trade routes to the East. It must not be forgotten that Columbus was
believed to have reached the eastern extremity of Asia. He himself
died in the belief that this was what he had done. It was not until
Vasco Nuñez de Balboa had crossed the Isthmus of Darien, and Magellan
had sailed through the straits named after him, and had found a vast
expanse of ocean between him and Asia, that it came to be understood
that there was a continent of America. In 1494 it was thought that
Asia had been reached, and it appeared not improbable that Spain and
Portugal would come to blows over the limits of what we should now
call their respective spheres of influence. The two States appealed
to the Pope, Alexander VI., and he drew a line between them running
from pole to pole 100 miles to the west of the Cape de Verd Islands.
The decision of the arbitrator did not appear satisfactory to the
Portuguese, who would have been confined too closely to the coast
of Africa. They protested, and their protest was listened to by the
Catholic sovereigns, Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. In
the year after the Pope had given his decision, a conference was held
at the town of Tordesillas, and it was then settled that the line of
demarcation should run 300 leagues to the west of the Azores and in
the corresponding meridian on the other side of the globe. In the
course of time, it was found that this decision had thrown by very
much the greater part of the two American continents into the share of
Spain. Other nations refused, indeed, to allow that the bull "Inter
cætera" gave Spain any exclusive rights. But the Spanish Government
was of another opinion. It abstained, indeed, from interfering with
the English settlements in New England and the French in Canada, which
were poor and distant. Its own weakness forced it so far to acquiesce
in what it could not prevent, but it never recognised the legitimacy of
foreign settlements; and whenever any of them approached those regions
where the Spanish rule was strong, they were liable to attack, even
when peace prevailed in Europe. The Spaniards, in fact, recognised no
peace beyond the line--that is to say, the line of demarcation from
north to south, and not, as is sometimes supposed, the equator.
Hence there arose a permanent condition of lawless violence in the
West Indies. By far the greater part of the islands, composing the
Greater and the Lesser Antilles, were not occupied by the Spaniards
at all. European adventurers were not to be debarred from settling in
unoccupied lands, by a mere decision of the Pope which they did not
recognise as valid. During the first half of the seventeenth century,
English, French, and Dutch had swarmed in to dispute these islands with
the Spaniard. The weakness of Spain made it impossible for her to keep
them out altogether. The early history of these settlements is obscure.
One very curious colony, founded by a Puritan company, of which Pym
was one of the directors, in the island of Old Providence on the coast
of Honduras, has left no trace except a few letter-books. Barbadoes
was peacefully occupied by Englishmen, and became rapidly prosperous.
Other English adventurers, some of them holding patents from the
king and others without, had settled in Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis,
and part of St. Kitts. The other part of St. Kitts was held by the
French. The Dutch also were in the West Indies, less as settlers than
as traders with the French and English. Yet, though these settlements
had increased and prospered, they were never quite safe from Spanish
attack. One great Spanish armament, under Don Fadrique de Toledo, had
swept the West Indies in 1629; other and minor attacks had been common.
The settlement in Old Providence, after many alarms and adventures, had
been finally exterminated at some time in the earlier stages of our
Civil War. It will be seen, then, that if the Spaniards were assailed
by Cromwell without formal declaration of hostilities in the New World,
the act was abundantly justified by Spanish precedents.
In 1654 the newly established Government was being urgently pressed
to send out just such an armament as was finally despatched. An
Englishman, of the name of Thomas Gage, the son of a family of English
Roman Catholics and strong Royalists, had published an exhortation
to his countrymen to fall upon Spanish America, and had revealed the
real weakness of the land in a book called the _New Survey of the
West Indies_, published in 1648, and very popular in the seventeenth
century. Gage, who had been a priest, and who then became converted,
and preached as a Puritan divine in England, was one of the very
few Englishmen for whom it had been possible to visit the Spanish
possessions. At the same time, some at least among the planters of
Barbadoes were urging the English Government to adopt an aggressive
policy, and were promising effectual support.
Under the stimulus of all these motives, the Protector's Government
organised this expedition in the summer and autumn of 1654. It was to
consist of 38 warships, carrying 1134 guns and 4380 seamen. A land
force of 3000 soldiers, divided into five regiments of 600 each, was
to be raised. The whole, when ready, was to sail for the West Indies,
and to begin hostilities with the Spaniards from the day it crossed
the tropic of Cancer. The orders given to the expedition, as was
commonly the case with the Council of State and Cromwell, were perfect
examples of what such things should be--at once absolutely precise
in prescribing the aim, and wisely large in defining the means to be
adopted. "We shall not," said the Protector, "tie you up to a method
by any particular instructions." The generals, in fact, were deprived
of every excuse for failure by being left free to choose the fittest
means. As for the object of the cruise, on that point there was no
doubt. They were to go over to the West Indies, firstly, to chastise
the French, who had been guilty of excesses against English trade;
secondly, to enforce the Navigation Laws against the Dutch, who had
been carrying on an interloping commerce with the English islands;
thirdly, and this was the main purpose of the armament, they were to
effect a settlement among the Spanish possessions. Where it was to
be made, they were themselves to judge on the spot, and according to
circumstances. They might land on the islands, taking Hispaniola by
preference, or, failing that, St. John, that is, San Juan de Puerto
Rico. Or, again, they might pass the islands and fall upon the mainland
somewhere between the mouth of the Orinoco and Porto Bello, that part
of South America commonly called the Spanish Main. A third course was
to attack both the islands and the mainland, but it was made abundantly
clear that the hands of those who were to be responsible for doing the
work were not to be tied by too precise instructions.
This was as it should have been, but all was not equally well with
the expedition. The leaders selected by Cromwell did not do honour
to his choice. Venables, the commander of the troops, must have done
something to make the Protector think him fit for the place, but on
this expedition he showed himself a feeble, pottering, uxorious man.
He took his wife with him, and appears to have been miserable when
separated from her company. Penn was undoubtedly a brave and skilful
seaman, but he wanted the intellectual resources and strength of
character required to make good the deficiencies of his colleague. The
weakness of the usurping Government is revealed by the action which
these two men, seemingly without any agreement with one another, took
during the summer. They both wrote to the exiled king, offering him
their services. At such a time, men who have not honour enough to
stand aside from a usurping Government, and who cannot serve it with
enthusiasm, are very likely to be found looking over their shoulders
for a safe retreat, and making friends with the enemy of the Government
of to-day, who may possibly be the ruler of to-morrow. Penn and
Venables offered to bring the whole armament over to King Charles if he
could find a port for them abroad. The king, who was totally unable to
comply with the condition, declined the offer. It throws an unpleasant
light on the character of Penn, that, immediately after he had been
making this offer to betray the master who trusted in him, he was found
appealing to the Protector for a grant of land in Ireland, which land,
as a matter of fact, was the confiscated property of the supporters
of the king. He and Venables did not work harmoniously together. They
had a squabble in England before they sailed, which was made up by the
exertions of friends, but probably left them on not very confidential
terms with one another. It was not only the inferiority of, and want of
harmony between, the leaders which was likely to militate against the
efficiency of the expedition. The victualling was ill done, probably
because of the poverty of the Government. A good part of the stores was
not ready in time, and had to be sent on later. A large portion of the
soldiers raised were of an inferior quality. Cromwell could not spare
the choice troops who were the support of his rule. The five regiments
were specially raised for the service, and they consisted mainly of
discharged soldiers of the king as well as of the Parliament. These
men had lost, or in many cases had never possessed, a true military
character. The number of 3000 provided for by the scheme was never
attained. The expedition did not carry more than 2500 men, of whom
perhaps half were more likely to be a hindrance than a help where
discipline was required.
On the 20th of December 1654 Rear-Admiral Dakins was sent on with
fourteen ships in advance. The bulk of the expedition sailed on
Christmas Day, which was probably chosen at least partly from a Puritan
desire to show disrespect for the feast. In mid-ocean the heavier
ships, which hampered the speed of the fleet, were left behind. Penn
and Venables pressed on with the better sailers. By the 29th January
1655 the whole armament was assembled in Carlisle Bay in Barbadoes.
The disappointments of the expedition began at once. It was found that
those planters who had been urging the Government to send a force into
the West Indies, and had promised effectual help, had spoken without
authority. The planters of Barbadoes were by no means generally pleased
at the appearance of an expedition from England. The generals were
authorised to raise a regiment in the island, and the planters were
afraid that if the freemen enlisted in large numbers, their "servants"
would revolt so soon as the armed force was gone. By servants must be
understood both the black slaves and those white men, criminals and
prisoners of war, who were bound to a term of service. Much pressure
had to be exercised before this opposition was overcome. It was at
last surmounted, and the regiment was raised. In the meantime the news
spread through the English islands. The swarm of loose adventurers
who filled them, the runaway "servants," sailors who had deserted
from their ships,--all the raw material, in fact, out of which the
formidable buccaneering body called the "Brethren of the Coast" was
afterwards formed,--began to collect in regiments, and were burning
to take part in the service, which seemed to promise plunder. Such
men as these, the floating population of the frontier, valiant in
pothouses, but feeble in battle, were of no real value for military
purposes. Yet they were accepted to the number of several thousands.
The expedition had unfortunately been put under the command of a
committee. In this Cromwell followed the practice of the Parliament,
and was perhaps influenced by the fear of putting too much power into
the hands of a single man. Not only Penn and Venables, but Goodson
the vice-admiral, Dakins the rear-admiral, two special Commissioners,
Winslow and Gregory Butler, together with some others, were joined in
the general command, and nothing was to be done without the consent
of three of them. The opinion of the wiser few, who would willingly
have dispensed with the riff-raff of the islands, was overborne, and
the expedition was hampered by an ill-armed, worse-disciplined, and
thoroughly untrustworthy mob. It is to be noted also that this distant
and unhealthy service in the West Indies was not popular with the
sailors. While at Carlisle Bay, the sea officers came in a body to Penn
and represented to him their hope that the hardships of their service
would be allowed for in their pay and prize-money. One good measure
that had been decided upon in England was here perfected. A regiment of
sailors was formed. It was put under the command of Admiral Goodson as
colonel, with naval officers to lead the companies.
Two months were spent at Barbadoes, which might have incomparably
better been employed in assailing the Spaniards before they were
ready. At last, on the 31st of March, the expedition got under way.
It proceeded by Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, and St. Kitts to the
south-eastern end of Hispaniola, and appeared before the town of San
Domingo on the 13th of April. San Domingo stands on the western side
of a little river called the Ozama. It is in the middle of a large
bay, some twenty-eight miles broad and some ten miles deep. The coast
is low, rocky, and beaten by a formidable surf. Looked at from the
sea, the spray thrown up from the waves was like the smoke of cannon
fringing the beach. Close to the town on the west side was a fort. To
the west of the fort, and at a distance of some five miles from the
town, another river, called by the Spaniards Jaina, and by us Hina,
falls into the sea. When there is a dead calm, or a land breeze from
the north, it is possible to land here, but at other times the surf
is too dangerous for boats. These conditions made it necessary to
disembark the soldiers to westward and leeward of the town at some
distance. In the West Indies the trade wind, or true breeze, always
blows from the east. Beyond Cape Nisao, the western extremity of San
Domingo Bay, there are a few landing-places in the surf-beaten coast.
At one of these, perhaps Catalina Bay, Venables disembarked with the
bulk of the expedition on the 14th of April. In the meantime Penn
remained, with the greater part of the fleet and two regiments of
soldiers, in front of San Domingo. The object of retaining these two
corps was to land them at the mouth of the Jaina, to co-operate with
Venables when he had got so far. They had with them stores and scaling
ladders for the purpose of attacking the town.
The story of what came of these imposing preparations is happily all
but unparalleled in English history. Venables began his march on the
day after landing, in circumstances of the most lamentable kind, if he
is to be believed.
"Our men, the last fortnight at sea, had bad bread, and little of it
or other victuals, notwithstanding General Penn's order, so that they
were very weak at landing; and some, instead of three days' provision
at landing, had but one, with which they marched five days, and
therefore fell to eat limes, oranges, lemons, &c., which put them into
fluxes and fevers. Of the former, I had my share for near a fortnight,
with cruel gripings that I could scarce stand."
In this dismal condition they struggled through the narrow paths which
traversed the dense tropical forest, without meeting more than a very
trifling resistance from the Spaniards. By the 16th they had reached
the Jaina. Here they remained until the 24th, engaged in what can
only be called pottering. General Venables came back to the flagship,
partly for the purpose of taking "a vomit," and partly in search of
his wife, who went with him when he returned to his post. Every kind
of difficulty as to provisions, scaling ladders, and powder united to
hamper the attack on the Spaniards. It does not appear that the men
were absolutely destitute of courage. On the 18th a portion of them
were roughly handled in an ambush, but they rallied well, and beat the
enemy back. The hardships of the service, of which the most intolerable
was thirst, did something to depress their spirits, but what worked
upon them most was unquestionably the discovery that they were being
led without energy or intelligence. First, the army advanced from the
Jaina to Fort Jerónimo. A vaunting attack, made without sufficient
means, was followed by a retreat to the former position. When at last,
on the 24th, the real attack was to be delivered, the troops, badly
armed, badly disciplined, and mostly of bad quality to start with, were
thoroughly ready for a panic.
On Wednesday the 25th the final attack on the Fort Jerónimo was to
be made. The troops advanced and met at first with no opposition.
They established themselves on the eastern side of the fort, where
no guns were mounted. An advance guard, called in the language of
the time a "Forlorn," was to open the attack, supported by a party
of "Reformadoes"--that is to say, officers belonging to corps which
had been suppressed or broken up and incorporated with others. Behind
them were the other regiments of the expedition. When the Forlorn was
close on the fort, and the attack just about to begin, a small body of
Spanish lancers, put by all the witnesses at some forty or fifty men,
fell suddenly upon the English. Their charge was directed against the
Forlorn, which fell suddenly and shamefully into disorder, and fled
headlong back on the Reformadoes. The Reformadoes, whose part it was
to have set an example to the army, were seized with a no less ignoble
spasm of terror. The Forlorn and the Reformadoes, mingled in confusion,
retreated upon the supporting regiments, which they infected with their
own cowardice. The whole mass gave way in flight, and retreated in all
the hubbub of an utter rout. Some of the officers did indeed behave
with the gallantry to be expected of English gentlemen. Haynes, the
major-general, the same officer who had co-operated with Blake in the
taking of the Channel Islands for the Parliament, broke out of the
mob of runaways, and, armed only with a small walking-sword, threw
himself in the path of a handful of Spanish lancers who were pressing
the pursuit. He was accompanied by an ensign named Blagg, who showed
the colours in the vain hope of rallying some support. But the example
of these brave men was lost on the terror-stricken rabble. Haynes
was borne to the ground and slain; Blagg tore his colours from the
staff, and, wrapping them round his body, fell down, and there died,
pierced with many wounds. The completeness of their success appears
to have taken the Spaniards entirely by surprise. They were a mere
handful, and, although they are said to have killed between three and
four hundred, they were not supported, and were easily repulsed when
some of the English were induced to make a stand. The corps to which
belongs the honour of saving the expedition from extermination was the
sailors' regiment commanded by Admiral Goodson. These men were no
doubt veterans of the Dutch war, who were hardened to perils. They let
the cowards pass, and then closed up to cover their retreat. So soon as
they were resolutely faced, the forty or fifty Spanish lancers, who had
hitherto "had the execution" of some thousands of Englishmen, fell back.
There were those among the English who believed that all was not
lost, and that a second attempt might be made with a fair prospect
of success. But the bulk of officers and men were completely cowed.
They could think of nothing except of hurrying back with the utmost
possible speed to the landing-place, and taking refuge in the ships.
The officers would not trust themselves with such men, and indeed the
spirit of the whole force was completely broken. While retreating
during the night, they were terrified at the noise made by the
land-crabs in the bush, and opened a wild fire right and left.
While the army was making this deplorable exhibition of itself, the
ships were parading to and fro in front of San Domingo, engaging at
odd moments in a languid artillery fire with the forts. Penn declared
that he could have easily destroyed Fort Jerónimo, and have swept the
sea-wall of the town. He excused his failure to act, by saying that his
colleagues would not agree. Venables, in particular, was opposed to the
destruction of Jerónimo, on the ground that it would be useful as a
hospital. It is not obvious, however, that Penn need have been deterred
by this from attacking the town. His conduct was certainly wanting in
enterprise, and the difference between him and his colleague seems to
be this, that whereas Venables did wrong, Penn did too little.
Having lost hundreds of men by the sword, and a still larger number by
the tropical diseases which were now raging, the unlucky expedition
cast about for some means of escaping the reproach of utter failure.
Some of the more poor-spirited among them were ready to return to
Barbadoes, and from thence to England. The majority, either because
they possessed more courage, or because, however much they feared
the enemy and the climate, they dreaded Oliver Cromwell still more,
were resolved to make a last effort before returning empty-handed. A
compensation which was easily to be secured lay ready to their hands.
The island of Jamaica is almost due west of the west end of the island
of San Domingo, at a distance of about a hundred miles. Gage, the
author of the _Survey of the West Indies_, was with Venables, and he,
with the English planters from Barbadoes and St. Kitts, could easily
inform the generals that the island was almost uninhabited, and would
be an easy prize. On the 4th of May, Penn and Venables left the bay of
San Domingo, and on the 10th appeared before the Spanish town on the
south side of Jamaica. Here, fortunately for them, perhaps, there was
no opposition. The population, in fact, was very small, hardly able to
beat off a considerable raid of pirates. The town was occupied after a
mere show of resistance on the 9th, 10th, and 12th of May. The Spanish
governor made his submission at once. His countrymen, with greater
spirit, deserted the town and took refuge in the hills.
Having now at last done something, the English leaders hastened to
deprive themselves personally of all credit by deserting their command
and running back to England. The early history of Jamaica is a very
painful one, and need not be told here. Perhaps the moral of it all
is best given by a witness who wrote after the Restoration of Charles
II. He reported that when the Spaniards saw how fast the English died,
they were surprised, but that, when they learned how much they drank,
they were surprised that any of them lived. The military and naval
leaders squabbled, and the soldiers and sailors fought. At last it
was decided that Penn should return to England with the bulk of the
fleet, leaving Goodson with twelve of the lighter vessels. He sailed
on the 25th of June, returning home by the western end of Cuba and the
Florida Channel. One English vessel, the =Discovery=, had been blown
up by accident at Jamaica. On the way another disaster occurred. The
=Paragon=, which had been Badiley's ship in the Mediterranean, caught
fire and blew up, with the loss of a hundred lives. Penn returned to
England in a very intelligibly dismal state of mind. He was inclined
to see the hand of the Lord visiting the sins of the expedition, and
something he referred to mysteriously as the "sin in England," on the
men of little faith about him. He was also visibly nervous as to the
reception it was likely he would meet with from the Protector, and
began garrulously excusing himself before he reached home. It was not
without cause that he, and possibly his colleague Venables, of whom we
have less evidence, looked forward to facing Oliver Cromwell. The old
explanation of the Protector's anger, that he punished the generals for
taking Jamaica when they were ordered to take San Domingo, was given in
ignorance of their instructions; but he had good cause to be angry with
them, both for the incapacity displayed at San Domingo, and for their
hasty desertion of their conquest of Jamaica. As his spy service was
both watchful and efficient, it is at least possible that Cromwell had
warning of their letters to the king. They reached England on the 31st
August, anchoring at Spithead. Within a fortnight they were both in the
Tower, on the recommendation of the Protector's Council. They did not
escape from this till they had made abject submission. Penn retired
to the estate which he had begged for himself out of the confiscated
property of the king's friends in Ireland, and was no more employed
during Oliver Cromwell's life.
Goodson remained at Jamaica for nearly two years, prosecuting the war
with Spain. The smallness of the force left under his command made
it impossible for him to undertake operations on a great scale. In
truth, what he did bore a very close resemblance to the piratical
warfare afterwards carried on by the buccaneers. He sailed twice to
the Spanish Main, burning and plundering small towns, taking water
and provisions at unfortified places, but attempting nothing against
the great port of Carthagena. To some among the English officers at
Jamaica this method of conducting hostilities was not acceptable. They
thought it piratical, and unworthy of a great State; but it was all
Goodson could do, and it served a useful purpose. The first two years
of our establishment in Jamaica were times of miserable weakness and
suffering. The governors died one after the other, and the ranks of
their followers were terribly thinned by fever. If during this interval
a vigorous attack had been made by the Spaniards, who were acclimatised
and expert in bush fighting, it is not impossible that we should have
lost the island. The presence of Goodson's ships and his activity
warded off this danger, and it is partly to him, therefore, that we
must attribute the merit of retaining this colonial possession.
Before the fleet under Penn left to undergo its varied fortunes in
the West Indies, another naval armament had sailed from England under
the command of Robert Blake. It started somewhat earlier than the
expedition directed against the West Indies--on the 29th September.
Blake's orders were ultimately to attack the Spaniards, but the
time for hostilities against them in Europe had not yet come. In
the interval there was plenty for an English admiral to do in the
Mediterranean. In the first place, he had, in the modern phrase,
"to show the flag"--that is to say, to let foreign nations see that
England was mistress of a naval force capable of extorting respect.
Then the Protector had inherited from the Council of State a number
of diplomatic disputes with the Italian princes. The presence of a
powerful English fleet in the Mediterranean was likely to add material
weight to the expostulations of his diplomatists. Blake worked his
way slowly along the Spanish and Italian coasts of the Mediterranean,
and was everywhere treated with deference. There is a story that at
Malaga he gave the Spaniards a proof that the ruler of England did not
bear the sword in vain for the defence of his subjects. It is said
that an English sailor who was on shore on leave displayed his Puritan
sentiments by insulting the host. For this he was maltreated by the
mob, on the instigation of a friar. Blake, so the story goes, insisted
on the punishment of the ecclesiastic, and was told by the governor
that he had no power to punish churchmen, which, if it was ever
said, was untrue. Upon this, the English admiral threatened to open
fire unless the friar was given up to him. His threat and the ocular
demonstration they had of his strength brought the Spanish authorities
to reason. The friar was sent on board, presumably expecting and,
if he was a fanatic, hoping for martyrdom. Blake, however, confined
himself to rebuking the over-zealous friar, and declaring that he would
make the English name as much respected as ever was that of a Roman
citizen. There is nothing improbable in the story, which, however,
rests solely on the authority of Bishop Burnet. Whatever may be the
accuracy of this anecdote, it is beyond question that Blake's mission
was to make the name of Englishmen respected in the Mediterranean,
and that it was fulfilled. The Italian princes found that delay would
no longer be tolerated. Their disputes with the English Government
were wound up. A naval power is not limited in its influence, as the
strongest of merely military powers must needs be. The States around
the Mediterranean might have despised the menace of the New Model Army,
which was no doubt capable of marching all through Italy, if only it
could have got so far; but a fleet can make the power of the State felt
wherever ships can go. Cromwell's menaces were formidable to the very
extremities of the Mediterranean.
In that sea there was one duty to be discharged which the English Navy
had been forced to neglect for too long. The pirates of the Barbary
States had long been a pest and a menace to the commerce of Europe, and
even to the coasts of Christian States. Within the Mediterranean nobody
had yet seriously undertaken to break their power. It is true that
they no longer operated in great fleets, as they had done in the days
of Barbarossa. The age of the pirate admirals had been succeeded by
that of the Raises, or pirate captains, but they were still formidable
to commerce, if they attempted no longer to capture towns and conquer
territory. The growing English trade in the Mediterranean suffered
from them severely. When the Church of England included a prayer for
prisoners and captives in her Litany, the words had a significance
they no longer bear. In 1620 the ridiculously feeble effort already
recorded, to check this disgraceful infliction, had been made with no
better result than to convince these Mohammedan sea rovers that England
was not formidable. It was necessary to bring them to a sounder view
of the facts, and this was one part of the task entrusted to Blake.
After passing along the coasts of Spain and Italy, Blake went on to
discharge this part of his duties. He first sailed over to Algiers
in March and opened negotiations. It was his purpose to secure his
object--the release of English captives and some security for the
exemption of English ships from capture in future--without fighting, if
possible. The Barbary States were still nominally part of the dominions
of the Sultan, and there was always a chance that severe measures taken
at their expense might provoke retaliation on the servants and property
of the Levant Company at Smyrna and Scanderoon. At Algiers, then, Blake
attempted peaceful negotiations with the Dey, and even exerted himself
on his behalf with the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John. The Dey
was obstinate, or, as he habitually lived in terror of the piratical
portion of his subjects, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that
he did not dare to make such an arrangement as Blake demanded. Still
the English admiral held his hand. Before taking hostile measures at
Algiers, he decided to pay a visit to the less formidable piratical
town of Tunis. The Dey of this other town of plunderers was not less
unreasonable, and by this time Blake's patience was exhausted. After
returning for a few days to Trapani in Sicily, he came back and fell
upon the pirate ships. Tunis was strong, and the Dey believed it to
be unattackable. It lies at the very bottom of the deep gulf between
Cape Farina and Cape Bon. The approach was protected by the forts of
Farina and Goletta, famous in the wars of Charles V. and Philip II. The
pirate galleys had been hauled under the guns of these fortifications,
and their owners might with some show of reason believe them safe,
but they had never yet been attacked in the style adopted by Blake.
On the 4th of April 1655 (just one month, be it noted for purposes
of comparison, before Penn and Venables sailed away from San Domingo
shamefully beaten) the English admiral stood in and opened fire on the
Tunisian ships. The forts proved very ineffectual, and the fire of the
vessels was soon silenced. Then the English took to their boats and
boarded. They were quickly masters of the prizes, and lost no time in
burning them. From Tunis Blake went first to Tripoli, and then came
back to Algiers. In these places satisfactory arrangements were at last
made. The Orientals had, in fact, discovered that the moderation of the
English admiral was not due to fear or weakness, and they at once bowed
to force. Blake's conduct was approved by Cromwell, and he was now free
to proceed to the execution of the last part of his duty.
The alliance with France was in the meantime maturing. There was no
longer any reason for delaying an open declaration of hostilities
against Spain. On the contrary, as Penn and Venables had had time to
develop their attack on the West Indies, it was very desirable that
the Spaniards should be prevented from sending reinforcements, and
this could be most effectually done by compelling them to stand on
guard at home. Blake was therefore ordered to cruise off Cadiz, for the
double purpose of intercepting the treasure-ships on their way back
from America and of preventing the despatch of a Spanish squadron to
the West Indies. The blockade was so far successful that the Spaniards
were paralysed, but no prizes were taken, and by the approach of autumn
the English ships were severely strained. In October Blake returned to
England. The war with Spain had not as yet been prosecuted with very
triumphant success. The failure at San Domingo was a huge disgrace,
hardly balanced in the opinion of the world by the capture of Jamaica.
The successful blockade of Cadiz, though it must have caused great loss
to the enemy, had not produced those visible results in the way of
prizes and bullion which the nation could understand. But Cromwell was
resolved to persevere.
In 1656 Blake returned to the coast of Spain. On this cruise he was
accompanied by Edward Montagu, afterwards the first Earl of Sandwich,
and their object was again to capture the much-desired Plate Fleet.
This year they had a better chance of success. In 1655 the Spanish
Government had stopped the vessels, but it was now in such dire need
of money that it was compelled to run the risk of bringing them home.
In summer a first detachment reached the neighbourhood of Cadiz, only
to fall into the hands of the English blockading fleet. Blake and
Montagu were not present at the capture, for they had retired to the
friendly ports of Portugal to refit, but a squadron had been left to
watch the port, under the command of Richard Stayner. It proved amply
sufficient for the work to be done. The Spanish treasure-ships, though
of great bulk for the time, were intrinsically very feeble, and their
decks were hampered by merchandise. Stayner burned or captured nearly
the whole, with a very trifling loss to himself. The bullion and goods
taken amounted in value to nearly the revenue of England for a year--to
over two millions sterling. Montagu returned to England with the booty,
taking Stayner with him. Although the great sugar-loaves of silver
were pillaged by the sailors, there was enough left to load thirty
waggons, which were driven through London to the Tower, to the general
gratification of the Protector's subjects.
Blake in the meanwhile remained outside of Cadiz during the autumn
and winter, till the spring of 1657, waiting for the next instalment
of the Plate Fleet. It was an unheard-of thing at that time to keep a
fleet out for the winter. Even now the heavier vessels had been sent
home with Montagu and Stayner, but the persistence of the others in
remaining abroad shows that our navy was increasing in seaworthiness
and hardihood. In the April of 1657 Blake was rewarded for his
perseverance by learning that a large Spanish squadron carrying
treasure had taken refuge at Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
To attack them in this port was in the general opinion an enterprise
of the utmost hazard. The bay of Santa Cruz is deep and the island
hilly, therefore the harbour is perpetually liable either to be in a
dead calm, or to be swept by the violent gusts of wind off the land.
These natural obstacles made entrance difficult for a fleet. And Santa
Cruz was in addition very powerfully fortified. So strong, in fact,
had art and nature made the harbour, that the Spaniards considered
a successful attack impossible, and Blake's contemporaries looked
upon his triumph as an unheard-of achievement of daring. Yet the
Commonwealth admiral, like so many other men of strong mind, showed
his strength by despising the vain appearance of force. He estimated
the inefficiency of the Spaniards at its true value. Moreover, he saw
that the forts, if attacked closely, would probably fail to stop the
entry of a fleet running before a good breeze and borne on a rising
tide. Once in the harbour, and in the midst of the Spanish vessels, he
would be comparatively safe, since they would mask the fire of the guns
on shore. With the turn of the tide, aided, as it was very likely to
be, by one of the common winds off the land, he would be able to secure
his retreat. No doubt there was an appreciable risk, as there always
must be in the serious operations of war. But it was one a bold man
commanding an effective fighting force could run without temerity.
The attack was made on the 20th of April, in the early hours of the
morning. The fleet had sighted the harbour by daybreak, and the
look-out frigates had reported that the Spanish ships were still in the
bay. The decision to attack was taken at once, and the English fleet
stood in. The result fully justified the calculations we may suppose
Blake to have made. The English ships ran past the forts with little
or no damage. They were in the midst of the Spanish ships and in hot
action by eight o'clock. The Spanish galleons were as ill fitted for
war as the vessels taken outside of Cadiz. Though the English remained
in the bay while daylight lasted, they lost only 50 killed and 120
wounded, while none of the ships received more damage than could be
made good at sea in a few days' work. The fate of the Spaniards was
very different. By seven in the evening they were all sunk, driven on
shore, or set on fire. When the work was thoroughly done, the English
prepared to drift out on the ebb-tide. By this time daylight must have
been over, and in the dusk and following darkness they would probably
in any case have passed the forts with very little injury. But by one
of those strokes of good fortune which commonly come to the help of
a bold and skilfully conducted enterprise, the wind arose from the
south-west, and they regained the sea swiftly, with no further injury.
The attack on the Spaniards at Santa Cruz de Tenerife was not only the
most brilliant achievement of the navy during Cromwell's Government,
but it was by far the finest single feat performed in the seventeenth
century, and, though it has been equalled, it has never been greatly
surpassed in later times. Even Nelson's attack on Copenhagen was
not more intrepid. The delight felt by all Englishmen, without
distinction of party, was unbounded. Cromwell sent Blake a "jewel"
consisting of his portrait set in gold and diamonds, and the royal
historian Clarendon has praised him without stint or qualification.
Blake, indeed, deserved alike the jewel and the praise. Nothing quite
of the same stamp as the attack on Santa Cruz had ever been done
before, except his own bombardment of the forts of the Dey of Tunis.
The captures of the Puntal Castle at Cadiz by the Earl of Essex in
1597, and then by his son in 1625, were small in comparison. In the
Elizabethan time, ships had either shrunk from attacking forts, or,
as in the case of Drake's attack on San Juan de Puerto Rico, had been
beaten off. At the Ile de Rhé, our ships had shown no inclination to
tackle the French fortifications. It is to Blake, as Clarendon justly
pointed out, that the credit belongs of first showing what a fleet
could do. But for Blake, his work was over. The destruction of the
West India fleet had completed the task he was sent to do on the coast
of Spain. He was therefore ordered to return home, but he never lived
to reach his native country. He died, as it would seem, of scurvy, on
board his flagship, the =George=, at the mouth of Plymouth Sound, on
the 7th of August 1657. He was buried with his old fellow-admiral and
general-at-sea, Richard Deane, in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, whence
their bodies were taken with those of other Puritan leaders, at the
Restoration, and thrown into a pit on the north side of the Abbey.
During the brief remainder of Cromwell's life, the navy had little to
do except to assist the troops which were co-operating with Turenne
in the siege of Dunkirk. With the death of the Protector the whole
foundation of his Government was removed. It was based on his personal
ascendency, and was supported by his immense superiority of faculty to
all enemies. Englishmen submitted to it because the alternative was
anarchy. When Oliver died, the anarchy which he had warded off came
swiftly upon the nation. Between the end of 1658 and the beginning
of 1660 power was snatched from one feeble hand by another, till at
last Monk, at the head of the army in Scotland, imposed himself on all
rivals. By this time the vast majority of Englishmen had come to the
conclusion that their one means of escape from a succession of mere
military tyrannies lay in the restoration of the ancient monarchy.
Happily for England, no man saw that truth more clearly than Monk,
and under his sagacious, phlegmatic guidance the restoration of the
monarchy was effected in the May of 1660. A historian of the navy
is strongly tempted to endeavour to prove that it helped materially
towards attaining this result. I can, however, see no evidence that
this was the case. A navy, though powerful to ward off foreign
intervention in our affairs, was very little able to influence the
nation. It could only apply pressure by intercepting trade and cruising
outside ports,--in other words, by condemning itself to the hardships
and tedium of blockade, and that, too, in circumstances which made
effective blockade impossible, since the fleet could not draw supplies
from abroad, and could only get them at home by the goodwill of their
countrymen. The utter failure of the Royalist revolt in the fleet in
1648 even to check the triumph of the Independents is an example of the
happy incapacity of a navy to take an influential part in civil strife.
Throughout the war the navy had followed, not led, and this was its
part during the fourteen months of confusion which intervened between
the fall of the Protectorate and the Restoration of King Charles.