AGAINST SPAIN
Spain's enmity--The Armada--Ralegh's opinion of tactics--With
Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norreys--The privateers.
Indeed Ralegh's immense energy is typical of the time. _Do it with thy
might_ could fitly have been the motto of the nation. Their capacity for
hard work was unequalled. The Armada was England's day of triumph. Men
applaud a prima-donna on the night of her success, and are apt to forget
the long years of training and privation and self-control that have
preceded the glory of the moment. It is even so with a nation. The
little hour of triumph is as nothing compared with the long years of
life which made that triumph possible; and only the greatest artist and
the greatest nation can bear the added burthen of success. England
lapsed after the impulse of that great action had died away. The nation
as a whole was too young and too boisterous with youth to support a
victory so overpowering in its magnificence.
The triumph itself was like few in the history of nations, and events
conspired to lend a vivid dramatic colour to its greatness.
The time had come when Philip the Second at last decided that the
insolence of England must be punished. The exploits of men like Hawkins
and Drake and Ralegh and Frobisher were becoming intolerable, and
though Elizabeth had at first given no sanction to their enterprises,
treating them much as she had treated the English supporters of the
Protestant cause in France, yet the knighthood of Drake on the deck of
his own ship at length declared the bent of her sympathy. The time had
come for action: and the time seemed specially favourable to Philip.
Sextus the Fifth was Pope, and he had created the league for the
subversion of heresy, and the arch-heretic of Europe must be put away.
The Prince of Parma was in the Netherlands ready to invade England. The
Catholics in England would be united by the execution of Mary, Queen of
Scots, and the Protestants themselves would be averse to the surrender
of the throne to her son and his Scotch followers. So Philip thought,
and slowly set the immense machinery of preparation to work.
Elizabeth possessed remarkable foresight and a remarkable dislike for
definite action. Her foresight was as uncanny as an instinct, or her
power of dissimulation, which is the art of diplomacy. Accordingly, it
is probable that her efforts for peace, and the treaty which she patched
up with the Prince of Parma, did not arise from any fear of war, but
were a clever design to increase the proud confidence of the enemy by
making him think that England was in reality in a state of panic, quite
unprepared for war. She knew well of the preparations, and of their huge
scale. Drake had sent news to Lord Burghley: "Assuredly," he wrote,
"there never was heard of or known so great preparations as the King of
Spain hath and daily maketh ready for the invasion of England." With
daring he sailed into the very harbour of Cadiz and damaged more than a
hundred tall ships. He was forbidden to do further damage. Spain's
enterprise was not destined to be strangled at home. Elizabeth's fear,
if her fear existed, allowed Philip to spend untold sums of money on his
fleet, and to adorn it with the flower of his nobility, and allowed
England to overcome her enemy in the full ostentation of his display.
Certainly Lord Howard of Effingham, Admiral of the Fleet, knew nothing
of Elizabeth's intentions, nor did Sir John Hawkins, the paymaster. They
wrote angry letters to Walsingham when the movements of their ships were
confined, and some of their men disbanded. "Never," wrote Lord Howard,
"never since England was England was there such a stratagem and mask
made to deceive us as this treaty." And Sir John Hawkins was even more
vehement: "We are wasting money, wasting strength, dishonouring and
discrediting ourselves by our uncertain dallying." Naturally they
desired to repeat Drake's exploit, to run every risk, like brave
Englishmen, and to crush the Spanish fleet in the Spanish harbours. But
they must wait. Elizabeth's fears or Elizabeth's diplomacy (conscious or
unconscious in its working a strange instinct for the good of England
was here) determined another course of action. "The Queen took upon
herself the detailed management of everything. Lord Howard's letters
prove that she and she only was responsible," as Froude, who accepts the
view of her perverseness and levity, declared.
Meanwhile the King of Spain's preparations were at length completed. The
galleons, "built high like castles," had been baptized each with the
name of a saint, St. Matthew, St. Philip, St. John, ceremonially, as it
was fitting that vessels about to fight for the Catholic cause should be
baptised. The one hundred and twenty-nine vessels of the Armada,
galleons and galleasses, set sail. They were strong only in pride and in
the sense of their cause's sacredness.
Their vessels were unwieldy and old-fashioned, their ammunition was
insufficient, and their admiral was high-born but incapable. For the
veteran Don Alvarez de Bacan, Marquis of Santa Cruz, had died suddenly,
and his place had been taken by the Duke of Medina Sidonia. On July 19
the Armada was reported off Plymouth. Beacons lit from hilltop to
hilltop flamed the news to London.
The English fleet was ready. "Their ships had warped out into the Sound
on the evening of the 19th: on the 20th they had plied out, to windward,
against a fresh south-westerly breeze; and the Armada running to the
eastward all night had, by daybreak on the 21st, given the English the
weather-gage for which they had been working."
On the afternoon of the 21st the battle began. The _Ark-Ralegh_, built
on Sir Walter's own design, in which was the Lord High Admiral, Howard
of Effingham, and three other ships sailed along the rear of the Spanish
line, sending quick volleys into the great vessels, and sailed back. The
Spaniards vainly tried to grapple with them: the English ships were too
swift and easily manoeuvred. And then, on the very opening of the long
battle, the Spaniards recognized their weakness, that their great
vessels were cumbrous, and so crank that their cannon sent their balls
on the weather side high into space, and on the lee side very nearly
plump into the water. For a week (there was little sleep for the men
during that week) the fleets fought down the Channel till the Spanish
fleet lay at last at Calais, but not for long. The English sent
fire-ships among them and drove them out. "This great preparation,"
writes Bacon, "passed away like a dream. The Invincible Navy neither
took any one barque of ours neither yet once offered to land; but after
they had been well beaten and chased, made a perambulation about the
Northern seas, ennobling many coasts with wrecks of mighty ships; and so
returned home with greater derision than they set forth with
expectation."
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF LONDON]
Two things are specially worthy of notice about this great battle. The
first is the continued ignorance of the commanders of various English
ships as to the actual damage which had been inflicted upon the enemy.
They had, of course, only their unaided eyes to trust to, and great
difficulty in announcing news from ship to ship. Lord Howard writes as
late as August 8: "Although we have put the Spanish Fleet past the
Firth, and I think past the Isles, yet God knoweth whether they go to
the Nase of Norway or into Denmark or to the Isles of Orkney to refresh
themselves and so to return." And Drake, too, wrote on the evening of
the battle: "God hath given us so good a day in forcing the enemy so far
to leeward, as I hope in God the Prince of Parma and the Duke of Sidonia
shall not shake hands this few days."
And the second point is that though the English loss was small during
the actual days of the battle, yet the strain and the food and the
sanitation were such that directly they came to port, a frightful
epidemic broke out among the men, who died, we are told, by hundreds in
consequence.
In the actual fighting Ralegh probably took no part. When the first news
came of the Armada's approach, he was in Ireland, attending to his
duties as Mayor of Youghal. With the utmost speed at that time possible
he sailed from Ireland and rode to the English coast. Certain it is,
however, that he arrived too late for any official post to be assigned
him, for the battle had been in progress for two days before his
arrival. But many private gentlemen joined the fleet in craft hastily
equipped for warfare, and it would be a thing to wonder at if Ralegh was
behindhand when such doings were happening. No positive information is,
however, forthcoming. Only it is known that the Lord High Admiral's ship
was built from designs which Ralegh had matured, and that he agreed
completely with the plan of the Lord High Admiral's attack. Many an
evening Drake and Effingham and Ralegh would have spent in discussing
the tactics of sea-battles, proud, as they well might be, of the
swiftness and ease with which an English ship could be manoeuvred in
comparison with the large unwieldiness of the carracks of Spain, who
still considered herself (God help her) mistress of the sea.
In his "History of the World" occurs a passage about the tactics
employed by the English against the Armada. There is a strong element of
pathos in the idea of the man shut up in the little room in the Tower of
London (he could watch the ships making their way down the Thames)
writing of this great action, which he had seen, and writing with
ardour, which nothing could extinguish. He had been recounting a fight
between Roman vessels, heavy and slow, and the swift African galleys.
Then he bursts out into this great paragraph of reminiscence, as though
once again he were convincing some obstinate fellow of the patent
rightness of the plan of attack.
"Certainly, hee that will happily perform a fight at sea must be skilful
in making choice of vessels to fight in: he must beleeve that there is
more belonging to a good man of war upon the waters, than great during;
and must know that there is a great deale of difference betweene
fighting loose or at large, and grapling. The guns of a slow ship pierce
as well, and make as great holes, as those in a swift. To clap ships
together without consideration, belongs rather to a madman than to a man
of warre: for by such an ignorant braverie was Peter Strozzi lost at the
Azores when he fought against the Marquesse of Santa Cruz. In like sort
had the Lord Charles Howard, Admirall of England beene lost in the year
1588, if he had not been better advised than a great many malignant
fooles were, that found fault with his demeanour. The Spaniards had an
armie aboord them; and he had none; they had more ships than he had and
of higher building and charging; so that had he intangled himself with
those great and powerfull Vessels, he had greatly endangered this
Kingdom of England.... But our Admirall knew his advantage, and held it:
which had he not done, he had not beene worthy to have held his head.
Heere to speake in generall of sea-fight (for particulars are fitter for
private hands than for the Presse) I say, That a fleete of twentie ships
all good sailers and goode ships have the advantage on the open Sea, of
an hundred as good ships, and of slower sayling. For if the fleete of an
hundred saile keep themselves neere together in a grosse squadron: the
twentie ships charging them upon any angle, shall force them to give
ground and to fall back upon their owne next fellowes: of which so many
as intangle, are made unserviceable or lost. Force them they may easily,
because the twentie ships, which give themselves scope, after they have
given one broad side of Artillerie, by clapping into the winde, and
staying, they may give them the other: and so the twentie ships batter
them in pieces with a perpetuall vollie; whereas those, that fight in a
troop, have no roome to turn and can alwaies use but one and the same
beaten side."
And this is precisely what had taken place in the Armada. It is
interesting to know that there was divergency of opinion about the
proper tactics to follow, and it would be still more interesting to know
who the "malignant fools" were, to whom Ralegh refers. Men who confuse
the strategy of war with their own idea of manliness, are common to all
times, and must indeed be the most desperate fellows for a proper
soldier to convince. You can hear them saying, with that dreadful
assumption of finality with which the pompous imbecile seems gifted,
those runaway tactics may be very well for buccaneers, but are they
seemly for the ships of the navy of England? Small wonder the memory of
them once more exasperated Ralegh in his prison-room to renewed anger.
Before the Armada there had been many privateering expeditions against
Spain on different waters; after the Armada these expeditions naturally
became even more numerous, when they possessed the prestige of the
Crown's authority.
Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norreys were sent with a small fleet to
reinstate Don Antonio on the throne of Portugal which had lapsed into
the possession of Philip of Spain. Ralegh went on that expedition, which
failed to attain its object but captured sixty Hanseatic vessels, laden
with victual and ammunition, which report said, were intended to
provision a new Armada.
Reprisals against Spain became the vogue, into which Ralegh threw
himself with spirit. Every man whom money and opportunity favoured,
fitted out his ship to spoil the Egyptian. The Queen's person, forsooth,
was not to be harmed: she was to be conveyed to his Holiness the Pope at
Rome? Such things, men knew, were said with happy confidence before the
Armada, and such things, remembered and repeated, spurred Englishmen on
to activity in which the hope of personal gain was small in comparison
with the fury of personal resentment that their Queen should be so
lightly valued and thought to be so sorrily championed. Nor did they
always discriminate nicely between the nationality of ships which they
waylaid. Ralegh, as Vice-Admiral of Devon, often received instructions
to see to the restitution of ships to subjects of the French King; and a
ship of his own had taken "two barks of Cherbourg from two of the French
King's subjects." There is a wild recklessness in the exploits of these
years; these gentlemen of England, whose names sound through history,
exulted: and there is much in their exultation that resembles the
behaviour of schoolboys rejoicing in an unexpected half-holiday in
spring. The grave way in which their doings are recorded heightens by
contrast the similarity. Ralegh and his men are bidden be careful "to
minister no cause of grief unto any of the (French) King's subjects, in
respect of the good amity and correspondence between Her Majesty and the
French King, their realm and subjects." Austerely the records run;
austerely, too, is related her Majesty's desire that a certain perfect
waist-coat, the fame of which had reached her ears, should be put on one
side for her Majesty's personal use.
They had the godlike capacity of remaining young, these Elizabethans;
they did not outgrow their taste for splendid waistcoats. And the world
found them irresistible.