THE YEAR AFTER THE ARMADA.

_THE COUNTER-ARMADA OF 1589_.[1]

On the night of Sunday, the 28th of July, 1588, the great Armada was

huddled, all demoralised and perplexed, in Calais roads. Only a week

before the proudest fleet that ever rode the seas laughed in derision

at the puny vessels that alone stood between it and victory over the

heretic Queen and her pirate countrymen, who for years had plundered

and insulted with impunity the most powerful sovereign in Europe.

Gilded prows and fluttering pennons, great towering hulls which seemed

to defy destruction, the fervid approbation of all Latin Christendom,

and the assurance of Divine protection, combined to produce in the men

of the Armada absolute confidence in an easy conquest. But six {4}

days of desultory fighting in the Channel had opened their eyes to

facts thitherto undreamed of. Handy ships, that could sail several

points closer to the wind than their unwieldy galleons, could harass

and distress them without coming to close quarters. At first they

shouted that the English were afraid of them, but as the sense of their

own impotence gradually grew upon them their spirits sank. Brave they

were, but, said they, of what use is bravery against foes who will not

fight with us hand to hand in the only way we wot of? And so from day

to day, whilst they straggled up the Channel, their boasting gave place

to dismay and disorganisation. They saw their ships were being sunk

and disabled one after the other, whilst the English vessels were

suffering little damage and had safe ports of refuge behind them. Thus

at the end of the week they found themselves with a dangerous shoally

coast to leeward, in an exposed roadstead surrounded by the reinforced

English fleet. They were ripe for panic, for their commander was a

fool and a craven in whom they had no confidence; and when the English

fireships drifted down upon them with the wind, flaring in the darkness

of the summer night, abject paralysing terror turned the huge fleet

into a hustling mob of ships, in which the sole thought was that of

flight. From that moment the Armada was beaten. The storms on the

northern and Irish coasts, the cold, the rotten food and putrid water,

pestilence and panic, added dramatic completeness to their

discomfiture; but superior ships, commanders, and seamanship had

practically defeated them when they slipped their cables and anchors

and crowded {5} through the narrow sea with the English fleet to

windward and sandbanks on their lee.

But the Armada had represented the labour, the thought, and the

sacrifice of years. Every nerve had been strained to render it

irresistible. Spain and the Indies had been squeezed to the last

doubloon, careful Sixtus V. had been cajoled into partnership in the

enterprise, and the Church throughout Christendom had emptied its

coffers to crush heresy for once and for ever. All along the coast of

Ireland from the Giant's Causeway to Dingle Bay the wreckage of the

splendid galleons was awash, and many of the best and bravest of

Spain's hidalgos, dead and mutilated, scattered the frowning shore; or,

alive, starved, naked, and plundered, were slowly done to death with

every circumstance of inhumanity by the Irish kerns or their English

conquerors. It could hardly be expected, therefore, that on the

receipt of the dreadful news Spain should calmly resign itself to

defeat. Such lessons as this are only slowly and gradually brought

home to the heart of a nation; and after Mendoza's lying stories of

victory had been contradicted, and the fell truth ran through Spain as

the battered, plague-stricken wrecks of what was left of the Armada

crept into Santander, the first heart-cry was for vengeance and a

re-vindication of the national honour.

Medina Sidonia was the scapegoat (perhaps not undeservedly, though

Parma should bear his share of blame), and as he went in state and

comfort through Spain to his home in the south, the very children and

old women in the streets jeered and spat upon him for the

chicken-hearted {6} coward who had disgraced their country in the eyes

of the world. Only the over-burdened recluse in the Escorial was

patient and resigned under the blow. He had, as he thought, done his

best for the cause of God; and if for some inscrutable reason all his

labour, his sacrifice, and his prayers were to be in vain, he could

only suffer dumbly and bend his head to the Divine decree. One after

the other the provinces and municipalities came to him with offers of

money to repair the disaster. In November the national Cortes secretly

sent him word, "that they would vote four or five millions of gold,

their sons and all they possess, so that he may chastise that woman,

and wipe out the stain which this year has fallen on the Spanish

nation."[2] But the Cortes and the Town Councils always tacked upon

their offers two conditions, born of their knowledge that peculation

and mismanagement were largely responsible for the disaster of the

Armada. "First that his Majesty will act in earnest; and secondly that

their own agents may have the spending of the money which they shall

vote, for in this way his Majesty will not be so robbed and all affairs

will go far better."[3] But the last condition was one that Philip

could never brook: the secret of his failure through life was that he

wished to do everybody's work himself and he was smothered in details.

Besides this there were difficulties, diplomatic and others, in the

way, of which the people at large were unaware. The star of Henry of

Navarre was rising, and all France was now alive to Philip's real

object in the invasion of England. Philip knew that in any repetition

of the attempt he would probably {7} not have to confront England

alone. So the cries for vengeance grew fainter, and national feeling

was gradually turned purposely in other directions.

But these cries had been loud enough to reach England. Exaggerated

rumours of the intention to renew the Armada were industriously sent

from all quarters by zealous spies and agents, and an uneasy feeling

grew that perhaps, after all, England had not finished her foe; for

Elizabeth's advisers had no means of exactly gauging the depth of

Philip's purse, and they knew the papal coffers were overflowing. It

is true that immediate danger was over. The hasty English levies had

been sent home again, bragging of the prowess they would have shown if

the hated Spaniard had dared to land, and the panic and fright had

given place to perfectly natural congratulations on the special

protection vouchsafed by the Almighty to the Virgin Queen and her

people. The heroics were over, and England was free, for the present

at all events, to don its work-a-day garb again.

But the easy victory had inflamed men's minds. There had been very

little fighting even on the fleet, and none at all on shore; and it is

not pleasant to be balked of a set-to when all is ready, and to turn

swords to bill-hooks without once fleshing them in an enemy's carcase.

So the idlers in England who were loath to go to work again, the

turbulent youngsters who were burning for an excuse to have a go at

somebody, and the lavish gentlemen who were thirsting for loot, began

on their side to talk about vengeance and retaliation. It mattered

little to them that for a long course of years England had been the {8}

aggressor, and that Philip had exhausted all diplomatic and

conciliatory means, including even secret murder, and the subornation

of treason, in England, to arrive at a peaceful _modus vivendi_. For

thirty years he had suffered, more or less patiently, robbery, insult,

and aggression in his own dominions at the hands of Elizabeth. The

commerce of his country was well-nigh swept from the sea by marauders

sallying from English ports or flying the English flag. His own towns,

both in the Spanish colonies and in old Spain, had been sacked and

burnt by English seamen without any declaration of war; and rebellion

in the ancient patrimony of his house had been, and was still, kept

alive by English money and English troops.

Englishmen, then as now, had the comfortable and highly commendable

faculty of believing their own side always to be in the right, and they

knew in this particular case that it was much more profitable to

plunder than to be plundered, to attack rather than defend.

Elizabeth's caution and dread of being forced into a costly national

war had over and over again caused her to discountenance this tendency

on the part of some of her advisers, though she was ready enough to

share the profits when her official orders were disregarded and her own

responsibility evaded. Only the year before the Armada she had

peremptorily ordered Drake, when he was ready to sail for Cadiz, not to

imperil peace by molesting any of the territories or subjects of his

Catholic Majesty. But when he came into Dartmouth, after "singeing the

King of Spain's beard," towing behind him the great galleon _San

Felipe_, with its 600,000 {9} ducats in money, the Queen smiled upon

him as if he had never disobeyed her. But for her positive orders of

recall indeed, Drake on this very voyage would have made the Armada

impossible by destroying, as he was able and ready to do, all the ships

preparing for it in Lisbon harbour.

Only just before the Armada, in June, 1588, the idea of diverting and

dividing Philip's forces by attacking him in his own country,

ostensibly in the interest of Dom Antonio, the Portuguese pretender,

was broached by Lord Admiral Howard in a letter to Walsingham, now in

the Record Office. The scheme assumed definite form soon after the

flight of the Armada, when, in September, Sir John Norris presented to

the Queen a complete plan for fitting out an expedition with this

object by means of a joint-stock company, which might be made both

patriotic and profitable at the same time. Such a proposal was one

eminently likely to suit the Queen, frugal and evasive of

responsibility as she was. Norris and his associates suggested that

the capital of the company should be £40,000 at least, out of which the

Queen was to subscribe £5,000, and to appoint a treasurer, who was to

supervise the expenditure of the whole. The Queen's contribution was

only to be spent by permission of this treasurer, and if the enterprise

fell through for want of subscribers she was to have her money returned

to her or the munitions of war which had been purchased with it. The

Queen, as was her wont, discreetly hesitated about it; and it was not

until addresses had been presented from Parliament begging her to adopt

some such action that she consented to take shares in the enterprise.

But her treasury was {10} well-nigh empty; and willing as she was that

anything should be done to weaken her enemy, her poverty and Tudor

frugality forbade her from undertaking to defray any very large portion

of the cost herself. So she answered her petitioners that although she

would sanction the enterprise and subscribe something to it, the main

cost must be borne by others.

The story of this ill-starred expedition is usually disposed of in a

few lines by English historians, although its success would have

completely changed the status of England on the Continent. What is

known of it hitherto is practically confined to the official documents

and letters in the Record Office, which have only become accessible of

late years, a few letters in the Bacon and Naunton Papers, and a

curious tract printed in Hackluyt and ascribed to Captain Anthony

Wingfield, minutely describing and apologising for the proceedings.

The account was written in the same year, 1589, as the expedition took

place; and the writer, whoever he was,[4] evidently witnessed the

events he relates. His {11} description is most graphic and

interesting, and presents the English view of the enterprise in its

best possible light, although all his explanations and palliations

cannot succeed in conjuring away the utter failure of the expedition,

or the bad conduct of the men who took part in it. The English

account, however, all indulgently unflattering as it is, is not the

only one extant. The publication of the latest volume of the Calendar

of Venetian State Papers puts us into possession of the version of the

affair current in the Spanish Court and conveyed to the King from his

officers in Portugal; and in addition to this I possess the transcript

of an unpublished contemporary manuscript which exists in the library

of Don Pascual de Gayangos at Madrid, written by a Castilian resident

in Lisbon at the time of the invasion, containing a detailed diary of

the event.[5] This manuscript, I believe, has never yet received the

attention it deserves from historians, but it is nevertheless valuable

as confirming in the main the English accounts, but relating the

incidents from an entirely different point of view. I have also

recently discovered in the Pombalina Library in Lisbon still another

contemporary manuscript diary of the English invasion, written by a

Portuguese gentleman in Lisbon who was present at the scenes he

describes, and whose standpoint is widely different from those of the

Castilian and the Englishman.[6] The Spaniard {12} is full of scorn

and contempt for the chicken-hearted Portuguese in Lisbon who, though

sympathising with the native pretender, slunk into hiding at his

approach; whilst the Portuguese diarist insists vehemently upon the

loyalty of the Portuguese nobles to Philip, and ascribes the

instability of the common people to their weakness and incredulity, to

their fear of the anger of Saint Antonio if they opposed his namesake

the pretender, to their desire to protect their wives and families, to

any other reason but the obvious one that high and low, rich and poor,

in the city were in a state of trembling panic from first to last,

utterly cowed and appalled by the few Spaniards whom they hated as much

as they feared.

In 1578, ten years before the Armada, the rash young King Sebastian of

Portugal had disappeared for ever from the ken of men on the Moorish

battlefield which had seen the opening and closing of his mad crusade.

For centuries afterwards the Portuguese peasants dreamt of his

triumphant return to lead to victory the hosts of Christendom. But he

came not, unless indeed one of the many claimants who long afterwards

assumed his name was indeed he; and in the meanwhile, when his uncle,

the childless Cardinal King Henry, died, Portugal wanted a monarch.

It had a large choice of descendants of Dom Manoel, grandfather of the

lost Sebastian, but the Magna Charta of the Portuguese, the laws of

Lamego (apocryphal as we now believe them to have been), were then

universally accepted, and strictly excluded {13} foreigners from the

throne; and all the claimants were aliens but two, the Duchess of

Braganza, daughter of the elder son of Dom Manoel, and doubtless the

rightful heiress; and Dom Antonio, a churchman, prior of Ocrato, the

questionably legitimate offspring of Manoel's second son.

When the Cardinal King died in 1580, Philip II., who for two years had

been intriguing, suborning, and threatening the leading Portuguese to

acknowledge his right to the succession, stretched out his hand to

grasp the coveted crown. Of the two native claimants one, the Duchess

of Braganza, was timid and unready; the other, Dom Antonio, was

ambitious, bold, and eager. Around him all that was patriotic grouped

itself. The poorer classes bitterly hated the foreigner, and

particularly the Spaniard, whose King was really the only other serious

claimant to the throne. The churchmen were devotedly attached to the

ecclesiastical claimant, the nobles were Portuguese before all, and

Antonio was acclaimed the national sovereign. But not for long; the

terrible Alba swept down upon Lisbon, as years before he had come down

upon the Netherlands, and crushed the life out of Portuguese

patriotism. There was no religious question to stiffen men's backs,

and no William of Orange to command them here. The Portuguese were

made of different stuff from the stubborn Dutchmen, and Alba rode

roughshod over them with but little resistance. Antonio was soon a

fugitive, hunted from town to town, holding out for weeks in one

fortress, only to be starved into another; proclaimed a bastard and a

rebel, with a great price set upon his head; and yet for eight long

months he wandered amongst the mountain {14} peasantry, as safe from

betrayal as was Charles Edward amongst the Scots Highlanders. At last

Antonio gave up the game and fled to France, and thence to England. He

came in July, 1581, and was immediately made much of by the Queen and

Leicester. In vain did Mendoza, Philip's ambassador, demand his

surrender as a rebel. The Queen said she had not quite made up her

mind to help him, but she had quite decided that she would not

surrender him to be killed. He was too valuable a card in her hand for

her to let him go, and she made the most of him. He was treated with

royal honours, and covert aid was given to him to strengthen the

Azores, which were faithful to him. He had taken the precaution to

bring away the crown jewels of Portugal with him, the spoils of the two

Indies, but he had no money. The greedy crew that surrounded the Queen

soon scented plunder, and money for warlike preparations, the purchase

of ships, and the like, was speedily forthcoming on security of

diamonds and pearls such as had rarely been seen in England. Elizabeth

and Leicester, in presents and by a quibble, managed to grab some of

the best; and most of those pledged to the London merchants ultimately

fell into the Queen's hands.[7] {15} Some were left with Walsingham for

safety, but when they were demanded Walsingham alleged that he was

personally responsible for some provisions Antonio had ordered, and

made difficulties about giving them up. So long as the money lasted

Antonio might spend it in England and leave his diamonds, but some

specious excuse was always invented to prevent any openly hostile

expedition to attack Philip leaving an English port under Antonio's

banner. The rascally Dr. Lopez, who was afterwards hanged at Tyburn

for attempting to poison the Queen, was Dom Antonio's go-between and

interpreter at Court, and he, greedy scamp as he was, made a good thing

out of it until the money began to run short, when, in his usual way,

he sold his knowledge to Philip, and attempted more than once to poison

the unhappy Pretender. Antonio, indeed, was surrounded by spies though

he knew it not,[8] but he found he was being frustrated, betrayed, and

defrauded in every way in England, and his precious jewels the

meanwhile were slipping away. So, in dudgeon with the greedy English,

he fled to France and took {16} such of his vessels as he could gain

possession of with him. Catharine de Medici, the Queen-mother, was,

for form's sake, a claimant to the Portuguese throne herself, but her

shadowy claim was soon abandoned when she had an opportunity of

cherishing such a thorn as Antonio promised to be in the side of her

powerful late son-in-law Philip. Antonio still had jewels, and whilst

they lasted he was treated with consideration and regal splendour in

that gay and dissolute Court. He certainly got more return for them

there than he got in England. Many were scattered in bribes amongst

the easy-going ladies and painted mignons of the Court, and most of the

rest went to pay for two costly naval expeditions fitted out in France

in the Queen-mother's name, to enable Antonio to hold the islands

faithful to him.[9] But Santa Cruz swooped down upon Terceira as Alba

had pounced upon Lisbon, and the merry-making crew of revellers was

soon disposed of. Then poor Antonio fell upon evil days. The

emissaries of Philip, false friends of Antonio, tried time after time

to put him out of the way by poison and the dagger, but he was ever on

the watch; and for help and safety, still sanguine and hopeful, drifted

from France to England and from England to France, {17} the plaything

in the game alternately of Elizabeth and Catharine, to be taken up or

cast aside as the interests of the players dictated.

Philip's open attempt to invade England in 1588 seemed once more to

offer him a chance of success, and his hopes rose again. One gem, and

one only, of all the rich store he brought from Portugal was left to

him; but that was the most precious of them all, the eighth greatest

diamond in the world, the chief ornament in the Russian imperial crown

to-day.[10] It was his last stake, and he decided to risk it on his

chance. It was pledged to Monsieur de Sancy, whose name it ever

afterwards bore, and with the money so raised Antonio started for

England to tempt Elizabeth to link his desperate cause with her hopes

of revenge upon Spain.

This was in the autumn of the Armada year, 1588, and, all unconscious

of his vile treachery to him, Antonio once more evoked Lopez's

influence at Court to gain the ear of the Queen and the support of his

close friend Walsingham. The venal Jew, who was for ever craving

rewards and favours, persuaded the Queen, no doubt for a weighty

consideration, to listen anew to the pretender's proposals.[11]

{18}

The adventurer-king was confident that if he could once set foot again

in his own country with an armed force the whole population would flock

to his standard, and he was ready to promise anything, and everything,

for the help he wanted. Already in 1582, when Catharine de Medici had

aided him to fit out the fleet under Strozzi at Bordeaux which was to

hold Terceira and restore Antonio to the throne, the desperate gamester

had promised her the great empire of Brazil as a reward for her help;

and now, if my Spanish diarist is to be believed, he offered to make

himself a mere vassal of Elizabeth if he were successful.

In the Record Office there is a bond by which Antonio undertakes, in

February, 1589, to reimburse to the adventurers all the cost of the

enterprise and the pay of the soldiers, but the Spanish manuscript

gives the substance of an agreement between Dom Antonio and the Queen

which promises much more than mere repayment. The diarist I quote

says:--

"The Queen, cautious and astute as she was, caught at the fine promises

that Dom Antonio held out and insisted that an agreement should be

entered into; which was done, in substance as set forth in the

following clauses. This agreement was brought, written in the English

language, by a certain Portuguese named Diego Rodriguez who {19} came

hither as treasurer to this expedition and passed over to the service

of our lord the King on the eleventh of June. The clauses, translated

into Castilian, say as follows:--

"First her Majesty the Queen of England undertakes to provide a fleet

of one hundred and twenty vessels and twenty thousand men--15,000

soldiers and 5,000 sailors--with captains for both services, to go and

restore Dom Antonio to the throne of Portugal.

"Dom Antonio undertakes that within eight days from the arrival of the

said fleet in Portugal the whole country will submit to him in

accordance with the letters he has received from the principal people

in the said kingdom.

"Item, That on arriving in Lisbon the city will be reduced at once

without any defence and all Castilians in it killed and destroyed, and,

for the friendship and aid thus shown him in recovering his kingdom, he

undertakes to fulfil the following things--namely:--

"First that within two months of his arrival in Lisbon he will hand to

her Majesty the Queen as an aid to the costs of the fleet five millions

in gold.

"Item, In testimony of the help she has given him he will pay every

year to the Queen for ever three hundred thousand ducats in gold,

placed and paid in London at his cost.

"Item, That the English should have full liberty to trade and travel in

Portugal and the Portuguese Indies and the Portuguese equal freedom in

England.

"Item, That if the Queen should not desire to fit out a fleet against

the King of Spain in England {20} she shall be at liberty to do so in

Lisbon and shall be helped in all that may be necessary.

"Item, That the castles of São Gian, Torre de Belem, Capariza, Oton,

São Felipe, Oporto, Coimbra and the other Portuguese fortresses shall

be perpetually occupied by English soldiers paid at the cost of Dom

Antonio.

"Item, That there shall be perpetual peace between her Majesty the

Queen and Dom Antonio and they shall mutually help each other on all

occasions without excuse of any sort.

"Item, That all the Bishoprics and Archbishoprics in Portugal shall be

filled by English Catholics and the Archbishopric of Lisbon shall be at

once filled by the appointment of Monsieur de la Torques (_sic_).

"Item, On arriving at Lisbon every infantry man shall receive twelve

months pay, and three extra, as a present from Dom Antonio and they

shall be allowed to sack the city for twelve days, on condition that no

man of any rank shall presume to harm any Portuguese or molest the

churches or houses wherein maidens are dwelling; and also that they pay

in money for whatever they may need in the country. Which agreement

her Majesty ordered to be duly executed under date of last day of

December 1588."[12]

The Spanish scribe waxes very indignant at this document, showing, as

he says it does, the sagacity of the Queen and the blind infatuation of

Dom Antonio, {21} "who gives up the substance for the shadow of

kingship, and is content to make the Portuguese subjects slaves so that

he shall be called King." But he is most shocked at the sacrifice to

this "pestilent sect" of the two instincts clearest to the Portuguese

heart, namely, devotion to their Church and their greed of gain; the

first of which, he says, will be destroyed by relationship with the

accursed heretics, and the second attacked by the substitution for "our

lord the king who does not spend a maravedi of Portuguese money, but

brings Castilian money into Portugal," of a King who has promised to

pay away more than the Portuguese can ever give him. "And besides," he

says, plaintively, "we Castilians and Portuguese are not so estranged

in blood of boundaries after all, for only a line divides us, and if it

be hard for the Portuguese to endure connection with their Castilian

kinsmen who bring riches into the country and take nothing from it how

much worse will it be to put up with a nation so greedy and insolent as

the English, separated from them by land and sea, and foreign to them

in customs, language, faith and laws?"

He ridicules the idea of five millions (of ducats) in gold being paid,

and says he supposes that a mistake of a nought has been made, which

probably was the case; but even then, he asks, where is such a sum as

500,000 ducats to come from, "let alone the 15 months' pay"? However

correct or otherwise in detail this agreement may be, it is certain

that some such terms were made, and it may be safely assumed that

Elizabeth, with her keen eye to the main chance, would take care to

make the best bargain she could out of the sanguine eagerness {22} of

Dom Antonio, who would be ready to promise "mounts and marvels" for

ready aid.[13] My Portuguese diarist also ridicules the impossible

terms promised by the Pretender, but adds the false finishing-touch,

evidently spread by the Castilians for the purpose of arousing the

indignation and resistance of the Portuguese, that the churches were to

be plundered and the Portuguese inhabitants of Lisbon despoiled.

It would appear strange at first sight that Elizabeth should have made

any proviso for the benefit of English Catholics whom she had sometimes

treated so unmercifully, but on other occasions she had favoured the

idea of English Catholic settlements being established across the seas

under her sway; and the great body of Catholic sympathisers resident in

England had not acted altogether unpatriotically in the hour of panic

and terror on the threat of invasion. It would, therefore, not have

been an impolitic move to earn their gratitude and further loyalty by

opening a new field for them outside of her own country but, in a

manner, under her control.

On the 23rd of February, 1589,[14] the Queen issued a warrant of her

instructions for the expedition, {23} appointing Sir John Morris[15]

and Sir Francis Drake to the chief command thereof, and in it lays down

precise rules for their guidance. She says that the objects of the

expedition are two: namely, first to distress the King of Spain's

ships, and second to get possession of some of the Azores, in order to

intercept treasure passing to and from the East and West Indies. Also

to assist the King Dom Antonio to recover the kingdom of Portugal, "_if

it shall be found the public voice in the kingdom be favourable to

him_."

On the same date authority was given to Norris and Drake to issue

warrants to the adventurers for their shares in the enterprise; and the

Queen herself undertook to repay them if the expedition were stopped at

her instance. Courtiers and swashbucklers touted their hardest for

subscriptions to this joint-stock warfare, and pressure was put upon

country gentlemen to subscribe liberally as a proof of their

patriotism--a pressure not to be disregarded in those doubtful

times.[16] The Queen's subscription ultimately reached £20,000,

besides seven ships of the Royal Navy. Promises of money and arms were

forthcoming in abundance, and flocks of idlers, high and low, offered

their valuable services. The scum of the towns, the sweepings of the

jails, were pressed for the voyage, and Pricket (or Wingfield), {24} in

his apology for the expedition, lays most of the blame of failure on

the kind of men they had, and complains bitterly of the justices and

mayors sending them "base disordered persons sent unto us as living at

home without rule." He says many idle young men, having seen their

fellows come back after a few months in the Netherlands full of their

brave deeds and tales of the wars, "thought to follow so good an

example and to spend like time amongst us," and finding soldiering a

harder trade than they had bargained for, were not likely to make good

troops.

The misfortunes of the enterprise began before it was fairly launched.

As may be supposed, promises of support, given under such circumstances

as those which I have described, were hardly likely to be strictly

kept, and the performance in this case fell far short. Pricket (or

Wingfield) bemoans this as follows: "For hath not the want of 8 out of

the 12 pieces of Artillerie which was promised unto the adventure lost

her Majestie the possession of the Groyne and many other places as

hereafter shall appeare whose defensible rampiers were greater than our

batterie (such as it was) could force and therefore were lost

unattempted. It was also resolved to send 600 English horse out of the

Low Countries whereof we had not one, notwithstanding the great charge

expended in their transportation hither.... Did wee not want seaven of

the thirteene old Companies we should have had from thence? foure of

the ten Dutch Companies and sixe of their men-of-warre for the sea from

the Hollanders? which I may justly say we wanted in that we might have

had so many good souldiers, {25} so many good shippes, and so many able

bodies more than we had.

"Did there not, upon the first thinking of the journey, divers gallant

courtiers put in their names for adventurers to the summe of £10,000,

who seeing it went not forward in good earnest, advised themselves

better and laid the want of so much money on the journey?"

But the expedition was got together somehow. Men were cajoled into the

belief that they were going on a great plundering excursion, and would

soon return home again loaded, as Wingfield says, with "Portogues" and

"Milrayes" which should make them independent for life. There were no

surgeons, no carriages for the hurt and sick, and from the first the

discipline was of the loosest. Provisions were said to be shipped for

two months, but in some of the ships the men declared they were starved

from the first day.

Even amongst contemporaries much difference of statement exists as to

the number of ships and men that composed the expedition, although this

difference is partly accounted for by a fact which will presently be

mentioned, and which has hitherto escaped notice. We should probably

not be far out when we put the number of soldiers who left Plymouth at

about 16,000 and the sailors at 2,500.[17] {26} Of the men-at-arms all

but the three or four thousand old soldiers, mostly from the Netherland

wars, were idle vagabonds whose first idea was loot and whose last was

fighting. In addition to these there were 1,200 gentlemen or more, the

flotsam and jetsam of the Court, younger sons of slender fortunes, and

gallants whose hearts were aflame to do good service to their country.

Seven[18] of the bravest of the Queen's ships, of three hundred tons

burden each, twenty other armed ships, and a large number of transports

and galleys of light draft, would have completed the fleet, but sixty

German smacks and sloops, which had been wintering in Holland on their

way to Spain, were pressed into the service and added to the number,

which finally reached nearly two hundred sail. The 1st of February was

the date originally fixed for starting, but when that date arrived

nothing was ready but the army of idlers, who wanted feeding, so that

when the fleet could have sailed it was found that most of the stores

had been consumed, and in some ships not a week's provision remained.

Money ran short, and Drake and Norris wrote, day after day, {27} during

all the month of March and first two weeks in April, heartrending

letters to the Council and to Walsingham. The provisions were run out,

they said; the enterprise must fall through if help be not sent at

once. They point out the dishonour and disgrace of such a lame ending,

and again and again beg for more provisions.

The innkeepers and victuallers of Canterbury, Southampton, Winchester,

Plymouth, and elsewhere wrote dunning letters to the Queen for money

due for stores supplied. The Dutch shipmasters commanding the flyboat

transports contributed by the States formally protested and refused to

put to sea with such insufficient provender as they had; and, just as

it looked as if the expedition would break down for good, there came

providentially into the harbour a Flemish ship with a cargo of dried

herrings, another with five hundred pipes of wine, and above all a

sloop loaded with barley. These provisions were promptly transferred

to the fleet to the dismay of the masters, who protested for many a day

afterwards, fruitlessly, against the confiscation of their cargoes.

The expedition was declared ready for sea, but then came tales of

contrary winds that kept them in and out of harbour for several days

more; and one day, whilst they were thus detained, the Queen's kinsman,

Knollys, comes post haste from London. Had anybody seen or heard

anything of the young Earl of Essex, the Queen's last new pet?

Curiously enough nobody had, although only the day before a party of

young gallants had dashed into Plymouth from London all dusty and

travel-stained, and had been received with open arms by the courtiers

and {28} officers on the fleet. Hot-blooded Essex, with all the

thoughtlessness of his twenty-two years, tired of sickly dallying with

an old lady and of squabbling with Raleigh, tired of his debts, his

duns and duties as prime favourite, had made up his mind to see some

fun, and had fled against the Queen's orders. No one had seen him of

course, but the _Swiftsure_, with Sir Roger Williams, the general

second in command of the army, mysteriously left the harbour as soon as

Knollys had told his tale. But a few hours later the Earl of

Huntingdon came with warrants of arrest and all manner of peremptory

papers, and Drake saw the matter was serious. Boats were sent scouring

after the _Swiftsure_, but could get no news of the missing earl. The

other ships stayed in Plymouth ten days longer for a fair wind, but the

_Swiftsure_ came back no more until the expedition was at an end.

Drake and Norris wrote nearly every day until they sailed disclaiming

any knowledge of Essex or his intention to join the force, and

expressing their deep sorrow; but the Queen did not believe them, and

from that time had nothing but hard words and sour looks for an

adventure that had robbed her of her favourite. At length, on the 13th

of April 1589, (O.S.), the expedition finally left Plymouth, but even

then it was only a feint in order that the men might be kept together

and not stray on shore and get out of hand. "The crosse windes held us

two daies after our going out, the Generalls being wearie thrust to sea

in the same wisely chosing rather to attend a change out there than to

lose it when it came by having their men on shoare."

Knocking about in the Channel in bad weather {29} was, however, not to

the taste of some of the ruffians who thought they were bound over

summer seas to a paradise of plunder; and three thousand men in

twenty-five ships, probably most of them owned by the recalcitrant

Dutchmen, deserted and were heard of no more--at least so far as the

expedition was concerned. This desertion to some extent explains the

divergence between the accounts given of the numbers of the expedition.

The rest of the fleet on the third day caught a fair wind and stretched

across the Bay of Biscay in fine spring weather. They were four days

before their eyes were gladdened by the sight of Cape Finisterra, but

in the week they had been at sea their provisions were running out.

Murmurs at the short commons were heard on all the ships, and it was

seen that the only way to keep the scratch crews from open mutiny was

to give them a chance of plunder.

So, instead of obeying the Queen's strict injunctions--for Drake was a

far better hand at commanding than obeying--and landing poor Dom

Antonio on the country he assured them was yearning for him, they bore

down upon Corunna, on the north-west coast of Spain. For months before

this, as the difficulties attending the fitting out of a new Armada

became more evident, terror-stricken rumours had pervaded Spain that

the dreaded Drake, who had now become a sort of supernatural bogey to

the Spanish people, was about to descend upon this or the other place

on the coast and wreak a terrible vengeance for the Armada. Early in

January even false news came to Madrid that an English fleet had

appeared outside Santander, and {30} at the end of the month the

Venetian ambassador in Madrid writes to his Doge that news had just

arrived from Lisbon that forty sail of English ships were out, divided

into squadrons of eight or ten ships each, and were doing much damage.

It was feared, he said, that they would all unite under Drake and make

an attempt first upon Portugal and then will go to the Azores, and

finally to the Indies. The fitting out in Spain of fifty ships to

protect the seas was hurried on; but, says the Venetian, "it is thought

that two months must elapse before they can be ready, and then one does

not see what they can do against such light ships as the enemy's."

Philip was dangerously ill and sick at heart. Fear reigned supreme in

his councils--fear that Drake the terrible would ravage the coasts

whilst Henry of Navarre crossed the Pyrenees. The Portuguese nobles

were known to be disaffected, and a rising in favour of Dom Antonio was

feared. Philip, with the energy of despair, did what he could, ill as

he was, immersed in mountains of papers dealing with trivial detail.

But he could do little. The Portuguese nobles who were at all doubtful

were ordered to come to Madrid, the Spanish grandees were enjoined to

raise and arm their followers and hold themselves in readiness to march

either towards the Pyrenees or to Lisbon. Then rumours came that the

Moorish King of Fez was to act in concert with the English, and seize

the Spanish possessions on the African coast opposite Gibraltar.

It will thus be seen in the distracted condition of affairs that Spain

was practically defenceless against a sudden descent on the coast, but

most {31} defenceless of all at the extremely remote north-west corner

of Spain, where Drake decided to land. The fear was mostly for

Portugal, where, we are told, "the population is so impatient of the

present rule that neither the severity of penalties, garrisons of

soldiers, nor the ability of governors have succeeded in quieting the

contumacious spirits. This causes a dread lest Drake who is acquainted

with those waters may furnish pretexts for fresh risings and they (the

Spaniards) wish to be ready to crush them."[19] The troops they

raised, says the Venetian ambassador, were inferior in quality of

horses and men: raw levies pressed unwillingly into the service, whilst

Portugal was in violent and open commotion awaiting the arrival of

Drake the deliverer.

But whilst all panic-stricken regards were directed upon Portugal,

Drake and his joint-stock Armada suddenly appeared where they were

least expected, before Corunna, and cast anchor; and the men, nothing

loath, were put on shore in a little bay within a mile of the town.

There was no one to stay their landing, and they had come nearly to the

gates before a hasty muster of townsfolk met them. These, all

unprepared and surprised as they were, soon retreated when they saw the

force that was coming against them, and shut themselves up behind the

gates and walls of the town. The place was weak and ill-garrisoned,

commanded by the Marquis de Cerralba, and could not hope to hold out

against a regular siege, but there were three galleons loaded with arms

in the harbour, which the new commander-in-chief in Madrid, Alba's son

Fernando, said would be a much greater loss than the town {32} itself.

The English slept the first night in the cottages and mills belonging

to a hamlet on the bank of one of the small streams discharging into

the bay, and out of gunshot of the walls. They were, however, quite

unmolested by the terrified townsfolk, although the galleon San Juan

and her consorts in the harbour kept up a fire upon them as they passed

to and fro.

The place indeed was utterly taken by surprise. The Cortes of Galicia

were in session at the time, the people peacefully pursuing their

ordinary avocations; the soldiers of the garrison were nearly all on

furlough, scattered over the province; "and, in short, every one was so

far from expecting an attack that they had no time to turn the useless

out of the town nor put their dearest possessions in safety." The wife

and daughter, indeed, of the Governor Cerralba at the first alarm fled

in their terror two leagues on foot, through the night, to a place of

safety, but after that none dared to move. The lower part of the town

fronting the harbour was protected on the land side only by weak walls,

and was unfit for protracted defence. The townspeople therefore agreed

that if the place were attacked on the water side it would be

untenable, and arranged that as soon as those in the higher town on the

hill should espy the English boats approaching they were to signal the

low town by a fire, so that the people below might make their escape to

the better defensible upper portion of the town. Some artillery was

landed by the English to stop the fire of the Spanish ships, and on the

morning of the second day the town was attacked simultaneously by 1,200

men in long boats and pinnaces under Captain Fenner and {33} Colonel

Huntly; and by Colonels Brett and Umpton on one side, and Captains

Richard Wingfield and Sampson on the other by escalade. The people in

the upper town, either from panic or oversight, neglected to give the

signal, and those below, thinking they had only to deal with an

escalade on their walls by Captain Wingfield, fought desperately until

they found two other forces had entered at other points, and then panic

seized them, and, as Pricket (or Wingfield) describes it, "The towne

was entered in three severall places; with an huge crie, the

inhabitants betooke them to the high towne which they might with less

perrill doo for that ours being strangers knew not the way to cut them

off. The rest that were not put to the sword in furie fled to the

rockes in the iland and hid themselves in chambers and sellers which

were everie day found out in great numbers." A perfect saturnalia

seems to have been thereupon indulged in by the English troops. Here

was the fruition of all their golden dreams--a flying, panic-stricken

foe, ample provisions to loot and to waste, and, above all, wine

without limit. "Some others (_i.e._, Spaniards) also found favour to

bee taken prisoners but the rest falling into the hands of the common

soldiers had their throates cut to the number of 500.... Everie seller

was found full of wine whereupon our men by inordinate drinking both

grewe senseless of the danger of the shot of the towne which hurt many

of them, being druncke, and took the first ground of their sickness,

for of such was our first and chiefest mortalitie."

Great stores of provisions were found in the lower town, and many were

also captured as they were {34} brought in by Spanish ships. These

provisions were alleged by the English to have been collected for the

purpose of a new attack on England, and it is quite probable that such

was the case, although the evidence on the point is insufficient. At

all events, the destruction of these stores is the only act which in

any sense justified the expedition sent out by the adventurers.[20]

The next few days were spent by the invaders in desultory attacks on

the upper town, burning a monastery and scouring the country round by

Colonel Huntly, who "brought home verie great store of cowes and sheep

to our great reliefe." A great crowd of country people, two thousand

strong, came down with a run one day, armed with rough weapons, to see

what manner of men were these who raided their cattle and burned their

poor huts, but a discharge of musketry killed eighteen of them and sent

the rest scampering away.[21] On "our side" we hear of an improvised

gabion battery being shaken down by the first fire, and Master Spenser,

the lieutenant of the ordnance, and many others killed by the enemy's

guns as they stood all exposed. But brave Sir Edward Norris held his

ground manfully {35} until his orders came to cease firing and retire.

Captain Goodwin makes a mistake of a signal and prematurely attacks the

upper town, getting shot through the mouth as a reward, and the "common

sort" drop off by drink, pestilence, and bullet plentifully enough, but

unrecorded. Norris and Drake sent home by Knollys flaming accounts of

their success, and still asked for more provisions from England and

more money; but Queen Bess was in a towering rage, and was not to be

appeased. She could not forget or forgive the loss of her favourite.

Raleigh and Blount were very well in their way, but she wanted Essex,

and suspected Drake and Norris of being parties to his escape. On the

4th of May (O.S.) she wrote to them a remarkable letter, showing that

she had tidings of Essex's being on board the _Swiftsure_, and

demanding dire vengeance on Sir Roger Williams, who helped to hide

him.[22]

{36}

After four days of fruitless pottering the troops were presumably sober

enough to attempt an attack upon the upper town, and the guns being

pointed against it, the general sent a drummer to summon it to

surrender before he opened fire. The summons was answered by a

musket-shot that laid the poor drummer low, but immediately afterwards

a pole was projected over the town wall, and from it there dangled a

man hanged by the neck. This was the man who had fired the dastard

shot. And then the Spaniards called a parley, and begged that the war

might be fair on both sides, as it certainly should be on theirs.

Considering that five hundred of their brethren had their throats cut

ruthlessly, after they had submitted, this was magnanimous at least;

"but as for surrendering the towne, they listened not greatly

thereunto."

So Norris banged away with his cannon for three days to make a breach

in the wall of the high town, and at the same time set men to work to

bore a mine in the rock beneath the gate, and at the end of the time,

all being in readiness, and his men, under the gallant brothers

Wingfield, with Philpot, Sampson, and York, waiting to storm the two

breaches, the mine turned out a dismal failure, and {37} nothing was

done. The next day they tried again, and this time with such success

that one half of the gate tower was blown up, and the other half left

tottering. On rushed the assailants. Some few got into the town, but

as the officers and their immediate followers set foot on the breach

and waved their men onward, down came the other half of the tower upon

them, and crushed them beneath the ruins. Two standards were lost, but

captured again, and scores of men were killed. In the dust and terror

the unpractised soldiery thought they were the victims of some

stratagem of the enemy and fled, leaving the officers and gentlemen

volunteers to extricate themselves as best they could. Poor Captain

Sydenham "was pitifully lost, who having three or foure great stones on

his lower parts was held so fast, as neither himself could stirre, nor

anie reasonable companie recover him. Notwithstanding the next day

being found to be alive there was 10 or 12 lost in attempting to

relieve him."

On the other side of the town the breach made in the walls by the

culverins was too small, and when brave Yorke had led his men to push

of pike with those who stood in the breach, the slope of rubbish on

which they mounted suddenly slipped down, and left them six feet below

the opening, and so they had to retreat too, through a narrow lane

exposed to the full fire of the enemy, and thus the attack failed at

both points.

In the meanwhile all Galicia was arming, and a prisoner brought in by

the cattle raiders gave news that the Count de Andrada, with 8,000 men,

was at Puente de Burgos, six miles off, which was {38} said to be only

the beginning of a great army being got together by the Count de

Altamira. On the next day, May 6th, it was determined to attack them,

and nine regiments of English marched out to the fray. The vanguard,

under Sir Edward Norris, was divided into three bodies under Captains

Middleton, Antony Wingfield, and Ethrington, respectively, and attacked

the enemy in the centre and both flanks simultaneously, routing them at

the first charge. They only stopped running when they came to a

fortified bridge over a creek of the sea, on the other side of which

was their entrenched camp. Sir Edward Norris, with Colonel Sidney, and

Captains Fulford, Hinder and others, always in front, fought hand to

hand over the bridge and into the trenches, under "an incredible volie

of shot for that the shot of their armie flanked upon both sides of the

bridge." But the earthworks were soon abandoned, and Sir Edward

Norris, in his very eagerness to be first, tumbled over his pike and

hurt his head grievously. The officers of the vanguard were nearly all

more or less hurt, but when the enemy had fled the usual amusement of

the "common sort" commenced. All round for miles the country was burnt

and spoiled, and the flying countrymen were slaughtered without mercy

or quarter. "So many as 2,000 men might kill in pursuit, so many fell

before us that day"; and after that was over and the men were

returning, hundreds of cowering peasants were found hidden in hedges

and vineyards, and their "throates" were cut. Two hundred poor

creatures took refuge in a "cloyster," which was burned and the men put

to the sword as they tried to escape. "You might {39} have scene the

countrie more than three miles of compasse on fyre," says the English

eye-witness, and he grows quite hysterical in his laudation of the

English valour; but the Spanish accounts tell how the Netherlands wars,

and the fears for Portugal and the French frontier, had denuded all

north-western Spain of soldiers, Count de Andrada's force only being a

hasty levy of undrilled and practically unarmed countrymen, who were

easily routed.

The next day the English began to ship their artillery and baggage and

made ready to depart, after again unsuccessfully trying to fire the

upper town. They managed indeed to burn down every house in the lower

town, and they set sail on May 9 (O.S.), 1589.

In the meanwhile utter dismay reigned at Madrid. What was left of the

fleet was acknowledged to be powerless for defence, and none knew for

certain where the blow was to fall. The accounts from Corunna were

intercepted by the Government, and were surmised to be worse than they

really were; but still the general opinion was not far out in supposing

that Drake could not do much permanent harm on the open places on the

coast, but would eventually attack either Lisbon or Cadiz. Fernando de

Toledo was appointed commander-in-chief, but soldiers could not be got

together.[23] Pietro de Medici was hastily ordered to raise 6,000

mercenaries in Italy; and Contarini writes from Madrid to the Doge: "It

is true that for want {40} of soldiers they have adopted a plan which

may prove more hurtful than helpful; they have enrolled Portuguese, and

so have armed the very people whom they have cause to fear, but perhaps

they think that as they have destroyed the leaders they have made

themselves safe."

Norris was almost as much dreaded as Drake himself, and his skill and

daring suggested to the terrified Court that he might intend to cut

through the neck of land upon which Corunna stands, and entirely

isolate the town, which he might then make into a great depot for an

English fleet. Philip, we are told, was in great anxiety, "not so much

on account of the loss he suffers as for the insult which he feels that

he has received in the fact that a woman, mistress of only half an

island, with the help of a corsair and a common soldier, should have

ventured on so arduous an enterprise, and dared to molest so powerful a

sovereign."

The bitterest blow of all to Philip was the knowledge that Spain's

impotence was now patent to the world, and that the mere presence of

Drake was sufficient to paralyse all resistance. When the English

force re-embarked at Corunna, says Contarini, they were not even

molested, so glad were the besieged to be rid of him at any cost.

"Whilst Drake was at Corunna he was so strongly entrenched that he

suffered no loss at all. If he had remained a few days longer the

place would have fallen for the reliefs were not as ready as was

rumoured. Drake occupied the place called the fishmarket. He knocked

down houses, seized cattle, killed soldiers, released officers on

ransom, and by pillage of the suburbs and the burning of monasteries

seemed to {41} care more for plunder than for glory."[24] As we have

seen, in fact, Drake's sole reason for going to Corunna at all against

his mistress' orders was to satisfy with loot the mutinous rabble on

board his ships, but of this the Spaniards were naturally ignorant.

The fleet sailed out of Corunna on the 9th of May, leaving smoking

ruins behind them for many miles around; but contrary winds drove the

ships back again and again. At last, on the 13th of May, the truant

_Swiftsure_ hove in sight, "to the great delight of us all," bringing

the Earl of Essex, Sir Roger Williams, Master Walter Devereux ("the

Earl's brother, a gentleman of wonderful great hope"), Sir Philip

Butler ("who hath always been most inward with him"), and Sir Edward

Wingfield.

However glad the men of lower rank may have been to see the dashing

young nobleman, Drake and Norris can hardly have been overjoyed. They

knew by this time that Elizabeth was in earnest about it, and that the

purse-strings would be drawn tighter, and the censure be stricter,

whilst her errant favourite was with the expedition; and some inkling

of this even reached the writer of the English account of the

expedition. "The Earle," he says, "having put himself into the journey

against the opinion of the world, and as it seemed, to the hazard of

his great fortune, though to the great advancement of his reputation

(for as the honourable carriage of himself towards all men doth make

him highlie esteemed at home, so did his exceeding forwardness in all

services make him to be wondered {42} at amongst us) who I say put off

... because he would avoide the importunity of messengers that were

daily sent for his return and some other causes more secret to himself."

The earl's first request was that he should always be allowed to lead

the vanguard of the army; "which was easilie granted unto him, being so

desirous to satisfie him in all things": and thenceforward to the end

of the expedition he marched at the head with Major-General Sir Roger

Williams, who seemed, by the way, "not one penny the worse" for her

Majesty's anathemas.

Early in the afternoon of May 16th (O.S.) the fleet cautiously

approached the town of Peniche, in Portugal. Drake had learnt on his

way that a great galleon from the Indies with a million crowns in gold

had taken refuge under the guns of the fortress, and doubtless hoped to

net so big a prize. But the Archduke Albert in Lisbon was also looking

anxiously for the gold, and sent his galleys, under Bazan, to bring the

galleon into the Tagus just before the arrival of the English at

Peniche. The town of Peniche was held by Gonsalves de Ateide with a

body of Portuguese who could not be trusted, and some Castilian

reinforcements sent to him under Pedro de Guzman; but the fortress was

commanded by a Captain Araujo, who was known to be secretly in favour

of Dom Antonio. Here it was determined to land the force, and Ateide

drew up his men at the landing-place before the fortress and opened

fire upon the ships as they entered the bay. On the other side of the

harbour, half a league off, the surf was running high, and a landing

there was looked {43} upon as impracticable, so that the shore was left

undefended. Suddenly, when least expected by the Spaniards, Norris

began to land his men on this side. Hot-headed Essex would not even

wait for his boat to reach land, but jumped into the beating surf

breast high with Sir Roger Williams and a band of gentlemen, and so

struggled ashore to protect the landing of the rest. By the time

Ateide and his 350 Castilians had reached the spot 2,000 English had

landed on the beach of Consolation as it was called. Some slight show

of resistance was made, and fifteen Spaniards fell at the push of the

English pike; but the Castilians were out-numbered and nearly

surrounded, and were forced to retire precipitately inland to a

neighbouring hamlet to await reinforcements from Torres Vedras. When

Norris had landed 12,000 or 13,000 men, with the loss of several

boatloads in the surf, but without further molestation from the

Spaniards, he summoned the Portuguese commandant of the fortress to

surrender. He replied that he refused to surrender to the English, but

would willingly do so to his lawful king, Dom Antonio. So the poor

pretender, "bigger of spirit than of body," landed with his son Manoel,

and his faithful bodyguard of a hundred Portuguese, to be received once

more on his own land as a sovereign. He found all things ready for

him: his canopy of state erected, plate for his table set out, and

kneeling subjects seeking for his smiles. He spoke smoothly and

fairly, we are told, to the country people, taking nothing from them,

but giving, or at least promising, much, and assuring them all of his

protection.

But if their new sovereign was chary of {44} oppressing them, no such

scruples afflicted their Castilian masters. My Portuguese diarist says

that the Spaniards retaliated for Araujo's treachery in surrendering

Peniche by stealing everything belonging to the Portuguese they could

lay their hands upon, and he cites one case in which they took the

large sum of two thousand crowns from one of the most influential

friends of the Spanish cause. "But," he says, apologetically, "in

confused times such as these soldiers _will_ act so."

Dom Antonio's bodyguard was armed with muskets and pikes from the

castle, and here the poor King kept his rough-and-ready Court for two

days. He was tenacious of his regal dignity, and had many a little

wrangle with the English about the scant ceremony with which they

treated him. But greater disappointments were yet in store for him.

The friars and peasants flocked in to salute their native king, but,

alas, Antonio hoped and looked in vain for the coming of the lords and

gentry from whom he expected so much. Wily Philip had been once more

too cunning for his enemy. At the first whisper of the expedition he

had banished to distant places in his own dominions every Portuguese

noble--seventy of them in all--who was not pledged hard and fast to the

Castilian cause. One of Antonio's false friends, too, had escaped at

Corunna, and had gone straight to Philip and divulged all the

pretender's plans and the names of his supporters still in Portugal who

were to help him into Lisbon. Their shrift, as may be supposed, was a

short one, and when Antonio came to his kingdom he found none but monks

and clowns to greet him. Such of the gentry as he approached were

usually too {45} panic-stricken to side with him, seeing the fate of

others of their class, and my Portuguese scoffs at the insolence of the

idea that Antonio and the English could hold Lisbon, even if they won

it against all the might of Spain, or of the common Portuguese rising

without the "fidalgos," and courting the ruin that would befall them if

the "heretics" got the upper hand without the fidalgos to restrain them.

But Antonio put a brave face on matters, and was all eagerness to push

on to his faithful capital of Lisbon, which he was confident awaited

him with open arms. His confidence to a certain extent seems to have

been shared by Norris, and here the second great mistake of the

expedition was made. The first vital error was the fruitless waste of

time at Corunna; the second was the resolution now arrived at by

Norris, entirely against Drake's judgment, to march from Peniche

overland forty-two miles to Lisbon. Drake, true to the sea and to the

tactics by which he had so often beaten the Spaniards, was in favour of

pushing on to Lisbon by sea, letting three or four fireships drift

about the castle of São Gian, which commanded the entrance to the

harbour, so that the smoke should spoil the aim of the guns, and then

make a dash for the city--and doubtless, thought Drake, for the

galleon, with its million gold crowns, lying in front of the India

house. Dom Antonio, whose one idea was to keep foot on the land where

he was king, sided with Norris. In vain Drake pointed out that they

had no baggage train or proper provisions for a march through an

enemy's country; that they had only one weak squadron {46} of cavalry,

of which the cattle was out of condition; that they had no fitting

field artillery; and that once inland they would lose the support and

protection of the fleet.

It was all of no avail; Dom Antonio and Norris had their way, and a

single company was left to garrison Peniche,[25] supported by six

ships, whilst the whole of the land forces were to march to Lisbon, and

Drake undertook to bring the rest of the fleet to Cascaes, at the mouth

of the river, when the weather would allow him to do so.

During the night after the landing, some cavalry under Captain Alarcon

had joined the Spaniards, and a force of Portuguese militia had also

been sent in by Don Luis Alencastro, but they soon deserted their

colours and left their officers to shift for themselves. The next

morning at four o'clock Captain Alarcon and a few of the Spanish

cavalry reconnoitred the position at Peniche, but found the enemy too

many for them, and could only scour back as hard as they could ride to

Luis Alencastro, the Grand-Commander of {47} the Order of Christ, who

was endeavouring to reorganise a body of Portuguese a few miles off, on

the road to Lisbon. But terrible tales of the strength of the English

had already spread; and when Alarcon and Guzman reached the

Grand-Commander they found his hasty levies in a panic at the story

that Drake had brought with him nine hundred great Irish dogs as fierce

as lions, and "capable of eating up a world of folks." So they flatly

refused to stir; and the Grand-Commander could do no more than hasten

back to Lisbon to inform the Cardinal-Archduke Albert of the state of

affairs, whilst Guzman, with the troops, fell back upon Torres-Vedras,

to hold if possible the road to Lisbon.

In the meanwhile the capital was in a state of intense excitement. The

native inhabitants, with a lively recollection of the sacking of the

city by Alba, flocked to the other side of the Tagus, notwithstanding

the strict orders of the Cardinal-Archduke to the contrary. Provisions

and munitions of war were hastily sent from Spain, and the Prior

Fernando de Toledo was already on the move, slowly bringing such troops

as he could muster for the relief of Lisbon, whilst the castles and

walls of the city were put into a state of defence. The Castilians,

few in number and intensely hated by the townsfolk, knew that in a

fight the brunt would fall upon them, and that the Portuguese, even

though they might not help the enemy, and this was by no means certain,

would not raise a finger to support the dominion of Philip. The

priests went from house to house, strong adherents of Dom Antonio

almost to a man, whispering that {48} the English were not, after all,

such bad people; that there were many Catholics amongst them who were

better Christians than the Castilians themselves, and, as the Spanish

diarist says, other things of the sort which will not bear repeating.

To the well-to-do they said that as soon as a native king was on the

throne their wealth would enormously increase, whilst the poor were

told that "fishing in troubled waters was profitable to the fisherman."

On the other hand, the Archduke, knowing the people with whom he had to

deal, established a veritable reign of terror, and sacrificed without

mercy--often without evidence--any person who was even suspected of

open sympathy with the invaders, although it was well known in Madrid

that the populace of Lisbon had tacitly agreed to open the gates to Dom

Antonio and to massacre the Spaniards on his approach. Some Portuguese

nobles had left the Archduke on the first landing of Dom Antonio, but,

finding that most of their order had been terrorised into quiescence,

returned to Lisbon and tendered their submission. They were at once

beheaded or imprisoned, and the rest became more slavish than ever in

their professions of attachment to the Archduke. Terrible stories were

spread at the same time of the "impious abominations" of the English

heretics, and the dreadful fate that awaited all Catholics if the

invader succeeded, until, as my Portuguese diarist says, "there was not

even a loafer on the quay who did not know that he would be cast out or

ruined if the English came." But it was all insufficient to make them

willing to {49} fight. The exodus still continued, and under cover of

night the people stole across the river by thousands, and a boat whose

usual freight was two ducats could not now be hired under fifty, whilst

a bullock-cart and bullocks which could be bought right out in normal

times for fifty ducats now charged sixty for a single journey to Aldea

Gallega, on the other side of the Tagus. The people of the provinces,

says my Portuguese diarist, oppressed the flying citizens more than the

English, until the scandal became so great that the Archduke had to

interfere and check their rapacity. Under some excuse or another every

Portuguese was anxious to get away and leave the fighting to be done by

some one else. The Portuguese diarist stoutly denies that his

countrymen were cowards or traitors, but always explains that the

common people _could not_ have risen without the lead of the native

nobles; and we have seen the methods by which they were terrorised and

made powerless. The Spaniard, on the other hand, makes no secret of

his contempt for the white-livered Lisbonenses, and uses much strong

language about them. My Portuguese diarist greatly resents this

feeling, and gives a little personal experience of his own to show how

harsh were the words used by the Castilians towards the craven

citizens. "On the morning," he says, "that the enemy fled I went up to

the castle to get some things of mine out of my boxes which I had left

there in the rooms of one of the officers, where I had determined to

await my fate if things came to the worst. As I was on my way down to

the palace again the rumour spread that the enemy was retreating,

whereupon some soldiers ascended {50} the watch tower to enjoy the

sight. I asked them when they returned if the good news were true that

the enemy was really flying, and one of them answered me roughly that

they who were flying were not the enemy but those who still stay in

Lisbon. To which I answered him not a word but God be with ye."

But by terrorism, energy, and promptness the Archduke at length got the

city into a state for defence both against the enemy from without and

the probable enemy within. The city water-tanks were locked and the

supply brought from outside, so as to save the precious liquid for the

coming siege. The resident Spaniards formed themselves into a

bodyguard of 150 men, "very smart and well armed," and, as in duty

bound, the Germans and Flemings offered two hundred harquebussiers in

good order, whilst many Portuguese "fidalgos" slept in the corridors of

the palace to protect the Archduke in the hour of need. Four colonels

were appointed to organise bands of the inhabitants for the defence of

the city, and Matias de Alburquerque, a famous sea-captain, took charge

of the twelve war galleys in the Tagus and armed thirty merchant ships

which were lying in the harbour. The defensive works round the city

were divided into sections and apportioned to the command of officers

of tried fidelity, whose names need not be recorded here, the river

front being mainly entrusted to Portuguese, who evidently considered

theirs the post of danger, as they had not the walls to protect them

along the quay side. The Castilians, however, made no secret of the

fact that they were placed there as no attack was expected from the

river. {51} The parts most strongly guarded, almost entirely by

Spaniards, were the quarters of St. Catalina, San Antonio, and San

Roque, facing the north and west, from which quarters the English were

expected to approach.

The English army, by all accounts twelve thousand strong, marched out

of Peniche on the 17th of May, with the Earl of Essex and Sir Roger

Williams leading; and Drake, accompanying them to the top of a hill at

some distance off, greeted each regiment as it passed him with kindly

words, and hopes of success, which he could hardly have anticipated.

Soon the English soldiery began to show their true metal. Strict

orders had been given that the property and persons of Dom Antonio's

faithful subjects were to be respected; but as soon as they got clear

of Peniche housebreaking and pillage became rife, and Norris had to

order his provost-marshal, Crisp, to hang a few of the malefactors

before he could obtain obedience.

The Archduke had sent three squadrons of Spanish horsemen to reinforce

Pedro de Guzman at Torres Vedras, block the road to Lisbon, and harass

the English. They went out to reconnoitre the enemy at various points

after he left Peniche, but they did not like the look of him, and fell

back again to Torres Vedras, whilst messengers were hourly sent to the

Archduke begging for more men, whom he could not send. At first it was

rumoured amongst the English that a stand would be made at a village

near Peniche, but when they arrived there the last Spanish horsemen

were just scampering out of it. The next day it was said {52} that

certainly a great stand would be made at Torres Vedras, and this

undoubtedly was the Archduke's intention; but even the almost

impregnable Torres Vedras was untenable with a few hundred horse and a

body of militia, who, if they fought at all, would fight on the other

side; and the Spanish forces, for fear of being cut off from their

base, hastily evacuated Torres Vedras and fell back gradually,

harassing the flanks of the enemy as much as they could and cutting off

stragglers.

And so the main body of Morris' force, with the Earl of Essex and Sir

Roger Williams always leading, moved rapidly and peacefully towards

Lisbon, whilst the panic in the capital grew greater as the English

came nearer. Peaceably--but hungry--for the land was bare, and the

English, we are told, "found our food dry and tasteless and hankered

after their own fat meats and birds, comparing our barrenness with the

abundance of their own land." There was little or no money in the

host, and nothing was to be taken from the Portuguese without payment.

There was in any case very little to take, for most of the people along

the road had fled or had been stripped clean by the Castilian soldiers

who had gone before. Drake's predictions of trouble in moving an army

without a baggage train began to come true, and at last starvation was

breeding open mutiny in the English host. Norris was then obliged to

tell Antonio that unless food were forthcoming more plentifully the

soldiers must be allowed to shift for themselves. The poor pretender

could only beseech his controller, Campello, to scour the country far

and wide for delicacies for the English, "who are naturally {53} dainty

and exquisite in their food"; but he could only pay in promises, and

the land was bare, so the invaders still marched a hungry host towards

the larders of Lisbon.

From day to day they were told that the Spaniards would certainly stand

and fight to-morrow, but they were continually disappointed, as indeed

was the stout-hearted Archduke in his palace, who received with dismay

the constant news that his forces were falling further and further back

towards the capital without fighting.

Whatever country people had remained on the road welcomed the invaders

with cries of "Viva el Rei Dom Antonio!" but the poor King still looked

in vain for the promised gentlemen. His desire to please his rustic

adherents was almost pathetic. He condescended, we are told, to caress

and embrace the "commonest little people"; and in order to make as

brave a show as possible before the English, picked out any countryman

who was decently fair-spoken to be paraded before them as some grand

gentleman in disguise. But however hopeful he might show himself, he

could not conceal the fact that not a dozen men-at-arms had joined him,

and his only chance now was that Lisbon itself should declare in his

favour. But the native citizens were distracted and divided. The

judges and magistrates had abandoned their posts, the shopkeepers had

deserted their stores, incendiary fires and pillage were of hourly

occurrence, and the Archduke alone kept his head. Even he was not free

from danger of attack, for more than one attempt was made to

assassinate some of his chief officers.

{54}

On one occasion a large number of men were caught deserting their posts

and escaping in a boat to the other side of the Tagus. When they were

brought to the Archduke for punishment he said if they were too

cowardly to fight in defence of their God and their fatherland they

were useless to him and could go. This he knew, that even the

Castilian women would mount the walls and fight with stones, if need

be, in such a cause. Albert required all his firmness and nerve, for

one sign of weakness from him and his handful of Spaniards, would have

given heart to the craven Portuguese within and without the walls, who

were thirsting for their blood.

Three-quarters of the Portuguese in Lisbon had fled or were in hiding,

and the rest were in Spanish pay or watched day and night by jealous

eyes. But watched as they were, and few in numbers, their hopes were

still high, and amongst themselves their speech grew bolder. They got

news daily from English prisoners and others of the approach of their

king, and plotted together how they would serve the hated Castilians

when the English deliverers came.

The rumour ran that the city would be surrendered to the invader on

Corpus Christi day, and not a Spaniard was to be left alive, and much

more to the same effect. But, alas! on one occasion when a few English

prisoners were being brought in a panic-cry arose that the invaders had

entered the city, and then each man fled to hiding to save his own skin

rather than to his post, and the few Spanish guards that remained had

to drag them out of cellars and lofts by main force, kicking {55} and

cuffing them for a set of cowards for not helping the defenders. The

Count de Fuentes, once on a false alarm, was sent out of the city with

every man who could be spared to Orlas, three leagues off on the road

to Cascaes, where it was expected the enemy would pass; but the English

went by Torres Vedras, and Fuentes had to hurry back into Lisbon again

the same day, to avoid being cut off and the gates being shut against

him.

On the 19th of May Norris and his troops marched into Torres Vedras,

where Dom Antonio was received with regal honours, and the oath of

allegiance taken to him. He was desirous of making a detour to

Santarem, through, as he said, a rich country favourable to him, but

Norris knew the danger of delay, and insisted upon pushing forward to

Lisbon.

Guzman and his Spanish horsemen had fallen back during the previous

night to Jara, nearer Lisbon, but he had left Captain Alarcon, with two

companies of horse, to hang on the skirts of the enemy. The next day

Captain Yorke, who commanded Norris' cavalry, determined to try their

metal, and sent a corporal with eight men who rode through forty of the

enemy, whilst Yorke himself, with forty English horse, put to

precipitous flight Alarcon's two hundred. On the following day, May

21st, the English, disappointed again of a fight, were lodged in the

village of Louvres, not far from Lisbon, which Guzman had hurriedly

evacuated after being very nearly surprised by Norris. The village was

small and the accommodation poor, so Drake's regiment, thinking to

better their quarters, went to sleep at a {56} little hamlet a mile

off. In the early dawn a cry was raised of "Viva el Rei Dom Antonio!"

which was the usual friendly salutation of the country folk. The young

English sentries fraternised with those who approached, and admitted

them into the sleeping-camp. It was an ambuscade, and many of the

English were slain, but the enemy was finally driven off by two

companies of Englishmen who were lodged near. The next day, at a

village near Lisbon, a large number were treacherously poisoned by the

bad water from a well, or, as some said, by the honey which they found

in the houses. This was three miles from Lisbon, at a place called

Alvelade, and at eleven o'clock at night Essex left the camp with Sir

Roger Williams and 1,000 men to lie in ambuscade near the town. When

they had approached almost to the walls a few of them began banging at

the gates and otherwise trying to alarm those within and provoke a

sally. But the device was too transparent, and a few men shot and a

sleepless night were the only result. When the English had arrived at

Alvelade, Count de Fuentes, with the main body of Spaniards, was at

Alcantara, a mile or so nearer Lisbon. Thither Albert hastily summoned

a council of war, and urged his officers at last to make a stand at

once before the English could co-operate with their friends within the

walls of Lisbon. Fuentes and the other Spanish commanders were of the

same opinion, but the Portuguese Colonel, Fernando de Castro, made a

speech pointing out that the English were short of stores, cut off from

their base, and weakened by sickness and short commons. "Let us," he

said, "fall back into the {57} city and conquer them by hunger and

delay. Behind our walls they will be powerless to injure us, whilst we

can draw abundant supplies from across the river, and they cannot

blockade us even by land with less than 40,000 men." This exactly

suited the other Portuguese, who were never comfortable unless they had

a good thick wall between themselves and their enemies. The opinion of

the Spaniards was overborne, and the defending force entered the gates

of Lisbon on Corpus Christi day, midst the ringing of bells and the

more or less sincere rejoicing of the populace. Lisbon feasted and

welcomed its defenders, whilst poor Dom Antonio, we are told, at

Alvelade just outside, had not a fowl or even a loaf of rye bread to

eat. "You may guess how he is hated by the Portuguese," says my

Portuguese diarist, "that he being so near his native Lisbon not even a

costermonger or a down dared to send him a meal, whilst we in the city

had plenty."

Most of the houses adjoining the walls had been blown up, but the

monastery of the Trinidade, down the hill towards the river, still

remained. The prior was understood to be in favour of Dom Antonio, as

were nearly all churchmen, and Ruy Diaz de Lobo, one of the few nobles

with Dom Antonio, undertook to negotiate with him to admit the English

to the city through the monastery garden. By the aid of two

sympathetic monks he obtained access to the prior. But the latter had

been gained over by the Spaniards, and a few hours afterwards the pale

heads of Ruy Diaz de Lobo and the two monks were grinning with

half-closed, lustreless eyes from the top of three poles on the great

quay, whilst Sir {58} Roger Williams and his men, when they approached

the monastery in expectation of a friendly reception, were received

with a shower of harquebuss balls, and fell back. The rest of the day,

now that the main body of English had come up, was spent in quartering

the men in the suburbs of the city, entrenched camps being formed,

protected by breastworks of wine-pipes filled with earth. Tired with

their six days' march and their labour in the trenches, Norris' little

army were glad to pass their first night before Lisbon in such peace as

the besieged would allow them.

If the enterprise was ever to succeed this was the moment. The English

were more numerous as regards men bearing arms, but they had come upon

their wild-goose chase against a fortified city without any battering

artillery or proper appliances for a siege, whilst the Spaniards were

behind strong walls, with unlimited sources of supply from the river

front across the Tagus. Norris, on the other hand, was short of

supplies, with fifteen miles of defensible country between him and

Cascaes, the point where the fleet was to await him. The advantage,

therefore, was clearly on the side of the besieged, but for the one

element of the disaffection of Lisbon itself from within, and in this

lay Dom Antonio's last chance. A letter written by Don Francisco

Odonte, adjutant-general in Lisbon, on the day following the arrival of

the English forces before the walls, gives a vivid description of the

state of affairs there at the time.[26]

"Dom Antonio," he says, "spent the night in the house of the Duke

d'Aveiro, and then early in the {59} morning completed the investment

of the city and continued his search for some secret gate by which he

might enter. But the garrison harassed him as much as they could. Don

Sancho Bravo and Captain Alarcon have been skirmishing all day outside

the city, and have sent in 25 or 30 English prisoners who have been

consigned to the galleys; and if they could only do the same by all

those who are really fighting us, whilst feigning to be our friends,

they might man more galleys than are to be found in all Christendom

this day, for those who have shown their colours during the last three

days, and that without a blush, are simply infinite, nor is there any

wonder that Dom Antonio has attempted this enterprise, owing to the

promises held out to him; for from the moment he disembarked, he has

been supplied with abundance of provisions,[27] whilst not a man has

offered us his services. All the aldermen of the city are against us

but two, the rest are all in hiding, and some even have supplied Dom

Antonio's troops, with as little shamefacedness as if they had come

from England with him. In this quarter of the city there is not a man

left. Some have fled across the river, some are hidden, some have

joined Dom Antonio. The troops under the four colonels publicly

declare they will not fight. Dom Antonio was certain the moment he

appeared the city would rise, and on this account we are in great alarm

and have passed a very bad night. God help us!"

But the English did not sleep tranquilly either. In the first hours of

the morning of the 25th of May {60} Don Garcia Bravo, with 500 Spanish

troops from Oporto, arrived in Lisbon. They were hungry, ragged, and

weary, but they were eager to meet the foe, and barely gave themselves

time to snatch a hurried meal before sallying from the gate of San

Anton and up the hill to the quarters of Colonel Brett in the farm of

Andres Soares. Another force at the same time came from the gate of

Santa Catalina and forced Brett's trenches from that side. The long

rows of windows of the monastery of San Roque on the hill were lined by

Spanish musketeers, who kept up a deadly fire on the English, whilst

two of the great guns of the castle were brought to bear upon one

exposed side of the invaders' camp. The attack was made before dawn,

and Brett had hardly time to muster his men in the darkness and

confusion, when a cannon-shot from the walls laid him low. Captain

Carsey and Captain Carr were mortally wounded, and 200 other officers

and men slain. The rest of the English forces were aroused, and came

to the rescue under Colonel Lane and Colonel Medkirk, and "put them to

a sodain fowle retreate, insomuch as the Earle of Essex had the chase

of them even to the gates of the High towne, wherein they left behind

them many of their best commanders." A body of Spanish horse, sallying

from the gates of San Anton to support their comrades, met the latter

in full retreat in a narrow lane, and unwillingly trampled them down;

thus adding to the confusion, which was completed by a flank charge

upon the struggling mass by Yorke's cavalry. The English chronicler

claims that the Spanish loss tripled ours, but my diarists say that

they had only twenty-five killed and forty wounded, and the {61}

Portuguese tries to account for the heavy loss of wounded by accusing

the English of using poisoned bullets. The next day the English tried

to get in through the monastery, but they found the city forewarned and

on the alert, although the monks had done their best for them. The day

after they bribed a Portuguese captain in charge of the wall at the

nearest point to the river to let them pass round at low tide, but the

spies told the Archduke, and the English found their ally replaced by a

Spaniard with a strong force, who sent them flying back again. And so

three days passed in constant skirmishes, whilst Norris was chafing and

helpless without. The fatal mistake he had made in leaving the fleet

was now apparent. The time, too, they had lost at Corunna was

irreparable. Fernando de Toledo was approaching with relief, and the

first dismay in Spain had now given way to desperate energy. The loss

of men in the English camp from sickness and wounds was terrible,

supplies and munitions were desperately short, there was no medical aid

or transport for the sick and disabled, whilst the Portuguese in

Lisbon, from whom everything had been hoped, still made no sign.

Dom Antonio still put a brave face on the matter, but his heart was

sinking. For the first two days he had lodged in the rear of the

English camp, outside Santa Catalina, but on the third, says my

Portuguese diarist, he began to fear for his safety, and, wearied of

low fare and the sound of musketry, sought refuge in the house of a

Portuguese gentleman on the road to Cascaes. But he was repulsed and

barely escaped capture, and thereafter could but cling desperately to

the English force. In vain he {62} looked now for the general rising

in his favour, for the promised nobles who never came, and hour by hour

the prospect darkened. The Earl of Essex, young, inexperienced,

hot-headed, was for assaulting all sorts of impossible places with pike

and musket, but Norris knew better, and sadly acknowledged to himself

that the expedition had failed.

Drake, with the fleet, had in the meanwhile reached Cascaes with

everything he could lay hands on in the form of prizes. He had cast

anchor on the very day twelvemonth that the great Armada had first

sailed out of Lisbon, and the townspeople of the capital were full of

portents which they saw in this coincidence. Every one in Lisbon by

this time feared that he would sail up the river and enter the harbour;

and such was the dread of his name that if he had done so he might have

turned the tide of victory. But his advice had been rejected, and he

would not venture under the guns of the forts with an under-manned

fleet and no soldiers. So he remained at Cascaes and left Norris to

get out of the hobble as best he could. When he arrived he found the

town almost abandoned, for the citizens had fled in terror at his very

name. My Portuguese says that Cardenas, the commander of the fortress,

"a great gentleman," was deceived by a monk (or, as he says, the devil

in disguise of one) into the belief that Lisbon had fallen, and he

accordingly gave up the fortress, and himself took to flight. The

Castilian and the Englishman tell the story somewhat differently, and

say that Cardenas was an adherent of Dom Antonio, and stipulated that a

show of compulsion should be used before he surrendered the fortress.

The {63} result in any case was the same to him, for the "great

gentleman's" head soon afterwards adorned one of the Archduke's poles

on the quay at Lisbon.

Drake had therefore established himself without difficulty at Cascaes,

and patiently awaited the result of the land attack on Lisbon.

If the English outside the walls of the capital were in a bad way, the

small force of steadfast Spaniards inside were not much better. They

knew that the Portuguese citizens around them were hourly watching for

an opportunity to cut their throats and let in the native pretender.

Panics of treason and treachery were of hourly occurrence, and on

several occasions only the coolness of the Cardinal-Archduke averted

disaster. Every day men of the best blood of Portugal, often taken

from the immediate surrounding of the Archduke, were seized for assumed

treason, the policy being to deprive the disaffected populace of native

leaders. To further terrorise the citizens, and prevent them from

plucking up heart to open the gates, a great review of all the Spanish

troops was held in an open space where the enemy could see as well as

the wavering townfolk. My Spanish diarist says, "With the sun flashing

on shining morions and the brave show of arms and men all were

convinced, friends and enemies alike that the success of our cause was

certain."

Boldness and firmness won the day. The next morning Norris called his

colonels together to seek their advice and consult with Dom Antonio.

He said that as the besieged stood firm and the populace made no move,

the English force must have artillery and munitions if they were to

succeed, and {64} asked their opinion as to whether he should wait for

Dom Antonio's forces, which came not, and meanwhile send a detachment

to Cascaes for munitions, or raise the siege altogether. Many were for

sending 3,000 men to Cascaes at once. They had given the enemy a good

drubbing, they said, and they would sally no more; but Norris had lost

hope in Portuguese promises, and was not quite so contemptuous of the

enemy as some of them, and he decided that he would wait only one day

more for Dom Antonio's levies. If 3,000 came in that night he would

send a like number of English to Cascaes for the munitions, otherwise

he would raise the siege and leave before daybreak. In vain Antonio

prayed for a few days' longer grace. In nine days all Portugal would

acclaim him. Lisbon was wavering already, and would turn the scale.

But all his prayers were in vain; and before dawn the English army was

mustered and ready for the march. Essex was disgusted at the turn

things had taken, and went up to the principal gate (he and Williams

being the last men to leave) and broke his lance against it, crying out

that if there was any within who would come out and have a bout with

him in honour of his mistress let him come, and he gave them all the

lie to their teeth. And then he turned away and followed the army, no

doubt much relieved in his mind.

During the day that Norris was awaiting the arrival of Dom Antonio's

troops the English had not left their trenches, and the defenders

feared that some deep design lay behind this. Were they mining, or was

Drake sending up some heavy {65} guns? they thought. So when the dawn

of the 27th of May showed that the main body of the English was already

on its way to Cascaes, Count de Fuentes still doubted whether it was

not all a feint to draw him out from the shelter of his walls, and

peremptorily refused permission to Count Villa Dorta to follow them up

and engage them. The way of the retreating force lay along the shore,

but to avoid the fire of the galleys which followed their movements

they chose the rough by-paths where possible. And so, all

undisciplined, sick, and starving, they wandered and struggled on as

best they could, four hundred at least of stragglers and sick being

killed or captured by Villa Dorta, who hung upon the rear,

notwithstanding his chief's prohibition. Later in the day Fuentes so

far conquered his suspicion as to lead his army out to Viera, half-way

to Cascaes, but he had barely sighted the enemy than some rumour or

suspicion reached him of an intended rising in Lisbon during his

absence, and he hurried back again to the city. My Portuguese diarist

ridicules the suggestion of such a danger as unworthy of any sensible

man; but the utter futility of the English and Portuguese proceedings

from the first was such as well might excuse Fuentes for thinking that

some deeper design must surely lay behind. The suspicion of the

Portuguese on the part of the Spaniards at this time is illustrated by

an anecdote given by the Portuguese diarist. Alvaro Souza, the captain

of Philip's Portuguese guard, with five companions, accompanied Sancho

Bravo, who took out a force to harry the English on their way to

Cascaes. Souza straggled and was captured by Spanish soldiers, {66}

who did not know him. They were near the castle of São Gian at the

mouth of Lisbon harbour and knowing that Pero Venegas, the commandant,

was a friend of his father, Souza sent a messenger to him begging him

to answer for his loyalty. Venegas declined to reply, and Souza was

lead off under arrest. On the way he met the famous Alvaro de Bazan

going to his galleys. He was a friend, and Souza appealed to him to

stand by him and his companions, "but he answered coldly that he knew

him not, nor was this a time to recognise any one." He had, he said,

recently answered for some Portuguese fidalgos in the palace, and a few

hours afterwards they were arrested for treason.

Fifteen weary miles over rough ground, and with Villa Dorta's troops

harassing their flank and rear, the English managed to cover during the

day, and at last, late in the evening, they marched into Cascaes.[28]

We may well imagine that the meeting between Drake and Norris was not

very cordial. The officers threw the whole blame for failure upon

Drake for not coming up the river to support them before Lisbon; the

sailors, on the other hand, saying that the march overland was against

Drake's advice, and that his ships, without men-at-arms to defend them

and work the guns, would have been at the mercy of the enemy. At all

events, it was {67} clear they had failed in two of the objects of the

voyage--namely, to burn the King of Spain's ships and restore Dom

Antonio; and one other only remained to be attempted, which was to take

the Azores.

I have already said that the raising of the siege of Lisbon took the

defenders by surprise. They fully believed it to be an attempt to draw

the Spanish troops out of the town in order that the citizens might

rise and massacre the few Spaniards left. So certain were they of this

that an unfortunate Portuguese noble--Count Redondo--who arrived that

day and went to pay his respects to the Archduke, was immediately

seized and beheaded _pour encourager les autres_. As soon as they saw

the English had really gone, Count de Fuentes with his six or seven

thousand men again made a reconnaissance almost to the English position

at Cascaes, and finding the invaders well entrenched, with the fleet

behind them, decided that it would be too risky to attack them, and

hastened back again to Lisbon. News of the nearness of the Spaniards

was brought in by some friars, of whom great numbers hung about Dom

Antonio's quarters, and Norris and Essex each promised the messengers a

hundred crowns if they found the enemy in the place reported, as they

were spoiling for a fight in the open before embarking. But Fuentes

had gone to Lisbon, and the friars lost their reward. Norris, however,

still eager, sent a page who spoke French, and a trumpeter, post-haste

to Lisbon, with a challenge to Fuentes and his army to come into the

open and fight. The opportunity was too good for Essex to miss, so he

too sent a cartel by the page {68} on his own account, giving every one

the lie in a general way and offering to fight anybody in single

combat. The messenger came back again without an answer, only that the

Spaniards had threatened to hang him for bringing such vapouring

insolence to them; but the Spaniard tells the story in another way,

less honourably for himself. He says, whilst the messengers were being

entertained "as if they were great gentlemen" at breakfast by some of

the captains who spoke French, the letters (which they had said could

only be opened by the Archduke's permission) were surreptitiously

steamed, read, and re-sealed, and handed back again as if unopened,

with the reply that his Highness would not allow them to be opened. So

Norris and Essex had their bravado for nothing, and went without their

fight.

In Lisbon the common people were as disturbed as ever, doubtless

feeling that their chance of freedom was slipping away from them, and

alarms were constantly raised that the English were returning. But

Spanish reinforcements were arriving now. The Duke of Braganza, head

of the Portuguese nobility, arrived in royal state with a great body of

retainers to help the Archduke, and all hope for Dom Antonio gradually

ebbed away.

The English commanders in Cascaes began now to think it high time to

put themselves right with the angry Queen, who continued to send

furious messages about their disobedience and about Essex and Sir Roger

Williams. On the 2nd of June they wrote from Cascaes a full account of

all that had happened in the best light they could devise, and saying

they knew not what to do unless {69} supplies came at once from

England. Everybody was terribly seasick, they said, and well-nigh

starving. Seeing that no more provisions could be expected, they

wrote, on the 5th of June, that they had decided to go to St. Michaels;

and then, for the first time, they confessed that Essex was with them.

They had met him, they said, to their great surprise, off Cape

Finisterra, but could not send him home before, as they could not spare

the _Swiftsure_; but still no word about Sir Roger Williams.[29]

If Drake could not or would not burn the Spanish fleet on this

occasion, he was always a splendid hand at plundering merchantmen, and

during the six days that his fleet lay before Cascaes he scoured the

sea for miles round in search of prizes, taking as many as forty German

hulks loaded with Spanish merchandise. Into these prizes the men from

the Dutch flyboats were transhipped, and the Dutch captains sent off

without being paid their freights, glad, no doubt, to get away from

such company on any terms.

In the meanwhile Lisbon was gradually settling down. People who had

been hiding in churches and cellars for the last ten days crept out,

nearly all under the impression that the Spaniards had all been

murdered, and that King Antonio had come to his own again. Dire was

their {70} disappointment when they found that they were not the only

people who had skulked in hiding, and that none of all the city had

dared to strike the blow that would have made Portugal free again. So

they patiently bent their neck to the yoke and cheered his Highness the

Archduke at the top of their voices as he went in state to the

cathedral to hear a solemn _Te Deum_ of victory.

The Spaniards did their best to follow up the enemy. The ships in the

Tagus were fitted out to watch Cascaes and follow the English fleet,

doing all the damage they could, and Don Pedro de Guzman was sent to

cut off the English garrison left at Peniche. They urged the horses,

says the Spanish diarist, until they were ready to drop, but arrived

too late to stop the embarkation, except of about 200 men, who were put

to death.

On the 8th of June the English fleet set sail, pursued and harassed by

the galleys from Lisbon in nearly a dead calm. Three of our ships were

taken or sunk and one burned, by her captain, Minshaw, after a

desperate resistance. A wind sprang up, however, and the Spanish

galleys were left behind; but soon the fleet got scattered, the men

died, and were thrown overboard by the hundred from scurvy, starvation,

and wounds; but, notwithstanding all, after sailing ostensibly for the

Azores, Drake turned back again and, picking up twenty-five of his

ships which had been separated from him, sailed up the bay and attacked

Vigo. He had only 2,000 men fit to fight: sickness and privation had

thinned them down to that, but with those few men, finding Vigo

deserted, the English burnt and wasted the town and all the villages

around. {71} "A verie pleasant rich valley but wee burnt it all,

houses and corne, so as the countrey was spoyled seven or eight miles

in length." Then they decided to drop down to the isle of Bayona, and

there put the pick of the men and stores on twenty of the best ships

for Drake to take to the Azores, whilst the rest returned to England.

But for some reason Drake broke the agreement and passed Bayona without

even calling, and the thirty ships that were awaiting him there were

left to their fate. Beset with tempest and pestilence, without a

commander, it was decided by those on board to make the best of their

way to England, in terrible distress as they were for provisions and

water. After ten days' voyage they arrived at Plymouth on the 2nd of

July, and found that Drake had already arrived there with the Queen's

ships, having abandoned his voyage to the Azores. Most of the

remaining ships had sought other ports in preference, in order to sell

their prizes without having to share the proceeds with others.

Such of the soldiers as came to Plymouth were sent grumbling home with

five shillings each for their wages and the arms they bore. The

English chronicler thinks that this was "verie good pay, considering

they were victualled all the time." Such, however, was not the opinion

of the unfortunate men themselves, who had not been allowed to loot as

much as they thought fit in Portugal. They said that if they had been

permitted to march as through an enemy's country, they would have come

back the richest army that ever returned to England. Not more than

5,000 of them ever came home; but their story was so dismal a one that

{72} all England rang with reprobation of the bad management and

parsimony that had brought the expedition to so inglorious a conclusion.

The first and third objects of the expedition--namely, the burning of

the Spanish fleet and the capture of St. Michaels--were never even

attempted, but the second object was very nearly being attained, and

the restoration of Dom Antonio, practically as a vassal of England,

might have been effected a dozen times over if the Portuguese in Lisbon

had not been an utterly terrified set of poltroons. On various

occasions, when Count de Fuentes and his troops were outside, a few

dozen daring men might have seized the gates and have turned the tide

in Antonio's favour. It was not to be, however, and the poor King

wandered a poverty-stricken fugitive yet for a few years before he

died, but his desperate struggle for sovereignty ended with the

ignominious failure of the English attempt to avenge a great national

injury by a joint-stock enterprise.

[1] For the sake of uniformity, throughout this narrative the dates are

given in the "old style," then used in England, ten days earlier than

the dates cited by the Spanish and Portuguese authorities.

[2] Venetian Calendar of State Papers.

[3] Ibid.

[4] In a subscription reprint of sixty copies of this tract published

in 1881 under the editorship of the Rev. Alexander Grosart, the

authorship appears to be ascribed, I know not on what grounds, to a

certain Robert Pricket who served probably as a gentleman volunteer and

follower of the Earl of Essex. He had seen previous service in the

Netherlands, and was the author of several poetical works, one being a

panegyric on the Earl of Essex. The tract is entitled "_A True Coppie

of a Discourse_, written by a gentleman employed in the late voiage of

Spaine and Portingale. Sent to his particular friend and by him

published for the better satisfaction of all such as having been

seduced by particular report have entered into conceipts tending to the

discredit of the enterprise and Actors of the same. At London.

Printed for Thomas Woodcock, dwelling in Paules Churchyard, at the sign

of the blacke Beare 1589."

[5] It is called "Relacion de lo subcedido del armada enemiga del reyno

de Inglaterra a este de Portugal con la retirada a su tierra, este año

de 1589." MS. Gayangos Library. Transcript in possession of the

author.

[6] "Memoria do successo da vinda dos Ingreses ao reino de Portugal."

Biblioteca National, Lisbon. Pombalina, 196, fol. 271. Transcribed by

the author.

[7] Mendoza, writing to Philip from London, August 8, 1582, gives one

instance of this amongst several. He says: "The Queen lent Dom Antonio

£3,000 when he was here, and I understand she peremptorily demands

payment of the sum, taking possession of the diamond which was pledged

here for a sum of £5,000 lent by merchants, who offer to relinquish

their claim to the Queen, if she will lend them £30,000 free of

interest for six years out of the bars brought by Drake, which they

will repay in five yearly instalments of £6,000 each. So far as I can

learn, this talk of the loan is a mere fiction and a cloak under which

the Queen may keep the diamond for the £8,000 on the ground that the

merchants advanced the £5,000 by her express order, without which they

would not have done so. This plan was invented by Cecil in order to

prevent Dom Antonio from getting his diamond back again."

This diamond is probably identical with the celebrated stone given by

Charles I. when Prince of Wales to the Count-Duke of Olivares,

favourite of Philip IV., when Charles and Buckingham went on their

foolish visit to Madrid. A contemporary account (Soto's MS. in the

Academy of History, Madrid) describes the diamond as being of the

purest water, weighing eight carats and called "the Portuguese," from

its having been one of the crown jewels of Portugal. It had a great

pearl pendent from it.

[8] See Calendar of Spanish State Papers of Elizabeth, vol. 3, for

particulars of them.

[9] The first of these, in 1582, commanded by Strozzi, consisted of 55

ships and 5,000 men. Terceira, which was held for Dom Antonio,

welcomed it at once, and in the midst of the rejoicings to celebrate

the event the Spanish fleet under Santa Cruz appeared and scattered the

French like chaff, Strozzi being killed, Antonio barely escaping, and

the fleet almost entirely destroyed. The second expedition in the

following year under Aymar de Chastes with 6,000 men was, curiously

enough, beaten by Santa Cruz in the same place and under exactly

similar circumstances ("Un pretendant portugais du xvi. siècle").

[10] It is a curious co-incidence that this gem was long afterwards

carried away from England by another fugitive King, James II., who sold

it, as Antonio had done, to provide for his needs. It had formerly

belonged to Charles the Bold of Burgundy, the great-grandfather of

Philip II.

[11] After the return of the expedition Lopez writes (July 12, 1589) to

Walsingham, deeply regretting that the Queen had been induced by his

advice to spend so much money to no purpose, and hinting that he had

intimated to Dom Antonio that he and his Portuguese were not wanted in

England. On the same day he himself craves for help in his need and

again asks for a thirty years' monopoly of the import of aniseed and

sumach into England. He was executed in 1592, and was in high favour

almost up to the day of his arrest. In the Mendoza Papers in the

National Archives in Paris, to which I have had access, are documents

proving that he made a regular trade of poisoning--or attempting to

poison, as he does not seem to have been very successful in the cases

recorded.

[12] It is certain from letters of Dom Antonio's friends in London, now

in the Archives Nationales (K 1567), that it was not until the end of

December that Antonio was confident that the fleet was really intended

to aid him.

[13] There is a rough memorandum in Burleigh's writing, September 20,

1588, in the Record Office, setting down the details of the proposed

expedition, in which he mentions that four thousand men are to be sent

for from Holland, as well as two thousand horsemen volunteers. At the

foot of the memorandum Burleigh sets down the "Articles of offers from

King Antonio.

"1. To attempt to burn ye shippes in Lysbon and Civill."

"2. To tak Lysbon."

"3. To tak the Hands."