'What should we do but sing His praise That led us through the watery maze Unto an isle so long unknown, And yet far kinder than our own? Where He the huge sea-monsters wracks, That lift the deep upon their backs, He lands us on a grassy stage, Safe from the storms' and prelates' rage: He gave us this eternal Spring Which here enamels everything, And sends the fowls to us in care On daily visits through the air: He hangs in shades the orange bright Like golden lamps in a green night, And does in the pomegranates close Jewels more rich than Ormus shows:

He makes the figs our mouths to meet And throws the melons at our feet; But apples plants of such a price, No tree could ever bear them twice. With cedars chosen by His hand From Lebanon He stores the land; And makes the hollow seas that roar Proclaim the ambergris on shore. He cast (of which we rather boast) The Gospel's pearl upon our coast; And in these rocks for us did frame A temple where to sound His name. O, let our voice His praise exalt Till it arrive at Heaven's vault, Which thence (perhaps) rebounding may Echo beyond the Mexique bay!'

Thus sung they in the English boat A holy and a cheerful note: And all the way, to guide their chime, With falling oars they kept the time. —Andrew Marvell.



BOOK II

THE SAILING AGE

PART I

THE SPANISH WAR

(1568-1596)

CHAPTER VIII

OLD SPAIN AND NEW

(1492-1571)

Just as Germany tried to win the overlordship of the world in this twentieth century so Spain tried in the sixteenth; and just as the Royal Navy was the chief, though by no means the biggest, force that has won the whole world's freedom from the Germans now, so the Royal Navy was the chief force that won world-freedom from the Spaniards then.

Spaniards and Portuguese, who often employed Italian seamen, were the first to begin taking oversea empires. They gained footholds in places as far apart as India and America. Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and waded into the Pacific, sword in hand, to claim it for the King of Spain. A Portuguese ship was the first to go right round the world. The Spaniards conquered all Central and great parts of North and South America. The Portuguese settled in Brazil.

While this was going on abroad France and England were taken up with their own troubles at home and with each other. So Spain and Portugal had it all their own way for a good many years. The Spanish Empire was by far the biggest in the world throughout the sixteenth century. Charles V, King of Spain, was heir to several other crowns, which he passed on to his son, Philip II. Charles was the sovereign lord of Spain, of what are Belgium and Holland now, and of the best parts of Italy. He was elected Emperor of Germany, which gave him a great hold on that German "Middle Europe" which, stretching from the North Sea to the Adriatic, cut the rest in two. Besides this he owned large parts of Africa. And then, to crown it all, he won what seemed best worth having in Central, North, and South America.



France and England had something to say about this. Francis I wrote Charles a pretty plain letter. "Your Majesty and the King of Portugal have divided the world between you, offering no part of it to me. Show me, I pray you, the will of our father Adam, so that I may see if he has really made you his universal heirs." Nor did the two Henrys forget the claims of England. Henry VII claimed most of the eastern coast of what are now Canada and the United States, in virtue of the Cabot discoveries. In the Naval Museum at Madrid you can still see the bullock-hide map of Juan de la Cosa, which, made in the year 1500, shows St. George's Cross flying over these very parts.

But it was not till after 1545, when the mines of Potosi made Europe dream of El Dorado, the great new Golden West, that England began to think of trying her own luck in America. Some of the fathers of Drake's "Sea-Dogs" had already been in Brazil, notably "Olde Mr. William Hawkins, a man for his wisdome, valure, experience, and skill in sea causes much esteemed and beloved of King Henry the Eight." Hawkins "armed out a tall and goodlie ship called the Pole of Plimmouth, wherewith he made three long and famous voyages into the coast of Brasil." He went by way of Africa, "where he trafiqued with the Negroes, and took of them Oliphants' teeth; and arriving on the coast of Brasil, behaved himself so wisely, that he grew into great friendship with those savages"—very different from the vile cruelty with which the Spaniards always treated the poor natives. These voyages were made about 1530; and the writer says that they were "in those days very rare, especially to our Nation."

In 1554 Charles V planned to make all such voyages work for the glory of Spain instead of England. But, thanks chiefly to the English Sea-Dogs, everything turned out the other way. Charles saw that if he could only add England to his vast possessions he could command the world; for then he would have not only the greatest land-power but the greatest sea-power too. Queen Mary seemed made for his plan. Her mother, Katharine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, was a Spaniard, and she herself cared less for England than for Spain. She was only too ready to marry Charles's heir, Philip, of Armada fame. After this Charles would leave his throne to Philip, who would then be King of England as well as King of Spain.

Philip sailed for England with a hundred and sixty ships, and came up the Channel with the Spanish standard at the main (that is, at the tip top of the main, or highest, mast). Lord Howard of Effingham sailed to meet him and answer Philip's salute. But Philip and his haughty Dons thought it was nonsense for the Prince of Spain to follow the custom of the sea by saluting first when coming into English waters. So the Spanish fleet sailed on and took no notice, till suddenly Howard fired a shot across the Spanish flagship's bows. Then, at last, Philip's standard came down with a run, and he lowered topsails too, so as to make the salute complete. Howard thereupon saluted Philip, and the two fleets sailed on together. But there was no love lost between them. Neither was the marriage popular ashore. Except for the people at court, who had to be civil to Philip, London treated the whole thing more as a funeral than a wedding. Philip drank beer in public, instead of Spanish wine, and tried to be as English as he could. Mary did her best to make the people like him. And both did their best to buy as many friends at court as Spanish gold could buy. But, except for his Queen and the few who followed her through thick and thin, and the spies he paid to sell their country, Philip went back with even fewer English friends than he had had before; while the Spanish gold itself did him more harm than good; for the English Sea-Dogs never forgot the long array of New-World wealth that he paraded through the streets of London—"27 chests of bullion, 99 horseloads + 2 cartloads of gold and silver coin, and 97 boxes full of silver bars." That set them asking why the whole New World should be nothing but New Spain.

But seventeen years passed by; and the Spanish Empire seemed bigger and stronger than ever, besides which it seemed to be getting a firmer hold on more and more places in the Golden West. Nor was this all; for Portugal, which had many ships and large oversea possessions, was becoming so weak as to be getting more and more under the thumb of Spain; while Spain herself had just (1571) become the victorious champion both of West against East and of Christ against Mahomet by beating the Turks at Lepanto, near Corinth, in a great battle on landlocked water, a hundred miles from where the West had defeated the East when Greeks fought Persians at Salamis two thousand years before.



THE FAME OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE

Sir Drake, whom well the world's end knew, Which thou didst compass round, And whom both poles of heaven once saw, Which north and south do bound.

The stars above would make thee known, If men here silent were; The sun himself cannot forget His fellow-traveller. —Anonymous.



CHAPTER IX

THE ENGLISH SEA-DOGS

(1545-1580)

The daring English sailors who roved the waters to prey on Spanish vessels were given the name of Sea-Dogs because they often used to hunt together like a pack of hounds. Their Norse forefathers were often called sea-wolves; and sometimes there was not so very much difference between the two. War to the knife was the rule at sea when Spaniards and Englishmen met, even in time of peace (that is, of peace between the sovereigns of Spain and England, for there was no such thing as real peace at sea or in any oversea possession). Spain was bound to keep Englishmen out of the New World. Englishmen were bound to get in. Of course the Sea-Dogs preyed on other people too, and other peoples' own Sea-Dogs preyed on English vessels when they could; for it was a very rough-and-tumble age at sea, with each nation's seamen fighting for their own hand. But Spanish greed and Spanish cruelty soon made Spain the one great enemy of all the English Sea-Dogs.



Sea-Dogs were not brought up on any bed of roses. They were rough, and their lives were rougher. They were no gentler with Spaniards than Spaniards were with them when both were fighting. But, except by way of revenge, and then very seldom, they never practised such fiendish cruelty as the Spaniards practised the whole time. "Captain John Smith, sometime Governor of Virginia and Admiral of New England" (whom the Indian girl Pocahontas saved from death) did not write The Seaman's Grammar till after most of Queen Elizabeth's Sea-Dogs were dead. But he was a big boy before Drake died; so one of his Directions for the Takying of a Prize may well be quoted here to show that there was a Sea-Dog code of honour which would pass muster among the rules of war today. What's more, the Sea-Dogs kept it. "Always have as much care to their wounded as to your own; and if there be either young women or aged men, use them nobly."

Some of the other Directions show that Smith knew how to fight like a lion as well as how to treat his captives well. "Out with all your sails! A steadie man at the helm! Give him (the enemy) chace! Hail him with trumpets! Whence is your ship? Of Spain!—whence is yours? Of England! Be yare at the helm! Edge in with him! Give him a volley of small shot, also your prow and broadside as before! With all your great and small shot charge him! Make fast your grapplings. Board him!" Then, after giving much good advice as to how the rest of a sea fight should be managed, Smith tells his pupils what to do in case of fire. "Captaine, we are foul of each other and the ship is on fire!" "Cut anything to get clear and smother the fire with wet clothes." Here he adds this delightful little note: "In such a case they will presentlie bee such friends as to help each other all they can to get clear; and if they bee generous, and the fire bee quenched, they will drink kindly one to the other, heave their canns overboard, and begin again as before." The duties of a good crew after the fight are carefully laid down: "Chirurgeon (surgeon) look to the wounded and wind up the slain, and give them three guns (volleys) for their funerals" (as we do still). "Swabber, make clean the ship! Purser, record their names! Watch, be vigilant! Gunners, spunge your ordnance! Souldiers, scour your pieces! Carpenters, about your leaks! Boatswain and the rest, repair sails and shrouds! Cook, see you observe your directions against the morning watch!" The first thing in this "morning watch" the captain sings out, "Boy, hallo! is the kettle boiled?"—"Ay, ay, Sir!" Then the captain gives the order: "Boatswain, call up the men to prayer and breakfast." The victory won, and the Spanish ship once safe in the hands of an English crew, the Directions end with a grand salute: "Sound drums and trumpets: Saint George for England!" ("Saint George for England!" is what Sir Roger Keyes signalled to the fleet he led against the Germans at Zeebrugge on St. George's Day in 1918, three hundred years after Smith's book was written.)

Sea-Dogs worked desperately hard for all they got, ran far more than the usual risks of war, and were cheated by most of the traders ashore. As for the risks: when Shakespeare speaks of a "Putter-out of five for one" he means that what we now call insurance agents would bet five to one against the chance of a ship's ever coming back when she was going on a long voyage through distant seas full of known and unknown dangers, such as pirates, cannibals, shipwreck, and deadly diseases. As for cheats: Sea-Dogs were not perfect themselves, nor were all landsmen quite so bad as those in the old sailors' song:

For Sailours they bee honest men, And they do take great pains. But Land-men and ruffling Ladds Do cheat them of their gains.

All the same, the "Land-men" often did cheat sailors so much that sailors might well be excused for poking fun at "Land-men" who were seasick. Yet, at a time when even the best crews had no means of keeping food and water properly, a land-lubber might also be excused for being not only seasick but sick in worse ways still. The want of fresh food always brought on scurvy; and the wonder is that any one lived to tell the tale when once this plague and others got a foothold in a ship.

But the Norse blood tingling in their veins, the manly love of wonderful adventure, and, by no means least, the gamble of it, that dared them to sail for strange outlandish parts with odds of five to one against them, these, quite as much as the wish to make a fortune, were the chief reasons why Sea-Dogs sailed from every port and made so many landsmen mad to join them. And, after all, life afloat, rough as it was, might well be better than life ashore, when men of spirit wanted to be free from the troubles of taking sides with all the ups and downs of kings and courts, rebels and religions.

Whether or not the man who wrote The Complaynt of Scotland was only a passenger or off to join the Sea-Dogs is more than we shall ever know; for all he tells us is that he wrote his book in 1548, and that he was then a landsman who "heard many words among the seamen, but knew not what they meant." In any case, he is the only man who ever properly described the daily work on board a Sea-Dog ship. The Sea-Dogs themselves never bothered their heads about what they thought such a very common thing; and whatever other landsmen wrote was always wrong. A page of this quaint old book, which was not printed till two hundred and fifty years after it was written, will show us how much the work aboard a Sea-Dog ship was, in some ways, like the work aboard any other sailing ship, even down to the present day; and yet how much unlike in other ways. Some of the lingo has changed a good deal; for English seamen soon began to drop the words King Henry's shipwrights brought north from the Mediterranean. Many of these words were Italian, others even Arabic; for the Arabs, Moors, and Turks haunted the Mediterranean for many centuries, and some of their sea-words passed current into all the northern tongues. We get Captain from the Italian Capitano, and Admiral from the Arabic Amir-al-bahr, which means Commander-of-the-sea.

"I shall report their crying and their call," says our author. "Then the boatsman" (who was the officer next to the captain) "cried with an oath: 'I see a great ship.' Then the master (that is, the captain) whistled and bade the mariners lay the cable to the windlass to wind and weigh (that is, heave the anchor up). Then the mariners began to wind the cable in with many a loud cry; and, as one cried, all the others cried in that same tune, as it had been an echo in a cave. 'Veer, veer; veer, veer; gentle gallants, gentle gallants! Wind, I see him! Wind, I see him! Pourbossa, pourbossa! Haul all and one!'" When the anchor was hauled above the water they cried: "Caupon, caupon; caupon, cola; caupon holt; Sarrabossa!" When setting sail they began with the same kind of gibberish. "Hou! Hou! Pulpela, Pulpela! Hard out strife! Before the wind! God send! God send! Fair weather! Many Prizes! Many Prizes! Stow! Stow! Make fast and belay—Heisa! Heisa! One long pull! One long pull! Young blood! More mud! There, there! Yellow hair! Great and small! One and all!" The "yellow hair" refers to the fair-haired Norsemen. What the master told the steersman might have been said by any skipper of our own day: "Keep full and by! Luff! Con her! Steady! Keep close!" But what he told the "Boatswain" next takes us back three hundred years and more. "Bear stones and limepots full of lime to the top" (whence they would make it pretty hot for an enemy held fast alongside). The orders to the artillery and infantry on board are equally old and very odd when we remember modern war. "Gunners, make ready your cannons, culverins, falcons, sakers, slings, head-sticks, murdering pieces, passevolants, bazzils, dogges, arquebusses, calivers, and hail shots! Souldiers, make ready your cross-bows, hand-bows, fire-spars, hail-shot, lances, pikes, halberds, rondels, two-handed swords, and targes!" Yet, old as all this was, the artillery seems to have made a good many noises that would have been familiar to those of us who heard the noises of the Great War. "I heard the cannons and guns make many hideous cracks" (like the stabbing six-inchers). "The bazzils and falcons cried tir-duf, tir-duf, tir-duf" (like the anti-aircraft "Archies"). Then the small artillery cried tik-tak, tik-tak, tik-tak (something like the rattle of machine-guns, only very much slower).

The cannons of those days seem like mere pop-guns to those who knew the British Grand Fleet that swept the Germans off the sea. But the best guns Drake used against the Spanish Armada in 1588 were not at all bad compared with those that Nelson used at Trafalgar in 1805. There is more change in twenty years now than there was in two hundred years then. The chief improvements were in making the cannon balls fit better, in putting the powder into canvas bags, instead of ladling it in loose, and in fitting the guns with tackle, so that they could be much more easily handled, fired, and aimed.

The change in ships during the sailing age was much greater than the change in guns. More sails and better ones were used. The old forecastle, once something really like a little castle set up on deck, was made lower and lower, till it was left out altogether; though the name remains to describe the front part of every ship, and is now pronounced fo'c's'le or foxle. The same sort of top-hamper (that is, anything that makes the ship top-heavy) was cut down, bit by bit, as time went on, from the quarter-deck over the stern; till at last the big British men-of-war became more or less like the Victory, which was Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, and which is still kept in Portsmouth Harbour, where Henry VIII's first promise of a sailing fleet appeared in 1545, the year that Drake was born.

Drake was a first-rate seaman long before he grow up. His father, also a seaman, lived in a man-of-war on the Medway near where Chatham Dockyard stands today; and Drake and his eleven sturdy brothers spent every minute they could in sailing about and "learning the ropes." With "the master of a barque, which used to coast along the shore and sometimes carry merchandise into Zeeland (Holland) and France" Drake went to sea at the age of ten, and did so well that "the old man at his death bequeathed his barque to him by will and testament."

But the Channel trade was much too tame for Drake. So in 1567, when he was twenty-two, he sailed with Hawkins, who was already a famous Sea-Dog, to try his fortune round the Spanish Main, (that is, the mainland of northern South America and of the lands all round Panama). Luck went against them from start to finish. Hawkins, who founded the slave trade that lasted till the nineteenth century, was attacked this time by the negroes he tried to "snare" in Africa. "Envenomed arrows" worked havoc with the Englishmen. "There hardly escaped any that had blood drawn, but died in strange sort, with their mouths shut some ten days before they died." As everybody who sailed to foreign parts used slaves in those days Hawkins and Drake were no worse than the rest; and less bad than those whites who kept them three hundred years later, when people knew better. But Hawkins' complaint against the negroes for not coming quietly is just the same sort of nonsense as any other complaint against anything alive for being "vicious" when we want to take or kill it. "This animal," said a Frenchman who made wise fun of all such humbug, "is very wicked. When you attack it, it defends itself!"

With what he could get—some four or five hundred negroes—Hawkins did a roaring trade in those parts of the Spanish Main where King Philip's subjects were not too closely watched by Governors and troops. But new troubles began when Hawkins, trying to leave the West Indies, was blown back by a hurricane into Vera Cruz, then known as San Juan de Ulua. Hawkins still had a hundred negroes left; so, hoping for leave from Mexico City to trade them off, he held the Kind's Island, which entirely commanded the entrance to the harbour, where he saw twelve Spanish treasure ships. But it was four hundred miles to the City of Mexico and back again; and meanwhile a great Spanish fleet was expected out from Spain. Hawkins had this fleet completely at his mercy; for it could no more get past the King's Island if he chose to stop it than the fleet inside could get out. Moreover, the stormy season was beginning; so the fleet from Spain might easily be wrecked if Hawkins kept it at bay.

The very next morning the fleet arrived. Hawkins was terribly tempted to keep it out, which would have made his own fleet safe and would have struck a heavy blow at Spain; for all the Spanish vessels together were worth many millions. But he feared the wrath of Queen Elizabeth, who did not want war with Spain; so he let the Spaniards "enter with their accustomed treason" after they had agreed not to attack him.

For a few days everything went well. Then suddenly the Spaniards set on the English, killed every Englishman they could catch ashore, and attacked the little English fleet by land and sea. Once the two Spanish fleets had joined they were in overwhelming force and could have smothered Hawkins to death by sheer weight of numbers. But he made a brave fight. Within an hour the Spanish flagship and another vessel had been sunk, a third was on fire, and every English deck was clear of Spanish boarding parties. But the King's Island, to which Hawkins had moored his vessels, now swarmed with Spaniards firing cannon only a few yards off. To hearten his men he drank their health and called out, "Stand by your ordnance lustily!" As he put the goblet down a round shot sent it flying. "Look," he said, "how God has delivered me from that shot; and so will He deliver you from these traitors." Then he ordered his own battered ship to be abandoned for the Minion, telling Drake to come alongside in the Judith. In these two little vessels all that remained of the English sailed safely out, in spite of the many Spanish guns roaring away at point-blank range and of two fire-ships which almost struck home.

Drake and Hawkins lost each other in the darkness and gale outside. Drake's tiny Judith, of only fifty tons, went straight to England, with every inch of space crowded by her own crew and those she had rescued from the other vessels. Hawkins was so overcrowded in the Minion (which then meant "darling") that he asked all who would try their luck ashore to go forward, while all who would stand by the Minion stayed aft. A hundred went forward, were landed south of the Rio Grande, and died to a man, except three. One of these walked all round the Gulf of Mexico and up the Atlantic sea-board, till he reached the mouth of the St. John in New Brunswick, when a Frenchman took him home. The other two were caught by the Spaniards and worked as slaves, one in Mexico, the other as a galley-slave in Europe. Both escaped in the end, one after fourteen, the other after twenty-two, years. The Spaniards found their own hostages all safe and sound aboard the flagship that Hawkins had abandoned at the King's Island. This surprised them very much; for they had kept all the English hostages Hawkins had sent them in exchange for theirs when they had made the agreement never to attack him, and they knew that by the laws of war he had the right to kill all the Spaniards who were in his power when the other Spaniards broke their word.

The treason of Ulua took place in 1568, just twenty years before the Great Armada. During those fateful twenty years the storm of English hatred against the Spanish tyrants grew and grew until it burst in fury on their heads.

Nothing daunted, Drake and his dare-devils went, three years running, to the Spanish Main. The third year, 1572, brought him into fame. He had only two tiny vessels, the Pasha and the Swan, with seventy-three men, all told. But with these faithful few he sailed into a secret harbour, intending to seize the whole year's treasure chest of Spain. To his surprise the found this letter from a scout on the coast: "Captain Drake! If you fortune to come to this port, make haste away! For the Spaniards have betrayed the place and taken away all that you left here." The date was fourteen days before. He soon saw that others knew his secret harbour; for in came Rance, an Englishman, who then joined forces. Stealing quietly along the coast, the hundred and twenty English lay in wait off Nombre de Dios, the place on the Atlantic coast of the Isthmus of Panama where the treasure was put aboard for Spain. An hour before dawn Drake passed the word along the waiting line: "Shove off!" Bounding into the bay he saw a Spanish rowboat, which at once saw him and pulled hard-all for the shore. The English won the desperate race, making the Spaniards sheer off to a landing some way beyond the town. Then they landed and tumbled the Spanish guns off their mountings on the wharf, to the amazement of the sleepy Spanish sentry, who ran for dear life.

No time was to be lost now; for the news spread like wildfire, and the alarm bells were ringing from every steeple in the town. So Drake made straight for the Governor's palace, while his lieutenant, Oxenham, (the hero of Westward Ho!), went by a side street to take the enemy in flank. The Spaniards fired a volley which killed Drake's trumpeter, who had just sounded the Charge! On went the English, swords flashing, fire-pikes blazing, and all ranks cheering like mad. When their two parties met each other the Spaniards were in full flight through the Treasure Gate of Panama, which Drake banged to with a will. The door of the Governor's Palace was then burst open, and there, in solid gleaming bars, lay four hundred tons of purest silver, enough to sink the Pasha and the Swan and all Drake's boats besides. But Drake would not touch a single bar. It was only diamonds, pearls, and gold that he had room for now; so he made for the King's great Treasure House itself. But a deluge of rain came on. The fire-pikes and arquebusses had to be taken under cover. The immensely strong Treasure House defied every effort to break it in. The Spaniards, finding how very few the English were, came on to the attack. Drake was wounded, so that he had to be carried off the field. And the whole attack ended in failure, and dead loss.

The game seemed up. Rance and his men withdrew, and Drake was left with less than fifty. But he was determined to be revenged on Spain for the treachery to Hawkins at Ulua (the modern Vera Cruz); and equally determined to get some Spanish treasure. So, keeping out of sight for the next five months, till the rainy season was over and the next treasure train was ready, he went wide of Nombre de Dios and made for Panama (the Pacific end of the trail across the Isthmus). He had nineteen picked Englishmen and thirty-one Maroons, who, being the offspring of Negro slaves and Indians, hated Spaniards like poison and knew the country to a foot.

On the 7th of February, 1573, from the top of a gigantic tree that stood on the Divide, Drake first saw the Pacific. Vowing to sail an English ship across the great South Sea he pushed on eagerly. Three days later his fifty men were lying in wait for the mule train bringing gold from Panama. All had their shirts on over their coats, so as to know one another in the night attack. Presently the tinkle of mule bells told of the Spanish approach. When the whole line of mules had walked into his trap Drake's whistle blew one long shrill blast and his men set on with glee. Their two years of toil and failure seemed to have come to an end: for they easily mastered the train. But then, to their intense disgust, they found that the Spaniards had fooled them by sending the silver train this way and the gold one somewhere else.

Without losing a moment Drake marched back to the Atlantic, where he met Tetu, a very gallant Frenchman, who, with his own seventy men, gladly joined company; for Spain hated to see the French there quite as much as she hated to see the English. The new friends then struck inland to a lonely spot which another Spanish train of gold and jewels had to pass on its way to Nombre de Dios. This time there was no mistake. When Drake's whistle blew, and the leading mules were stopped, the others lay down, as mule trains will. Then the guard was quickly killed or put to flight, and all the gold and jewels were safely seized and carried to the coast. Here again disaster stared Drake in the face; for all his boats were gone, and not one of the men left with them was in sight. But once more Drake got through, this time by setting up an empty biscuit bag as a sail on a raft he quickly put together. With one other Englishman and two Frenchmen he soon found his boats, divided the treasure with the French, put the English share on board ship, and, after giving many presents to the friendly Maroons, sailed for home. "And so," says one of his men, "we arrived at Plymouth on Sunday, the 9th of August, 1573, at what time the news of our Captain's return did so speedily pass over all the church that very few remained with the preacher, all hastening to see the evidence of God's love towards our Gracious Queen and Country."

The plot kept thickening fast and faster after this. New Spain, of course, was Spanish by right of discovery, conquest, and a certain kind of settling. But the Spaniards wanted to keep everyone else away, not only from all they had but from all they wished to have. Their Governor-General plainly showed this by putting up in his palace the figure of a gigantic war-horse pawing at the sky, and by carving underneath, "The Earth itself is not enough for Us." Nor was this the worst. No whites, not even the Germans, have ever been so fiendishly cruel to any natives as the Spaniards were to those they had in their power. They murdered, tortured, burnt alive, and condemned to a living death as slaves every native race they met. There were brutal Belgians in the Congo not so very long ago. American settlers and politicians have done many a dark deed to the Indians. And the British record in the old days of Newfoundland is quite as black. But, for out-and-out cruelty, "the devildoms of Spain" beat everything bad elsewhere. Moreover, while English, French, and Spaniards all wanted gold when they could get it, there was this marked difference between the two chief opponents, that while Spain cared mostly for tribute England cared mostly for trade. Now, tribute simply means squeezing as much blood-money as possible out of an enslaved country, no matter at what cost of life and liberty to the people there; while trade, though often full of cheating, really means an exchange of goods and some give-and-take all round. When we consider this great difference, and remember how cruel the Spaniards were to all whom they had made their enemies, we can understand why the Spanish Empire died and why the British lives.

One day Queen Elizabeth sent for Drake and spoke her mind straight out. "Drake, I would gladly be revenged on the King of Spain for divers injuries"; and, said Drake, "she craved my advice; and I told Her Majesty the only way was to annoy him by the Indies." Then he told her his great plan for raiding the Pacific, where no outsider had ever been, and where the Spaniards were working their will without a thought of danger. Elizabeth at once fell in with Drake's idea and "did swear by her Crown that if any within her Realm did give the King of Spain to understand hereof they should lose their heads therefor." The secret had to be very well kept, even from Burleigh, who was then more or less like what a Prime Minister is now. Burleigh was a very cautious man, afraid of bringing on an open war with Spain. Elizabeth herself did not want open war; but she was ready to go all lengths just short of that. In those days, and for the next two centuries, a good deal of fighting could go on at sea and round about oversea possessions without bringing on a regular war in Europe. But for Elizabeth to have shown her hand now would have put Philip at least on his guard and perhaps spoilt Drake's game altogether. So the secret was carefully hidden from every one likely to tell Mendoza, the lynx-eyed ambassador of Spain. That Elizabeth was right in all she did is more than we can say. But with enemies like Philip of Spain and Mary Queen of Scots (both ready to have her murdered, if that could be safely done) she had to hit back as best she could.

"The Famous Voyage of Sir Francis Drake into the South Sea, and therehence about the whole Globe of the Earth, begun in the Yeare of our Lord 1577" is the greatest raid in history. His fleet was small enough, compared with what we know of fleets today. But it did wonderful work for all that. The flagship Golden Hind was of only a hundred tons. The four others were smaller still. There were less than two hundred men, all told. Yet with these Drake sailed off to raid the whole Pacific seaboard of New Spain. He took "great store of wildfire, chain-shot, harquebusses, pistols, corslets, bows, and other weapons. Neither had he omitted to make provision for ornament and delight, carrying with him expert musicians, rich furniture, and divers shows of curious workmanship, whereby the magnificence of his native country might amongst all nations be the more admired."

Sou'sou'west went Drake until he reached the "Land of Devils" in South America, northeast of Montevideo. Terrific storms raised tremendous seas through which the five little vessels buffeted their toilsome way. The old Portuguese pilot, whom Drake had taken for his knowledge of that wild coast, said the native savages had "sold themselves to the Devil, because he was so much kinder than the Spaniards; and the Devil helped them to keep off Spanish vessels by raising these awful storms." The frightful Straits of Magellan (through which the British ship Ortega led the Germans such a dance of death) took Drake seventeen squally days to clear. But he was out of the frying-pan into the fire when he reached the Pacific, where he struck a storm fifty-two days long. One of his vessels sank. Two others lost him and went home. But the Golden Hind and the little pinnace Benedict remained safe together off Cape Horn, which Drake was now the first man to discover.

Carried too far south of his course, and then too far west by trusting the bad Spanish maps, Drake only reached Valparaiso in the north of Chili at the end of 1578. Thinking he must be a Spaniard, as no one else had ever sailed that sea, the crew of the Grand Captain of the South opened a cask of wine and beat a welcome on their drums. Before the Spaniards knew what was happening gigantic Tom Moone had led the English boarders over the side and driven the crew below. Half a million was the sum of this first prize. The news spread quickly, scaring the old Governor to death, heartening the Indians, who had just been defeated, and putting all Spanish plans at sixes and sevens. Messengers were sent post-haste to warn the coast. But Drake of course went faster by sea than the Spaniards could by land; so he overhauled and took every vessel he met. Very few showed fight, as they never expected enemies at sea and were foolish enough not to be ready for those that were sure to come sooner or later. Even ashore there was little resistance, often, it is true, because the surprise was complete. One day some Spaniards, with half a ton of silver loaded on eight llamas, came round a corner straight into Drake's arms. Another day his men found a Spaniard fast asleep near thirteen solid bars from the mines of Potosi. The bars were lifted quietly and the Spaniard left peacefully sleeping.

Sailing into Lima Drake cut every single Spanish ship adrift and then sailed out again, leaving the harbour a perfect pandemonium of wrecks. Overhauling a ship from Panama he found that the King's great treasure ship, Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, the "chiefest glory of the whole South Sea," had such a long start of him that she might unload at Panama before he could come up with her. The Spaniards, a lubberly lot, brave soldiers but never handy sailors, were afraid of the Straits of Magellan and knew nothing of Cape Horn; so they always sent their treasure across the Isthmus of Panama.

Drake set every stitch of canvas the Golden Hind could carry, taking four more prizes by the way and learning that he was gaining on the treasure ship. After clearing the prizes he sent them back with no one on board hurt, plenty to eat and drink, and presents for all ranks and ratings—very much to the amazement of the Spaniards. "Only a day ahead," was the news the last prize gave him. But they were nearing Panama; so Drake strained every nerve anew, promising a chain of solid gold to the first look-out who saw the chase. Next midday his cousin, young Jack Drake, yelled out "Sail-ho!" and climbed down on deck to get the golden chain.

Panama was now so close that Drake was afraid of scaring the treasure ship into making a run for it; so he trailed twelve empty wine casks over the stern to slacken the speed of the Golden Hind and make her look more like a lubberly Spaniard. As the evening breeze came up and reached him first he cut the casks adrift, set every sail, and presently ran alongside. "Who are you?" asked the Spanish captain. "A ship of Chili!" answered Drake. But when Don Anton looked down on the Golden Hind he saw her decks crowded with armed men from whom a thundering shout of triumph came—"English! English! Strike sail!" Then Drake blew his whistle, at which there was perfect silence while he called, "Strike sail, Senor Anton! or I must send you to the bottom!" Anton, however, was a very brave man, and he stoutly replied, "Strike sail? Come and do it yourself!" At once the English guns cut down his masts and rigging, while a perfect hail of arrows prevented the Spaniards from clearing the wreckage away. Don Anton's crew began running below, and when, in despair of making sail, he looked overside, there was gigantic Tom Moone, at the head of the boarders, climbing out of the pinnace. Then Anton struck his flag, was taken aboard the Golden Hind, and, with all his crew, given a splendid banquet by his English foes. After this the millions and millions of treasure were loaded aboard the Golden Hind, and the Spaniards were given handsome presents to soften their hard luck. Then they and their empty treasure ship were allowed to sail for Panama.

Throwing the Spaniards off the scent by steering crooked courses Drake at last landed at what is now Drake's Bay, near the modern San Francisco, where the Indians, who had never even heard of any craft bigger than canoes, were lost in wonder at the Golden Hind and none the less at the big fair-haired strangers, whom they took for gods. Drake, as always, was very kind to them, gave them rich presents, promised them the protection of his Queen, whose coins he showed them, and, pointing to the sky while his men were praying, tried to make them understand that the one true God was there and not on earth. They then crowned him with a head-dress of eagle's feathers, while he made them a speech, saying that he would call their country New Albion. California thus became the counterpart of Cape Breton, over which John Cabot had raised St. George's Cross eighty-two years before.

Leaving the Indians in tears at his departure Drake crossed the Pacific to the Moluccas, where a vile Portuguese, with the suitable name of Lopez de Mosquito, had just killed the Sultan, who was then his guest, chopped up the body, and thrown the pieces into the sea, to show his contempt for the natives. Drake would have gladly helped the Sultan's son, Baber, if he had only had a few more men. But having no more than fifty-six left he could not risk war with the Portuguese among their own possessions. He did, however, make a treaty with Baber which was the foundation of all the English Far-Eastern trade. And here, as everywhere, he won the hearty good-will of the natives.

After a narrow escape from being wrecked on an unknown reef, and other escapes from dangers which alone would fill a story book, the gallant Golden Hind sailed into Plymouth Sound with ballast of silver and cargo of gold. "Is Her Majesty alive and well?" asked Drake of a fishing smack. "Ay, ay, that she is, my Master." So Drake wrote off to her at once and came to anchor beside what is now Drake's Island. He wished to know how things were going at Court before he went to London. The Queen wrote back to say she wished to see him, and that she would "view" some of the wonderful things he had brought back from foreign parts. Straight on this hint he went to town with jewels enough to soften any woman's heart. The Spanish ambassador was beside himself with rage; but in London "the people were swarming daily in the streets to behold their Captain Drake and vowing hatred to all that misliked him."

To crown everything, the Golden Hind came round to London, where she was the wonder of the day, and when the Queen herself went aboard to a state banquet at which she knighted the hero of the sea: "I bid thee rise, Sir Francis Drake!"



CHAPTER X

THE SPANISH ARMADA

(1588)

By 1580, the year of Drake's return, Spain and England were fast moving toward the war that had been bound to come ever since the Old World had found the riches of the New.

The battle grounds of rival sea-powers had been shifting farther and farther west since history began. Now the last step was to come. We have seen already that the centre of the world's sea trade had moved for thousands of years from south-eastern Asia toward north-western Europe, and that in the fifteenth century it was pretty well divided between Venice and the Hansa Towns. This was only natural, because Venice was in the middle of southern Europe and the Hansa Towns were in the middle of northern Europe. The two were therefore well placed to receive, store, and distribute the bulk of the oversea trade. In a word, Venice (on the Adriatic) and the Hansa Towns (mostly on what is now the German coast) were the great European central junctions of oversea trade; while the Atlantic states of Spain and Portugal, France and England were only terminal points, that is, they were at the end of the line; for the Atlantic ended the world to the west.

The discovery of a rich New World changed all that. Venice and the Hansa Towns became only stations by the way; while the new grand central junction of the world was bound to be somewhere among the Atlantic states of England, France, Portugal, and Spain. When these four countries became rivals for this junction England won, partly because she had the advantage of being an island, and thus safe from invasion by land, but mostly because her men were of the fighting kindred of the sea. Yet she had to fight hard to win; she had to fight hard to keep what she won; and we all know how hard she has just had to fight again for the real "Freedom of the Seas."

Her first great rival, Spain, was stronger than ever in 1580, because it was then that Philip II added Portugal, as well as all the oversea possessions of Portugal to his own enormous empire. He felt that if he could only conquer England, then the dream of his father, Charles V, would certainly come true, and he would be the master of the world. France also stood in his way, but only by land; and if he had England and England's sea-power he could make short work of France. His having Portugal gave him much that he needed for his "Invincible Armada": plenty of ships, sailors at least as good as his own, new ports and new islands, like the Azores, and the "wealth of All the Indies"—for he now had the Portuguese trade with the Indies as well as his own with the West.

Luckily for England, Philip was a landsman, no soldier, and very slow. So England struck first, but at New Spain, not, Old, because Elizabeth would not have open war if she could help it. She had enemies in Scotland, enemies in France, a few at home, and millions in Spain. Besides, she was cleverer at playing off one against the other than in managing a big war; and, like most people everywhere, even in our own sea-girt Empire now, she never quite understood how to make war at sea.

In 1585 London was all agog about Sir Francis Drake again; for he was to command the "Indies Voyage" against New Spain, with Frobisher, of North-West-Passage fame, as his Vice-Admiral, and Knollys, the Queen's own cousin, as Rear-Admiral. There were twenty-one ships and twenty-three hundred men; with Carleill, a first-class general, to command the soldiers ashore. Drake's crew of the Golden Hind came forward to a man, among them gigantic Tom Moone, the lion of the boarding parties. It is quite likely that Shakespeare went down with the crowds of Londoners who saw the fleet set sail from Woolwich; for the famous London vessel, Tiger, which he mentions both in Macbeth and in Twelfth Night, was one of Drake's fleet.

Drake's written plan proves that he was not only a daring raider but a very great admiral as well. It marked down for attack all the places in New Spain the taking of which would knock the sea trade there to pieces, because they were the same by sea as railway junctions are by land. More than this, he planned to hold Havana, so that the junctions he destroyed could not be made to work again, as from there he could pounce on working parties anywhere else.

Drake first swooped down on San Domingo in Hayti, battering the walls from the sea while Carleill attacked them by land. The Spaniards had been on their guard, so no treasure was found. Drake therefore put the town to ransom and sent his Maroon servant to bring back the Spanish answer. But the Spanish messenger ran his lance into the Maroon and cantered away. The Maroon dragged himself back and fell dead at Drake's feet. Drake sent word to say he would hang two Spaniards a day till the one who had killed his Maroon was hanged himself. No answer having come in next morning, two Spanish friars were strung up. Then the offender was brought in and hanged by the Spaniards in front of both armies. After this Drake burnt a fresh bit of the town each day till the Spaniards paid the ransom.

The next dash was for Cartagena on the mainland of South America. The Spaniards felt safe from a naval attack here, as the harbour was very hard to enter, even with the best of Spanish pilots. But Drake did this trick quite easily without any pilot at all; and, after puzzling the Spaniards by his movements, put Carleill ashore in the dark just where the English soldiers could wade past the Spanish batteries under cover at the weakest spot. When Carleill reached the barricade his musketeers fired into the Spaniards' faces and wheeled off to let the pikemen charge through. After a fierce hand-to-hand fight the Spaniards ran. The town gave in next day. Having been paid its ransom Drake sailed for the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine in Florida and utterly destroyed it, then went on to Sir Walter Raleigh's colony of Roanoke, in what is now North Carolina, and thence home.

He had missed the yearly treasure fleet by only half a day. He had lost so many men by sickness that he had no chance of taking and holding Havana. And the ransoms were less than he had hoped for. But he had done enough to cripple New Spain for the next few years at any rate. Arrived at Plymouth he wrote to London, saying, "There is now a very great gap opened, very little to the liking of the King of Spain."

But the King, stung to the quick, went on with his Armada harder than before, and in 1587 had it more than half ready in Lisbon and Cadiz. Then Drake "singed King Philip's beard" by swooping down on Cadiz and smashing up the shipping there; by going on to Cape St. Vincent, which he seized and held with an army while his ships swept off the fishing craft that helped to feed the great Armada; and by taking "the greatest ship in all Portugal, richly laden, to our Happy Joy." This was the best East Indies treasure ship, loaded with silks and spices, jewels and gold, to the value of many millions. But, better than even this, Drake found among her papers the secrets of the wonderful trade with the East, a trade now taken over by the Spaniards from the conquered Portuguese. With these papers in English hands the English oversea traders set to work and formed the great East India Company on the last day of the year 1600. This Company—founded, held, and always helped by British sea-power—went on, step by step, for the next two hundred and fifty-seven years, after which India, taken over by the British Crown, at last grew into the present Indian Empire, a country containing three times as many people as the whole population of the United States, and yet a country which is only one of the many parts of the British Empire all round the Seven Seas.

Crippled by English sea-power both in New Spain and Old, threatened by English sea-power in his trade with the Far East, and harassed by English sea-power everywhere between Spain and the Spanish Netherlands, where the Duke of Parma was preparing an army for the invasion of England, King Philip kept working on with murder in his heart. At last, in the summer of 1588, his Great Invincible Spanish Armada seemed to be as Great, Invincible, and Spanish as he could ever hope to make it. All the landlubbers, even in England, thought it very great indeed; and most of them think so still. The best Spanish soldiers, like all the few really good Spanish sailors, had very grave doubts. Those who knew the English Navy best expected nothing but disaster: their letters still remain to prove it. But most people, then as now, knew nothing about navies; and so the Armada went on collecting ships and men together, heartening the landsmen of Spain, and disheartening far too many landsmen in England.

The fatal weakness of the Great Armada was its being out of date. Though little better than an ancient floating army, it had to fight what then was the one really modern fleet; and this was its undoing. Time out of mind, as we have seen already, battles on the water had always been made as much like battles on the land as the wit of man could make them. They were fought by soldiers under generals, not by sailors under admirals. They were fought mostly on the platforms of huge rowboats called galleys; and the despised galley-slaves were almost the only seamen. Even the officers and men who handled the clumsy old sailing craft, or the still clumsier sail aboard a galley, were thought to be next door to nobodies; for their only work was to fit their craft together like so many bits of land in order that the soldiers might have the best imitation of a "proper field." The main bodies of these floating armies drew up in line-abreast (that is, side by side) charged each other end-on, and fought it out hand-to-hand on the mass of jammed-together platforms. No such battle was ever fought far from the land; for a good breeze would make the platforms wobble, while no galley could survive a gale.

These ancient rowboat battles on calm coastal waters lasted till Lepanto in 1571. Guns, muskets, and sailing craft were all used at Lepanto. But the main fighting was done on galley platforms, and not so very differently done from the way the Greeks and Persians fought at Salamis twenty centuries before. Then, after less than twenty years, the Armada, though better than the Spaniards at Lepanto, was sent across the open sea to fight a regular sea-going fleet, whose leaders were admirals, whose chief fighting men were sailors, whose movements were made under sail, and whose real weapon was the shattering broadside gun. It was ancient Spanish floating army against modern English Sea-Dog fleet.

Philip's silly plan was that the Armada should make for the Straits of Dover, where it would see that Parma's Spanish army had a safe passage from Flanders into England. Philip had lost his best admiral, Santa Cruz, and had put the Armada in charge of Medina Sidonia, a seasick landlubber, whom he ordered not to fight any more than could possibly be helped until Parma had reached England. Parma, who was a good soldier, saw at once what nonsense it was to put the army first and navy second in the fighting, because, even if he could get into England, his lines of communication with the bases in Flanders and Spain could never be safe until Drake's fleet had been beaten. He knew, as all soldiers and all sailors know, that unless you have a safe road over which to bring your supplies from your base to your front your fleets and armies must simply wither away for want of these supplies—for want of men, arms, food, and all the other things a fleet and army need. Therefore he wanted the fleet to fight first, so as to clear, or try to clear, safe roads across the sea. After these roads, or "lines of communication" between the bases and the front, had been cleared he would try to conquer England with his Spanish army.

But Philip went his own silly way; and Elizabeth, his deadly enemy, nearly helped him by having some silly plans of her own. She and her Council (all landsmen, and no great soldier among them) wanted to divide the English fleet so as to defend the different places they thought the Armada might attack. This would also please the people; for most people do like to see ships and soldiers close in front of them, even when that is quite the wrong place for the ships and soldiers to be. Of course this plan could never have worked, except in favour of the Spaniards, who might have crushed, first, one bit of the English fleet, and then another, and another, though they had no chance whatever against the united whole.

Drake's own perfect plan was to take the whole fleet straight to Lisbon and beat the Armada as it tried to get out. This would have given him an enormous advantage; first, because he would have found the Armada at once, instead of having to search for it after it had sailed; secondly, because he could have crushed it ship by ship as it came out of the Tagus; and, thirdly, because this defeat of the Armada off the coast of Portugal would certainly prevent Parma from taking his army from Flanders into England. On the 30th of March, 1588, a day to be forever remembered in the history of sea-power, Drake wrote all this from Plymouth to the Queen and her Councillors. One civilian, Sir Francis Walsingham, saw at once that Drake was right. But the others shook their heads; while even those who thought Drake knew better than they did were afraid to let the fleet go so far away, because the people liked the comfort of seeing it close beside the coast. Drake's way was the way of Nelson, Jellicoe, Beatty, and all the greatest seamen. But he was not allowed to try it till the 7th of July, when the Armada had left Lisbon and was in the harbour of Corunna at the northwest corner of the Spanish coast. And even then the Queen kept him so short of stores that he could not have waited there to take the best chance.

When almost in sight of Spain a roaring sou'wester blew up; so, being unable to wait, he had to come back to Plymouth on the 12th. Then for a week the English fleet was taking in stores as hard as it could. Lord Howard of Effingham, the Lord High Admiral of England, was in command as the Great Officer of State who represented the Queen. But he was a very sensible man, who, knowing that Drake was the greatest seaman in the world, let him do the fighting in the proper way.



The southwest wind that blew Drake back brought the Armada out and up the English Channel. Howard and Drake, their desperate week of taking in stores at last quite done, were playing a game of bowls on the green when Captain Fleming, of the ever famous Golden Hind, rushed up to say the Spaniards were in sight of the Lizard, only sixty miles west. Drake, knowing perfectly well what time there was to spare, and how best to calm the people looking on, said, "There's time to finish the game first and the Spaniards after." But the fleet got its sailing orders on the spot; and all that fateful night the ships were working out of Plymouth Sound. The Queen and her politicians, though patriotic as any Sea-Dog, had, by keeping Drake so short of stores, very nearly got their own fleet caught in just the same way as Drake had wished to catch the Great Armada, that is, coming out of port, ship by ship, against a united fleet outside. But Philip's silly plan, the clumsiness of the Armada, and, above all, the supreme skill of the English Sea-Dogs, put everything to rights again.

Next morning Drake was safely out at sea in the Channel, with fifty-four ships, when he sighted a dim blur toward the west. This was the Great Invincible Armada. Rain killed the wind, and the English lay under bare poles, unseen by the Spaniards, who still left some of their idle sails swinging to and fro. The great day had come at last. Philip's Armada had drunk to Der Tag (the day) of England's overthrow just as the Germans did three centuries later; and nearly all the Spaniards thought that thirty thousand Spaniards on the water were more than a match for fifteen thousand English. But the Spaniards were six thousand short, through sickness and desertion, and of the remaining twenty-four thousand little more than a quarter were seamen. The rest were soldiers, with many camp-followers. The fifteen thousand English, on the other hand, were nearly all on board; and most of them had been trained to sea fighting from their youth up. The Spaniards were one-quarter seamen and three-quarters landsmen. The English were three-quarters seamen and one-quarter landsmen; and most of these landsmen were like the Marines of the present day, "soldier and sailor too." Nor was this the only difference that helped to seal the fate of the doomed Armada. For not only were the English seamen twice as many and twice as good as the Spanish seamen, but in the numbers of their trained seamen-gunners the English beat the Spaniards no less than ten to one: and guns were the weapons that decided the issue of the day, just as they did at Jutland in our recent war against the Germans.

A little before sunset the mist lifted, and the Spaniards, to their intense surprise, saw the whole English fleet together. Every big ship in the Armada sent boats hurrying off to know what orders Sidonia had to give them. But Sidonia had none. That the Sea-Dogs had worked out of Plymouth so quickly and were all together in a single fleet was something he had not reckoned on, and something Philip's silly plan had not provided for. Still, the Armada had one advantage left, the weather-gage; for the southwest wind was piping up again, blowing from the Armada to the English. Yet even this advantage was soon lost, not by any change of wind, but by English seamanship. For while eight English vessels held the attention of the Armada, by working about between it and the shore, the rest of Drake's fleet stole off to sea, got safely out of sight, tacked to windward with splendid skill, edged in toward the Armada when sea-room west of it was gained, and then, next morning, to the still more intense surprise of the Armada, came down to attack it, having won the weather-gage by sailing round behind it in the night.

This was the decisive stroke. The fight itself was simply the slaughter of a floating army by a fleet. The Spaniards fought like heroes, day after slaughterous day. But their light guns, badly served by ill-trained crews, fired much too high to hull the English ships "'twixt wind and water," that is, to smash holes in their sides along the water-line. On the other hand, the English had more and better guns, far more and far better seaman-gunners, and vessels managed by the sea's own "handy men." They ran in with the wind, just near enough to make their well-aimed cannon-balls most deadly on the Spanish water-line, but never so near that the Spaniards could catch them with grappling hooks and hold them fast while the Spanish soldiers boarded. Another way the skilful English had was to turn their broadside against the enemy's end-on. This, whether for a single ship or for a fleet, is called "crossing the T"; and if you will look at a T you will see that guns firing inward from the whole length of the cross-stroke have a great advantage over guns firing back from the front of the up-stroke. In other words, the broad front converges on the narrow front and smashes it.

The crowded Spaniards sailed on, the whole week long, before the pursuing English in the "eagle formation," with the big ships forming the body and the lighter ones the wings: good enough for ancient battles like Lepanto, but of no use against a modern fleet like Drake's. Most of them could hardly have been more nearly useless if they had been just so many elephants fighting killer whales at sea. Do what they could, they could not catch the nimble Sea-Dogs who were biting them to death. But they still fought on. Their crowded soldiers were simply targets for the English cannon-balls. Sometimes the Spanish vessels were seen to drip a horrid red, as if the very decks were bleeding. But when, at the end of the week, Sidonia asked Oquendo, "What are we to do now?", Oquendo, a dauntless warrior, at once replied: "Order up more powder!"

The Spaniards at last reached Calais and anchored in the Roads. But, when the tidal stream was running toward them full, Drake sent nine fire-ships in among them. There was no time to get their anchors up; so they cut their cables, swung round with the tide in horrible confusion, dashing into one another in the dark, and headed for the shallows of the Flemish coast. This lost them their last chance of helping Parma into England. But it also saved Parma from losing the whole of his army at sea. Once more the brave, though cruel, Spaniards tried to fight the English fleet. But all in vain. This was the end. It came at Gravelines, on the 29th of July 1588, just ten days after Captain Fleming of the Golden Hind had stopped Drake's game of bowls at Plymouth. North, and still north, the beaten Armada ran for its life; round by the stormy Orkneys, down the wild waters of the Hebrides and Western Ireland, strewing the coasts with wreckage and dead men, till at last the few surviving ships limped home.



There never was a better victory nor one more clearly gained by greater skill. Nor has there ever been a victory showing more clearly how impossible it is to keep sea empires safe without a proper navy.

But, after all, it is the whole Sea-Dog war, and not any single battle or campaign, that really made those vast changes in world-history which we enjoy today. For we owe it to the whole Sea-Dog breed that the fair lands of North America are what they are and not as Spain might otherwise have made them. The Sea-Dogs won the English right of entry into Spain's New World. They, strange as it may seem, won French rights, too; for Spain and France were often deadly enemies, and Spain would gladly have kept the French out of all America if she had only had the fleet with which to do it. Thus even the French-Canadians owe Drake a debt of gratitude for breaking down the great sea barriers of Spain.

"The Invincible Armada" could not, of course, have been defeated without much English bravery. And we know that the Queen, her Councillors, and the great mass of English people would have fought the Spanish army bravely enough had it ever landed. For even Henry V, calling to his army at the siege of Harfleur,

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead!

was no braver than Queen Elizabeth addressing her own army at Tilbury Fort, the outwork of London, when the Armada was sailing up the Channel: "I am only a poor weak woman. But I have the heart of a king; and of a King of England too."

There can be no doubt whatever that both leaders and followers must have good hearts, and have them in the right place too; and that the heart of England beat high throughout this great campaign. But good heads, rightly used, are equally needed in war. Sea-Dog courage counted for much against the Great Armada; but Sea-Dog skill for more.

If you want a fight in which the Sea-Dog hearts might well have quailed against appalling odds, then turn to the glorious end of Drake's old flagship, the Revenge, when her new captain, Sir Richard Grenville, fought her single-handed against a whole encircling fleet of Spain.



Grenville, Drake, and Sir Philip Sidney had been among those members of Parliament who had asked Queen Elizabeth to give Sir Walter Raleigh a Royal Charter to found the first of the English oversea Dominions—the colony on Roanoke Island in what is now North Carolina. Grenville himself went out to Roanoke. He was a born soldier of fortune and "first-class fighting man"; an explorer, scout, and pioneer; but not a colonist at all. On his return from founding Raleigh's colony his boats were swept away in a storm just before he saw a Spanish treasure ship. But he made his carpenter put together some sort of boat with bits of boxes; and in this he boarded the Spaniard, just reaching her deck before his makeshift craft went down.

On the 1st of September, 1591, the Revenge, with Grenville in command of her less than two hundred men, was at "Flores in the Azores" when Don Alonzo de Bazan arrived with fifty-three ships of Spain. The little English squadron under Lord Thomas Howard had no chance against this overwhelming force. So it put to sea just in time to escape destruction. But when Howard saw that the Revenge was being surrounded he gallantly came back and attacked the Spaniards in rear; while the little George Noble of London ran alongside the Revenge, offering to stand by through thick and thin. Grenville ordered her off, and Howard himself also retired, seeing no chance whatever of helping the Revenge and every chance of losing all his own ships.

Then, at three in the afternoon, the whole Spanish fleet closed in on the Revenge, which had only one hundred men really fit for duty. The rest were sick. Grenville, who had sworn he would cut down the first man who touched a rope while there still seemed a chance to escape, now refused the Spanish summons to surrender and prepared to fight to the last. Trimming his sails as carefully as if for a yacht race he ran down close-hauled on the starboard tack, right between the two divisions of the Spanish fleet, till the flagship, three times the size of the Revenge, ranged up on his weather side, thus blanketing his canvas and stealing the wind. As the Revenge lost way the ships she had passed on the other side began ranging up to cut her off completely. But meanwhile her first broadside had crashed into the flagship, which hauled off for repairs and was replaced by two more ships. The fight raged with the utmost fury all that sunny afternoon and far into the warm dark night. Two Spaniards were sunk on the spot, a third sank afterwards, and a fourth could only be saved by beaching. But still the fight went on, the darkness reddened by the flaming guns.

Maddened to see one English ship keeping their whole fleet of fifty-three at bay the Spaniards closed in till the Revenge was caught fast by two determined enemies. In came the Spanish grapplings, hooking fast to the Revenge on either side. "Boarders away!" yelled the Spanish colonels. "Repel Boarders!" shouted Grenville in reply. And the boarders were repelled, leaving a hundred killed behind them. Only fifty English now remained. But they were as defiant as before, giving the Spaniards deadly broadsides right along the water-line, till two fresh enemies closed in and grappled fast. Again the boarders swarmed in from both sides. Again the dauntless English drove them back. Again the English swords and pikes dripped red with Spanish blood.

But now only twenty fighting men were left, while Grenville himself had been very badly wounded twice. Two fresh enemies then closed in, grappled, boarded, fought with fury, and were barely driven back. After this there was a pause while both sides waited for the dawn. Four hundred Spaniards had been killed or drowned and quite six hundred wounded. A hundred Sea-Dogs had thus accounted for a thousand enemies. But they themselves were now unable to resist the attack the Spaniards seemed unwilling to resume; for the first streak of dawn found only ten men left with weapons in their hands, and these half dead with more than twelve hours' fighting.

"Sink me the ship, Master Gunner!" was the last order Grenville gave. But meanwhile the only two officers left alive, both badly wounded, had taken boat to treat for terms; and the terms had been agreed upon. Don Bazan promised, and worthily accorded, all the honours of war. So Grenville was carefully taken on board the flagship, laid in Don Bazan's cabin, and attended by the best Spanish surgeon. Then, with the Spanish officers standing before him bareheaded, to show him all possible respect, Grenville, after thanking them in their own language for all their compliments and courtesies, spoke his farewell to the world in words which his two wounded officers wrote home:

"'Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind; for that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, that hath fought for his Queen and Country, honour and religion.' And when he had said these and other such like words he gave up the ghost with a great and stout courage."



THE REVENGE

A Ballad of the Fleet

At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, And a pinnace, like a flutter'd bird, came flying from far away: "Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty three!"

* * * * * *

He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight, And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight, With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.

"Shall we fight or shall we fly? Good Sir Richard, tell us now, For to fight is but to dip! There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set." And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good Englishmen. Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil, For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet."

* * * * * *

Sir Richard spoke and he laugh'd, and we roar'd a hurrah, and so, The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe, With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below; For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen, And the little Revenge ran on thro' the long sea-lane between.

Thousands of their soldiers look'd down from their decks and laugh'd, Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft Running on and on, till delay'd By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons, And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns, Took the breath from our sails, and we stay'd.

And while now the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud Whence the thunderbolt will fall Long and loud, Four galleons drew away From the Spanish fleet that day, And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay, And the battle-thunder broke from them all.

But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went, Having that within her womb that had left her ill content; And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand, For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers, And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his ears When he leaps from the water to the land.

And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three. Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came, Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame; Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame. For some were sunk and many were shatter'd, and so could fight us no more— God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?

For he said "Fight on! fight on!" Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck; And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone, With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck. But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead, And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head, And he said 'Fight on! fight on!'

And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea, And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring; But they dared not touch us again, for they fear'd that we still could sting, So they watch'd what the end would be. And we had not fought them in vain, But in perilous plight were we, Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain, And half of the rest of us maim'd for life,

In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife; And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold, And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent; And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side; But Sir Richard cried in his English pride, "We have fought such a fight for a day and a night As may never be fought again! We have won great glory, my men! And a day less or more At sea or ashore, We die—does it matter when? Sink me the ship, Master Gunner—sink her, split her in twain! Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!"

And the gunner said, "Ay, ay," but the seamen made reply: "We have children, we have wives, And the Lord hath spared our lives. We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go; We shall live to fight again, and to strike another blow." And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.

And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then, Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last, And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace; But he rose upon their decks, and he cried: "I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true; I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do: With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!" And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true, And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap That he dared her with one little ship and his English few; Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew, But they sank his body with honour down into the deep, And they mann'd the Revenge with a swarthier alien crew, And away she sail'd with her loss and long'd for her own; When a wind from the lands they had ruin'd awoke from sleep, And the water began to heave and the weather to moan, And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew, And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew, Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags, And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter'd navy of Spain, And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags To be lost evermore in the main.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson.



PART II

THE DUTCH WAR

CHAPTER XI

THE FIRST DUTCH WAR

(1623-1653)

The Dutch Wars, which lasted off and on for fifty years (1623-1673), were caused by rivalry in oversea trade. In the sixteenth century the Dutch and English had joined forces against the Portuguese, who had tried to keep them out of the East Indies altogether. But when once the Portuguese were beaten the allies fell out among themselves, the Dutch got the upper hand, and, in 1623, killed off the English traders at Amboyna, one of the Moluccas. War did not come for many years. But there was always some fighting in the Far South East; and Amboyna was never forgotten.

The final step toward war was taken when the British Parliament passed the famous Navigation Act of 1651. By this Act nothing could be brought into England except in English ships or in ships belonging to the country from which the goods came. As the Dutch were then doing half the oversea freight work of Europe, and as they had also been making the most of what oversea freighting England had lost during her Civil War, the Act hit them very hard. But they did not want to fight. They had troubles of their own at home. They also had a land frontier to defend. And they wanted to keep their rich sea freight business without having to fight for it. But the British were bent on war. They remembered Amboyna. They did not see why the Dutch should keep other shippers out of the East Indies. And it angered them to see the Dutch grow rich on British trade taken away while the British were busy with a war.

When things are in such a state the guns almost go off by themselves. Captain Young, with three ships, met three Dutch men-of-war in the Channel and fired at the first that refused to salute according to the Custom of the Sea. Then the great British admiral, Blake, fired at the great Dutch admiral, van Tromp, for the same reason. A hot fight followed in each case; but without a victory for either side. At Dungeness, however, van Tromp with eighty ships beat Blake with forty, and swept the Channel throughout the winter of 1652-3. But in February, when the fleets were about equal, the British got the better of him in the Straits of Dover, after a running fight of three days. Blake being wounded, Monk led the fleet to another victory in May. But the dogged Dutch were not yet beaten; and it was not till the last of July that the final battle came.

Monk made straight for the Dutch line at six in the morning. For nine hours the fight went on, the two fleets manoeuvring with great skill and fighting furiously every time they came together. Each time they separated to manoeuvre again some ships were left behind, fighting, disabled, or sinking. The British attacked with the utmost courage. The Dutch never flinched. And so noon passed, and one, and two o'clock as well. Van Tromp's flag still flew defiantly; but van Tromp himself was dead. When the fleets first met he had been killed by a musket-shot straight through his heart. When they first parted the flag for a council of war was seen flying from his ship. The council of Dutch admirals hurriedly met, decided to keep his flag aloft, so as not to discourage their men, took orders from his second-in-command, and met the British as bravely as before. But after nine hours fighting their fleet broke up and left the field, bearing with it the body of van Tromp, the lion of the Dutch, and by far the greatest leader who had as yet withstood the British on the sea.



This great battle off the coast of Holland made the Dutch give in. They were divided among themselves; the merchants keeping up a republic and a navy, but the nobles and inland people wishing for a king and army to make the frontier safe. The British, though also divided among themselves, had the advantages of living on an island, of having settled what kind of government they would obey for the time being, and of having at the head of this government the mighty Cromwell, one of the greatest masters of the art of war the world has ever seen.

Cromwell understood warfare on the sea, though his own magnificent victories had been won on land. He also understood the three things Britain needed then to make and keep her great: first, that she should be strong enough to make foreigners respect her; secondly, that her oversea trade should be protected by a strong navy; and thirdly, that she should begin to found a British Empire overseas, as foreigners always tried to shut the British out of their own oversea dominions.

In 1654 a fleet and army were sent against the Spanish West Indies; for, though there was no war with Spain in Europe, there never was any peace with Spaniards overseas. Cromwell's orders, like those of Pitt a hundred years later, were perfect models of what such orders ought to be. He told the admiral and general exactly what the country wanted them to do, gave them the means of doing it, and then left them free to do it in whatever way seemed best on the spot. But the admiral and general did not agree. King's men and Cromwell's men had to be mixed together, as enough good Cromwellians could not be spared so far away from home. The leaders tried to stand well with both sides by writing to the King; and every other trouble was made ten times worse by this divided loyalty. Jamaica was taken. But the rest was all disgraceful failure.

A very different force sailed out the same year under glorious Blake, who soon let Spaniards, Italians, and Barbary pirates know that he would stand no nonsense if they interfered with British vessels in the Mediterranean. The Italian princes were brought to book, as the Spaniards had just been brought to book at Malaga. Then Blake swooped down on the Moorish pirates' nest at Tunis, sinking every vessel, silencing the forts, and forcing the pirates to let their Christian slaves go free. After this the pirates of Algiers quickly came to terms without waiting to be beaten first.

Meanwhile the frightened Spaniards had stopped the treasure fleet of 1655. But next year they were so short of money that they had to risk it; though now there was open war in Europe as well as in New Spain. Running for Cadiz, the first fleet of treasure ships fell into British hands after very little fighting; and Londoners had the satisfaction of cheering the thirty huge wagon-loads of gold and silver booty on its way to safekeeping in the Tower.

All that winter Blake was cruising off the coast of Spain, keeping the seaways open for friends and closed to enemies, thus getting a strangle-hold under which the angry Spaniards went from bad to worse. In the spring his hardy vigil met with its one reward; for he learnt that the second treasure fleet was hiding at Santa Cruz de Teneriffe in the Canary Islands, within a hundred miles of north-western Africa. Teneriffe was strongly fortified, as it was a harbour of refuge between Spain and her oversea possessions, both East and West. It was also very strong by nature, being surrounded by mountains, subject to dead calms and sudden storms, and lying snugly at the inner end of a big deep bay. But Blake knew the brave Spaniards for the lubbers they have always been at sea. So, on the 20th of April, 1657, he ran in with wind and tide, giving the forts at the entrance more than they bargained for as he dashed by. Next, ranging alongside, he sank, drove ashore, or set on fire every single Spanish vessel in the place. Then he went out with the tide, helped by the breeze which he knew would spring up with the set of the sun.

This perfect feat of daring skill, though sometimes equalled by the Navy, has never been surpassed; and when Blake died on his way home the people mourned their sudden loss as they have never mourned except for Nelson and for Drake.



CHAPTER XII

THE SECOND AND THIRD DUTCH WARS

(1665-1673)

The Dutch quickly took up the East India trade dropped by the beaten Spaniards, started their general oversea freighting again, and were soon as dangerous rivals as before. The Dutch at home were very much afraid of war, because their land frontier was threatened by France, while their seaways were threatened by England. But they could not make the Dutch East India Company keep its promises; for oversea companies in those days were mostly a law to themselves; and, in this case, the Dutch at home, though afraid to say so, quite agreed with the Dutch overseas in wishing to shut out the British from all the rich trade with the East. The new British Government, under sly and selfish Charles II, was eager to show that it would care as much for British sea trade as great Cromwell had. So it did not take long to bring on a war.

The first battle was fought on the 3rd of June, 1665, and won by the British, who broke through the Dutch line. The Dutch retreat, however, was magnificently covered by van Tromp's son, Cornelius; and the Duke of York (brother to Charles II and afterwards himself King James II) flinched from pressing home a finishing attack. Next year Monk, a really great commander, fought the famous Four Days Battle in the Downs, (11-14 June 1666). He was at first weaker in numbers than de Ruyter, the excellent Dutch admiral; but he skilfully struck one part of the Dutch line very hard before the rest could support it. On the second and third days the Dutch, do what they could, were quite unable to crush him. Both sides had some bad ships and bad crews; but as the Dutch had more of these than the British had they suffered the greater loss by flinching.

On the fourth day Monk was helped by gallant Prince Rupert, cousin to Charles II and by far the best of all the Stuarts. The Government of Charles, afraid that Louis XIV would send the French to join the Dutch, had just done one of those foolish things that are always done when scared civilians try to manage fleets and armies for themselves. They had sent Rupert off to guard against the French, thus risking a double defeat, by weakening Monk in front of the Dutch and Rupert in front of the French (who never came at all) instead of leaving the whole fleet together, strong enough to fight either enemy before the two could join. Rupert came in the nick of time; for, even with his fresh ships to help Monk through this last and most desperate day, de Ruyter and van Tromp were just enough stronger to win. But the fighting had been so deadly to both sides that the Dutch were in no condition to go on.

Again there was some very bad behaviour on both sides, especially among the court favourites. But Charles never thought of punishing these men for deserting Monk, any more than he thought of honouring the memory of Sir Christopher Myngs, Rupert's second-in-command, who fell, mortally wounded, at the end of the fight, after having done all that skill and courage could possibly do to turn the fortune of the day. Myngs was one of those leaders whom men will follow anywhere; and in the diary of Samuel Pepys, a good official at Navy headquarters in London, we may see the shame of Charles shown up by the noble conduct of the twelve picked British seamen who, after following Myngs to the grave, came forward, with tears in their eyes, to ask this favour: "We are here a dozen of us who have long served and honoured our dead commander, Sir Christopher Myngs. All we have is our lives. But if you will give us a fire-ship we will do that which shall show how we honour his memory by avenging his death on the Dutch."

Even the King did his best for the fleet now, as he was afraid to meet Parliament without a British victory. After immense exertions Monk and Rupert met de Ruyter and van Tromp, with almost equal forces, on the 25th of July, at the mouth of the Thames, and closed in so fiercely that there was hardly any manoeuvring on either side. Locked together in a life-or-death struggle the two fleets fought all day long. Next morning the British again closed in, and again the desperate fight began. But several Dutch captains flinched this time; and so de Ruyter, hoping the next shot would kill him, retired defeated at last.

The following year (1667) the Dutch came back and sank a British fleet at Chatham; for Charles and his vile favourites were doing for the British Navy what de Ruyter's flinching captains had been doing for the Dutch.

The Peace of Breda ended this second Dutch war in disgrace. But the Treaty of Dover, in 1670, brought on the third Dutch war with even greater shame; for Charles now sold himself to Louis XIV, who thus bought the Royal Navy for an attack on the Dutch, by which he and Charles were to benefit at the expense of all the rest. The French and British fleets, worked by the hidden hands of their two kings, grew suspicious of each other and failed to win a victory. The Dutch fought with the courage of despair and came through with the honours of war. But, worn out by their efforts, and unable to defend themselves by both land and sea, they soon lost their position as one of the Great Powers, and have never won it back.



THE MOAT

It may be said now to England, Martha, Martha, thou art busy about many things, but one thing is necessary. To the Question, What shall we do to be saved in this World? there is no other Answer but this, Look to your Moat.

The first Article of an Englishman's Political Creed must be, That he believeth in the Sea. . . . We are in an Island, confined to it by God Almighty, not as a Penalty but a Grace, and one of the greatest that can be given to Mankind. Happy Confinement, that hath made us Free, Rich, and Quiet.

George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, 1633-95.



PART III

THE FRENCH WAR

CHAPTER XIII

THE FIRST WAR AGAINST LOUIS XIV

(1689-1697)

In Chapter VI we saw how French and English once fought a Hundred Years War to decide the French possession of all the land of France, and how the French, having the greater army, won. Now, in these next seven chapters we shall learn how they fought another Hundred Years War to decide the command of the sea, and how the English, grown into a British Empire and having the greater navy, won in their turn. Both victories proved to be for the best. France and England both gained by the first war; because the natural way for France to grow was all over the land that is France now, while the natural way for England to grow was not on the continent of Europe but in the British Isles. The British Empire gained more than the French by the second war; but as France could never have held an oversea Empire without a supreme navy, and as she could never have a supreme navy while she had two land frontiers to defend with great armies, she really lost nothing she then could have kept. Besides, in the nineteenth century she won a great empire in northern Africa, where her Mediterranean sea-power keeps it safe. The British Empire, on the other hand, being based on world-wide sea-power, is rightly placed as it is. So neither French nor British are tempted to envy each other now; while their Hundred Years Peace, followed by their glorious Alliance in the Great War, should make them friends for ever.

The Franco-British wars which began in 1689 and ended on the field of Waterloo in 1815 are not called the Second Hundred Years War in books. But that is what they were in fact. The British Navy was the chief cause of British victory all through, and, as French and British always took opposite sides, we may also call the whole of these seven wars by the one name of "The French War," just as we have called the other wars against our chief opponents "The Spanish War" and "Dutch War"; and just as we might call "The Great War" by the name of "The German War."

Two more points must be well understood, or else we shall miss the real meaning of our imperial history and the supreme importance of the Royal Navy.

First, there have been four attempts made in modern times by Great Powers on the continent of Europe to seize the overlordship of the World; and each time the Royal Navy has been the central force that foiled the attack upon the freedom of mankind. These four attempts have been made about a century apart from one another. The Spanish attempt was made at the end of the sixteenth century. The first French attempt was made by Louis XIV at the end of the seventeenth. The second French attempt was made by Napoleon at the beginning of the nineteenth. The German attempt was made at the beginning of the twentieth. Though alike in the ambitions of their makers, these attempts were most unlike in the way the wars were carried on; for, while the Spaniards and Germans were monsters of cruelty, the French were foemen worthy of the noblest steel.

Secondly, as we shall see in Chapter XVI, the middle of this long French War was marked by the marvellous growth of the British Empire under the elder Pitt; a man whose like the world had never seen before and may not see again; orator, statesman, founder of empire, champion of freedom, and one of the very few civilians who have ever wielded the united force of fleets and armies without weakening it by meddling with the things that warriors alone can do.

Louis XIV liked to be called the Sun King (Roi Soleil) and Great Monarch (Grand Monarque). His own France was easily the first Great Power in Europe. She was rich and populous. The French army was the most famous in the world. French became the language of diplomacy. Whenever two nations speaking different languages wrote to each other about affairs of state or made treaties they did so in French, as they do still. But all this was not enough for Louis. He wanted to be a conqueror in Europe and beyond the seas. His people did not need oversea trade and empire in the same way as the Dutch and British, did not desire it half so much, and were not nearly so well fitted for it when they had it. France was a kingdom of the land. But, no matter, Louis must make conquests wherever he could.

Hoping to get England under his thumb he befriended James II, the last Stuart king, whom the English drove out in 1688. James, less bad but less clever than his vile brother Charles, had a party called Jacobites, who wanted French help to set him on the throne again, but no French interference afterwards. Most of Great Britain favoured the new king, William III; most of Ireland the old one, James. This greatly endangered British sea-power; for the French fleet had been growing very strong, and an enemy fleet based on Ireland would threaten every harbour in Great Britain from Bristol to the Clyde. More than this, a strong enough fleet could close the Channel between the south of Ireland and the north of France. There would then be no way out of Great Britain on to the Seven Seas except round the north of Scotland. But an enemy fleet strong enough to shut off Great Britain from the short cuts north and south of Ireland would certainly be strong enough to command the roundabout way as well; for it would be close to its base on the west coast of Ireland, while ships coming round by the north of Scotland would be far from their own. Thus Ireland, then as now, was the key to the sea-door of Great Britain. Luckily for Great Britain then, and for our Empire and Allies throughout the Great War, keys are no good unless you have the hand to turn them. And, then as now, the strong right hand that holds the key of Ireland was and is the Royal Navy.