There he arrived on September 26th. He was clear away, but that was all. He was short both of water and victuals. There had not even been time to distribute the stores he had, or to issue his general orders to the fleet. He smelt foul weather, too; and, determined to complete somewhere what he had left undone at Plymouth, he boldly ran in under the lee of the Bayona Islands in Vigo Bay. The old Queen's officers were aghast. Entirely dominated by the prestige of Spain, they believed that nothing could be done against her except by surprise, and they trembled to see their admiral thus recklessly fling his cards upon the table. But he knew what he was doing. As with sagacious bravado he had sprung ashore at Santa Marta, and had mocked the Spanish fleet in Cartagena harbor, so now before he struck he exulted that his unfleshed host should hear him shout "En garde!" to the King of Spain; that they should listen while he cried that England cared not for spying traitors, for she had nothing to conceal; that her fleets meant to sail when and where they would, and Philip might do his worst. It was a stroke of that divine instinct which marks out a hero from among able captains—the magic touch of a great leader of men, under which the dead fabric of an army springs into life and feels every fibre tingling with the strong purpose of its heart.

Two leagues from the town of Bayona the fleet anchored; and resolved at once to display his whole strength, and exercise his men in their duties, Drake ordered out his pinnaces and boats for a reconnaissance in force. His boldness bore immediate fruit. The Governor sent off to treat, and by nightfall it was arranged that troops should land, and in the morning be allowed to water and collect what victuals they could. But at midnight the threatened storm rolled up. The troops were hurriedly reembarked; and, barely in time to escape disaster, the flotilla regained the ships. For three days the gale continued, threatening the whole fleet with destruction till it was got safely up above Vigo. There the whole of the boats in which the panic-stricken inhabitants had embarked their property were captured, and, though by this time the Governor of Bayona had arrived with a considerable force, he was compelled to permit Drake to carry out his purpose in peace.

By October 8th he was out in the Bayona road again, waiting for a wind to waft him on his way, and it was reported at the Spanish court that he had gone toward the Indies. The consternation was universal. The Marquis of Santa Cruz, high admiral of Spain and the most renowned naval officer in Europe, declared that not only the African islands, but the whole Pacific coast, the Spanish Main, and the West Indies were at the corsair's mercy, and told his master that a fleet of forty sail must be instantly equipped for the pursuit. But though for another fortnight Drake rode defiantly at the Bayona anchorage, not a limb of Philip's inert machinery could be moved against him; and, while the chivalry of Spain chafed under their sovereign's deliberation, the second blow was struck.

Madeira was passed by and the Canaries spared; for Palma, which Drake intended should revictual him, showed so bold a front that he would not waste time in trying to reduce it. It was on another point that his implacable glance was fixed.

Five years ago at Santiago, the chief town of the Cape Verd Islands, young William Hawkins, a personal adherent of Drake's, had been made the victim of some such treachery as his father and captain had suffered together at Vera Cruz. From that hour it was doomed. In the middle of November the fleet arrived in the road and the troops landed. Threatened by Carleill from the heights above the valley where it lies, and from the sea by Drake, without a blow the town was abandoned to its fate. For ten days the island was scoured for plunder and provisions, and ere the month was out the anchorage was desolate and Santiago a heap of ashes.

Drake's vengeance was complete, and, exulting like Gideon in the devastation that marked his course, he led his ships across the Atlantic. Is there a moment in history more tragic than that? For the first time since the ages began, a hostile fleet was passing the ocean—the pioneer of how many more that have gone and are yet to go—the forerunner of how much glory and shame and misery! What wonder if the curse of God seemed upon it? Hardly had it lost sight of land when it was stricken with sickness. In a few days some three hundred men were dead, and numbers of others prostrate and useless; but in unshaken faith, and with reverent wonder at the inscrutable will of Heaven, Drake never flinched or paused. His only thought was how to check the evil. At Dominica he got fresh provisions from the natives, and refreshed his sick with a few days on shore. At St. Christopher he again halted to spend Christmas and elaborate the details of his next move.

The point where Philip was now to feel the weight of his arm was the fair city of Santo Domingo in Espanola. It was by far the most serious operation Drake had yet undertaken. Hitherto his exploits had been against places that were little more than struggling settlements, but Santo Domingo was indeed a city, stone-built and walled, and flanked with formidable batteries. It was held by a powerful garrison, as Drake learned from a captured frigate, and a naval force had been concentrated in the harbor for its defence. As the oldest town in the Indies, its renown had hitherto secured it from attack, and in Spain it was held the queen city of the colonial empire. The moral effect of its capture would be profound, and, besides, from Virginia the governor of Raleigh's new colony had sent home a fabulous report of its wealth. Drake was fully alive to the gravity of the task before him. His dispositions had never been so elaborate, and they evince at least a touch of that military genius which the strategists of the next century denied him. While the sick were recruiting he sent forward a squadron to reconnoitre, and, if possible, to open communications with the maroons who infested the hills. For three days the garrison was thus exhausted with constant alarms, and then on January 1, 1586, the whole fleet appeared in the bay.

Night fell, and, as darkness closed the eyes of the harassed garrison, with the fleet all was activity. In boats and pinnaces the troops were being rapidly embarked, and soon Drake in person was piloting the flotilla for the surf-beaten shore. At a point within the bay, but some ten miles from the town, a practicable landing-place had been found. Watch-houses overlooked it, but watchmen there were none. Drake had got touch with the maroons. By his directions a party of them had stolen down from the hills, and as the sentries came out from the city in the evening, swiftly and silently they had been every one despatched. Thus, unseen and unmolested, the troops were successfully landed, and then, with pious and cheery farewells to Carleill, Drake returned to the fleet to prepare the ground for the surprise.

In the morning he anchored in the road, ran out his guns, and proceeded to threaten a landing at a point close to that side of the town upon which Carleill was stealthily approaching in two parallel columns. As the Spaniards saw the fleet preparing the advance of the boats and pinnaces, the whole of the horse and a large force of foot marched out of the town to oppose the threatened attack, and took up a position fronting the sea, with their left resting on the town and the other flank exposed in the line of Carleill's advance. It was exactly what had been foreseen, and, ere the Spaniards had discovered that the movement from the fleet was merely a feint, the horse which were covering their exposed flank were flying before Carleill's musketeers.

The surprise was complete. Taken in flank by Carleill, and threatened in the rear by his second column under Powell, the chief of the staff, the infantry could make no real resistance; and so rapidly was the English advance pushed home that the struggling mass of friend and foe entered pell-mell through the open gates of the town. For an hour, alarms of drum and trumpet mingling confusedly with the sounds of street-fighting reached the listening fleet as the two columns forced their way to meet upon the Plaza. But how they fared none could tell, till on a tower a white staff suddenly appeared, and in another moment the cross of St. George fluttered gayly out upon the breeze. With a roar of triumph the ships' guns saluted the signal of victory. The town was won.

Though the garrison fled panic-stricken across the river on the far side of the city, and the citadel was evacuated in the night, the place was far too large to be occupied by the force at Drake's command. Following, therefore, the same tactics that had been successful at Nombre de Dios, he ordered the troops to intrench themselves in the Plaza and to occupy the principal batteries. In this way he held the city for a month. The plunder was disappointing. The city was already a hundred years old, and its day was done; for the reckless native policy of the colonists had almost ruined the island. It remained but to treat for a ransom. The Governor at once declared himself unable to meet the extravagant demands of the English admiral, and in order to bring him to terms Drake began to burn the town piecemeal. But so well was it built that little harm could be done, and every day his impatience increased.

Once, in the course of the negotiations, he sent a boy with a flag of truce to the Spanish camp. A Spaniard, meeting the lad, so ill-treated him that he could barely crawl back to die at the admiral's feet. Then all the fury of Drake's nature burst forth. Two friars who were among the prisoners were immediately sent ashore and hanged by the provost-marshal on the scene of the crime. Another was despatched to the Spanish camp to declare that two more would be executed every morning until the offender was brought down and hanged on the spot by his own authorities. In hasty alarm the demand was complied with, and then the international dinners and the negotiations went on more smoothly. Convinced at last of the poverty of the colony, Drake accepted a ransom of twenty-five thousand ducats. The sum, which is equal to about fifty thousand pounds of our money, though little enough to satisfy the shareholders, was very serious for the enemy. For besides this loss the town had been stripped of everything worth carrying away by the troops and seamen. Two hundred forty guns were taken on board the English ships; and not only were they thoroughly refurnished from the Spanish stores, but for a month the whole expedition had lived in free quarters at the enemy's expense. The entire fleet which lay in the harbor fell into Drake's hands, and, with the exception of four of the finest galleons, was given to the flames. Besides the vessels which the Spaniards themselves had scuttled, two galleys with their tenders, fifteen frigates, and a galleon were thus destroyed, and hundreds of galley-slaves set free.

"It was such a cooling to King Philip," said one in Europe as the news leaked out, "as never happened to him since he was King of Spain." But as yet Drake was far from done. In the middle of February, with his force recruited by the English prisoners he had freed, and with a troop of attendant prizes laden with his spoil, in undiminished strength he appeared before Cartagena. No city in America was more difficult of approach, but the memories of the old hard days were still green, when, storm-beaten, drenched, and chilled, without food or shelter, he had ridden in the harbor day after day in despite of all the Spaniards could do, and he knew it all like a pilot. The city was built close to the shore fronting west, and directly from its southern face an inlet of the sea stretched many leagues southward along the coast, forming a large lagoon. The long spit of land which separated this sheet of water from the sea was pierced by two natural channels. At the far end was the dangerous Bocca Chica, and some three miles from the city was a larger entrance known as the Bocca Grande. Between this entrance and the town a tongue of land ran out at right angles from the spit to the opposite shore, forming an inner harbor and barring all approach to the city from the outer part of the lagoon, except by a narrow channel which lay under the guns of a powerful fort on the mainland.

On its northern and eastern faces the city was encircled by a broad creek, which ran round it from the inner harbor to the sea in such a way as to form a wide natural moat, rendering the city unapproachable from the mainland except by a bridge. This bridge was also commanded by the harbor fort, nor were land operations possible at any other point except from that part of the spit which lay between the city and the Bocca Grande. So finely, however, did this narrow down before the city could be reached, that between the inner harbor and the sea it was but fifty paces wide, and here the Spaniards had had time to prepare defences that looked impregnable. From shore to shore a formidable entrenchment completely barred the way; and not only was its front so staked and encumbered as to render a night attack impossible, but its approaches were swept by the guns and small-arms of a great galeas and two galleys which lay in the inner harbor.

To a man so tender as Drake ever was for the lives of his men and the safety of his ships, to attack such a place might well have appeared hopeless; but the originality of the amphibious corsair at once descried a hole which had escaped all the science of the Spanish martialists. Instead of entering by the Bocca Grande, with consummate skill and daring he piloted the whole fleet through the dangerous channel at the extreme end of the lagoon. The only impression which so hazardous a movement could create in the minds of the Spaniards was that he was about to repeat his Santo Domingo operations, and land his troops there to attack from the mainland. Such an impression must have been confirmed as, moving up the lagoon, he anchored opposite the Bocca Grande and threatened the harbor fort with his boats; but Drake's project was far different. Instead of being landed on the mainland, Carleill with eight companies was quietly slipped ashore in the Bocca Grande, with instructions to make his way diagonally through the woods that covered the spit till he reached the seashore, and then, instead of advancing on the front of the intrenchments, to wade along through the wash of the surf till he was within striking distance of the Spanish position.

Meanwhile Frobisher advanced with the flotilla against the harbor fort, and as soon as Carleill was heard in contact with the enemy's pickets he opened fire. The boat-attack was repulsed—indeed, it may only have been intended as what soldiers then called "a hot alarm"—but Carleill was completely successful. By the march through the surf he had not only evaded the obstacles which the enemy had so carefully prepared, but he had been covered from the fire of the galleys in the harbor, and had never so much as entered the fire-area of the heavily armed intrenchments. After a desperate struggle at push of pike, the position was carried by assault, and once more so hotly was the advantage pursued that in one rush the whole town was captured. The garrison fled across the bridge to the hills, and the next day, when Drake brought up the fleet to bear upon the fort, that also was evacuated.

No success was ever better earned and few more richly rewarded. Cartagena was the capital of the Spanish Main, and though much younger than Santo Domingo it was far wealthier. It yielded rich loot for the men; and for his shareholders Drake, after a long negotiation, succeeded in exacting a ransom of a hundred ten thousand ducats, besides what he got for an adjacent monastery. Though to all this plunder Drake could add the consolation that he had destroyed the galleys and shipping which crowded the port, and blown up the harbor fort which the Spaniards had forgotten to include in the convention, he was still unsatisfied. Well knowing that by an advance up the Chagres River in his boats Panama lay at his mercy, he was resolved with its capture to crown the campaign; but as he lay in Cartagena the sickness, which had never really ceased, broke out again with new virulence, and made such havoc with his force that he had reluctantly to confess that Panama must wait. To capture it with the crippled means at his command was impossible, and the only question was whether Cartagena should be held till he could return with reenforcements.

The soldiers declared themselves ready to undertake the task; but in a full council of war it was finally decided that no strategical advantage would be gained at all proportional to the risk that would be run in further weakening the fleet, and on the last day of March the signal to make sail home was flying from the Elizabeth Bonaventura. So severely, however, did they suffer from the weather and want of water that it was nearly two months before they reached the coast of Florida. Still Drake found time and energy to destroy and plunder the Spanish settlement at St. Augustine, and relieve Raleigh's exhausted colony in Virginia. With the remnants of the settlers on board, he weighed for England, and on July 28, 1586, he was writing from Plymouth to Lord Burghley laconically reporting his return; and, apologizing for having missed the Plate fleet by only twelve hours' sail—"the reason best known to God"—he declared that he and his fleet were ready at once to strike again in any direction the Queen would be pleased to indicate.

"There is a very great gap opened," said Drake in his letter to Burghley, "very little to the liking of the King of Spain." That, with the calm request for orders, was his comment on a feat which changed the destinies of Europe. At its fullest flood he had stemmed the tide of Spanish empire. It was no less a thing than that.

A few months ago all Europe had been cowering in confused alarm before the shadow of a new Roman empire. Ever since the first triumph of Luther, the cause of Reformation had been Steadily losing ground; on England and the Low Countries hung its only hope, and with the fall of Antwerp Europe saw itself on the eve of that "last great battle in the west" which must decide its fate for centuries. In despair of the result, each trembling power was trying to hide behind the other; each was thrusting its neighbor forward to break the coming blow; and Philip led the cheating till his hour should come. He was bent on crushing Elizabeth; and then, with one foot on the ruins of her kingdom, he meant to stamp down his rebellious Netherlands into the gloomy Catholicism in which his own dark soul was sunk. As the fruit of his splendid deliberation ripened, he strove to cheat Elizabeth into inactivity by a hope that peace might yet be purchased by the betrayal of the Netherlands.

Then in laughing gusts came over the Atlantic the rumors of his exploits, till the full gale they heralded swept over Europe, whirling into oblivion a hundred intrigues and bending the prestige of Spain like a reed. The limitless possibilities of the new-born naval warfare had been demonstrated, and the lesson startled Europe like a revelation. An unmeasured force was added to statecraft, and a new power had arisen. The effect was immediate. Men saw the fountain of Spanish trade at England's mercy; they knew how narrowly the Plate fleet had escaped, and a panic palsied Philip's finance. The Bank of Seville broke; that of Venice was in despair; and the King of Spain, pointed at as a bankrupt, failed to raise a loan of half a million ducats. Parma was appalled. With his brilliant capture of Antwerp he had seen himself on the brink of that great exploit with which he hoped to crown his career; and now, instead of a host armed at all points for the invasion of England, he saw around him a broken army it was impossible to supply. In Germany the Protestant princes raised their heads, and, seeing dawn at last, began to shake off the lethargy into which despair had plunged them. England was wild with joy. Burghley himself was almost startled from his caution, and cried out with half a shudder that Drake was a fearful man to the King of Spain.

For two years Philip had been at work upon his Armada. His ports were crowded with its details; his storehouses were bursting with its furniture; and Walsingham at last was able to convince the Queen, by a paper stolen from the very closet of the Pope, that it was upon her head the great engine was to crash. Her eyes were opened; and, infected for a moment with the warlike spirit into which her people and her Parliament had lashed themselves, she ordered Drake in 1587 to the coast of Spain.

It was no longer as a privateer that he was to act. He held the rank of her majesty's admiral-at-the-seas, and William Borough, the comptroller of the navy, was his vice-admiral. Four of the Queen's largest battle-ships and two of her pinnaces were under his command, and the London merchants committed to his flag ten fine cruisers, with the famous Merchant Royal at their head. Besides these, he had six hundred tons of his own shipping, as well as some of the lord admiral's. In all, exclusive of tenders, there were twenty-three sail—five battle-ships, two first-class cruisers, seven of the second class, and nine gunboats large and small. With this fine force he was instructed to proceed to Cape St. Vincent, and by every means in his power to prevent the concentration of the several divisions of the Armada by cutting off their victuallers, and even destroying them in the ports where they lay. If the enemy sailed for England or Ireland, he was to hang on their skirts, cut off stragglers, and prevent a landing; and, finally, he was given a free hand to act against the East and West India convoys.

Elizabeth was in a resolute mood. Drake's ideas of naval warfare were developing a step further, and the Queen for the moment listened. He was beginning dimly to grasp that the command of the sea was the first object for a naval power to aim at. It was because he had not command of the seas that he had been unable to retain his hold of Cartagena, for the troops which should have formed its garrison were wanted to defend his fleet. Wiser for the lesson, his aim was now to crush the Spanish navy, and then, in undisputed control of the sea, to gather in his harvest. The opposition were thoroughly alarmed, and, while Drake in hot haste was driving on his preparations, they left no stone unturned to get his orders modified. They tampered with his men, they whispered slanders in his mistress' ear, they frightened her with threats from abroad, they tempted her with offers of peace from Parma on the old disgraceful terms. For Walsingham, who, through thick and thin, was always at Drake's back, it was an unequal fight; with the stanchest of his party in disgrace for Mary's premature execution, he was single-handed against a host, and at last the friends of Spain prevailed. Early in April a messenger sped down to Plymouth with orders that operations were to be confined to the high seas. As Philip's ships were all snug in port, and could well remain there as long as Drake's stores allowed him to keep the sea, it was a complete triumph for Spain. But when the messenger dashed into Plymouth with the fatal packet he found the roadstead empty. Drake was gone.

In vain at the last moment a number of his sailors had been induced to desert; he had filled their places with soldiers. In vain a swift pinnace was despatched in pursuit; Drake had taken care no orders should catch him, and, with his squadron increased by two warships from Lyme, was already off Finisterre, battling with a gale which drove the pinnace home. For seven days it raged and forced the fleet far out to sea. Still Drake held on in its teeth, and so well had he his ships in hand that on the 16th, within twenty-four hours after the gale had blown itself out, the whole fleet in perfect order was sailing gayly eastward past Cape St. Vincent.

Eastward—for he had intelligence that Cadiz harbor was full of transports and store-ships, and on the afternoon of the 19th, as he entered the bay, he saw a forest of masts in the road behind the city. A council of war was summoned at once, and without asking their opinion he quietly told them he was going to attack. It was his usual manner of holding a council, but it took Borough's breath away. It shocked the old Queen's officer, and outraged his sense of what was due to his own reputation and experience and the time-honored customs of war. He wanted to talk about it and think about it, and find out first whether it was too dangerous. And there was certainly some excuse for his caution. Cadiz stands on a precipitous rock at the end of a low and narrow neck of land, some five miles in length, running parallel to the coast. Within this natural breakwater are enclosed an outer and an inner port; and so cumbered with shoals and rocks was the entrance from the sea that no ship could get in without passing under the guns of the town batteries, while access from the outer to the inner port was only to be gained by the Puntal passage, half a mile wide.

Opposite Cadiz, on the other side of the outer harbor, was Port St. Mary, and within the Puntal channel, at the extreme end of the inlet, stood Port Royal. Both places, however, were so protected by shoals as to be unapproachable except to the port pilots. It was an ideal scene of action for galleys to develop their full capabilities. Two had already appeared to reconnoitre, and how many more there were no one could tell. Galleys, it must be remembered, were then considered the most formidable warships afloat, and quite invincible in confined waters or calms. By all the rules of war, on which Borough was the first authority in the service, to attack was suicide; but Drake had spent his life in breaking rules. He did not care. The enemy was there, his authority was in his pocket, the wind was fair, his officers believed in him, and as the sun sank low behind them the fleet went in.

A scene of terror and confusion followed. Every ship in the harbor cut its cables and sought safety in flight, some to sea, some across the bay to St. Mary's, some through the Puntal passage to the inner harbor and Port Royal. To cover the stampede ten galleys came confidently out from under the Cadiz batteries. All was useless. While the chartered cruisers swooped on the fugitives, the Queen's ships stood in, to head off the advancing galleys, as coolly as though they had fought them a hundred times before. In a few minutes the English admiral had taught the world a new lesson in tactics. Galleys could only fire straight ahead; and, as they came on line abreast, Drake, passing with the Queen's four battle-ships athwart their course, poured in his heavy broadsides. Never before had such gunnery been seen. Ere the galleys were within effective range for their own ordnance they were raked and riddled and confounded, and to the consternation of the Spaniards they broke for the cover of the batteries. Two had to be hauled up to prevent their sinking; the rest were a shambles, and nothing was now thought of but how to protect the city from the assault which seemed inevitable. Hardly any troops were there: a panic seized the population; and Drake was left alone to do the work for which he had come.

Beyond the batteries the fleet anchored with its prizes, plundering and scuttling with all its might, till the flood came in again. Then all that remained were fired, and, by the flare of the blazing hulks as they drifted clear with the tide, Drake moved the fleet into the mouth of the Puntal channel, out of range of the batteries. He himself took up a position seaward of the new anchorage, to engage the guns which the Spaniards were bringing down from the town and to keep off the galleys; for as yet the work was but half done. In the inner harbor lay the splendid galleon of the Marquis de Santa Cruz, and a crowd of great ships too big to seek the refuge of the shoals about Port Royal, and at daylight the Merchant Royal went boldly in, with all the tenders in company. Then, in spite of the labors of the past night, the plundering, scuttling, and burning began again. Outside, the galleys were making half-hearted demonstrations against the English anchorage, but they were easily kept at bay. By noon it was all over, and Drake attempted to make sail. In the past thirty-six hours he had entirely revictualled his fleet with wine, oil, biscuit, and dried fruits. He had destroyed some twelve thousand tons of shipping, including some of the finest vessels afloat, and four ships laden with provisions were in possession of his prize crews.[1] It was enough and more than enough. But the wind would not serve, and all day long he lay where he was, in sight of the troops that were now pouring along the isthmus into Cadiz.

[1] In the official report the Spaniards admit the loss of twenty-four ships valued at one hundred seventy-two thousand ducats. This, it would seem, was all they dared tell the King.

Again and again the galleys attempted to approach, and every time Drake's broadsides swept them back before they reached their effective range. Vainly, too, the Spaniards strove to post guns near enough to annoy the fleet. Nor did the struggle cease till at midnight a land-wind sprang up, and, brushing from his path the galleys that sought to block the way, Drake made sail. By two o'clock he had cleared the batteries and was safe outside without losing a single man. Boldly enough then the galleys gave chase, but, unfortunately, the wind suddenly shifted completely round. Drake at once went about, and the galleys fled in most undignified haste, leaving the English fleet to complete its triumph by anchoring unmolested in full view of the town.

Such an exploit was without precedent. The chivalry of Spain was as enthusiastic in its admiration of Drake's feat of arms as it was disgusted at the cumbrous organization which condemned it to inactivity. A whole day Drake waited where he was, to try and exchange his prisoners for English galley-slaves, but, getting nothing but high compliments and dilatory answers for his pains, on the morrow he sailed. There was no time to lose. By his captures he had discovered the whole of Philip's plan. Out of the Mediterranean the divisions of Italy, Sicily, and Andalusia were to come and join the head-quarters at Lisbon, where the Grand Admiral of Spain, the Marquis de Santa Cruz, was busy with the bulk of the armada. At Cape St. Vincent was the road where ships coming out of the Straits waited for a wind to carry them north, and there he had resolved to take his stand, and fight everything that attempted to join Santa Cruz's flag in the Tagus.

Such light airs prevailed that it was not till the end of the month that the fleet reached the road. By that time its water was exhausted, and, as every headland was crowned with works commanding the anchorage and the watering-places, Drake at once saw he must take them. In his usual off-hand way he summoned his council, and told them over the dinner-table what he was going to do. It was more than the vice-admiral's dignity and caution could endure. In high dudgeon he returned to his ship, and, in the midst of a gale which suddenly arose and drove the fleet to the north of the cape, he indited a long and solemn protest, not only against the contemplated operation, but against the unprecedented despotism with which Drake was conducting the whole expedition. Borough, though no doubt jealous of Drake, certainly believed he was doing nothing beyond his right and duty. He felt he had been attached to the expedition as the most complete sailor in the kingdom, and he valued and deserved his reputation. In the scientific knowledge of his art he was unrivalled, and he was the only officer in the service who had fought and won a purely naval action. No one, therefore, can fairly blame him for resenting the revolutionary manner in which his commander was ignoring him in contempt of the time-honored privileges of the council of war.

Drake, in his hot self-confidence, thought otherwise. As he rode out the gale under the lee of St. Vincent, and the tempest howled through his rigging, once more there fell upon him the shadow of the tragedy which could never cease to darken his judgment. Already, in Cadiz harbor, he had thought his vice-admiral too careful of his ship when the shot were flying; and now he saw in him another Doughty sent by the friends of Spain to hang on his arm. "In persisting," he told Lord Burleigh, "he committed a double offence, not only against me, but it toucheth further." To his embittered sense the querulous protest was a treasonable attack on his own authority, and in his fury he brutally dismissed the old admiral from his command and placed him under arrest on his flag-ship. In vain the astonished veteran protested his innocence, apologized, and made submission. Drake would not listen. The ring of the heads-man's sword upon the desolate shores of Patagonia had deafened his ears to such entreaties forever.

Two days later he was back in Lagos Bay, landing a thousand men for an attempt upon the town, but in the evening, after vainly endeavoring to induce the bodies of cavalry which hovered on their line of march to come within reach, the troops reembarked, reporting the place too strong to be taken by assault. Such reports were not to Drake's liking. It was no mere cross-raiding on which he was bent, but a sagacious stroke that was essential to the development of his new ideas. To get the command of the seas it was necessary that he should be able to keep the seas, and for this a safe anchorage and watering-places were necessary. In default of Lagos, strategy and convenience both indicated St. Vincent road for his purpose. It was commanded by forts, but that did not deter him; and, resolved to have his way, he next day landed in person near Cape Sagres.

On the summit of the headland was a castle accessible on two sides only. The English military officers declared that a hundred determined men could hold it against the whole of Drake's force. But he would not listen; it commanded the watering-place, and he meant to have it. Detaching part of his force against a neighboring fort, which was at once evacuated, he himself advanced against the castle, and at the summit of the cliff found himself confronted with walls thirty feet high, bristling with brass guns and crowded with soldiers. The garrison had just been reenforced by that of the evacuated fort, and to every one but the admiral the affair was hopeless. He attacked with his musketeers, and, when they had exhausted their ammunition, in the name of his queen and mistress he summoned the place to surrender. In the name of his lord and master the Spanish captain laughed at him. Whereupon Drake, more obstinate than ever, sent down to the fleet for fagots, and began piling them against the outer gate to fire it. So desperate was the resistance that again and again the attempt failed. For two hours the struggle lasted. As fast as the defenders threw down the fire, the English piled it up again; and in the midst of the smoke and the bullets the admiral toiled like a common seaman, with his arms full of fagots and his face black with soot. How long his obstinacy would have continued it is impossible to say, but at the end of the two hours the Spanish commandant sank under his wounds and the garrison surrendered. Daunted by a feat which every one regarded as little short of a miracle, the castle and monastery of St. Vincent, together with another fort near it, capitulated at the magician's first summons, and left him in complete possession of the anchorage to water the fleet undisturbed.

Having fired the captured strongholds, and tumbled their guns over the cliffs into the sea, Drake returned to the fleet to find the sailors had not been idle. Between St. Vincent and a village some nine miles to the eastward which they had been ordered to burn, they had taken forty-seven barks and caravels laden with stores for the Armada, and destroyed between fifty and sixty fishing-boats with miles of nets. The tunny-fishery, on which the whole of the adjacent country chiefly depended for its subsistence, was annihilated. For the time Drake's work on the Algarve coast was done, and, having watered the fleet and fished up the captured guns, he sailed for Lisbon.

His own idea had been to land there and smite Philip's preparation at its heart, but this the Government had expressly forbidden. Still he hoped that the havoc he had made and the insults he had put on the Spanish coasts might goad Santa Cruz to come out and fight him. For three days he lay off Cascaes, in sight of Lisbon, threatening an attack and sending polished taunts to the Spanish admiral. He offered to convoy him to England if his course lay that way; he took prizes under his very nose; with his fleet in loose order he sailed up to the very entrance of the harbor; but, though seven galleys lay on their oars watching him from the mouth of the Tagus, Santa Cruz would not move, and Drake learned at last how deep was the wound he had inflicted.

Philip's organization was now completely dislocated. The fleet at Lisbon was unmanned. Its crews had been shattered in Cadiz harbor, and the troops that were intended for it had been thrown into the defenceless city under the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, with orders that while Drake was on the coast not a man was to be moved. All thought of an attack on England was given up. It was even doubted whether by straining every nerve it would be possible to save the homeward-bound fleets from the Indies. The Italian squadrons were ordered to land their troops at Cartagena, and Philip hoped that by forced marches across the peninsula they might possibly arrive in time for Santa Cruz to sail before it was too late. Every one else looked on the convoys as doomed. For Drake, having assured himself that Santa Cruz could not stir, and that England was safe for a year at least, resolved to make for the Azores and wait for the prey that had so narrowly escaped him the year before.

On the third day of his stay off the Tagus he took advantage of a northerly gale to run for the anchorage at St. Vincent, which he had made his own, and where he intended to water and refresh for the voyage. There, huddled under the lee of the cape, was found a fresh crowd of store-ships, which he seized. For nine days he lay there, rummaging the ships, taking in water, and sending the men ashore in batches to shake off the sickness with which, as usual, the fleet was attacked. Every day new prizes fell into his hands, and ere he sailed he had taken and destroyed forty more vessels and a hundred small craft. On May 22d he put to sea, and, as the news spread, a panic seized every commercial centre in the Spanish dominions. Half the merchants in Philip's empire saw ruin before them: the whole year's produce both of the East and West Indian trade was at Drake's mercy; and no one knew how Spain, with its resources already strained to the utmost, would survive the shock.

Whatever might have been the result had these fears been realized, destiny seemed to have decided that in the Channel should be played the last great scene. Drake had not been two days out when a storm struck his fleet and scattered it over the face of the sea. For three days it raged with extraordinary fury. Drake's own flag-ship was in dire peril, and, when the heavens cleared, only three of the battle-ships and half a dozen smaller craft were together. Not a single merchant-ship was to be seen, and the Lion, Borough's flag-ship, on which he was still a prisoner, was missing too. Before leaving St. Vincent Drake had told Walsingham that he ought to have at least six more cruisers to do his work properly, and now two-thirds of what he had before were gone. Still he held on, hoping to find some of the missing ships at the rendezvous in the Azores.

On the morning of June 8th St. Michael's was sighted, but not a sail had rejoined the flag except the Spy, one of the Queen's gunboats, with the captain and master of the Lion on board, and they reported that the crew of Borough's ship had mutinied and carried him home. Then, in the depth of his disappointment, Drake's fury blazed out anew. His fierce self-reliance and fanatic patriotism had taught him to see a traitor in every man that opposed him, and the bitter experience of his lifelong struggle against the enemies of his country and his creed could bring him but to one conclusion—Borough was the traitor who had ruined the greatest chance of his career! A jury was impanelled, the deserter tried for his life, found guilty, and condemned to death.

It was little good except to relieve the admiral's anger. The splendid opportunity was gone; the fruit of his brilliant exploit was snatched from his lips; for, even had the remnant of his fleet been less shattered than it was, the great convoys were beyond its strength. The only hope was to hurry back to England and beg for reenforcements to fight Santa Cruz for the life-blood of Spain.

Yet ere he sailed there was a consolation at hand. As he lay waiting for his shattered squadron to close up, fuming at traitors, and marvelling at the inscrutable will of Heaven, the dawn of June 9th lit up the gray sea and showed him a huge carack in the offing. On a smart breeze he gave chase. The carack kept her course, but, as Drake drew near, began displaying her colors nervously. Drake made not a sign in reply, but held on till he was within range. Then on a sudden, with a blaze of her ensigns and her broadside, the Elizabeth Bonaventura told the stranger what she was. Two of Drake's squadron threw themselves resolutely athwart-hawse of the enemy, and the rest, plying her hard with shot, prepared to run aboard her towering hull. But, ere they closed, her flag fluttered sadly down, and the famous San Filippe, the King of Spain's own East-Indiaman, the largest merchantman afloat, was a prize in Drake's hands.

Well might he wonder now at God's providence, as with lightened heart he sailed homeward with his prize. For not only was it the richest ever seen in England before or since, not only was its cargo valued at over a million of our money, but in it were papers which disclosed to our merchants all the mysteries and richness of the East India trade. It was a revelation to English commerce. It intoxicated the soberest capitalists; and they knew no rest till they had formed the great East India Company, to widen the gap which Drake had opened, and to lay the foundation of our Indian Empire.



DEFEAT OF THE SPANISH ARMADA

A.D. 1588

SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY

Two years after the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the throne of England, the Geneva Confession of Faith (Calvinistic) was adopted by the Scottish nation, which thus formally became Protestant. The aim of Mary, Queen of Scots, to restore the Catholic religion in that kingdom added many complications to her royal task, as well as to her personal fortunes. Her final condemnation and execution, 1587, for conspiracy against Elizabeth, occurred at a time when the shadow of Spanish supremacy was being cast broadly over Europe. The Spanish power was still attempting the subjugation of the Netherlands, and it was the ambition of Philip II to bring England also under his own sway and that of Rome.

Elizabeth had given aid to Philip's rebellious subjects in the Netherlands, and Sir Francis Drake had committed many depredations upon Spain and her colonies. For the purpose of avenging these acts, as well as the death of Mary Stuart, and of overthrowing the Reformation in Great Britain, Philip gathered up all his strength and prepared to hurl a mighty naval force, the "Invincible Armada," against England.

Creasy's masterly survey of the European situation at this period unfolds the Anglo-Spanish complications. His exhaustive account of the Armada and its ill-fated enterprise makes clear everything important in this famous passage of history.

On the afternoon of July 19, 1588, a group of English captains was collected at the bowling green on the Hoe, at Plymouth, whose equals have never before or since been brought together, even at that favorite mustering-place of the heroes of the British navy. There was Sir Francis Drake, the first English circumnavigator of the globe, the terror of every Spanish coast in the Old World and the New; there was Sir John Hawkins, the rough veteran of many a daring voyage on the African and American seas and of many a desperate battle; there was Sir Martin Frobisher, one of the earliest explorers of the Arctic seas in search of the northwest passage.

There was the high admiral of England, Lord Howard of Effingham, prodigal of all things in his country's cause, and who had recently had the noble daring to refuse to dismantle part of the fleet, though the Queen had sent him orders to do so in consequence of an exaggerated report that the enemy had been driven back and shattered by a storm. Lord Howard—whom contemporary writers describe as being of a wise and noble courage, skilful in sea matters, wary and provident, and of great esteem among the sailors—resolved to risk his sovereign's anger, and to keep the ships afloat at his own charge, rather than that England should run the peril of losing their protection.

Another of our Elizabethan sea-kings, Sir Walter Raleigh, was at that time commissioned to raise and equip the land forces of Cornwall; but we may well believe that he must have availed himself of the opportunity of consulting with the lord admiral and the other high officers, which was offered by the English fleet putting into Plymouth; and we may look on Raleigh as one of the group that was assembled at the bowling green on the Hoe.

Many other brave men and skilful mariners, besides the chiefs whose names have been mentioned, were there, enjoying, with true sailor-like merriment, their temporary relaxation from duty. In the harbor lay the English fleet with which they had just returned from a cruise to Corunna in search of information respecting the real condition and movements of the hostile armada. Lord Howard had ascertained that our enemies, though tempest-tossed, were still formidably strong; and, fearing that part of their fleet might make for England in his absence, he had hurried back to the Devonshire coast. He resumed his station at Plymouth, and waited there for certain tidings of the Spaniards' approach.

A match at bowls was being played, in which Drake and other high officers of the fleet were engaged, when a small armed vessel was seen running before the wind into Plymouth harbor with all sails set. Her commander landed in haste, and eagerly sought the place where the English lord admiral and his captains were standing. His name was Fleming; he was the master of a Scotch privateer; and he told the English officers that he had that morning seen the Spanish Armada off the Cornish coast. At this exciting information the captains began to hurry down to the water, and there was a shouting for the ships' boats; but Drake coolly checked his comrades, and insisted that the match should be played out. He said that there was plenty of time both to win the game and beat the Spaniards. The best and bravest match that ever was scored was resumed accordingly. Drake and his friends aimed their last bowls with the same steady, calculating coolness with which they were about to point their guns. The winning cast was made; and then they went on board and prepared for action, with their hearts as light and their nerves as firm as they had been on the Hoe bowling green.

Meanwhile the messengers and signals had been despatched fast and far through England, to warn each town and village that the enemy had come at last. In every seaport there was instant making ready by land and by sea; in every shire and every city there was instant mustering of horse and man. But England's best defence then, as ever, was in her fleet; and, after warping laboriously out of Plymouth harbor against the wind, the lord admiral stood westward under easy sail, keeping an anxious look-out for the armada, the approach of which was soon announced by Cornish fisher-boats and signals from the Cornish cliffs.

It is not easy, without some reflection and care, to comprehend the full extent of the peril which England then ran from the power and the ambition of Spain, or to appreciate the importance of that crisis in the history of the world. Queen Elizabeth had found at her accession an encumbered revenue, a divided people, and an unsuccessful foreign war, in which the last remnant of our possessions in France had been lost; she had also a formidable pretender to her crown, whose interests were favored by all the Roman Catholic powers. It is true that, during the years of her reign which had passed away before the attempted invasion of 1588, she had revived the commercial prosperity, the national spirit, and the national loyalty of England. But her resources to cope with the colossal power of Philip II still seemed most scanty; and she had not a single foreign ally, except the Dutch, who were themselves struggling hard, and, as it seemed, hopelessly, to maintain their revolt against Spain.

On the other hand, Philip II was absolute master of an empire so superior to the other states of the world in extent, in resources, and especially in military and naval forces as to make the project of enlarging that empire into a universal monarchy seem a perfectly feasible scheme; and Philip had both the ambition to perform that project and the resolution to devote all his energies and all his means to its realization. Since the downfall of the Roman Empire no such preponderating power had existed in the world. During the mediaeval centuries the chief European kingdoms were slowly moulding themselves out of the feudal chaos; and though the wars with each other were numerous and desperate, and several of their respective kings figured for a time as mighty conquerors, none of them in those times acquired the consistency and perfect organization which are requisite for a long-sustained career of aggrandizement. After the consolidation of the great kingdoms they for some time kept each other in mutual check.

During the first half of the sixteenth century the balancing system was successfully practised by European statesmen. But when Philip II reigned, France had become so miserably weak through her civil wars that he had nothing to dread from the rival state which had so long curbed his father, the Emperor Charles V. In Germany, Italy, and Poland he had either zealous friends and dependents or weak and divided enemies. Against the Turks he had gained great and glorious successes; and he might look round the Continent of Europe without discerning a single antagonist of whom he could stand in awe. Spain, when he acceded to the throne, was at the zenith of her power.

The hardihood and spirit which the Aragonese, the Castilians, and the other nations of the peninsula had acquired during centuries of free institutions and successful war against the Moors had not yet become obliterated. Charles V had, indeed, destroyed the liberties of Spain; but that had been done too recently for its full evil to be felt in Philip's time. A people cannot be debased in a single generation; and the Spaniards under Charles V and Philip II proved the truth of the remark that no nation is ever so formidable to its neighbors, for a time, as a nation which, after being trained up in self-government, passes suddenly under a despotic ruler. The energy of democratic institutions survives for a few generations, and to it are superadded the decision and certainty which are the attributes of government when all its powers are directed by a single mind. It is true that this preter-natural vigor is short-lived: national corruption and debasement gradually follow the loss of the national liberties; but there is an interval before their workings are felt, and in that interval the most ambitious schemes of foreign conquest are often successfully undertaken.

Philip had also the advantage of finding himself at the head of a large standing army in a perfect state of discipline and equipment, in an age when, except some few insignificant corps, standing armies were unknown in Christendom. The renown of the Spanish troops was justly high, and the infantry in particular was considered the best in the world. His fleet, also, was far more numerous and better appointed than that of any other European power; and both his soldiers and his sailors had the confidence in themselves and their commanders which a long career of successful warfare alone can create.

Besides the Spanish crown, Philip succeeded to the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, the duchy of Milan, Franche-Comte, and the Netherlands. In Africa he possessed Tunis, Oran, the Cape Verd and the Canary islands; and in Asia, the Philippine and Sunda islands and a part of the Moluccas. Beyond the Atlantic he was lord of the most splendid portions of the New World, which Columbus found "for Castile and Leon." The empires of Peru and Mexico, New Spain, and Chile, with their abundant mines of the precious metals, Espanola and Cuba, and many other of the American islands were provinces of the sovereign of Spain.

Whatever diminution the Spanish empire might have sustained in the Netherlands seemed to be more than compensated by the acquisition of Portugal, which Philip had completely conquered in 1580. Not only that ancient kingdom itself, but all the fruits of the maritime enterprises of the Portuguese, had fallen into Philip's hands. All the Portuguese colonies in America, Africa, and the East Indies acknowledged the sovereignty of the King of Spain, who thus not only united the whole Iberian peninsula under his single sceptre, but had acquired a transmarine empire little inferior in wealth and extent to that which he had inherited at his accession. The splendid victory which his fleet, in conjunction with the papal and Venetian galleys, had gained at Lepanto over the Turks, had deservedly exalted the fame of the Spanish marine throughout Christendom; and when Philip had reigned thirty-five years, the vigor of his empire seemed unbroken, and the glory of the Spanish arms had increased, and was increasing throughout the world.

One nation only had been his active, his persevering, and his successful foe. England had encouraged his revolted subjects in Flanders against him, and given them the aid, in men and money, without which they must soon have been humbled in the dust. English ships had plundered his colonies; had defied his supremacy in the New World as well as the Old; they had inflicted ignominious defeats on his squadrons; they had captured his cities and burned his arsenals on the very coasts of Spain. The English had made Philip himself the object of personal insult. He was held up to ridicule in their stage plays and masks, and these scoffs at the man had—as is not unusual in such cases—excited the anger of the absolute King even more vehemently than the injuries inflicted on his power. Personal as well as political revenge urged him to attack England. Were she once subdued, the Dutch must submit; France could not cope with him; the empire would not oppose him; and universal dominion seemed sure to be the result of the conquest of that malignant island.

There was yet another and a stronger feeling which armed King Philip against England. He was one of the sincerest and one of the sternest bigots of his age. He looked on himself, and was looked on by others, as the appointed champion to extirpate heresy and reestablish the papal power throughout Europe.

A powerful reaction against Protestantism had taken place since the commencement of the second half of the sixteenth century, and he looked on himself as destined to complete it. The Reformed doctrines had been thoroughly rooted out from Italy and Spain. Belgium, which had previously been half Protestant, had been reconquered both in allegiance and creed by Philip, and had become one of the most Catholic countries in the world. Half Germany had been won back to the old faith. In Savoy, in Switzerland, and many other countries the progress of the Counter-reformation had been rapid and decisive. The Catholic league seemed victorious in France. The papal court itself had shaken off the supineness of recent centuries, and, at the head of the Jesuits and the other new ecclesiastical orders, was displaying a vigor and a boldness worthy of the days of Hildebrand or Innocent III.

Throughout Continental Europe the Protestants, discomfited and dismayed, looked to England as their protector and refuge. England was the acknowledged central point of Protestant power and policy; and to conquer England was to stab Protestantism to the very heart. Sixtus V, the then reigning Pope, earnestly exhorted Philip to this enterprise. And when the tidings reached Italy and Spain that the Protestant Queen of England had put to death her Catholic prisoner, Mary, Queen of Scots, the fury of the Vatican and Escurial knew no bounds. Elizabeth was denounced as the murderous heretic whose destruction was an instant duty.

A formal treaty was concluded in June, 1587, by which the Pope bound himself to contribute a million of scudi to the expenses of the war, the money to be paid as soon as the King had actual possession of an English port. Philip, on his part, strained the resources of his vast empire to the utmost. The French Catholic chiefs eagerly cooeperated with him. In the seaports of the Mediterranean and along almost the whole coast from Gibraltar to Jutland the preparations for the great armament were urged forward with all the earnestness of religious zeal as well as of angry ambition.

"Thus," says the German historian of the Popes,[1] "thus did the united powers of Italy and Spain, from which such mighty influences had gone forth over the whole world, now rouse themselves for an attack upon England! The King had already compiled, from the archives of Simancas, a statement of the claims which he had to the throne of that country on the extinction of the Stuart line; the most brilliant prospects, especially that of a universal dominion of the seas, were associated in his mind with this enterprise. Everything seemed to conspire to such an end—the predominancy of Catholicism in Germany, the renewed attack upon the Huguenots in France, the attempt upon Geneva, and the enterprise against England. At the same moment a thoroughly Catholic prince, Sigismund III, ascended the throne of Poland, with the prospect also of future succession to the throne of Sweden. But whenever any principle or power, be it what it may, aims at unlimited supremacy in Europe, some vigorous resistance to it, having its origin in the deepest springs of human nature, invariably arises. Philip II had to encounter newly awakened powers, braced by the vigor of youth and elevated by a sense of their future destiny.

[1] Ranke.

"The intrepid corsairs, who had rendered every sea insecure, now clustered round the coasts of their native island. The Protestants in a body—even the Puritans, although they had been subjected to as severe oppression as the Catholics—rallied round their Queen, who now gave admirable proof of her masculine courage and her princely talent of winning the affections and leading the minds and preserving the allegiance of men."

Ranke should have added that the English Catholics at this crisis proved themselves as loyal to their Queen and true to their country as were the most vehement anti-Catholic zealots in the island. Some few traitors there were, but as a body, the Englishmen who held the ancient faith stood the trial of their patriotism nobly. The lord admiral himself was a Catholic, and—to adopt the words of Hallam—"then it was that the Catholics in every country repaired to the standard of the lord lieutenant, imploring that they might not be suspected of bartering the national independence for their religion itself." The Spaniard found no partisans in the country which he assailed, nor did England, self-wounded,

"Lie at the proud foot of her enemy."

For upward of a year the Spanish preparations had been actively and unremittingly urged forward. Negotiations were, during this time, carried on at Ostend, in which various pretexts were assigned by the Spanish commissioners for the gathering together of such huge masses of shipping, and such equipments of troops in all the seaports which their master ruled; but Philip himself took little care to disguise his intentions; nor could Elizabeth and her able ministers doubt but that this island was the real object of the Spanish armament.

The peril that was wisely foreseen was resolutely provided for. Circular-letters from the Queen were sent round to the lord lieutenants of the several counties requiring them to "call together the best sort of gentlemen under their lieutenancy, and to declare unto them these great preparations and arrogant threatenings, now burst forth in action upon the seas, wherein every man's particular state, in the highest degree, could be touched in respect of country, liberty, wives, children, lands, lives, and—which was specially to be regarded—the profession of the true and sincere religion of Christ, and to lay before them the infinite and unspeakable miseries that would fall out upon any such change, which miseries were evidently seen by the fruits of that hard and cruel government holden in countries not far distant.

"We do look," said the Queen, "that the most part of them should have, upon this instant extraordinary occasion, a larger proportion of furniture, both for horsemen and footmen, but especially horsemen, than hath been certified thereby to be in their best strength against any attempt, or to be employed about our own person or otherwise. Hereunto as we doubt not but by your good endeavors they will be the rather conformable, so also we assure ourselves that almighty God will so bless these their loyal hearts borne toward us, their loving sovereign, and their natural country, that all the attempts of any enemy whatsoever shall be made void and frustrate, to their confusion, your comfort, and to God's high glory."[2]

[2] Strype, cited in Southey: Naval History.

Letters of a similar kind were also sent by the council to each of the nobility and to the great cities. The Primate called on the clergy for their contributions; and by every class of the community the appeal was responded to with liberal zeal, that offered more even than the Queen required. The boasting threats of the Spaniards had roused the spirit of the nation, and the whole people "were thoroughly irritated to stir up their whole forces for their defence against such prognosticated conquests; so that in a very short time all her whole realm, and every corner, were furnished with armed men, on horseback and on foot; and those continually trained, exercised, and put into bands in warlike manner, as in no age ever was before in this realm.

"There was no sparing of money to provide horse, armor, weapons, powder, and all necessaries; no, nor want of provision of pioneers, carriages, and victuals, in every county of the realm, without exception, to attend upon the armies. And to this general furniture every man voluntarily offered, very many their services personally without wages, others money for armor and weapons, and to wage soldiers—a matter strange, and never the like heard of in this realm or elsewhere. And this general reason moved all men to large contributions: that when a conquest was to be withstood wherein all should be lost, it was no time to spare a portion."[3]

[3] Copy of contemporary letter in the Harleian Collection, quoted by Southey.

Our lion-hearted Queen showed herself worthy of such a people. A camp was formed at Tilbury; and there Elizabeth rode through the ranks, encouraging her captains and her soldiers by her presence and her words. One of the speeches which she addressed to them during this crisis has been preserved; and, though often quoted, it must not be omitted here.

"My loving people," she said, "we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear! I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come among you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die among you all, to lay down for my God, for my kingdom, and for my people, my honor and my blood even in the dust.

"I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England, too, and think it foul scorn that Parma, of Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm, to which, rather than any dishonor shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms; I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for your forwardness, you have deserved rewards and crowns: and we do assure you, on the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time my lieutenant-general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject, not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valor in the field we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people."

Some of Elizabeth's advisers recommended that the whole care and resources of the government should be devoted to the equipment of the armies, and that the enemy, when he attempted to land, should be welcomed with a battle on the shore. But the wiser counsels of Raleigh and others prevailed, who urged the importance of fitting out a fleet that should encounter the Spaniards at sea, and, if possible, prevent them from approaching the land at all.

In Raleigh's great work, the History of the World, he takes occasion, when discussing some of the events of the First Punic War, to give his reasonings on the proper policy of England when menaced with invasion. Without doubt we have there the substance of the advice which he gave to Elizabeth's council; and the remarks of such a man on such a subject have a general and enduring interest beyond the immediate crisis which called them forth.

Raleigh says: "Surely I hold that the best way is to keep our enemies from treading upon our ground; wherein if we fail, then must we seek to make him wish that he had stayed at his own home. In such a case, if it should happen, our judgments are to weigh many particular circumstances that belong not unto this discourse. But making the question general, the positive, Whether England, without the help of her fleet, be able to debar an enemy from landing, I hold that it is unable so to do, and therefore I think it most dangerous to make the adventure; for the encouragement of a first victory to an enemy, and the discouragement of being beaten to the invaded, may draw after it a most perilous consequence.

"Great difference I know there is, and a diverse consideration to be had, between such a country as France is, strengthened with many fortified places, and this of ours, where our ramparts are but the bodies of men. But I say that an army to be transported over sea, and to be landed again in an enemy's country, and the place left to the choice of the invader, cannot be resisted on the coast of England without a fleet to impeach it; no, nor on the coast of France or any other country, except every creek, port, or sandy bay had a powerful army in each of them to make opposition.

"For let the supposition be granted that Kent is able to furnish twelve thousand foot, and that those twelve thousand be layed in the three best landing-places within that country, to wit, three thousand at Margat, three thousand at the Nesse, and six thousand at Foulkstone, that is, somewhat equally distant from them both, as also that two of these troops—unless some other order be thought more fit—be directed to strengthen the third, when they shall see the enemy's fleet to head toward it: I say, that notwithstanding this provision, if the enemy, setting sail from the Isle of Wight, in the first watch of the night, and towing their long boats at their stems, shall arrive by dawn of day at the Nesse, and thrust their army on shore there, it will be hard for those three thousand that are at Margat—twenty-and-four long miles from thence—to come time enough to reenforce their fellows at the Nesse. Nay, how shall they at Foulkstone be able to do it, who are nearer by more than half the way? seeing that the enemy, at his first arrival, will either make his entrance by force, with three or four shot of great artillery, and quickly put the first three thousand that are intrenched at the Nesse to run, or else give them so much to do that they shall be glad to send for help to Foulkstone, and perhaps to Margat, whereby those places will be left bare.

"Now, let us suppose that all the twelve thousand Kentish soldiers arrived at the Nesse ere the enemy can be ready to disembark his army, so that he will find it unsafe to land in the face of so many prepared to withstand him, yet must we believe that he will play the best of his own game—having liberty to go which way he list—and, under covert of the night, set sail toward the east, where what shall hinder him to take ground either at Margat, the Downes, or elsewhere, before they at the Nesse can be well aware of his departure?

"Certainly there is nothing more easy than to do it. Yea, the like may be said of Weymouth, Purbeck, Poole, and of all landing-places on the southwest; for there is no man ignorant that ships, without putting themselves out of breath, will easily outrun the soldiers that coast them. 'Les armees ne volent point en poste' ('Armies neither flye nor run post'), saith a marshal of France. And I know it to be true that a fleet of ships may be seen at sunset, and after it at the Lizard, yet by the next morning they may recover Portland, whereas an army of foot shall not be able to march it in six days.

"Again, when those troops lodged on the sea-shores shall be forced to run from place to place in vain, after a fleet of ships, they will at length sit down in the midway and leave all at adventure. But say it were otherwise, that the invading enemy will offer to land in some such place where there shall be an army of ours ready to receive him; yet it cannot be doubted but that when the choice of all our trained bands, and the choice of our commanders and captains, shall be drawn together—as they were at Tilbury in the year 1588—to attend the person of the Prince, and for the defence of the city of London, they that remain to guard the coast can be of no such force as to encounter an army like unto that wherewith it was intended that the Prince of Parma should have landed in England.

"For end of this digression, I hope that this question shall never come to trial: his majesty's many movable forts will forbid the experience. And although the English will no less disdain, than any nation under heaven can do, to be beaten upon their own ground, or elsewhere, by a foreign enemy, yet to entertain those that shall assail us, with their own beef in their bellies, and before they eat of our Kentish capons, I take it to be the wisest way—to do which his majesty, after God, will employ his good ships on the sea, and not trust in any intrenchment upon the shore."

The introduction of steam as a propelling power at sea has added tenfold weight to these arguments of Raleigh. On the other hand, a well-constructed system of railways, especially of coast-lines, aided by the operation of the electric telegraph, would give facilities for concentrating a defensive army to oppose an enemy on landing, and for moving troops from place to place in observation of the movements of the hostile fleet, such as would have astonished Sir Walter, even more than the sight of vessels passing rapidly to and fro without the aid of wind or tide., The observation of the French marshal whom he quotes is now no longer correct. Armies can be made to pass from place to place almost with the speed of wings, and far more rapidly than any post-travelling that was known in the Elizabethan or any other age. Still, the presence of a sufficient armed force at the right spot, at the right time, can never be made a matter of certainty and, even after the changes that have taken place, no one can doubt but that the policy of Raleigh is that which England should ever seek to follow in defensive war.

At the time of the armada, that policy certainly saved the country, if not from conquest, at least from deplorable calamities. If, indeed, the enemy had landed, we may be sure that he would have been heroically opposed. But history shows us so many examples of the superiority of veteran troops over new levies, however numerous and brave, that, without disparaging our countrymen's soldierly merits, we may well be thankful that no trial of them was then made on English land. Especially must we feel this when we contrast the high military genius of the Prince of Parma, who would have headed the Spaniards, with the imbecility of the Earl of Leicester, to whom the deplorable spirit of favoritism, which formed the great blemish on Elizabeth's character, had then committed the chief command of the English armies.

The ships of the royal navy at this time amounted to no more than thirty-six; but the most serviceable merchant vessels were collected from all the ports of the country; and the citizens of London, Bristol, and the other great seats of commerce showed as liberal a zeal in equipping and manning vessels as the nobility and gentry displayed in mustering forces by land. The seafaring population of the coast, of every rank and station, was animated by the same ready spirit; and the whole number of seamen who came forward to man the English fleet was 17,472; the number of the ships that were collected was 191; and the total amount of their tonnage, 31,985. There was one ship in the fleet—the Triumph—of 1100 tons, one of 1000, one of 900, two of 800 each, three of 600, five of 500, five of 400, six of 300, six of 250, twenty of 200, and the residue of inferior burden.

Application was made to the Dutch for assistance; and, as Stowe expresses it: "The Hollanders came roundly in with three-score sail, brave ships of war, fierce and full of spleen, not so much for England's aid as in just occasion for their own defence, these men foreseeing the greatness of the danger that might ensue if the Spaniard should chance to win the day and get the mastery over them; in due regard whereof, their manly courage was inferior to none."

We have more minute information of the number and equipment of the hostile forces than we have of our own. In the first volume of Hakluyt's Voyages, dedicated to Lord Effingham, who commanded against the armada, there is given—from the contemporary foreign writer Meteran—a more complete and detailed catalogue than has perhaps ever appeared of a similar armament:

"A very large and particular description of this navie was put in print and published by the Spaniards, wherein were set downe the number, names, and burthens of the shippes, the number of mariners and soldiers throughout the whole fleete; likewise the quantitie of their ordinance, of their armor, of bullets, of match, of gun-poulder, of victuals, and of all their navall furniture was in the saide description particularized.

"Unto all these were added the names of the governours, captaines, noblemen, and gentlemen voluntaries, of whom there was so great a multitude that scarce was there any family of accompt, or any one principall man throughout all Spaine that had not a brother, sonne, or kinsman in that fleete; who all of them were in good hope to purchase unto themselves in that navie—as they termed it—invincible, endless glory and renown, and to possess themselves of great seigniories and riches in England and in the Low Countreys. But because the said description was translated and published out of Spanish into divers other languages, we will here only make an abridgement or brief rehearsal thereof.

"Portugall furnished and set foorth under the conduct of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, generall of the fleete, 10 galeons, 2 zabraes, 1300 mariners, 3300 souldiers, 300 great pieces, with all requisite furniture.

"Biscay, under the conduct of John Martines de Ricalde, admiral of the whole fleete, set forth 10 galeons, 4 pataches, 700 mariners, 2000 souldiers, 250 great pieces, etc.

"Guipusco, under the conduct of Michael de Oquendo, 10 galeons, 4 pataches, 700 mariners, 2000 souldiers, 310 great pieces.

"Italy, with the Levant islands, under Maitine de Vertendona, 10 galeons, 800 mariners, 2000 souldiers, 310 great pieces, etc.

"Castile, under Diego Flores de Valdez, 14 galeons, 2 pataches, 1700 mariners, 2400 souldiers, and 380 great pieces, etc.

"Andaluzia, under the conduct of Petro de Valdez, 10 galeons, 1 patache, 800 mariners, 2400 souldiers, 280 great pieces, etc.

"Item, under the conduct of John Lopez de Medina, 23 great Flemish hulkes, with 700 mariners, 3200 souldiers, and 400 great pieces.

"Item, under Hugo de Moncada, 4 galliasses, containing 1200 gally-slaves, 460 mariners, 870 souldiers, 200 great pieces, etc.

"Item, under Diego de Mandrana, 4 gallies of Portugall, with 888 gally-slaves, 360 mariners, 20 great pieces, and other requisite furniture.

"Item, under Anthonie de Mendoza, 22 pataches and zabraes, with 574 mariners, 488 souldiers, and 193 great pieces.

"Besides the ships aforementioned, there were 20 caravels rowed with oares, being appointed to performe necessary services under the greater ships, insomuch that all the ships appertayning to this navie amounted unto the summe of 150, eche one being sufficiently provided of furniture and victuals.

"The number of mariners in the saide fleete were above 8000, of slaves 2088, of souldiers 20,000—besides noblemen and gentlemen voluntaries; of great cast pieces, 2600. The aforesaid ships were of an huge and incredible capacitie and receipt, for the whole fleete was large enough to containe the burthen of 60,000 tunnes.

"The galeons were 64 in number, being of an huge bignesse, and very flately built, being of marveilous force also, and so high that they resembled great castles, most fit to defend themselves and to withstand any assault, but in giving any other ships the encounter fair inferiour unto the English and Dutch ships, which can with great dexteritie wield and turne themselves at all assayes. The upper worke of the said galeons was of thicknesse and strength sufficient to beare off musket-shot. The lower worke and the timbers thereof were out of measure strong, being framed of plankes and ribs foure or five foote in thicknesse, insomuch that no bullets could pierce them but such as were discharged hard at hand, which afterward prooved true, for a great number of bullets were founde to sticke fast within the massie substance of those thicke plankes. Great and well-pitched cables were twined about the masts of their shippes, to strengthen them against the battery of shot.

"The galliasses were of such bignesse that they contained within them chambers, chapels, turrets, pulpits, and other commodities of great houses. The galliasses were rowed with great oares, there being in eche one of them 300 slaves for the same purpose, and were able to do great service with the force of their ordinance. All these, together with the residue aforenamed, were furnished and beautified with trumpets, streamers, banners, warlike ensignes, and other such like ornaments.

"Their pieces of brazen ordinance were 1600, and of yron a 1000.

"The bullets thereto belonging were 120,000.

"Item of gun-poulder, 5600 quintals; of matche, 1200 quintals; of muskets and kaleivers, 7000; of haleberts and partisans, 10,000.

"Moreover, they had great stores of canons, double-canons, culverings and field-pieces for land services.

"Likewise they were provided of all instruments necessary on land to conveigh and transport their furniture from place to place, as namely of carts, wheeles, wagons, etc. Also they had spades, mattocks, and baskets to set pioners on worke. They had in like sort great store of mules and horses, and whatsoever else was requisite for a land armie. They were so well stored of biscuit, that for the space of halfe a yeere they might allow eche person in the whole fleete halfe a quintall every moneth, whereof the whole summe amounteth unto an hundreth thousand quintals.

"Likewise of wine they had 147,000 pipes, sufficient also for halfe a yeere's expedition. Of bacon, 6500 quintals. Of cheese, 3000 quintals. Besides fish, rise, beanes, pease, oile, vinegar, etc.

"Moreover, they had 12,000 pipes of fresh water, and all other necessary provision, as namely candles, lanternes, lampes, sailes, hempe, oxe-hides, and lead to stop holes that should be made with the battery of gunshot. To be short, they brought all things expedient, either for a fleete by sea, or for an armie by land.

"This navie—as Diego Pimentelli afterward confessed—was esteemed by the King himselfe to containe 32,000 persons, and to cost him every day 30,000 ducates.

"There were in the said navie five terzaes of Spaniards—which terzaes the Frenchmen call regiments—under the command of five governours, termed by the Spaniards masters of the field, and among the rest there were many olde and expert souldiers chosen out of the garisons of Sicilie, Naples, and Tercera. Their captaines or colonels were Diego Pimentelli, Don Francisco de Toledo, Don Alonco de Lucon, Don Nicolas de Isla, Don Augustin de Mexia, who had eche of them thirty-two companies under their conduct. Besides the which companies, there were many bands also of Castilians and Portugals, every one of which had their peculiar governours, captaines, officers, colors, and weapons."