Part 30 (1/2)
[Sidenote: The situation]
At last, however, the endless evasion had ceased to be possible.
Leicester's campaign in the Netherlands, feeble as it was, and Drake's expedition to Cartagena, put an end to the theory that Spain and England were at peace. It was known that in the ports of Spain and Portugal Philip was making his slow preparations for a naval attack; his ablest admiral, Santa Cruz, had formulated a vast scheme--vaster indeed than Philip was ever prepared to adopt. The Guises were prepared to go any lengths to prevent the legitimate Protestant succession in France; and the French King had publicly thrown in his lot with the Guises. Now also Mary Stewart was not only out of the way herself, but before her death had declared against the succession to her own claims of her son, and had acknowledged Philip, [Footnote: _State Papers, Spanish,_ iii., p. 581; and _ante,_ p.
338.] a legitimate descendant of John of Gaunt, as her heir. At last in Philip's mind the suppression of Elizabeth acquired precedence over the suppression of the Provinces.
The near approach of a life-and-death struggle made no difference whatever in the English Queen's methods. Eighteen months before, she had struck one hard blow by sea, when she dispatched Drake on the Cartagena expedition, but otherwise had merely played at helping the Netherlanders, by sending an army and paralysing it for action. She did exactly the same thing now.
[Sidenote: April: Drake's Cadiz expedition]
Drake, with a squadron not large either in numbers or in tonnage but exceedingly efficient, had orders to sail from Plymouth to ”singe the King of Spain's beard,” as he phrased it. Drake knew his Queen, and got himself out of port before the appointed day, on April 2nd. The expected counter- orders arrived in due time--when he was out of reach. Elizabeth possibly knew her Drake and reckoned on his premature departure, while she had secured her loop-hole for shuffling out of the responsibility. He carried out the singeing business most effectively. Making for Cadiz, where it was known that stores and s.h.i.+ps were acc.u.mulated, he stood into the harbour, sunk one s.h.i.+p of war there, cleared out so much of the stores as he could accommodate, and fired the bulk of the s.h.i.+pping, cutting the cables. Drake then captured the Sagres forts at Cape St. Vincent, intending to lie in wait for an expected squadron from the Mediterranean; but departed after a short interval, being minded to sail into the port of Lisbon where the Admiral Santa Cruz lay with the bulk of the Armada. This exploit, however, he was obliged to forgo, [Footnote: Corbett, _Drake and the Tudor Navy_, ii., pp. 97 ff. The account there given is followed here. The author points out that Froude and others have been misled by the almost certain misdating of a letter of Drake's which he attributes to 1589.]
contenting himself with a challenge to Santa Cruz to come out and fight, which he was in no condition to do. Returning to Cape St. Vincent, Drake there remained long enough to stop the expected squadron, and throw the whole of Philip's transport arrangements out of gear. Satisfied with the destruction wrought, which served to cripple at least the mobility of the Armada for many months, he then sailed for the Azores, where he fell in with a great Spanish _East_ Indiaman, the _San Felipe_, whereof the spoils very satisfactorily filled the pockets of his crews; and so returned home, having made it all but impossible that the invading fleet should sail during 1587.
[Sidenote: Negotiations with Parma]
Then, month after month, Elizabeth carried on the old practice in the Netherlands. She negotiated persistently with Parma, on the old basis, that the Provinces had a right to their old const.i.tution but nothing more. Of course she knew that the Provinces would never a.s.sent to that solution. On the favourable view of her policy, it must be held to have rested on a fixed determination not to make the Netherlands her field of battle. For Sluys, one of the forts which she held, so to speak, in p.a.w.n from the States, was taken after a stubborn siege and at immense cost both in money and men by Parma, simply because Maurice of Na.s.sau was too uncertain as to her real intentions to make a serious effort for its relief. Confidence in her had sunk to the lowest point when, some months before, an English captain, Stanley, had handed over the town of Deventer, which was in his charge, to the Spaniards, whose service he himself entered. The Provinces, Parma, Elizabeth's own Ministers, believed that she meant the negotiations in earnest. Parma, who knew how tremendous a task the invasion of England must be, would have liked to come to terms, but Philip would not give him the authority; the terms approved by his lieutenant must be referred back to him. They were never finally formulated. All through 1587, through the first months of 1588, the thing dragged on; and then Elizabeth declared that the surrender of the Cautionary Towns, always. .h.i.therto treated as the necessary first step, was only to be thought of as the last step--a quite impossible condition from the Spanish point of view. But by the time the negotiations had thoroughly broken down, a whole year had been practically wasted by Spain. Taking on the other hand the unfavourable view--which appears to have been that of almost every statesman and soldier of the day --she engaged in a highly discreditable negotiation for a betrayal of the Provinces by the surrender of the Cautionary Towns, in the hope of obtaining with Philip a peace which would have rendered him infinitely more dangerous than he actually was; being only saved from that disaster by saner counsels and against her own will at the last moment.
[Sidenote: The Queen's Diplomacy]
From beginning to end, the facts are consistent with either view of her character. If the second view be true, history affords no parallel to the amazing good fortune which attended her; for her whole career was a succession of apparently hopeless entanglements, each one leading to inevitable disaster; yet from every one a loop-hole of escape was found.
If the first be true, history again affords no parallel to the invariable success which attended a series of deceptions practised alike upon her servants, her friends, and her enemies. But whichever solution we accept-- and there is no third alternative--her personal policy remains one of pure political opportunism, either very short sighted or singularly long sighted, without a particle of the idealism which, mixed though it might be with other motives, was so emphatically characteristic of half her ministers and more than half her subjects. Towards the cause of the Reformation, as such, she was entirely cold; to her, its adherents in the Netherlands and in France were merely pieces on the political chess-board. It is an odd paradox that such a ruler should have won and maintained among her own people a personal popularity amounting to enthusiasm, which was a very strong force in binding the nation together.
[Sidenote: 1587-88 French affairs]
While Elizabeth was keeping up the diplomatic game above described, she was very materially aided by the state of affairs in France, where what is known as the ”War of the three Henries”--Henry III., Henry of Navarre, and Henry of Guise--was in full progress. The King, professing to support the League, was in fact doing his best to play into the hands of his nominal opponent, Navarre, and to paralyse his nominal adherent, Guise, who had Philip of Spain behind him. Philip, aware of this ambiguous position--as also was Elizabeth--found himself unable to trust to France for support, or absolutely to repudiate her demands to share in the Armada expedition viewed as a Catholic Crusade. The position became acute when Guise, ignoring the King's orders, entered Paris in force, receiving a general ovation while the King himself had to fly, on the ”Day of the Barricades”
(April-May, 1588). There was a nominal reconciliation in July; but it was then already too late for the Guises to hold the French ports at the service of the Spaniard.
Neither from Scotland nor in Ireland was any danger to be apprehended in the coming struggle. We turn again to the story of the Armada itself.
[Sidenote: 1587 Preparations for the Armada]
Great as was the damage wrought by Drake, it was energetically repaired, and Philip warned Parma to be ready for the arrival of the Armada in September 1587. The plan of operations was for Santa Cruz to sail up the Channel, dominate the pa.s.sage from the Low Countries, and so enable Parma, heavily reinforced by the soldiers on board the great fleet, to pour his troops into England. Philip's plans were quite unaffected by the talk of peace; but the English were justified in their confidence that the Armada would not be ready to sail in time. When it was ready, Santa Cruz p.r.o.nounced that the storms to be looked for so late in the year would make the voyage itself dangerous, and would render it impossible to keep the necessary control of the water-ways: which was what the English authorities had calculated on.
[Sidenote: 1588 Plans of Campaign]
There was indeed a very considerable risk in deferring the mobilisation of the English fleet; for in January, Philip resolved to delay no longer, and if the Armada had sailed then there was no force ready to meet it. But the death of Santa Cruz at the critical moment destroyed the plan. In February the English were in trim to take the seas; the opportunity was lost, and another was not given. If the seamen had been allowed their own way, the Lord Admiral Howard of Effingham, Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher and the other captains would have sailed for the Spanish coast; nor can it be doubted that they would then have done completely what Drake and his squadron had done only in part a year before, and practically have annihilated the Armada in its own ports; but other counsels prevailed, to their great chagrin. The idea that the Spanish fleet might evade the English, if the latter left the Channel, and make the invasion a _fait accompli_ without a sea-fight at all, was too alarming to the landsmen. Whether Parma would ever have taken the enormous risk of throwing himself into a hostile country, with an unfought fleet hastening to cut him off from his base, is another matter. It is noteworthy however that even the seamen do not seem to have realised the enormous risk involved in such an undertaking. They knew that a small squadron was quite sufficient to frustrate any invasion that Parma without the Armada could contemplate. But when the Armada was already in helpless and headlong flight round Scotland, Drake [Footnote: Laughton, S. P. _Armada,_ ii., pp. 99, 100: Drake to Walsingham.]
still regarded an attempted coup by Parma as a danger to be seriously guarded against.
[Sidenote: The opposing forces]
We are in the habit of looking upon the destruction of the Armada as a feat verging on the miraculous. Yet it is apparent that every one of the great sailors antic.i.p.ated a complete victory with entire confidence. They knew that they understood the conditions of naval warfare, and that the enemy did not. Although, on paper, the Spaniard had all the best of it, he never really had a chance, for the plain reason that his fleet was utterly outcla.s.sed. The Armada put to sea with about 130 s.h.i.+ps. Of these, 62 were of over 300 tons burden. The whole English fleet is given as 197 s.h.i.+ps including the 34 of the Royal Navy. Of these, only 49 exceeded 200 tons. The average [Footnote: Laughton, i., p. li.] tonnage of the 62 was quite double that of the 49; and the aggregate of the 130 was approximately double that of the 197. The recorded lists and estimates also give the Spaniards double the number of men and guns. Many of the great Spaniards were little more than transports; on the other hand, half the English s.h.i.+ps were too small for effective fighting. But there is little doubt that the English fighting s.h.i.+ps were much better armed relatively to their size; that the guns were better, and infinitely better handled. The s.h.i.+ps were in fact far superior as fighting machines, because the two fleets were built, armed, and manned, on two diametrically opposed theories of naval tactics: which may be summed up by saying that the Spaniards relied upon ma.s.s, and hand to hand fighting, the English on mobility and artillery; applying unconsciously by sea the principles by which the great land-tacticians of the past, Edward III. and Henry V., had shattered greatly superior hosts at Crecy and Agincourt. The finer comprehension of naval strategy on the part of the English admirals had been made of no account by the ignorance of the supreme authority, which detained the fleet on the coast: but their tactical developments were unhampered. For the first time on a large scale the accustomed rules were about to be discarded.
[Sidenote: The New Tactics]
Hitherto, naval battles had been a.s.similated to land battles; s.h.i.+ps had attacked, moving abreast in military formation; they had grappled and fought for possession of each other's decks; the work had been soldiers'
work, and for that the Spaniards were equipped, carrying two soldiers for every mariner. But this was to be mariners' work, and on the English s.h.i.+ps the complement of soldiers was quite insignificant in comparison to that of mariners and gunners. The English s.h.i.+ps were handled by seamen, many of the Spanish by landsmen. The English s.h.i.+ps answered the helm and could go ”about,” with a rapidity which amazed the Spaniards. They were constructed to deliver broadsides, which the Spaniards could not do. Their guns could be discharged three times or more to the Spaniards once. The Spaniards, with a dim perception of the English point of superiority, tried to nullify it by futile firing at the rigging, which was for the most part a pure waste of shot; the English pounded the Spanish hulls and their crowded decks; systematically refusing to come to close quarters, so that the enemy never had a chance of utilising his soldiery. With s.h.i.+ps built and rigged for speed and for manoeuvring, with men who had learnt how to handle them in many a storm, with captains whose seamans.h.i.+p was trusted by every sailor, the Englishmen repeatedly secured the weather-gauge, joining battle or refusing it as they liked; and the final result was never seriously in doubt.
[Sidenote: Defective arrangements]