Part 66 (2/2)
There were patriotism, loyalty, courage, and enthusiasm, in abundance; but the commander-in-chief was a queen's favourite, odious to the people, with very moderate abilities, and eternally quarrelling with officers more competent than himself; and all the arrangements were so hopelessly behind-hand, that although great disasters might have been avenged, they could scarcely have been avoided.
Remembering that the Invincible Armada was lying in Calais roads on the 6th of August, hoping to cross to Dover the next morning, let us ponder the words addressed on that very day to Queen Elizabeth by the Lieutenant-General of England.
”My most dear and gracious Lady,” said the Earl, ”it is most true that those enemies that approach your kingdom and person are your undeserved foes, and being so, and hating you for a righteous cause, there is the less fear to be had of their malice or their forces; for there is a most just G.o.d that beholdeth the innocence of that heart. The cause you are a.s.sailed for is His and His Church's, and He never failed any that faithfully do put their chief trust in His goodness. He hath, to comfort you withal, given you great and mighty means to defend yourself, which means I doubt not but your Majesty will timely and princely use them, and your good G.o.d that ruleth all will a.s.sist you and bless you with victory.”
He then proceeded to give his opinion on two points concerning which the Queen had just consulted him--the propriety of a.s.sembling her army, and her desire to place herself at the head of it in person.
On the first point one would have thought discussion superfluous on the 6th of August. ”For your army, it is more than time it were gathered and about you,” said Leicester, ”or so near you as you may have the use of it at a few hours' warning. The reason is that your mighty enemies are at hand, and if G.o.d suffers them to pa.s.s by your fleet, you are sure they will attempt their purpose of landing with all expedition. And albeit your navy be very strong, but, as we have always heard, the other is not only far greater, but their forces of men much beyond yours. No doubt if the Prince of Parma come forth, their forces by sea shall not only be greatly, augmented, but his power to land shall the easier take effect whensoever he shall attempt it. Therefore it is most requisite that your Majesty at all events have as great a force every way as you can devise; for there is no dalliance at such a time, nor with such an enemy. You shall otherwise hazard your own honour, besides your person and country, and must offend your gracious G.o.d that gave you these forces and power, though you will not use them when you should.”
It seems strange enough that such phrases should be necessary when the enemy was knocking at the gate; but it is only too, true that the land-forces were never organized until the hour, of danger had, most fortunately and unexpectedly, pa.s.sed by. Suggestions at this late moment were now given for the defence of the throne, the capital, the kingdom, and the life of the great Queen, which would not have seemed premature had they been made six months before, but which, when offered in August, excite unbounded amazement. Alexander would have had time to, march from Dover to Duxham before these directions, now leisurely stated with all the air of novelty, could be carried into effect.
”Now for the placing of your army,” says the lieutenant-general on the memorable Sat.u.r.day, 6th of August, ”no doubt but I think about London the meetest, and I suppose that others will be of the same mind. And your Majesty should forthwith give the charge thereof to some special n.o.bleman about you, and likewise place all your chief officers that every man may know what he shall do, and gather as many good horse above all things as you can, and the oldest, best, and a.s.suredest captains to lead; for therein will consist the greatest hope of good success under G.o.d. And so soon as your army is a.s.sembled, let them by and by be exercised, every man to know his weapon, and that there be all other things prepared in readiness, for your army, as if they should march upon a day's warning, especially carriages, and a commissary of victuals, and a master of ordnance.”
Certainly, with Alexander of Parma on his way to London, at the head of his Italian pikemen, his Spanish musketeers, his famous veteran legion--”that nursing mother of great soldiers”--it was indeed more than time that every man should know what he should do, that an army of Englishmen should be-a.s.sembled, and that every man should know his weapon. ”By and by” was easily said, and yet, on the 6th of August it was by and by that an army, not yet mustered, not yet officered, not yet provided with a general, a commissary of victuals, or a master of ordinance, was to be exercised, ”every man to know his weapon.”
English courage might ultimately triumph over, the mistakes of those who governed the country, and over those disciplined brigands by whom it was to be invaded. But meantime every man of those invaders had already learned on a hundred battle-fields to know his weapon.
It was a magnificent determination on the part of Elizabeth to place herself at the head of her troops; and the enthusiasm which her att.i.tude inspired, when she had at last emanc.i.p.ated herself from the delusions of diplomacy and the seductions of thrift, was some recompense at least for the perils caused by her procrastination. But Leicester could not approve of this hazardous though heroic resolution.
The danger pa.s.sed away. The Invincible Armada was driven out of the Channel by the courage; the splendid seamans.h.i.+p, and the enthusiasm of English sailors and volunteers. The Duke of Parma was kept a close prisoner by the fleets of Holland and Zeeland; and the great storm of the 14th and 15th of August at last completed the overthrow of the Spaniards.
It was, however, supposed for a long time that they would come back, for the disasters which had befallen them in the north were but tardily known in England. The sailors, by whom England had been thus defended in her utmost need, were dying by hundreds, and even thousands, of s.h.i.+p-fever, in the latter days of August. Men sickened one day, and died the next, so that it seemed probable that the ten thousand sailors by whom the English s.h.i.+ps of war were manned, would have almost wholly disappeared, at a moment when their services might be imperatively required. Nor had there been the least precaution taken for cheris.h.i.+ng and saving these brave defenders of their country. They rotted in their s.h.i.+ps, or died in the streets of the naval ports, because there were no hospitals to receive them.
”'Tis a most pitiful sight,” said the Lord-Admiral, ”to see here at Margate how the men, having no place where they can be received, die in, the streets. I am driven of force myself to come on land to see them bestowed in some lodgings; and the best I can get is barns and such outhouses, and the relief is small that I can provide for them here. It would grieve any man's heart to see men that have served so valiantly die so miserably.”
The survivors, too, were greatly discontented; for, after having been eight months at sea, and enduring great privations, they could not get their wages. ”Finding it to come thus scantily,” said Howard, ”it breeds a marvellous alteration among them.”
But more dangerous than the pestilence or the discontent was the misunderstanding which existed at the moment between the leading admirals of the English fleet. Not only was Seymour angry with Howard, but Hawkins and Frobisher were at daggers drawn with Drake; and Sir Martin--if contemporary, affidavits can be trusted--did not scruple to heap the most virulent abuse upon Sir Francis, calling him, in language better fitted for the forecastle than the quarter-deck, a thief and a coward, for appropriating the ransom for Don Pedro Valdez in which both Frobisher and Hawkins claimed at least an equal share with himself.
And anxious enough was the Lord-Admiral with his sailors peris.h.i.+ng by pestilence, with many of his s.h.i.+ps so weakly manned that as Lord Henry Seymour declared there were not mariners enough to weigh the anchors, and with the great naval heroes, on whose efforts the safety of the realm depended, wrangling like fisherwomen among themselves, when rumours came, as they did almost daily, of the return of the Spanish Armada, and of new demonstrations on the part of Farnese. He was naturally unwilling that the fruits of English valour on the seas should now be sacrificed by the false economy of the government. He felt that, after all that had been endured and accomplished, the Queen and her counsellors were still capable of leaving England at the mercy of a renewed attempt, ”I know not what you think at the court,” said he; ”but I think, and so do all here, that there cannot be too great forces maintained for the next five or six weeks. G.o.d knoweth whether the Spanish fleet will not, after refres.h.i.+ng themselves in Norway; Denmark, and the Orkneys, return. I think they dare not go back to Sprain with this, dishonour, to their King and overthrow of the Pope's credit. Sir, sure bind, sure find. A kingdom is a grand wager. Security is dangerous; and, if G.o.d had not been our best friend; we should have found it so.”
[Howard to Walsingham, Aug.8/18 1588. (S. P. Office MS.)]
[”Some haply may say that winter cometh on apace,” said Drake, ”but my poor opinion is that I dare not advise her Majesty to hazard a kingdom with the saving of a little charge.” (Drake to Walsingham, Aug. 8/18 1588.)]
Nothing could be more replete, with sound common sense than this simple advice, given as it was in utter ignorance of the fate of the Armada; after it had been lost sight of by the English vessels off the Firth of Forth, and of the cold refreshment which: it had found in Norway and the Orkneys. But, Burghley had a store of pithy apophthegms, for which--he knew he could always find sympathy in the Queen's breast, and with which he could answer these demands of admirals and generals. ”To spend in time convenient is wisdom;” he observed--”to continue charges without needful cause bringeth, repentance;”--”to hold on charges without knowledge of the certainty thereof and of means how to support them, is lack of wisdom;” and so on.
Yet the Spanish fleet might have returned into the Channel for ought the Lord-Treasurer on the 22nd August knew--or the Dutch fleet might have relaxed, in its vigilant watching of Farnese's movements. It might have then seemed a most plentiful lack of wisdom to allow English sailors to die of plague in the streets for want of hospitals; and to grow mutinous for default of pay. To have saved under such circ.u.mstances would, perhaps have brought repentance.
The invasion of England by Spain had been most portentous. That the danger was at last averted is to be ascribed to the enthusiasm of the English, nation--both patricians and plebeians--to the heroism of the little English fleet, to the spirit of the naval commanders and volunteers, to the stanch, and effective support of the Hollanders; and to the hand of G.o.d shattering the Armada at last; but very little credit can be conscientiously awarded to the diplomatic or the military efforts of the Queen's government. Miracles alone, in the opinion of Roger Williams, had saved England on this occasion from perdition.
Towards the end of August, Admiral de Na.s.sau paid a visit to Dover with forty s.h.i.+ps, ”well appointed and furnished.” He dined and conferred with Seymour, Palmer, and other officers--Winter being still laid up with his wound--and expressed the opinion that Medina Sidonia would hardly return to the Channel, after the banquet he had received from her Majesty's navy between Calais and Gravelines. He also gave the information that the States had sent fifty Dutch vessels in pursuit of the Spaniards, and had compelled all the herring-fishermen for the time to serve in the s.h.i.+ps of war, although the prosperity of the country depended on that industry. ”I find the man very wise, subtle, and cunning,” said Seymour of the Dutch Admiral, ”and therefore do I trust him.”
Na.s.sau represented the Duke of Parma as evidently discouraged, as having already disembarked his troops, and as very little disposed to hazard any further enterprise against England. ”I have left twenty-five Kromstevens,” said he, ”to prevent his egress from Sluys, and I am immediately returning thither myself. The tide will not allow his vessels at present to leave Dunkerk, and I shall not fail--before the next full moon--to place myself before that place, to prevent their coming out, or to have a brush with them if they venture to put to sea.”
But after the scenes on which the last full moon had looked down in those waters, there could be no further pretence on the part of Farnese to issue from Sluys and Dunkerk, and England and Holland were thenceforth saved from all naval enterprises on the part of Spain.
Meantime, the same uncertainty which prevailed in England as to the condition and the intentions of the Armada was still more remarkable elsewhere. There was a systematic deception practised not only upon other governments; but upon the King of Spain as well. Philip, as he sat at his writing-desk, was regarding himself as the monarch of England, long after his Armada had been hopelessly dispersed.
In Paris, rumours were circulated during the first ten days of August that England was vanquished, and that the Queen was already on her way to Rome as a prisoner, where she was to make expiation, barefoot, before his Holiness. Mendoza, now more magnificent than ever--stalked into Notre Dame with his drawn sword in his hand, crying out with a loud voice, ”Victory, victory!” and on the 10th of August ordered bonfires to be made before his house; but afterwards thought better of that scheme. He had been deceived by a variety of reports sent to him day after day by agents on the coast; and the King of France--better informed by Stafford, but not unwilling thus to feed his spite against the insolent amba.s.sador--affected to believe his fables. He even confirmed them by intelligence, which he pretended to have himself received from other sources, of the landing of the Spaniards in England without opposition, and of the entire subjugation of that country without the striking of a blow.
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