The Spanish Armadas

  Don Antonio of Crato, the claimant to the Portuguese throne, now a man of fifty-seven, had been in England for some time, having been compelled to leave France because of Philip II’S attempts to have him assassinated. He had become friendly with Drake and had stayed at Drake’s home in Devon. For years Don Antonio had been urging that the English should land him in Portugal with a supporting army, and claiming that the Portuguese were only waiting for his arrival to rise and overthrow their Spanish conquerors. As long ago as 1581 he and Drake had made plans to seize the Azores; later he had attempted it with the assistance of a French fleet under Admiral Strozzi and had been comprehensively defeated; but all through the years he had kept his claim alive.

  Now with the Spanish fleet out of action the time seemed ripe for a really serious attempt to install him. With the jewellery and gold he had brought with him when he left Portugal he had been able to maintain spies working for him in the Iberian Peninsula and elsewhere for nearly a decade, and they reported now on the great discontent in Lisbon and Oporto. Two of these spies incidentally, de Escobar and de Endrada, worked both for him and for Philip II, but were so skilled that though they often met they never suspected each other, nor did either employer suspect that their men were receiving money from the other side. Contrary to what is generally believed, the age of the double-spy did not begin in the present century.

  Don Antonio’s offer to Elizabeth was that two months after his attaining the throne he would defray the full cost of the expedition and would pay England a further three hundred thousand ducats annually, and that he would give England full trade privileges in Portugal and her possessions. It was enough to tempt anyone as near bankruptcy as Elizabeth.

  But the possibility of recreating an independent and friendly Portugal was not the only issue at stake. At this moment the Spanish fleet was knocked out and the Spanish coast defenceless. In various Atlantic and Biscayan ports, in varying degrees of mutilation and unseaworthiness, were the remains of that fleet: galleons, great ships, carracks, armed merchantmen, galleasses, pataches, zabras. In spite of the havoc wrought off Gravelines and the even more disastrous wrecks off the Irish coast, a surprisingly large number of the great fleet had somehow drifted home: seven out of the ten galleons of Portugal, six of Recalde’s Biscayan great ships, half of Pedro de Valdes’s Andalusians, more than half of Diego Flores’s Castilians, seven of Oquendo’s, two of Bertendona’s Levantines. These were the capital ships; no one could be sure how many of them could be repaired, or how quickly. But at the moment they were virtually defenceless in ill-defended seaports. Drake had demonstrated only eighteen months ago what he could do in Cadiz. A bigger raid now – indeed something of a small armada in reverse – could wipe out these ships and so make absolutely complete the victory of last year. Drake put this to the Queen – in company with Sir John Norris, England’s most accomplished and experienced soldier. It was all, for once, very much to Elizabeth’s way of thinking, and she agreed in principle to the proposal within three weeks of its being put to her.

  There was another idea too in the minds of the planners. It was to seize the Azores and establish a regular blockade of the treasure flota sailing to Spain from the Indies. Hawkins had put forward this proposal in December 1587 after Drake’s successful raid on Cadiz; it had been impracticable then because of the existence of the Spanish fleet. Now, especially if it were preceded by the destruction of the remnants of that fleet, it was a very feasible proposition and, combined with his loss of control in the Netherlands would be likely to force Philip to sue for peace. So it was agreed that the enterprise should be put in hand: another empresa but with smaller resources and having three objectives instead of one.

  It was floated as a joint stock company, with a capital of about £80,000. One quarter was to come from the Queen, one half from private adventurers, including merchants and nobility, one eighth in kind from the City of London and one eighth in kind from the Dutch. The Queen has come in for bitter condemnation from historians for allowing this to become a commercial enterprise, in which almost inevitably the aims became blurred; but in fact she had little choice.

  As we have seen earlier in explaining if not excusing her neglect of her victorious sailors, she was on the verge of insolvency. By Christmas 1588 she had about £55,000 left. One half of what she could expect to receive in the following year from ordinary revenues she was pledged to pay towards helping her Dutch allies, under the treaty of 1585. Money was needed urgently in Ireland. James still expected his subsidy in Scotland. And if Henry of Navarre was to help Henry III to survive in France, he too was likely to need more financial help before the year was far gone. None of these calls on her purse was concerned with the ordinary expenses of English civil or military life. In 1588 Burghley had tried to borrow £50,000 abroad at 10 per cent interest. In early 1589 she tried and failed to raise £100,000 in Germany. By November of that year she was reduced to the straits of selling crown lands.

  The Queen promised £20,000 towards the cost of the expedition to Portugal; it was the most she could do; and as a pledge of her intentions she advanced most of the money before the rest had been subscribed. London merchants, who had slid off into the country in 1588 in order to avoid paying the forced loans imposed then, now vied with each other in putting money into what so clearly was to be a profit-making venture. With the national hero, Drake, in command and ‘Black’ Norris at his side, one could hardly go wrong.

  The assent and cooperation of the Dutch took longer to obtain. Parma, swinging his troops away from the invasion ports, had laid siege to Bergen-op-Zoom. Thanks largely to English help, the attempt to capture the town failed, but with Parma only hibernating for the winter months and clearly anxious to restore his lost credit in the eyes of Philip, it was not the most propitious time to ask the Dutch to release three thousand troops and six siege-guns with the necessary transports and ten hulks for carrying horses. They were seven weeks making up their minds, but eventually they agreed to send fifteen hundred of their own troops with ten warships, and they also agreed to the withdrawal of three thousand of the English troops to join the enterprise, provided that all their own men should be back by June.

  Speed was of the essence, for winter had brought almost all the fighting in Europe to a standstill, and this was the moment when troops and money could best be spared. Unhappily a quarrel broke out with the Dutch, in which the English appear to have been to blame, about the number and manner of the withdrawal of the English troops. This was further aggravated by Lord Willoughby’s jealousy of Norris and Drake and by a general reluctance of the English commanders to release trained veteran troops from their armies and have them replaced by raw country levies, so that other men should have the glory of leading them on a wildcat invasion of Portugal. One thinks of the Dardanelles.

  So the expedition, instead of sailing for Portugal on the 1st February, did not reach Plymouth until the 19th March and was then held back by persistent south-westerly winds for another month. When it sailed it was in a much depleted condition compared to the original plan. Not one of the Dutch warships had arrived and only a few of their transports. The cavalry did not exist and the seasoned troops only numbered eighteen hundred. On the other hand the expedition was swollen by inexperienced volunteers who, flocking in to Plymouth to follow Drake anywhere, increased the total number of soldiers from a planned ten thousand to around nineteen thousand. At the same time the long delay in Portsmouth consumed something like one-third of the total victuals laid on for the voyage.

  At the last the Queen, who previously had been unwavering in her support of the expedition, began to have doubts about its success, for by now the winter was past and all the forecasts of the pessimists were coming true. Geertruidenberg, one of the key positions in the Netherlands, had fallen; Henry III’s ineptitude in France put the Channel ports in peril, and he had sent a desperate appeal for a loan of £27,000 to hire an army of German mercenaries; while James of Scotland was asking for a subsidy to keep
down his Catholic nobles. Elizabeth’s attitude was also exasperated by the escape of young Essex who, having distinguished himself in the fighting in Holland, now disobeyed her express instructions to stay at court and rode down to Plymouth in time to sail in the company of the famous Welsh soldier, Sir Roger Williams. She dispatched message after message recalling him, and pinnaces to search the Channel. Eventually one of her darkest messages was sent winging in pursuit of Drake. ‘Sir Roger Williams’ offence,’ she wrote, ‘is in so high a degree that the same deserveth to be punished by death … If Essex be now come into the company of the fleet, we straightly charge you that you do forthwith cause him to be sent hither in safe manner. Which if you do not, you shall look to answer for the same at your own smart; for these be no childish actions … As we have authority to rule so we look to be obeyed.’ (Happily for Essex’s ambitions, this stern order did not reach the fleet until most of the land fighting was done.)

  The English Armada which sailed with such high hopes and with so many diverse ambitions was, though much watered down from the original outline, still a considerable force. Its chief lack was siege-guns and cavalry, both of which had been included in the preliminary plan. For the first time, like the Spanish Armada, soldiers greatly outnumbered sailors, the numbers who finally embarked being approximately seventeen thousand of the former and four thousand of the latter, besides about fifteen hundred officers and gentlemen adventurers. Six royal galleons, sixty English armed merchantmen of displacements varying from four hundred tons to eighty tons, sixty tough little Dutch flyboats of around one hundred and fifty to two hundred tons and a score or more of pinnaces. Nevertheless, even as a naval force, it was far from being an all-out effort, as Spain’s had been. Most of the latest and finest of the royal ships were laid up at Chatham; Frobisher with three royal ships and three pinnaces was patrolling the Straits to prevent war material reaching Spain from the north; Sir George Beeston had a similar squadron in the North Sea protecting English sea trade with Germany; and the Earl of Cumberland was fitting out the Victory and six other ships at his own expense for raiding the Spanish sea routes.

  Having learned the value of formation fighting from the Spanish, Drake had divided his fleet into five squadrons, each led by a Queen’s ship: himself, again in the Revenge, in the first, Sir John Norris in Nonpareil in the second, Vice-Admiral Thomas Fenner in Dreadnought in the third. Sir Roger Williams (with the rebellious Essex) in Swiftsure in the fourth, and Sir Edward Norris in Foresight in the fifth. The first two were of five hundred tons each, the second two of four hundred tons, the fifth of three hundred.

  Both Drake and Norris, much taken with Don Antonio and the thought of liberating Portugal, would have liked to attack Lisbon at once; but the ‘Instructions’ with which they were issued made the destruction of the Spanish fleet the first objective. This was a vital order of priorities; but unfortunately, although a few of the smaller Armada ships were sheltering in the west-facing Spanish and Portuguese ports, the majority, indeed more than fifty of the biggest ships, were in harbour in the northern ports: forty of them in Santander and twelve in San Sebastian. To attack these ships meant taking the whole fleet far to the leeward of the prevailing winds and alerting all Spain to the presence of the raiding force; and, once in this corner of Biscay, the fleet might find itself embayed.

  Here was a strong conflict of interest: the national interest which dictated that the damaged galleons must be destroyed before anything else at all was attempted; and an interest which could be of great national advantage but which also promised much private profit for the investors. Two separate fleets could have attended to two such different objectives, but the existing fleet was not strong enough to divide.

  Instead, as so often happens, a fatal compromise was attempted. Hearing that a large concentration of shipping was ‘in the Groyne’, they attacked Coruña instead. Here they found only one of the Armada galleons, the San Juan of one thousand and fifty tons, two greatships, two galleys and a hulk. Drake landed Norris to take the town, and after much confused fighting in the dark and the rain, which in those days rendered muskets useless, the lower town was taken with a minimum of loss. Young Admiral Martin de Bertendona, not long recovered from commanding the worst hit of all the Armada squadrons, had to set fire to the San Juan to save her from being captured. (Little wonder that two years later he enjoyed attacking the Revenge.) About five hundred Spaniards were caught and killed and Don Juan de Luna, the military commandant of the town, was taken prisoner. But part of the garrison contrived to retire into the higher town, from which they were able during the next few days to harass the English with gunfire.

  The shipping burned, the scanty provisions of the fleet replenished, the remaining victuals in the town destroyed, there was nothing to keep the English fleet. But in the darkness and confusion of the first victory great wine barrels had been discovered, and most of the soldiers who had landed drank themselves into insensibility after sacking the town. Many of them were immediately ill, and dysentery was widespread. In the meantime an attempt was made to mine the fortress of the upper town, but this failed. Then an Italian came in with news that an army of eight thousand Spaniards was approaching to relieve the town.

  Immediately Sir John Norris and his brother Sir Edward led nine regiments of pikemen and musketeers to intercept them. In the battle which followed, both Norrises behaved with that kind of mad, inspired gallantry which characterized the most successful generals of the sixteenth century, each in turn leading the way across a narrow two-hundred-yard-long bridge spanning a river, under a hail of musket-fire and into a barricade at the other end. Sir John did not even bother to put on his armour and escaped without a scratch; Sir Edward received a sword slash on his head. The Spanish were put to flight with about a thousand dead, and the country around was laid waste by the victorious infantry. The battle of El Burgo Bridge occurred not very far from where Sir John Moore, fighting for the Spanish, was to die two hundred and twenty years later.

  By now the expeditionary force had been in Coruña two weeks and, apart from some not very valuable booty, they had little to show for the exploit. Their duty now lay, as it had always lain, two hundred and fifty miles west, where the bulk of the shattered Armada awaited them. But Sir John Norris now said he was doubtful of the ability to ‘distress a fleet’ while it was guarded by the guns of a town, and doubtful of his ability to take the town without the siege guns that he had been promised but notably lacked. Also the captains and shipmasters of the Queen’s ships reiterated their opinion that with the prevailing westerly winds it was dangerous to take the fleet so far into the Bay.

  There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the second opinion, but the first, coming from, of all people, such men as Norris and Drake, sounds a trifle disingenuous. (Drake, with his notorious entry into Cadiz and a dozen other miraculous exploits; Norris with all his iron experience of campaigning in the Netherlands.) The truth is surely that they saw little prospect of profit in it for the investors. Also their clash with Spanish forces at El Burgo Bridge had convinced them that they could land where they chose in Spain and none to stop them. ‘An army of 10,000 good soldiers may pass through the whole realm without great danger,’ wrote the Queen’s agent, Anthony Ashley, to the Council on the 7th May.

  So, with full apologies and explanations sent hastening homewards, they deliberately disobeyed the Queen’s instructions and sailed, as they had always wanted to, for Lisbon.

  The Queen when she received the dispatches had no doubt in her mind as to what had happened. ‘They go to places more for profit than for service,’ she commented bleakly. The leaders of the fleet beating southwards towards Lisbon can hardly have been unaware that only a resounding success in Portugal could now make their homecoming a happy one.

  Spanish spies, with unerring skill, had reported that when the English fleet arrived off Lisbon it was likely to land a force near Peniche, fifty miles north of the city; and this was what happened. Led by Sir Roger Wi
lliams, with Essex recklessly courageous beside him, several regiments succeeded in getting ashore through the surf, and after a brisk bloody encounter the defending forces retreated and the open town surrendered. The same night the castle overlooking the town surrendered to Don Antonio.

  It was a propitious start. The rest of the fourteen regiments were landed safely, and the following day the two forces split: the army proposed to march to Lisbon overland while the whole countryside flocked to Don Antonio’s standard; the fleet was to sail to Lisbon and intimidate the capital city from the sea.

  That Lisbon was intimidated when it became known that El Draque was in the Tagus there can be no doubt. The little fortified town of Cascaes, sixteen miles from Lisbon at the mouth of the Tagus, surrendered precipitately, and there was a panic flight of the population from Lisbon despite all efforts of the Spanish governor, the young Cardinal Archduke Albert, to halt it.

  For once in his life Drake did not commit his ships to an all-out attack on the city. Perhaps the consciousness of having so flagrantly disobeyed the Queen hung heavy on him; perhaps he had been overborne by his military advisers to allow them first to attack from the land; certainly he overestimated the extent to which the Spanish, obviously warned of his coming, had been able to add to their garrison and fortify the town. There were in fact rather less than seven thousand troops in all available for the defence, and many of these were Portuguese with no stomach to fight on behalf of their conquerors. All that the Archduke Albert could do was initiate a reign of terror in the city, in which anyone suspected of having sympathy for the claims of Don Antonio was at once executed.

  In 1580 when the Spanish took Portugal, Santa Cruz had landed the Duke of Alva with his seasoned Spanish veterans at Cascaes, and, while the troops marched on Lisbon, Santa Cruz had sailed his fleet up the Tagus, the two forces never losing contact with each other. Had this plan been followed now it would surely have succeeded again. Instead Drake waited for the Portuguese to rise and for news of Norris who, lacking cavalry or even enough horse for the transport of baggage, marched his troops in great heat across the peninsula. Many of the men were already sick from seaboard infections or from their excesses at Coruña.