By the mouth of Howard, Elizabeth's captains implored her for leave to repeat the cruise for 1587. They pointed out that, if we must fight the Spaniard, it was better to fight him on his own coast than ours, and, moreover, it was safer, since, even if we were to be beaten, defeat would be less dangerous a long way off than at home. But Elizabeth would not part with the hope that her diplomacy, which had stood her in such admirable stead during the twenty-eight years of her reign, would serve her again, and she would not allow her fleet to sail for an attack upon Spain, which must necessarily have broken off the negotiations of peace. Still, the preparations for war were not neglected. The Admiral of England, Lord Howard, with Drake as Vice and Hawkins as Rear Admiral, had his headquarters at Plymouth, while Lord Henry Seymour commanded the ships of London and the East Coast, in the Thames. On the approach of the enemy, his station was to be in the Downs, where he was to watch the Duke of Parma, who was collecting the army of invasion in the Flemish ports. In this work Seymour had the help of a squadron of Dutch vessels, commanded by Justinus of Nassau, a natural son of William the Silent.

At the end of May the Duke of Medina Sidonia did at last sail. All his demands had been supplied by the king. His banners had been solemnly blessed by the Cardinal Albert—the cardinal who was Viceroy of Portugal; all his officers and men had taken the Communion and confessed their sins; and at last the Armada was on the way, with assurances from the king that "it must succeed, since God would not fail to help it on an enterprise so much for His service as this was." When Cromwell told his soldiers to trust in God, he also added the order to keep their powder dry; in other words, not to allow their reliance on divine assistance to tempt them into neglecting ordinary human precautions. King Philip was lavish in good advice and intelligent direction, but he was neither so practical as Oliver Cromwell, nor would he take equally good care that what he directed his men to do should be within their power. It was worthy of a king who, throughout the whole of his life, was endeavouring to achieve vast ends with very insufficient means, that Philip sent his fleet out with the knowledge that it suffered from a great cause of inferiority, but without making the slightest effort to remove the defect. He knew that the gunnery of his crews was altogether inferior to the English, and that his guns were not so good. Therefore, as he warned the Duke of Medina Sidonia, it was to be expected that the English ships would endeavour to engage at a distance, and would avoid coming so close that the Spaniards would have a chance of boarding them. It was also not unknown to Philip that the English ships sailed better than his own, and that therefore it would be in their power to choose the distance at which they would engage. Yet, instead of providing quicker ships and better guns, and of training more skilful gunners, he could only advise his admiral to come to close quarters with the English fleet without telling him how the feat was to be achieved. The very first experience of his fleet after leaving Lisbon ought to have shown him how little hope there was that the unlucky Duke of Medina Sidonia would have it in his power to engage the English except on their own terms. By a curious coincidence, Lord Howard and the duke left port at about the same time; the Lord Admiral sailing from Plymouth to the south and west in order to meet the coming Spaniards, and Medina Sidonia sailing from Lisbon towards England. Had no accident intervened, they would probably have met in the neighbourhood of the Scilly Isles. A few days after the duke had left Lisbon, a gale broke out from the south-west. It affected both fleets,—the Spaniards, who had just rounded Cape Finisterre, and the English, who were at the mouth of the Channel. But whereas these latter were only hindered, the Invincible Armada was completely scattered. The duke had given his fleet only one rendezvous in case of an accident of this kind, and that was the neighbourhood of the Scilly Isles. The squadron of urcas, or storeships, which accompanied his fleet held on to the appointed place, and there remained. But the heavy galleons were so maltreated by the wind that they were scattered along the coast. The duke himself anchored at Corunna, and there collected his ships after some days of confusion. A whole month passed before he was ready to go to sea again. He himself was so dispirited that he actually proposed to advise the king to give the enterprise up altogether, and was only restrained from writing to that effect by the strenuous efforts of a council of war. Meanwhile, Lord Howard, after being driven back by the gale, had taken to the sea again, and had despatched a squadron to reconnoitre towards the coast of Spain, while the bulk of his fleet was stretched across the mouth of the Channel, in order to be the better able to catch sight of the enemy if he endeavoured to pass. Nothing was seen of the Spaniards, and Lord Howard returned to Plymouth. Although undoubtedly better fitted than the Invincible Armada, the English ships were not without wants of their own. In the hope of diminishing expenses, or perhaps rather from the difficulty found in collecting provisions, it was thought necessary to put the men "six on four," that is to say, that each set of six men received the rations of four. It is doubtful whether the gaol fever, which broke out later on, had already appeared, but the health of the fleet was not good. From Cecil there came incessant appeals to keep down "charges," and complaints that, no matter how much money was sent, he was worried out of his life by appeals for more, to the no small aggravation of the gout, from which he suffered cruelly. This idle hope to diminish expense, at a moment when England had need to spend every man and every penny, led the Treasurer, and perhaps Elizabeth, to propose a measure of enormous practical folly. It was actually proposed to the Lord Admiral to pay off four or five of his biggest ships on his return to Plymouth. Howard, with patriotic indignation, professed that he would rather pay the expenses out of his own pocket. The proposal was never carried out, for the Spanish fleet appeared off the Lizard.

Medina Sidonia sailed from Corunna on the 12th of July. This date and all the others must be understood to be in the old style used by us, and not in the new or Gregorian employed by the Spaniards. The strength of the Spanish fleet is put at 132 ships of 59,120 tons, carrying 29,287 men, of whom 21,621 were soldiers and 8066 were sailors. It is doubtful whether all these vessels were actually present after the various disasters the Armada had already experienced. The four galleys must be deducted from its strength. They proved perfectly incapable of facing the winds and currents of the Channel, and were compelled to take refuge in French ports. Nearly a third of the others were urcas, and of no use for fighting purposes. The whole was divided into ten squadrons. The first in dignity—for it included the flagship of Medina Sidonia—was the squadron of Portugal, consisting of ten galleons. Then followed the squadron of Castile, of fourteen sail, under the direct command of Diego Flores de Valdes. This officer had commanded the yearly flota, or convoy, which went to and fro between Spain and its American possession, carrying the trade; on account of his experience as a seaman, Diego Flores had been especially recommended to Medina Sidonia as his adviser, and sailed with him in the flagship. His character seems to have been envious, and, whatever he may have done to supply the duke's deficiencies as a seaman, he proved an indifferent military adviser. Pedro de Valdes commanded the squadron of Andalusia, of ten ships. The squadron of Biscay was of the same strength, and the flag officer in command was Juan Martinez de Recalde, who was also senior admiral of the whole fleet, by which we may perhaps understand that he was the officer responsible for the navigation, subject to the directions of Medina Sidonia. Miguel de Oquendo led the ten ships forming the squadron of Guipuzcoa. The squadron of Italy, under Martin de Bertendona, was of the same force. Twenty-three urcas or storeships were under the command of Juan Gomez de Medina, while a miscellaneous swarm of other small craft were under Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza. Four galleasses, great overgrown galleys, formed a squadron apart, under Hugo de Moncada. The four galleys under Diego de Medrado proved, as has been said above, useless from the first, and never took any share in the fighting in the Channel. They were driven by the weather to seek refuge in French ports, and were able, later on, to return in safety to Spain. Although the names of the various kinds of ships forming the Armada are strange, the vessels themselves, with the exception of the galleasse, described above, were not essentially different from our own. The "galleon" was, for instance, only our "capital ship." Although it has been customary to speak of the Spanish ships as exceeding ours in bulk, it does not appear that any of them were larger than the best of the queen's—the White Bear, for instance, or the Triumph, or the Ark. Some twenty or twenty-five of our largest were equal to eighty or ninety of the Spaniards in average size, and far superior in seaworthiness. The smaller ships were equal to their smaller in size, and vastly superior in number.

In the number of guns, also, the superiority of the Spaniards was much more apparent than real. There is a doubt as to the actual excess in the number of the Spanish cannon over the English. On the other hand, modern Spanish writers have endeavoured to show that the English had the advantage in the point of weight. It is, however, easy to make too much of this. The number of cannons royal, and even of demi-cannon, in the English navy was not great. The large majority of our guns were culverins and demi-culverins of about the same calibre as the guns carried by the Spaniards. For practical purposes, however, the English had really a greater number of cannon, for it is beyond doubt that the fire of our gunners was both more rapid and better directed. The Spaniards themselves confessed that we fired three to one. It is self-evident that a gun which is fired three times in five minutes is, for the purpose of doing damage, quite as effectual as three guns which are fired once each in the same space of time. The Spaniards, indeed, looked down upon the use of artillery as being somewhat ignoble. The management of the guns was left entirely to the sailors, who were a despised and subordinate element in the crews of their ships. It does not seem that they had any class of gunners. When, then, we remember that the Spanish ships were ill fitted for the navigation of the Channel, and that their seamen had no knowledge of its waters, it will be seen that even with good leadership they would have been at a disadvantage.

When we turn to our own fleet, the conditions are completely reversed. In mere material force, that is to say, in the number of capital ships and of guns, we were inferior, but in every other respect we had the superiority. We had experience, familiarity with the waters in which the fighting was to take place, and a far higher level of skill in gunnery. The value of the fleet, the fighting instrument, must depend on the skill of the men by whom it is used, that is to say, of the seamen. Now, whereas the Spanish sailor was, as has been said above, subordinate and despised, the English seaman had conquered his due place of superiority in the fleet. But, after all, the greatest element of superiority on our side was to be found in the quality of the leaders. Lord Howard of Effingham, without being a man of extraordinary ability, had a valuable mixture of intellectual docility and vigour of character. And his subordinates, Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, were all in various degrees capable men. The subordinate leaders among the Spaniards were not unworthy to compete with our own. Pedro de Valdes, Martinez de Recalde, and Miguel de Oquendo, not to mention many others, were able officers, but they were not listened to by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, whose conduct presented a familiar combination of vacillation and obstinacy. He alternately allowed himself to be earwigged by his official adviser, Diego Flores, or insisted upon having his way when the advice of any seaman would have saved him from committing a blunder. The number of ships with Lord Howard at Plymouth was about a hundred, including all the best of the queen's. The other vessels, which altogether amounted to nearly another hundred, were either still in the ports along the Channel, or were collecting, under the command of Lord Henry Seymour and Sir William Winter, in the Thames and the Downs.

The orders the Duke of Medina Sidonia had received from his king were both intelligent and explicit. He had been told that his first duty was to cripple or destroy, if he could, the English fleet, and that the transport of Parma's army was only to be a secondary object. A large discretion was very properly left him in the carrying out of his duties, while the general principles upon which he was to act were made quite clear. How the duke contrived to disobey at once the letter and the spirit of his orders will be seen from the following narrative.

On the 20th of July his fleet reached the Lizard, after eight days of easy navigation from Corunna, which he had left upon the 12th. As not infrequently happens in the case of a long-expected danger, the actual crisis was a surprise. When the Spaniards were reported to be in the neighbourhood of the Lizard, Lord Howard was lying with the whole of his fleet in Plymouth Sound. As the Spaniards came up with a good south-westerly breeze, they had, if they had known how to use it, a great opportunity to strike with advantage. The same breeze which brought them up made it extremely difficult for the English to get out, since the wind was blowing across the Sound. If, then, the duke had kept straight on and had steered boldly into Plymouth Sound, he might have forced the English to battle under circumstances highly favourable to himself, for in a confined anchorage the English ships could not have manœuvred, nor would it have been within their power to choose their distance. The heavy Spanish galleons could have run them aboard, and then the fight must have been conducted in conditions which it was the interest of the Spaniards to seek. From the report of one Captain Vanegas, a military officer serving in the flagship, it appears that the proposal to sail in and attack the English in Plymouth Sound was actually made to Medina Sidonia by Alonso de Leiva, but it was rejected with the advice of a council of war, on the ground that the Spanish fleet could not attack in a line abreast, because of the shoals at the mouth of the Sound (those upon which the breakwater now stands); while if they entered in line ahead, that is to say, one ship following another through the channels on either side of the shoal, they would be destroyed in detail by the fire of the English ships and forts. This was a line of reasoning, and these were dangers, which, fortunately for us, were destined to have a powerful influence with our enemies, both French and Spanish, for centuries. In reality, the perils of an attack in line ahead were greatly exaggerated, and, even if it had been necessary for the Duke of Medina Sidonia to sacrifice a few ships, the results would have repaid the cost. But the Spanish leader, who could over-ride his professional advisers roughly enough when he pleased, was on this occasion slavishly obedient to the advice of the mere seamen, when it would have been better for him to have listened to the bolder council of the military officer. He stood on past Plymouth, and by that action he decided the fate of the Armada.

From the moment that his approach had been reported, the most strenuous efforts had been made on the part of the English fleet to get to sea. Working all through the night of the 20th and the morning of the 21st, they had warped out a large part of the ships. While they were carrying out this movement, undeterred by the Spaniards, Medina Sidonia was rolling slowly up Channel. On the 21st July, so soon, in fact, as he was out of harbour, Howard stood after the Spaniards and sent them in the old chivalrous fashion a solemn defiance to battle. He despatched a pinnace appropriately named the Defiance, with orders to fire a gun at the Spaniard as a symbolical announcement that it was open war. Then a confused action began between the two fleets. The Spaniards were advancing along the Channel in a long half-moon, or concave line abreast, stretching seven miles from north to south. This formation, which was copied from the galleys, was absurdly ill fitted for vessels carrying a broadside of guns, since it is clear that he who is between two ships of his own side can fire neither to right nor to left without injuring his own friends. Such a blundering arrangement almost dictated to Lord Howard the course it was most convenient for him to adopt. He attacked the two extremities of the Spanish line. It is probable that the English ships more or less roughly carried out the method of attack which has been described as "concentration by defiling"; that is to say, they ran down from windward till within easy gunshot, then they fired into the stern and quarter of the galleons at the extremity of the Spanish wing, and hauled to windward so soon as there was any danger of coming too near, or of heading, and therefore falling to leeward of, their enemy. Under the pressure of such an attack as this, the extremities of the Spanish half-moon would naturally flinch inwards, and the danger of collision between the ships thus thrown out of their order of sailing would be very serious. We know as a matter of fact that the ships at the extremity of the Spanish line did suffer very severely. One, the Sta Catalina, was very much cut up. Oquendo's flagship was crippled by an explosion of gunpowder, said to have been caused by a Flemish gunner in revenge for some ill usage. But the most serious loss to the Spaniards, both materially and in honour, occurred in the squadron of Andalusia. The Nuestra Señora del Rosario was the flagship of Pedro de Valdes, one of the best and ablest officers in King Philip's service. In the confusion produced throughout the Spanish fleet by the English attack, the Rosario had been run into and crippled by another ship of the squadron. Her bowsprit was carried away and the foremast brought down. In this state Valdes was incapable of keeping up with the fleet unless he was towed. But no help was afforded him. At sundown, apparently immediately after the accident had happened, the duke signalled to the fleet to hold on its course, and stood up Channel before the westerly wind. Pedro de Valdes was left to his fate, which not only might have been, but was, foreseen by every ship in the Armada. There is a general agreement among the witnesses on the Spanish side, who are many and circumstantial, that the desertion of the flagship of the squadron of Andalusia spread a profound discouragement. There was not a man in the fleet who did not say to himself, "If so good an officer as Pedro de Valdes is deserted, what can the rest of us expect if we are disabled?" During the night Lord Howard followed the Spaniards close, but was not himself accompanied by the rest of the fleet. Drake had been ordered to carry the guiding light for the night, but, tempted by the sight of some vessels passing him to the westward, he had turned back, thinking, or professing to think, that they formed a part of the Spanish fleet endeavouring to escape out of the Channel. Lord Howard mistook the light of the Spaniards for that of his own vice-admiral. Meanwhile the rest of the English fleet, having lost the guiding light, lay to. Thus when day broke we were all scattered, though fortunately all to windward, and the different parts of our force were most characteristically placed. The gallant and disinterested Lord Howard was in dangerous proximity to the enemy, the bulk of the English fleet was lying off some distance in safety, but Drake, the ex-slaver and buccaneer, was close to the crippled Spaniard—a prize which he could seize at no great cost of danger or trouble to himself. Pedro de Valdes, being surrounded on all sides, had no resource but to surrender at discretion, and the Rosario was sent into Weymouth. The remainder of the 22nd passed without any incident of note. By the following day the Spaniards had rolled slowly along to Portland. Here they seemed about to enjoy a change of fortune. By this time, indeed, they had begun to understand that it was upon fortune they must depend for a chance of bringing the English to battle on terms fairly favourable to themselves. The operations of the 21st had convinced them of the great superiority of the English fleet in weatherliness. When, then, on the morning of the 23rd the wind shifted to the N.E. and thereby gave the Spaniards an opportunity of securing the weather-gage, they were flattered by a prospect of taking their revenge. A part of the English were between them and the shore. The Spaniards turned in the confident hope of catching their slippery enemy between the "sword and the wall," to use their own expressive idiom. But they were not to enjoy any favour of fortune on this campaign. Just when a close engagement seemed to be inevitable, the wind again swept round to the west, transferring the weather-gage once more to the English. The duke resumed his course to the east, and the English fell back a short space, and then again followed their lumbering enemy, looking keenly for every chance to strike him with advantage.

Nothing of note is recorded to have happened on the 24th, unless it be that complaints were heard of want of powder in the fleet. In the meantime the country had become thoroughly aroused. The Spaniards had seen the beacon fires blazing on the hills of Devon on the night of the 20th, and before daylight those flames had leapt from hill-top to hill-top—

Volunteers swarmed down to the fleet. As English and Spaniards rolled heavily along the Channel, ships slipped out from the different ports to reinforce Howard. To the eastward, Lord Henry Seymour and Sir William Winter were concentrating their squadrons in the Downs, while the squadrons of Holland and Zeeland, united under the command of Justinus of Nassau, were blocking every port in Spanish Flanders. It was one of the most fatal of the misconceptions of the Spaniard that he had hoped to draw help from those very harbours which the son of William the Silent was blockading. On the 25th of July, Medina Sidonia despatched a quick-sailing ship in advance to the Duke of Parma, informing him of his own approach, and begging him to come out, in order that they might combine their forces. The Spanish fleet was then off the Isle of Wight. It was the day of St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican order, and a member of the house of Guzman. The Duke of Medina Sidonia, as was only natural in a Roman Catholic, and a gentleman of a family which had produced so eminent a saint, was in expectation that the anniversary would be marked by some signal manifestation of divine assistance. But none came. Lord Howard was so little disturbed by his enemy, and, we may add, was so little anxious to force on a battle with him, that he spent some part of the day in conferring the honour of knighthood on Lord Thomas Howard, Lord Sheffield, Roger Townsend, Hawkins, and Frobisher. There was indeed some fighting, but the day was calm, with very light breezes from the west, and the engagement was a mere artillery duel, which in times of rude gunnery meant a great waste of powder and shot. On the 26th there was no action, and next day the Spaniards anchored in the Roads of Calais.

In his own belief and in that of most of his contemporaries, the Duke of Medina Sidonia had now carried out one main purpose of his expedition. He had come to a place at which, if distance and their own relative position were alone to be considered, he could effect his meeting with the Duke of Parma. From Calais, therefore, he sent another officer, urging the prince to come out at once with his seventeen thousand soldiers. As a matter of fact, however, the Duke of Parma was unable to move. The vessels he had been building to serve as transports were in no state to go to sea, and if they had been they could not have moved, for the prince had few sailors, and the Dutch squadron, numerous and well appointed, was waiting for him outside. Alexander Farnese, who does not seem ever to have had any effective belief in the advisability of invading England, made a show of embarking his men, but until the Dutch blockading squadrons were cleared away this was a mere parade, and there was no naval force at hand to drive them off. As on a famous occasion in our own later history, the Duke of Medina Sidonia waited for the Duke of Parma, while the Duke of Parma, for his part, stood waiting for the Duke of Medina Sidonia. So the 27th and the 28th of July wore away.

Meanwhile, Howard had been joined by Lord Henry Seymour and Sir William Winter, and a council of war was held on the flagship, the Ark Royal. At this council it was decided to do some service against the Spaniards at anchor by fireships. Seven vessels were filled with combustibles and primed with powder. These preparations did not pass unperceived by the enemy, and it was at least suggested to the Duke of Medina Sidonia to prepare pinnaces with grappling irons for the purpose of towing off any fireships the English might send among them. Ever since a weapon of this kind had been used against them at the siege of Antwerp, the Spaniards had regarded the fireship with considerable fear. But measures of precaution were either not taken at all, or were taken very ill. After dark, and when the tide was flowing strongly, the fireships were sent in before the westerly wind. An instantaneous panic broke out in the Spanish fleet. The whole swarm of ships hurried to escape their assailants by getting up anchor and running away to leeward. The better disciplined ships, in which the officers of experience and volunteers of noble birth were numerous, weighed anchor, and moved off in some order. The others cut their cables, and ran for it in great confusion. Collisions were common. One great galleasse, the flagship of Don Hugo de Moncada, had her rudder unshipped, and was stranded while endeavouring to get into Calais harbour. Here the greater part of her crew deserted her. The remainder, under the command of Don Hugo, made a gallant fight for it against the swarm of English boats, till Moncada fell shot through the head with a harquebus bullet, when the others surrendered. Wild confusion prevailed throughout the rest of the now beaten fleet. The vessels which had cut their cables drifted away to leeward, for, as the Spaniards at that time carried no anchors on deck except those at the catheads, they could not hoist others out in time from the hold, and had no means of bringing themselves up. Thus, when the day broke, such of Medina Sidonia's vessels as were in a position to anchor were separated by miles from the great majority, which the tide had carried far to leeward. The duke got under way, and ought to have run down to leeward. But, having been yielding when he ought to have been firm, he was, after the not uncommon habit of timid men, obstinate when he might very well have yielded. He stood out to sea with the galleons immediately about him, and signalled for the rest of his fleet to join him. As they had to tack against the wind, this movement could not be executed by most of them in less than many hours. The isolated position of the Spanish commander was at once obvious to the English admirals, and their whole force fell upon the part of the Spanish fleet nearest them. This was the hottest day's fighting of the whole campaign. The English were confident, and threw aside some of the caution they had hitherto displayed. They came to close quarters, and their artillery did heavy damage to their enemies. No Spanish ship was actually taken, but one was seen to sink, and others were so crippled that they drifted out of action and sought refuge in the Flemish ports held by the Duke of Parma. These, with few exceptions, became prizes to the Dutch.

When the battle of Gravelines was over, the Armada was beaten. It had not suffered very severe loss in numbers, but it had become convinced both of its own inferiority in manœuvring power to its opponents, and of the utter incapacity of its chief. He, for his part, was thoroughly sick of his command, and was already in a humour to tell the king, as he did on his arrival in Spain, that he would rather have his head cut off than meddle with the command of fleets again.

In truth, neither fleet was in a condition to continue the action. The English had exhausted their gunpowder, and the gaol fever was extending with dreadful rapidity. There was also a want of provisions, for which the queen's Government has been severely, and perhaps not altogether justly, blamed by historians. If the queen and Lord Burleigh were eager to keep down expenses, it must be remembered that the Crown was very poor. The resources required to keep a great fleet on foot for any length of time could only be obtained by an appeal to Parliament. The political difficulties of her position made Elizabeth at all times unwilling to put herself in the position of having to make a bargain with the House of Commons, which was certain to exact concessions in return for supplies of money. At such a time, indeed, nothing ought to have been allowed to stand in the way of the defence of the country, or to prevent the fair treatment of the officers and men serving in the fleet. Yet there is no reason to suppose that Elizabeth and her Lord Treasurer were careless of their duty; but the Government of the time had very little experience in the maintenance of great military forces. The naval administration was in a rudimentary condition, and it may very well be that the want of powder and provisions and the very irregular payment of wages were due rather to awkwardness and ignorance, helped perhaps by dishonesty on the part of subordinates, than to meanness in Elizabeth. The fleet which in the following year was sent to the coast of Spain to retaliate for the Spanish invasion suffered much from the want of food and from pestilence. Yet it was organised not by the queen, but by a committee of adventurers, who had every motive to fit it out well, since they must needs rely upon its efficiency to repay them by the capture of Spanish prizes. However the blame must be divided, the fact remains that within a few days after the battle of Gravelines the English fleet was in danger of being paralysed by the want of necessary stores, and by the unmanning of the ships through sickness and desertion.

The English fleet had the resource of retiring to its own harbours, but there was no such escape for the Spaniards. There was no port of their own available for the heavy ships nearer than the Bay of Biscay. Parma did indeed advise the duke to betake himself to the free city of Hamburg, where, as he was well provided with money, he would have no difficulty in finding stores, and from whence he could issue later on for the purpose either of renewing the attack on England, or of co-operating in a serious effort to reduce Holland and Zeeland. Whatever the worth of the advice may have been, and whether it was physically practicable or not, the Duke of Medina Sidonia was in no condition to act upon it. He had become completely cowed. Indeed, he had just had a demonstration of the utter unfitness of his fleet for the work his master the king had sent him to perform. The battle of Gravelines was followed by strong breezes, for they do not seem to have attained to the dignity of a storm, from the S. and S.W. Under the impulse of these winds, the heavier ships of the Armada began to drift on the shallows of the coast of Zeeland. By the confession of the Spaniards, their vessels were wholly at the mercy of the wind and the currents. They drifted along quite unable to help themselves, and only a lucky shift of the wind saved them from going ashore. When the wind did turn to a point more favourable to them, the Spanish ships, still very little diminished in number, but entirely broken in spirit, straggled out into the North Sea, and then, by the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, all stood to the northward for the purpose of making their way back to Spain by the west of the British Isles.

When the Armada was seen to be in retreat, Howard told off Lord Henry Seymour to remain in the Downs for the purpose of operating with Justinus of Nassau in the blockade of Parma's ports. He himself followed the Spaniards as far north as the Firth of Forth. That he made no attack upon them, shows either that his own vessels were wholly destitute of stores, or that the enemy still inspired him with an amount of respect not justified by their real condition. At the Firth of Forth, Howard left the enemy and returned to the mouth of the Thames. For a time there was a belief that the Duke of Parma might still sally out, and there was even in the opinion of some of our leaders a fear that the Armada might return. It was not, indeed, until months afterwards that the world began to know what had been the fate of the King of Spain's great fleet. It had stood to the north until the pilots, by whose advice the Duke of Medina Sidonia acted, thought it safe to turn to the west, and up to this period it had apparently not suffered much. Nine vessels had in all been lost by capture or abandonment to the enemy. But on the way home fifty-four perished by shipwreck. Almost from the very day in which the galleons and urcas of the King of Spain turned the north of Scotland on their way home, they were subjected to a succession of storms of extraordinary violence for the season of the year. Being ill provided with pilots and charts, as well as essentially unseaworthy, they were quite unable to struggle with the violence of the weather. Nineteen vessels were wrecked on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Those of the Spaniards who were wrecked within the dominions of Queen Elizabeth were massacred by orders of her officers, many of them being put to death in cold blood, after they had been received to quarter. About one-half of the King of Spain's ships were lost. Those which reached his ports were almost unmanned, for the scurvy broke out during the miseries of the return home, and, as the provisions were exhausted, the crews died from actual starvation. Few of the leaders lived to return home. Alonso de Leiva perished in the wreck of the Rata. Oquendo and Martinez de Recalde did indeed live to cast anchor in Spanish waters, but they died almost immediately afterwards from the effect of the sufferings they had endured, and the shame of the great disaster. The Duke of Medina Sidonia spent his time, while returning to Spain, sitting in his cabin with his face buried in his hands, in complete prostration and stupor, while Diego Flores and Don Francisco de Bobadilla carried on the duties of commander. The duke had left Spain a very prosperous gentleman; he returned a white-haired old man.

The failure of the Armada was naturally a very conspicuous event in the opinion of that and succeeding generations. It was the visible deliverance of England, and with her of the Protestants of Europe. The piety of the time accounted for the failure of the mighty armament by saying that God had blown upon it, and it had been scattered. This verdict has not always been accepted by the rationalism or the patriotism of modern times, and yet it may be said to be essentially true. The Armada failed through its own weakness and the incapacity of its chief. With the single exception of their use of the fireships in Calais Roads, the English leaders did nothing to force the Duke of Medina Sidonia into a disadvantageous position. He put himself into the worst position by his own acts. When he did decide to retreat, the material strength of his fleet was hardly impaired. It was the moral strength that was gone, and that partly through the discovery that the ships were very ill fitted for their work, and partly because the Spaniards had discovered the hopeless incapacity of their leader. Even at the last moment, when the Spaniards had been saved by a mere shift in the wind from destruction on the banks of Zeeland, Lord Howard showed no wish to come to close quarters with them. The supposition that he left them at the Firth of Forth because he foresaw they would perish on their way home, is inadmissible. Lord Howard cannot have known that the latter part of the month of August would be beyond precedent stormy. If the weather had been what it might have been expected to be, the loss of the Spaniards would probably not have gone beyond a very few more vessels than those which had already been taken or driven on shore, or had fallen into the hands of the enemy in the Channel. In that case, they would indeed have failed to effect an invasion of England; but the ships might have been refitted, and the Armada would not have been considered to have suffered severely. Thousands of men would no doubt have died from scurvy and want of food, but that was usual even with the successful naval expeditions of the time. As the English were then not familiar with the seas north of the Firth of Forth, it is possible that if Lord Howard had pursued the Spaniards, his own ships would have suffered much, if not quite as much as the enemy. The storms did not cause the failure of the Armada in the Channel or the North Sea, but they did produce its destruction.

CHAPTER III
FROM THE ARMADA TO THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN

Being now delivered from all fear of an attack by Spain, and at the same time persuaded that there was no hope of peace with Philip till he was thoroughly broken, Elizabeth's Government retaliated for the Armada by a vigorous raid on the coast of Spain. In theory, the expedition was intended to do much more than merely harass the King of Spain's coasts. There was an avowed intention to help the Prior of Ocrato, who claimed the throne of Portugal, to recover the kingdom out of the hands of King Philip. But the forces provided were quite insufficient for such a serious undertaking as the reconquest of Portugal, although they were very large in proportion to the resources of England and her Dutch allies. The Dutch, in fact, who were threatened by a serious attack at home, were compelled to withhold a great part of the forces which they had promised to contribute. Still, the expedition contained 11,000 troops and 1500 seamen. The command at sea was given to Sir Francis Drake, and the command of the troops to the officer who had then the greatest military reputation in England, Sir John Norris. It did not, on the whole, prove successful. The withholding of the old English troops in the Low Countries made it necessary to rely wholly on new levies. They, as usual, proved untrustworthy. Upwards of one-third of the men are said to have deserted before the expedition sailed at all. Finding that if they delayed much longer they would probably be weakened to a much more dangerous extent, Drake and Norris put to sea on the 15th of April, and five days later landed in the neighbourhood of Corunna, with the intention of taking the town. They had no difficulty in burning the suburbs, and in scattering a body of country militia brought down by the king's governor to attack them. But the upper town beat off all their attacks; and in the meantime the soldiers had broken into the stores of wine collected for export, and had drunk so freely that illness began to infest the squadron. Corunna having beaten it off, the fleet now went on to the coast of Portugal. Her partners' desire for booty had once more hampered the execution of the queen's political purposes. Every day wasted on the road to Portugal gave King Philip more time to prepare for defending his conquest, but the adventurers had need of the plunder of the town in order to cover their expenses, and therefore time was wasted in futile attempts to take a strongly fortified place without a battering-train. After the failure at Corunna, Drake and Norris anchored at Peniche, and there landed the troops who were still in a condition to render service. According to the plan, they were to march overland to Lisbon, while Drake promised to enter the Tagus and meet them at the town. But the scheme broke down entirely. Norris did indeed march to the gates of Lisbon, but he found it far too strongly held to be attacked by him. The profuse promises made by Dom Antonio, the pretender, were completely falsified by experience. The crowds of partisans on whom he relied for help did not appear. Drake found it impossible even to enter the Tagus, a river with a very swift current, heavily fortified at the mouth. At last, Norris, finding that he was in danger of attack by the troops collecting in the interior of the country, re-embarked his men, and the expedition returned home. It hung about on the coast for a time in the hope of picking up a few prizes, and it had a brush or two with the King of Spain's galleys at the mouth of the Tagus. In one of these, the galleys, aided by a dead calm, succeeded in cutting off and setting on fire one English vessel which carried a company of soldiers. But the Spanish trade had been so completely frightened that it had no longer any ships at sea. The provisions began to run out. Disease had made so much progress in the squadron that barely two thousand men were left fit for service. It finally returned home in the midst of very bad weather, having failed of its main purposes, but having also shown how entirely the destruction of the Armada had prostrated the naval strength of the King of Spain.

An equally convincing proof of Spanish weakness was given in the following year. A squadron of ten ships, all belonging to the queen, were sent out to the "Isles," that is to say, to the Azores and Canaries, under the command of Sir John Hawkins and Sir Martin Frobisher. This was a regular military expedition designed to interrupt the trade of Spain with America, and if possible to cripple King Philip by capturing his treasure-ships on their way home. So far as interrupting Spanish trade was concerned, Hawkins and Frobisher were completely successful. So feeble was the great King of Spain at sea, that he forbade his flota to return home this year lest it should fall into the hands of the English cruisers. The loss to him was immense, as also to his subjects, but to us the stoppage of the Spanish treasure-ships was a disappointment. It was not enough for Elizabeth, who had great expenses to meet, to prevent the King of Spain from receiving his silver. She had cherished the hope that at least some portion of it would fall into the hands of her officers. When, therefore, they cruised for seven long months without taking a single prize, great or small, the queen was in a very bad temper. It was on this occasion that Sir John Hawkins, when giving an account of his ill success, attempted to justify himself by use of his favourite biblical language. "Paul," said the old sea-rover, "planteth and Apollos watereth, but it is God who giveth the increase." This attempt to console her for the loss of her money, in the style of the Puritans, whom she loathed with a peculiar detestation, was more than enough to provoke an explosion from the great queen. It is said that she broke out with "God's death! this fool went out a soldier, and is come home a divine."

Although Queen Elizabeth consoled herself for her disappointment by snubbing the unctuous piety of Hawkins, she did not cease sending out these expeditions to the "Isles." They were indeed the main course of the naval war of the rest of her reign. The object was to reduce Philip to impotence by cutting off his supplies of treasure. As the ships which carried out the trade from Spain and returned with the cargoes and bullion from the New World were under the necessity of stopping at the "Isles" to water and refit, it was good policy to wait for them where they might be expected to be met with tolerable certainty. In order to make doubly sure, it was much the practice for the English ships to divide, some of them taking their station off Cadiz, and others cruising near the Azores. Thus, if the Spaniards missed the ships at the "Isles," they might fall into the hands of the others at the mouth of the Straits. The squadrons employed on this work did not consist wholly of the queen's ships. A large part of them belonged to private adventurers—either men of business who fitted out vessels as a commercial speculation, or gallant gentlemen of the stamp of the Earl of Cumberland, whose voyages are among the most brilliant made in the great queen's reign. None of these voyages to the "Isles" proved as fully successful as the queen could have wished, but they did do enormous damage to the King of Spain, and indirectly they had important permanent consequences for England.

The voyage of 1591 was rendered extremely memorable by the famous last fight of the Revenge. In this year the queen sent out her squadron under the command of Lord Thomas Howard. It consisted of six ships, and it took up the cruising ground occupied to so little purpose by Hawkins and Frobisher in the previous year. By this time it had become impossible for the King of Spain to delay his flota again. Orders had therefore been sent to come on at all hazards. Foreseeing that his vessels would be in danger from the English at the Azores, King Philip had prepared another armament which was to sail from Cadiz to meet the flota in mid-voyage and escort it home. While Howard was cruising at the Azores, the Earl of Cumberland was on a private venture on the coast of Spain. He sighted the Spanish fleet on its way out from Cadiz, and despatched a quick-sailing pinnace called the Moonshine with a warning to Howard. The Moonshine found the English admiral at anchor in Flores Bay, with a great part of his men on shore watering, and some sick with the scurvy. The warning had barely been delivered to Howard before the Spanish fleet under the command of Alonso de Bazan, the brother of Don Álvaro, was almost upon him. The roadstead of Flores opens to the N.W., and the Spanish fleet came round the western side of the island, tacking against the westerly wind. It would have been extremely rash in Lord Thomas Howard to allow himself to be caught with his little handful of ships by so superior a force of the enemy in a position where he could not avoid attack. He therefore very properly prepared to stand out to sea without delay.

It was of course impossible to desert the men on shore. They were provided for by leaving the Revenge, the flagship of Sir Richard Grenville, the second in command, which was esteemed the best sailer of the queen's ships, to pick them up and then to join the flag outside. Before the men were collected, the Spanish fleet was opposite the roadstead. Apparently Lord Thomas Howard had stood out to sea, so that the fleet of Don Alonso de Bazan was between him and the Revenge. When Sir Richard Grenville stood out from the anchorage, he had an easy means of rejoining his admiral. All he had to do was to put before the wind, to run to leeward of the Spaniards, and join Lord Thomas on the other side. As a matter of fact, this course was actually followed by a small transport, or victualler, left behind with the Revenge. But although this was the safe and sensible course, it had about it an air of flight. Flight in the circumstances would not have appeared discreditable to an ordinary officer, but Sir Richard Grenville was not an ordinary officer. He was a man of a passionate nature, with a large share of what we may with all due reverence describe as the swaggering courage of the Elizabethans. We must not judge him as a man of to-day, but as a gentleman of Devon, with a mediæval spirit on the point of honour and a superb valour, who had probably been fed upon tales of chivalry, and was very capable of acting after the manner of a knight-errant. It was, in fact, exactly as a knight-errant that he behaved. His sailing-master advised him to put before the wind and trust to the speed of his ship, but Grenville refused. To understand what exactly was the point of honour upon which he fought, it is necessary to remember that at sea the windward position is the place of honour. He who makes way for another, and passes to leeward of him, acknowledges the superiority of the ship for which he makes way. If, then, Grenville had put before the wind, and had run to leeward of the Spaniards, he would in his own opinion have confessed that they were his betters. Now this he would not do, and he therefore decided that at whatever hazard to himself, his ship, and his crew, "he would pass through the two squadrons in spite of them, and enforce that of Seville to give him way." This, it seems, if the English version of the story is to be believed, "he performed upon divers of the foremost who sprang and fell under the lee of the Revenge"; that is to say, in the modern phrase, they bore up and made way for the Revenge. It is probable that these were small vessels, perhaps urcas, for a large proportion of the fifty-three ships under the command of Don Alonso de Bazan were certainly transports employed to carry soldiers, and not provided with a battery of guns. However that may be, the St. Philip, the first of the great Spanish galleons in a position to bar his way, did not bear up for Grenville. On the contrary, she ran into him to windward, and, being much the bigger and higher ship of the two, took the wind out of his sails and immediately stopped his way. From that moment the fate of the Revenge was settled. Other vessels joined the St. Philip, and the Revenge was shut in. In that position she maintained a defence so long and so desperate, that it is only to be accounted for by the very bad gunnery of the Spaniards, and by the fact that the action began shortly before dark, and was prolonged through the night. The want of light had unquestionably a great deal to do with preventing the Spaniards from overpowering the crew of the Revenge by mere numbers. Lord Thomas Howard did not desert his fiery second in command. He did, on the contrary, all that was possible for him with a handful of undermanned ships. He attacked the Spaniards from windward as closely as he could without allowing himself to be entangled in the midst of their superior numbers. More he could not have done without manifest folly; and it is even said that when he did show a disposition to sail into the midst of the Spaniards, his master threatened to throw himself overboard rather than have any share in the destruction of the queen's ships. It was probably during the night that Lord Thomas Howard left his knightly colleague to his fate, and sailed away. At daybreak the Revenge was completely battered to pieces, forty of her men were killed and a number wounded. Grenville himself was mortally hurt. If he could still have had his way, he would rather have blown his ship up than allow her to fall into the hands of the enemy, but his crew were not disposed to be sacrificed any further. They insisted on being allowed to surrender, and the Spaniards gave them quarter. Grenville himself was carried still living onto the flagship of Don Alonso de Bazan. He declared in his last breath, in Spanish, if Linschoten is to be believed: "Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful heart and a quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a good soldier ought to do, who has fought for his country, queen, religion, and honour. Wherefore my soul joyfully departeth out of this body, and shall always leave behind it an everlasting fame of a true soldier, who hath done his duty as he was bound to do. But the others of my company have done as traitors and dogs, for which they shall be reproached all their lives, and leave a shameful name for ever."

Linschoten was at that time a resident in the Islands, and may very well have had at least the substance of this speech from the Spaniards who actually heard it. It is too consistent not only with the character of the man, but of that of the type to which he belonged, to be wholly false. There was in the action as well as in the literature of the Elizabethan time a strain of rodomontade. The death of Sir Richard Grenville was emphatically what the sixteenth century described as a rodomontade in act. The capture of the Revenge was much boasted of by the Spaniards, and is still remembered by them with some complacence. Even, however, if we allow for a large element of exaggeration in our own accounts of the battle, it was not a feat which redounded much to their glory. Nor was the end of this effort to protect the return home of the trade from America fortunate. Lord Thomas Howard was indeed driven off, and two days after the action the galleons on their way home from America joined Don Alonso. They represented only the remains of the convoys which had sailed from the ports of New Spain. The ships stopped by Philip's orders in the preceding year had suffered much from the teredo or boring worm, and numbers went down before reaching the Islands. Of the remainder few ever lived to see Spain. Shortly after they had joined Don Alonso, a violent gale, which lasted for seven days and blew in succession from different quarters, burst on the hundred and forty ships now collected under the command of the Spanish admiral. More than a hundred went down or were wrecked on the Islands. The loss was greater than that of the Armada, and the blow sustained by the naval power of Spain even more irreparable.

The next two years saw a repetition of these voyages to the Isles, distinguished by the usual features of active enterprise and seamanship on the part of the English, and of helpless adherence to routine on the part of the Spaniards. In 1594, however, the queen's policy was changed. Although these voyages to the Islands were sound in policy, and had done immense mischief to the Spaniards, they had not proved profitable to the queen. In 1594 she listened to the advice of Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins, and decided to revert to an older method of striking at the wealth of the King of Spain. "These two generals," says Sir William Monson, "presuming much upon their own experience and knowledge, used many persuasions to the queen to undertake a voyage to the West Indies, giving much assurance to perform great services, and promising to engage themselves very deeply therein with the adventure of both substance and life." The plan was, in fact, a repetition of the scheme partially executed in 1585. It was to sail to the West Indies and there seize the King of Spain's treasure at its port of departure. The plunder of the Islands and of Spanish ships would, it was calculated, at any rate cover the expenses of the expedition. It was late in sailing, owing to fear of an invasion by the Spaniards from the Low Countries.

The Cardinal Archduke Albert, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands since Parma's death in 1592, had made himself master of the great part of Brittany, and one small expedition did actually come out of the little port of Blavet and burn the town of Penzance. So soon, however, as it was known that the invasion would be limited to this trumpery raid, Drake and Hawkins were allowed to sail. As was usual in the case, the squadron consisted only in part of ships belonging to the queen. Of these there were six—the Defiance, in which Sir Francis Drake had his flag, and the Garland, the flagship of Sir John Hawkins, the Hope, the Bonaventure, the Foresight, and the Adventurer. There were, besides these, twenty vessels belonging to private adventurers. Two thousand six hundred soldiers were embarked to serve on shore in the proposed capture of Panama. They were under the command of Sir Thomas Baskerville, a gentleman of Devon.

The old kinsmen and fellow-adventurers, who had begun the brilliant epoch of Elizabethan naval achievement, sailed, on what was destined to be their last voyage, from Hawkins's native town of Plymouth on the 28th of August 1594. They began by following the usual route to the West Indies by the Grand Canary. Here, according to precedent, they spent time in attempting to plunder. Hawkins is said to have been in favour of pushing on at once to the West Indies in obedience to the queen's orders. Information had been received in England to the effect that a Spanish treasure-ship had put into Puerto Rico disabled. It was obvious that the sooner the English squadron appeared before the port, the better would be its chance of finding the treasure-ship still there, and of taking the town unprepared. But although Hawkins's advice was unquestionably sound, it was overruled by Drake and Baskerville, who had the support of public opinion in the squadron. The sailors, under pretence of seeking provisions, were in fact eager for plunder. It was therefore decided to land and pillage, but the fleet had overshot its mark. The town of Gran Canaria could not be attacked before the Spaniards had time to put it into a defensible position. Finding La Gran Canaria too strong to be taken, the English commanders were constrained to be satisfied with landing a few men at an out-of-the-way place for fresh water. Even this did not in the end succeed with them. Some stragglers from the watering parties were attacked by the native herdsmen, who killed most of them, and took the others prisoners. From one of the men taken the Spanish governor learned the destination of the fleet, and immediately despatched a quick-sailing vessel to put the towns of the West Indies upon their guard. They had, however, been already warned by the King of Spain, who was well supplied with information from England. Finding that there was nothing to be done at the Canaries, Drake and Hawkins stood on to the Leeward Islands, and stopped to water at Dominica and Guadaloupe. On entering the West Indies they were scattered by a storm. While they were rejoining one another and trading with the natives of the islands for food and water, the Spaniards were actively at work to defeat the purpose of the expedition. King Philip had not been careless of the safety of his treasure-ship. He had despatched from Spain a squadron of eight zabras, under the command of Don Pedro Tello, with orders to bring the bullion home. By a piece of extraordinary bad fortune for us, five of the vessels under Tello's command captured a little bark of thirty-five tons belonging to Hawkins's squadron. This misfortune happened in the sight of a larger English ship, which escaped and brought the bad news to Hawkins, who is reported to have sickened at once as foreseeing the inevitable consequences. Don Pedro Tello did what any English commander of the time would have done without scruple. He put his prisoners to the torture, and compelled them to tell him where the expedition was bound. Then he hurried on to Puerto Rico. The English commanders delayed for some days longer at Guadaloupe, and then continued their route in what seems to have been a very leisurely fashion. Dissensions are said to have broken out between Drake and Hawkins, and there is certainly in the whole history of their proceedings a want of the promptitude and resolution they had shown when younger men. Before they reached Puerto Rico, Hawkins died, and was buried at sea.

Though released from a colleague with whom he had not worked happily hitherto, Sir Francis Drake was not more successful when left to himself. He attacked Puerto Rico in vain. The Spaniards had had time to land the treasure and to put the port into a state of defence. The English lost upwards of a hundred men in the repulse. This experience seems to have convinced the surviving leaders that it was hopeless to waste more time at Puerto Rico. They therefore proceeded to carry out the remainder of their instructions. But for once we were doomed to failure and to find fortune everywhere against us. As is so often the case, bad fortune meant mistaken calculation. Drake and Hawkins had not realised that a great change had come over the West Indies within the last ten years. The smaller Spanish posts had been harried out of existence, and the larger had been fortified by the King of Spain's engineers. Thus there was no such opportunity for plunder as had been presented a few years before to forces incapable of undertaking a regular siege. After one or two unsuccessful attempts to extort ransom from towns along the coast, which were deserted at their approach, Drake and Baskerville decided to make the long-delayed attack on Panama. Drake himself remained with the ships at Nombre de Dios, while Baskerville with seven hundred and fifty men attempted that overland march which in after times was triumphantly executed by the buccaneers of Sir Henry Morgan. But in 1594 the Spanish Government was far stronger than it was in the later seventeenth century. Baskerville met with very serious resistance. He was harassed while marching through the bush, and repulsed with heavy loss in attacking a stockade erected by the Spaniards across the road. Finding his enterprise hopeless, even if he and his comrades were prepared to "cloy the jaws of death," he returned to Nombre de Dios. The Indians, who had been friendly when Drake was formerly on the coast, were now hostile, perhaps because of the excesses of the meaner adventurers who had followed Sir Francis. A detachment of English were cut off by them in an ambuscade. It began to be borne in upon the mind of Sir Francis Drake that his life of daring and success was to end in failure. "Sir Francis Drake, who was wont to rule fortune, now finding his error, and the difference between the present state of the Indies and what it was when he first knew it, grew melancholy upon this disappointment, and suddenly, and I hope naturally, died at Porto Bello, not far from the place where he got his first reputation." So says Sir William Monson; but there is no reason to suppose that the death of Drake was due to any other cause than the action of disappointment and the evil climate of the coast on a constitution tried by long and hard service. After the deaths of the two seamen leaders, Sir Thomas Baskerville brought home whatever fever and the sword had spared in the most unsuccessful of all the fleets of Elizabeth's reign. He returned by the Straits of Florida, fighting an indecisive action with the squadron of the King of Spain's ships at the west end of Cuba on his way.

Neither of the voyages to the "Isles" nor this attempt to revert to the attacks on the West Indies had answered the expectations of Elizabeth and her Council. In spite of his many failures and disasters, Philip was indefatigable in refitting his fleet and in organising constant renewed attempts to invade England. By land, the excellence of his troops, and the capacity of his military officers in Flanders, gave him some compensation for his disasters at sea. The Spaniards had established themselves on the coast of Brittany, and even succeeded in capturing Calais. In 1596, then, the queen seemed in almost as much danger as she had been in 1588. This time, however, Elizabeth took the course which had then been pressed upon her by her captains. She decided to make a formidable attack on the King of Spain at home. Acting on the earnest advice of Lord Howard, and of the Earl of Essex, who was now at the height of his favour, she took part in a great combined expedition to Cadiz. A fleet of 150 sail was got together. The queen contributed 17 ships of the Royal Navy, a very large proportion of the whole at that time, and the sum of no less than £50,000, which was about one-eighth of her regular revenue; her Dutch allies contributed 18 ships of war and 6 storeships; the others were vessels either levied in the seaports by the Crown, or belonging to adventurers. This fleet carried 1000 gentlemen volunteers, 6368 troops, and 6772 seamen, exclusive of the Dutch. It was most carefully organised, and sailed with precise instructions to do the utmost possible amount of damage to the King of Spain's men-of-war in his havens, to his magazines of victuals and munitions for arming his navy, without hazarding men or ships on merely foolish or rash undertakings. In sharp contrast to the campaign of 1594, this was extraordinarily successful. The fleet sailed on the 1st of June, and swept down to Cadiz in twenty days, capturing everything it met on the way. So thoroughly was this work done that not a single one of the caravels which the Spaniards had at sea for the purpose of scouting was able to escape into harbour with information of the approach of the allied fleet. Its appearance before Cadiz on the 20th of June was a complete surprise to the enemy.

The town rises out of the sea from a mass of rock joined to the mainland by a long narrow spit and a bridge. This isthmus, natural and artificial, runs from S.E. to N.W. Between it and the land to the east lies the harbour of Cadiz, which is divided into outer and inner by a tongue of land thrust out from the island of Cadiz itself, towards the mainland, called Puntal, or the Point. It has a fort at the extremity. The inner harbour stretches eastward into the mainland of Spain. Puerto Real and the great arsenal called the Carraca lie respectively on the northern and southern sides of the eastern end of this harbour.

When the allied fleet was seen outside, the outer harbour of Cadiz contained a number of richly-laden galleons and a squadron of the King of Spain's galleys. The galleons were drawn up across the mouth of the harbour, while the galleys were stationed on either side, with their prows turned inwards for the purpose of flanking any attack. The appearance of resolution which this disposition of their forces was calculated to give was not borne out by the steadiness of the Spaniards under attack. The allied fleet had no difficulty in forcing its way into the inner harbour, and then the galleons, except two which were taken, and two burned by the Spaniards, fled up to Puerto Real, while the galleys escaped to sea, through an opening in the spit connecting the town of Cadiz with the mainland. It was the belief of some of the officers present, that if the allies had contented themselves with merely cutting Cadiz off from the mainland by occupying some point on the connecting road, they might have followed the galleons and merchant ships which took refuge at Puerto Real with the certainty of securing an enormous booty, and with every probability that the town of Cadiz would fall whenever they returned to attack it. This judicious plan was rendered impossible of application by the headlong zeal of the Earl of Essex. Having attacked, and silenced, the fort at the end of Puntal, he landed and marched on to storm the town itself. His example aroused the emulation of Lord Howard, of Lord Thomas Howard, and of Sir Walter Raleigh. They hastened to land and join in the assault upon the town. Cadiz, being destitute of a regular garrison and ill-fortified, fell without much difficulty before the attack of the allies, though not without sharp fighting in the streets and marketplace, in which one distinguished English officer, Sir John Winkfield, was shot dead. Cadiz remained in the possession of the allies for a fortnight. To the honour of their commanders be it said, they behaved with a moderation very seldom shown at that time after the storm of a city. Strict order was maintained, and the allies were content to levy a moderate ransom on the city, though they might easily have sacked it as brutally as the Spanish armies of the time had sacked the cities of the Low Countries.

On the Spanish side nothing more effectual was performed than the burning of the ships which had taken refuge at Puerto Real. This was done by the orders of the same Duke of Medina Sidonia who had commanded the Armada. He was still Captain-General of Andalusia, by the undeserved favour of his king, and he once more had an opportunity of covering himself with ridicule. After retaining possession of Cadiz for as long as they pleased, the allies set it on fire, and retreated with less booty than they had hoped to obtain, but certainly with immense honour, and after dealing the heaviest blow to the dignity of the King of Spain it had as yet had to endure. On the way home the fleet plundered the little Portuguese town of Faro in Algarve, when they carried off the library of Bishop Osorio, "which library," says Monson, "was brought into England by us and many of the books bestowed upon the newly erected library at Oxford." It was counted the most remarkable proof of the good fortune and good management of this armament that it returned in health.

Successful though the expedition had been, it had not satisfied the queen. Honour had been gained in abundance, but the material results were not what Her Majesty and her Council had been led to expect. No sooner had the Lord Admiral and his colleague, the Earl of Essex, reached home than they were importuning the queen for money to pay the wages of their men. Now this was not what the queen had looked for. She had been induced to advance so great a sum of money as £50,000 by the eager assurances of Howard and Essex that an attack on the King of Spain's harbours, made with sufficient force, must needs be extremely lucrative. It was commonly reported that many of those who took part in the "Cadiz Voyage" had returned with a comfortable sum of plunder. Yet there was nothing due to Her Majesty capable of covering the expenses of the campaign, still less of leaving her a margin of profit on her £50,000. Therefore the generals were subjected to very searching inquiries why they had nothing more to produce, and were compelled to justify themselves as well as they could. The real explanation was that they had been in such a hurry to seize the town that they had neglected to take possession of the ships before the Spaniards had time to burn them. For this postponement of the more profitable to the less there were two reasons. Of these, one is to be found in the difference between the meaning of the words "prize" and "plunder." Prize meant whatever had to be thrown into a common stock and divided pro rata. It included an enemy's ships, with their cargoes and ordnance, and the ransom of towns, or whatever was paid for the release of goods afloat from capture. In this the common sailor and soldier only took his share when the whole was divided on the return home. Plunder meant whatever the men were entitled to take possession of at once. It included small arms, cabin furniture, the personal ransom paid for prisoners, whatever loose cash they had in their pockets when they were taken, their clothes and jewellery. A civilised enemy was accustomed to exercise a certain decency in the exercise of this right of war. It was thought more becoming not to strip the prisoners actually naked, and, in some cases at least, it was made a rule that the women were not to be deprived of their earrings. At Cadiz the chiefs protected "the better sort of merchants' wives." They were allowed to go off unmolested to the number of two hundred or so, under an escort provided by the Earl of Essex. They availed themselves of his courtesy to put on all their best dresses at once, together with all their rings and necklaces. But although Essex and Howard kept the pillage of Cadiz within exceptionally close limits, it is certain that the town must have afforded a great deal of miscellaneous plunder. The women who did not have the good fortune to be included among "the better sort of merchants' wives" were probably left with little enough of whatever finery they may have possessed. As for the men, nobody would stand on much ceremony with them. Such portable property as plate, or the goods in the shops, would be taken as a matter of course, every man seizing for himself whatever came in his way.

On the ships there was much less of this promiscuous plunder than in the town, and the men, whether soldiers or sailors, were perfectly well aware of the fact. Essex excused himself for not seeing that the ships were taken possession of, by saying that he had instructed the sailors to follow up the galleons to Puerto Real, while the soldiers of the expedition were engaged in occupying the town. But the sailors were extremely unlikely to accept a division of labour which would have thrown a good deal of work, with a prospect of remote reward, on them, while it left the soldiers the exclusive enjoyment of the plunder of Cadiz. They were the less likely to do so, because experience had shown them that when the final division of the prize came to be made in England, Her Majesty would take very good care that the lion's share of it should fall to the Crown. Therefore, when once the example of attacking Cadiz was set by the Earl of Essex, the whole combined force, military and naval, hastened to the place where lay the largest and the most immediate share of profit.

Another explanation of the failure to make a thoroughly successful commercial speculation of the capture of Cadiz, is to be found in the rivalry between the chiefs. To this there was a chivalrous side. The eagerness with which Howard and Essex, Raleigh and Lord Thomas Howard, strove to outstrip one another for the foremost place in driving back the King of Spain's galleons, and storming his city, makes a very gallant story. They behaved much after the manner to be expected of spirited sixth-form boys. In that there was nothing dangerous to the interests of the service. But this emulation had another side, which is only to be accurately described by the less honourable name of rivalry. Essex and Raleigh were both courtiers who were endeavouring to excel one another in the favour of the queen by outdoing one another in the flatteries Elizabeth loved. They had come to open hostility already, and having been reconciled, they of course hated one another mortally. At Cadiz the evil consequences of their hostility were hardly apparent. But there was enough of it to prevent the campaign of 1596 from being as fully successful as it might have been. There was in the greater Elizabethan enterprises unity of sentiment and a vigour of energy which produced success in the main, but there was hardly what in the full sense of the word is called discipline. In addition to the rivalry between the leaders, there was a rivalry between the different types of men. The sailor and the sailor officer were opposed to the soldier. The latter grew impatient when the former endeavoured to overbear him by appeals to seamanship, and the conditions of war at sea which the military man only vaguely understood, while the sailor was apt to think himself sacrificed to the soldier.