The Year after the Armada, and Other Historical Studies. Martin A. S. Hume

a challenge to Fuentes and his army to come into the open and fight. The opportunity was too good for Essex to miss, so he too sent a cartel by the page on his own account, giving every one the lie in a general way and offering to fight anybody in single combat. The messenger came back again without an answer, only that the Spaniards had threatened to hang him for bringing such vapouring insolence to them; but the Spaniard tells the story in another way, less honourably for himself. He says, whilst the messengers were being entertained "as if they were great gentlemen" at breakfast by some of the captains who spoke French, the letters (which they had said could only be opened by the Archduke's permission) were surreptitiously steamed, read, and re-sealed, and handed back again as if unopened, with the reply that his Highness would not allow them to be opened. So Norris and Essex had their bravado for nothing, and went without their fight.

      In Lisbon the common people were as disturbed as ever, doubtless feeling that their chance of freedom was slipping away from them, and alarms were constantly raised that the English were returning. But Spanish reinforcements were arriving now. The Duke of Braganza, head of the Portuguese nobility, arrived in royal state with a great body of retainers to help the Archduke, and all hope for Dom Antonio gradually ebbed away.

The English commanders in Cascaes began now to think it high time to put themselves right with the angry Queen, who continued to send furious messages about their disobedience and about Essex and Sir Roger Williams. On the 2nd of June they wrote from Cascaes a full account of all that had happened in the best light they could devise, and saying they knew not what to do unless supplies came at once from England. Everybody was terribly seasick, they said, and well-nigh starving. Seeing that no more provisions could be expected, they wrote, on the 5th of June, that they had decided to go to St. Michaels; and then, for the first time, they confessed that Essex was with them. They had met him, they said, to their great surprise, off Cape Finisterra, but could not send him home before, as they could not spare the Swiftsure; but still no word about Sir Roger Williams.[29]

      If Drake could not or would not burn the Spanish fleet on this occasion, he was always a splendid hand at plundering merchantmen, and during the six days that his fleet lay before Cascaes he scoured the sea for miles round in search of prizes, taking as many as forty German hulks loaded with Spanish merchandise. Into these prizes the men from the Dutch flyboats were transhipped, and the Dutch captains sent off without being paid their freights, glad, no doubt, to get away from such company on any terms.

      In the meanwhile Lisbon was gradually settling down. People who had been hiding in churches and cellars for the last ten days crept out, nearly all under the impression that the Spaniards had all been murdered, and that King Antonio had come to his own again. Dire was their disappointment when they found that they were not the only people who had skulked in hiding, and that none of all the city had dared to strike the blow that would have made Portugal free again. So they patiently bent their neck to the yoke and cheered his Highness the Archduke at the top of their voices as he went in state to the cathedral to hear a solemn Te Deum of victory.

      The Spaniards did their best to follow up the enemy. The ships in the Tagus were fitted out to watch Cascaes and follow the English fleet, doing all the damage they could, and Don Pedro de Guzman was sent to cut off the English garrison left at Peniche. They urged the horses, says the Spanish diarist, until they were ready to drop, but arrived too late to stop the embarkation, except of about 200 men, who were put to death.

      On the 8th of June the English fleet set sail, pursued and harassed by the galleys from Lisbon in nearly a dead calm. Three of our ships were taken or sunk and one burned, by her captain, Minshaw, after a desperate resistance. A wind sprang up, however, and the Spanish galleys were left behind; but soon the fleet got scattered, the men died, and were thrown overboard by the hundred from scurvy, starvation, and wounds; but, notwithstanding all, after sailing ostensibly for the Azores, Drake turned back again and, picking up twenty-five of his ships which had been separated from him, sailed up the bay and attacked Vigo. He had only 2,000 men fit to fight: sickness and privation had thinned them down to that, but with those few men, finding Vigo deserted, the English burnt and wasted the town and all the villages around. "A verie pleasant rich valley but wee burnt it all, houses and corne, so as the countrey was spoyled seven or eight miles in length." Then they decided to drop down to the isle of Bayona, and there put the pick of the men and stores on twenty of the best ships for Drake to take to the Azores, whilst the rest returned to England. But for some reason Drake broke the agreement and passed Bayona without even calling, and the thirty ships that were awaiting him there were left to their fate. Beset with tempest and pestilence, without a commander, it was decided by those on board to make the best of their way to England, in terrible distress as they were for provisions and water. After ten days' voyage they arrived at Plymouth on the 2nd of July, and found that Drake had already arrived there with the Queen's ships, having abandoned his voyage to the Azores. Most of the remaining ships had sought other ports in preference, in order to sell their prizes without having to share the proceeds with others.

      Such of the soldiers as came to Plymouth were sent grumbling home with five shillings each for their wages and the arms they bore. The English chronicler thinks that this was "verie good pay, considering they were victualled all the time." Such, however, was not the opinion of the unfortunate men themselves, who had not been allowed to loot as much as they thought fit in Portugal. They said that if they had been permitted to march as through an enemy's country, they would have come back the richest army that ever returned to England. Not more than 5,000 of them ever came home; but their story was so dismal a one that all England rang with reprobation of the bad management and parsimony that had brought the expedition to so inglorious a conclusion.

      The first and third objects of the expedition—namely, the burning of the Spanish fleet and the capture of St. Michaels—were never even attempted, but the second object was very nearly being attained, and the restoration of Dom Antonio, practically as a vassal of England, might have been effected a dozen times over if the Portuguese in Lisbon had not been an utterly terrified set of poltroons. On various occasions, when Count de Fuentes and his troops were outside, a few dozen daring men might have seized the gates and have turned the tide in Antonio's favour. It was not to be, however, and the poor King wandered a poverty-stricken fugitive yet for a few years before he died, but his desperate struggle for sovereignty ended with the ignominious failure of the English attempt to avenge a great national injury by a joint-stock enterprise.

[1] For the sake of uniformity, throughout this narrative the dates are given in the "old style," then used in England, ten days earlier than the dates cited by the Spanish and Portuguese authorities.

[2] Venetian Calendar of State Papers.

[3] Ibid.

[4] In a subscription reprint of sixty copies of this tract published in 1881 under the editorship of the Rev. Alexander Grosart, the authorship appears to be ascribed, I know not on what grounds, to a certain Robert Pricket who served probably as a gentleman volunteer and follower of the Earl of Essex. He had seen previous service in the Netherlands, and was the author of several poetical works, one being a panegyric on the Earl of Essex. The tract is entitled "A True Coppie of a Discourse, written by a gentleman employed in the late voiage of Spaine and Portingale. Sent to his particular friend and by him published for the better satisfaction of all such as having been seduced by particular report have entered into conceipts tending to the discredit of the enterprise and Actors of the same. At London. Printed for Thomas Woodcock, dwelling in Paules Churchyard, at the sign of the blacke Beare 1589."

[5] It is called "Relacion de lo subcedido del armada enemiga del reyno de Inglaterra a este de Portugal con la retirada a su tierra, este año de 1589." MS. Gayangos Library. Transcript in possession of the author.