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

of horses and men: raw levies pressed unwillingly into the service, whilst Portugal was in violent and open commotion awaiting the arrival of Drake the deliverer.

      But whilst all panic-stricken regards were directed upon Portugal, Drake and his joint-stock Armada suddenly appeared where they were least expected, before Corunna, and cast anchor; and the men, nothing loath, were put on shore in a little bay within a mile of the town. There was no one to stay their landing, and they had come nearly to the gates before a hasty muster of townsfolk met them. These, all unprepared and surprised as they were, soon retreated when they saw the force that was coming against them, and shut themselves up behind the gates and walls of the town. The place was weak and ill-garrisoned, commanded by the Marquis de Cerralba, and could not hope to hold out against a regular siege, but there were three galleons loaded with arms in the harbour, which the new commander-in-chief in Madrid, Alba's son Fernando, said would be a much greater loss than the town itself. The English slept the first night in the cottages and mills belonging to a hamlet on the bank of one of the small streams discharging into the bay, and out of gunshot of the walls. They were, however, quite unmolested by the terrified townsfolk, although the galleon San Juan and her consorts in the harbour kept up a fire upon them as they passed to and fro.

      The place indeed was utterly taken by surprise. The Cortes of Galicia were in session at the time, the people peacefully pursuing their ordinary avocations; the soldiers of the garrison were nearly all on furlough, scattered over the province; "and, in short, every one was so far from expecting an attack that they had no time to turn the useless out of the town nor put their dearest possessions in safety." The wife and daughter, indeed, of the Governor Cerralba at the first alarm fled in their terror two leagues on foot, through the night, to a place of safety, but after that none dared to move. The lower part of the town fronting the harbour was protected on the land side only by weak walls, and was unfit for protracted defence. The townspeople therefore agreed that if the place were attacked on the water side it would be untenable, and arranged that as soon as those in the higher town on the hill should espy the English boats approaching they were to signal the low town by a fire, so that the people below might make their escape to the better defensible upper portion of the town. Some artillery was landed by the English to stop the fire of the Spanish ships, and on the morning of the second day the town was attacked simultaneously by 1,200 men in long boats and pinnaces under Captain Fenner and Colonel Huntly; and by Colonels Brett and Umpton on one side, and Captains Richard Wingfield and Sampson on the other by escalade. The people in the upper town, either from panic or oversight, neglected to give the signal, and those below, thinking they had only to deal with an escalade on their walls by Captain Wingfield, fought desperately until they found two other forces had entered at other points, and then panic seized them, and, as Pricket (or Wingfield) describes it, "The towne was entered in three severall places; with an huge crie, the inhabitants betooke them to the high towne which they might with less perrill doo for that ours being strangers knew not the way to cut them off. The rest that were not put to the sword in furie fled to the rockes in the iland and hid themselves in chambers and sellers which were everie day found out in great numbers." A perfect saturnalia seems to have been thereupon indulged in by the English troops. Here was the fruition of all their golden dreams—a flying, panic-stricken foe, ample provisions to loot and to waste, and, above all, wine without limit. "Some others (i.e., Spaniards) also found favour to bee taken prisoners but the rest falling into the hands of the common soldiers had their throates cut to the number of 500. … Everie seller was found full of wine whereupon our men by inordinate drinking both grewe senseless of the danger of the shot of the towne which hurt many of them, being druncke, and took the first ground of their sickness, for of such was our first and chiefest mortalitie."

Great stores of provisions were found in the lower town, and many were also captured as they were brought in by Spanish ships. These provisions were alleged by the English to have been collected for the purpose of a new attack on England, and it is quite probable that such was the case, although the evidence on the point is insufficient. At all events, the destruction of these stores is the only act which in any sense justified the expedition sent out by the adventurers.[20]

The next few days were spent by the invaders in desultory attacks on the upper town, burning a monastery and scouring the country round by Colonel Huntly, who "brought home verie great store of cowes and sheep to our great reliefe." A great crowd of country people, two thousand strong, came down with a run one day, armed with rough weapons, to see what manner of men were these who raided their cattle and burned their poor huts, but a discharge of musketry killed eighteen of them and sent the rest scampering away.[21] On "our side" we hear of an improvised gabion battery being shaken down by the first fire, and Master Spenser, the lieutenant of the ordnance, and many others killed by the enemy's guns as they stood all exposed. But brave Sir Edward Norris held his ground manfully until his orders came to cease firing and retire. Captain Goodwin makes a mistake of a signal and prematurely attacks the upper town, getting shot through the mouth as a reward, and the "common sort" drop off by drink, pestilence, and bullet plentifully enough, but unrecorded. Norris and Drake sent home by Knollys flaming accounts of their success, and still asked for more provisions from England and more money; but Queen Bess was in a towering rage, and was not to be appeased. She could not forget or forgive the loss of her favourite. Raleigh and Blount were very well in their way, but she wanted Essex, and suspected Drake and Norris of being parties to his escape. On the 4th of May (O.S.) she wrote to them a remarkable letter, showing that she had tidings of Essex's being on board the Swiftsure, and demanding dire vengeance on Sir Roger Williams, who helped to hide him.[22]

      After four days of fruitless pottering the troops were presumably sober enough to attempt an attack upon the upper town, and the guns being pointed against it, the general sent a drummer to summon it to surrender before he opened fire. The summons was answered by a musket-shot that laid the poor drummer low, but immediately afterwards a pole was projected over the town wall, and from it there dangled a man hanged by the neck. This was the man who had fired the dastard shot. And then the Spaniards called a parley, and begged that the war might be fair on both sides, as it certainly should be on theirs. Considering that five hundred of their brethren had their throats cut ruthlessly, after they had submitted, this was magnanimous at least; "but as for surrendering the towne, they listened not greatly thereunto."

      So Norris banged away with his cannon for three days to make a breach in the wall of the high town, and at the same time set men to work to bore a mine in the rock beneath the gate, and at the end of the time, all being in readiness, and his men, under the gallant brothers Wingfield, with Philpot, Sampson, and York, waiting to storm the two breaches, the mine turned out a dismal failure, and nothing was done. The next day they tried again, and this time with such success that one half of the gate tower was blown up, and the other half left tottering. On rushed the assailants. Some few got into the town, but as the officers and their immediate followers set foot on the breach and waved their men onward, down came the other half of the tower upon them, and crushed them beneath the ruins. Two standards were lost, but captured again, and scores of men were killed. In the dust and terror the unpractised soldiery thought they were the victims of some stratagem of the enemy and fled, leaving the officers and gentlemen volunteers to extricate themselves as best they could. Poor Captain Sydenham "was pitifully lost, who having three or foure great stones on his lower parts was held so fast, as neither himself could stirre, nor anie reasonable companie recover him. Notwithstanding the next day being found to be alive there was 10 or 12 lost in attempting to relieve him."

      On the other side of the town the breach made in the walls by the culverins was too small, and when brave Yorke had led his men to push of pike with those who stood in the breach, the slope of rubbish on which they mounted suddenly slipped down, and left them six feet below the opening, and so they had to retreat too, through a narrow lane exposed to the full fire of the enemy, and thus the attack failed at both points.

      In the meanwhile all Galicia was arming, and a prisoner brought in by the cattle raiders gave news that the Count de Andrada, with 8,000 men, was at Puente de Burgos, six miles off, which