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

Authorities.—In addition to the books quoted at the head of the last chapters, Sir William Monson's Naval Tracts, to be found in vol. iii. of Churchill's Voyages, are of great value for the later part of the great queen's reign. Sir Richard Hawkins's account of his own voyage to the South Seas contains much most valuable information as to the naval life of the time. It has been published by the Hakluyt Society. Linschoten, printed in English by the same Society, is valuable for the loss of the Revenge, and for the picture it gives of the Spanish and Portuguese methods of conducting trade, and of their disasters. The accessible evidence for the voyages of the Earl of Cumberland is in Purchas. Southey took the cream off the narratives of Elizabethan sea adventure in the Lives of the Admirals, written for the Cabinet Cyclopædia.

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."