The preparations of Philippe for the invasion of England were rapidly advancing, and it had been arranged between him and Parma that a powerful army was to be massed in Flanders and Brabant, which should be embarked in small vessels and convoyed across the straits by a great fleet to be sent from Spain. Until all was ready, the queen was to be kept unsuspicious of danger by pretended negotiations for peace, which were never to be more than a blind.
To carry out this scheme Parma needed a capacious and convenient harbour. Those he possessed were useless for his purpose, because the English held Flushing at the mouth of the Schelde and Dutch armed ships were constantly cruising almost up to Antwerp, so at the beginning of June 1587 he laid siege to Sluis in north-western Flanders with all the forces he could muster. The town had a garrison of eight hundred English and eight hundred Dutch soldiers, and not only the burghers but the women aided heroically in its defence. The importance of preventing such a harbour from falling into the hands of the Spaniards was realised at once in England, and Leicester was directed to return to the Netherlands without delay. On the 7th of July he reached Flushing with three thousand raw recruits, but the bickering between him and the states was so great that united action was impossible, and his attempt to relieve Sluis was an utter failure. The garrison was so reduced in number that it could resist no longer, and the burghers and women were quite worn out, when at the beginning of August Sluis capitulated on honourable terms, and Parma came into possession of an excellent base for the invasion of England.
That invasion, however, was deferred for a time, and the pretence of negotiating for peace was to be continued many months longer, owing to the action of the daring sea captain Sir Francis Drake. Drake sailed from Plymouth on the 2nd of April 1587 with four men-of-war and twenty-four ships fitted out by private adventurers, and seventeen days later entered the harbour of Cadiz and pillaged, burned, and destroyed some hundred and fifty vessels that he found there. He then sailed to Lisbon, and destroyed a hundred transports and provision ships that were lying in the Tagus. At first sight this looks something like piracy, for there had been no declaration of war between England and Spain. But what were all those vessels lying off Cadiz and Lisbon destined for? For the invasion of England, and this it was that justified Drake in destroying them as he so bravely did.
Historical Sketches.
Leicester remained nearly six months in the Netherlands on his second visit, and then, finding it impossible to recover his former authority, he returned to England. On the 27th of December 1587 he attached his name to a document resigning his office, but it did not reach the states-general until April 1588. In the interim a condition of affairs that can almost be termed civil war prevailed. The officials and commanders of garrisons who had taken an oath of fidelity to Leicester refused to obey any other authority, and young Maurits of Nassau, who had been appointed by the states captain-general, was obliged to coerce them by force of arms. At last Leicester’s resignation was received, and on the 12th of April 1588 the states-general issued a placaat[27] absolving all persons from their oaths of fidelity to him, when something like harmony was restored. The baron Willoughby now became the commander of the English troops in the Netherlands.
Warlike operations in that country were, however, almost stayed for a while, owing to Parma’s whole attention being occupied with preparations for the invasion of England and deceiving the English commissioners who were treating for peace. He was building great numbers of small transports, collecting vast stores of provisions and munitions of war, and providing for sixty thousand soldiers, some of whom were intended to hold his conquests during his absence and others to go with him to England when the invincible armada should arrive from Spain with additional forces and convoy his vessels across the channel.
The Invincible Armada.
At last in July 1588 the armada, consisting of a hundred and thirty-four ships of war, with twenty thousand soldiers on board, sailed from Coruña, and on the 29th of that month came in sight of the English coast. Never in the world’s history were more important issues in the balance than those dependent on that mighty fleet. Absolutism or political liberty, iron bound religious conformity or freedom of conscience, these were the issues at stake, not only for England and Holland, but for mighty nations still unborn. It is not necessary to relate the history of the armada here, every schoolboy knows how it came to anchor in Calais roads, how the Sea Beggars of Holland and Zeeland prevented Parma from joining it, how the English fleet under Howard and Drake and Hawkins and other ocean heroes followed and worried it, how they sent fireships that frightened it in confusion from Calais roads, how it fled into the North sea with the English grappling every galleon that lagged behind, how God sent a great storm that dispersed it, and how finally only fifty-three out of the hundred and thirty-four huge fighting ships reached the Spanish coast again, and these little better than disabled wrecks. The invincible armada was no more, and England and Holland were saved.
Parma had a great army under his command, but sickness was wasting it away, and he had not the means of maintaining it properly. So much had been expended upon the armada that it was impossible for Philippe to send him the money he needed. He was in chronic ill-health and seemed to have lost heart too by the failure of the mighty effort that had been made, and so for a time took no action commensurate with what might have been expected of him. He indeed laid siege to Bergen op Zoom, which was garrisoned by five thousand Dutch and English soldiers under Colonel Morgan, but he did not press it with his old vigour, and during the night of the 12th of November 1588 he abandoned it. Then for months he did nothing, until on the 10th of April 1589 he obtained possession of Geertruidenberg, a town on the Brabant side of the Maas.
Historical Sketches.