English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century / Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4

by James Anthony Froude

The next point was the ransom of the city. The Spaniards still hesitating, 200 men were told off each morning to burn, while the rest searched the private houses, and palaces, and magazines. Government House was the grandest building in the New World. It was approached by broad flights of marble stairs. Great doors opened on a spacious gallery leading into a great hall, and above the portico hung the arms of Spain—a globe representing the world, a horse leaping upon it, and in the horse's mouth a scroll with the haughty motto, 'Non sufficit orbis.' Palace and scutcheon were levelled into dust by axe and gunpowder, and each day for a month the destruction went on, Drake's demands steadily growing and the unhappy Governor vainly pleading impossibility.

Vandalism, atrocity unheard of among civilised nations, dishonour to the Protestant cause, Drake deserving to swing at his own yardarm; so indignant Liberalism shrieked, and has not ceased shrieking. Let it be remembered that for fifteen years the Spaniards had been burning English seamen whenever they could catch them, plotting to kill the Queen and reduce England itself into vassaldom to the Pope. The English nation, the loyal part of it, were replying to the wild pretension by the hands of their own admiral. If Philip chose to countenance assassins, if the Holy Office chose to burn English sailors as heretics, those heretics had a right to make Spain understand that such a game was dangerous, that, as Santa Cruz had said, they had teeth and could use them.

It was found in the end that the Governor's plea of impossibility was more real than was at first believed. The gold and silver had been really carried off. All else that was valuable had been burnt or taken by the English. The destruction of a city so solidly built was tedious and difficult. Nearly half of it was blown up. The cathedral was spared, perhaps as the resting-place of Columbus. Drake had other work before him. After staying a month in undisturbed occupation he agreed to accept 25,000 ducats as a ransom for what was left and sailed away.

It was now February. The hot season was coming on, when the climate would be dangerous. There was still much to do and the time was running short. Panama had to be left for another opportunity. Drake's object was to deal blows which would shake the faith of Europe in the Spanish power. Carthagena stood next to St. Domingo among the Spanish West Indian fortresses. The situation was strong. In 1740 Carthagena was able to beat off Vernon and a great English fleet. But Drake's crews were in high health and spirits, and he determined to see what he could do with it. Surprise was no longer to be hoped for. The alarm had spread over the Caribbean Sea. But in their present humour they were ready to go anywhere and dare anything, and to Carthagena they went.

Drake's name carried terror before it. Every non-combatant—old men, women and children—had been cleared out before he arrived, but the rest prepared for a smart defence. The harbour at Carthagena was formed, as at St. Domingo and Port Royal, by a sandspit. The spit was long, narrow, in places not fifty yards wide, and covered with prickly bush, and along this, as before, it was necessary to advance to reach the city. A trench had been cut across at the neck, and a stiff barricade built and armed with heavy guns; behind this were several hundred musketeers, while the bush was full of Indians with poisoned arrows. Pointed stakes—poisoned also—had been driven into the ground along the approaches, on which to step was death. Two large galleys, full of men, patrolled inside the bank on the harbour edge, and with these preparations the inhabitants hoped to keep the dreadful Drake from reaching them. Carlile, as before, was to do the land fighting. He was set on shore three miles down the spit. The tide is slight in those seas, but he waited till it was out, and advanced along the outer shore at low-water mark. He was thus covered by the bank from the harbour galleys, and their shots passed over him. Two squadrons of horse came out, but could do nothing to him on the broken ground. The English pushed on to the wall, scarcely losing a man. They charged, scaled the parapets, and drove the Spanish infantry back at point of pike. Carlile killed their commander with his own hand. The rest fled after a short struggle, and Drake was master of Carthagena. Here for six weeks he remained. The Spaniards withdrew out of the city, and there were again parleys over the ransom money. Courtesies were exchanged among the officers. Drake entertained the Governor and his suite. The Governor returned the hospitality and received Drake and the English captains. Drake demanded 100,000 ducats. The Spaniards offered 30,000, and protested that they could pay no more. The dispute might have lasted longer, but it was cut short by the re-appearance of the yellow fever in the fleet, this time in a deadlier form. The Spanish offer was accepted, and Carthagena was left to its owners. It was time to be off, for the heat was telling, and the men began to drop with appalling rapidity. Nombre de Dios and Panama were near and under their lee, and Drake threw longing eyes on what, if all else had been well, might have proved an easy capture. But on a review of their strength, it was found that there were but 700 fit for duty who could be spared for the service, and a council of war decided that a march across the Isthmus with so small a force was too dangerous to be ventured. Enough had been done for glory, enough for the political impression to be made in Europe. The King of Spain had been dared in his own dominions. Three fine Spanish cities had been captured by storm and held to ransom. In other aspects the success had fallen short of expectation. This time they had taken no Cacafuego with a year's produce of the mines in her hold. The plate and coin had been carried off, and the spoils had been in a form not easily turned to value. The expedition had been fitted out by private persons to pay its own cost. The result in money was but 60,000l. Forty thousand had to be set aside for expenses. There remained but 20,000l. to be shared among the ships' companies. Men and officers had entered, high and low, without wages, on the chance of what they might get. The officers and owners gave a significant demonstration of the splendid spirit in which they had gone about their work. They decided to relinquish their own claims on the ransom paid for Carthagena, and bestow the same on the common seamen, 'wishing it were so much again as would be a sufficient reward for their painful endeavour.'

Thus all were well satisfied, conscious all that they had done their duty to their Queen and country. The adventurers' fleet turned homewards at the beginning of April. What men could do they had achieved. They could not fight against the pestilence of the tropics. For many days the yellow fever did its deadly work among them, and only slowly abated. They were delayed by calms and unfavourable winds. Their water ran short. They had to land again at Cape Antonio, the western point of Cuba, and sink wells to supply themselves. Drake himself, it was observed, worked with spade and bucket, like the meanest person in the whole company, always foremost where toil was to be endured or honour won, the wisest in the devising of enterprises, the calmest in danger, the first to set an example of energy in difficulties, and, above all, the firmest in maintaining order and discipline. The fever slackened as they reached the cooler latitudes. They worked their way up the Bahama Channel, going north to avoid the trades. The French Protestants had been attempting to colonise in Florida. The Spaniards had built a fortress on the coast, to observe their settlements and, as occasion offered, cut Huguenot throats. As he passed by Drake paid this fortress a visit and wiped it out. Farther north again he was in time to save the remnant of an English settlement, rashly planted there by another brilliant servant of Queen Elizabeth.

Of all the famous Elizabethans Sir Walter Raleigh is the most romantically interesting. His splendid and varied gifts, his chequered fortunes, and his cruel end, will embalm his memory in English history. But Raleigh's great accomplishments promised more than they performed. His hand was in everything, but of work successfully completed he had less to show than others far his inferiors, to whom fortune had offered fewer opportunities. He was engaged in a hundred schemes at once, and in every one of them there was always some taint of self, some personal ambition or private object to be gained. His life is a record of undertakings begun in enthusiasm, maintained imperfectly, and failures in the end. Among his other adventures he had sent a colony to Virginia. He had imagined, or had been led by others to believe, that there was an Indian Court there brilliant as Montezuma's, an enlightened nation crying to be admitted within the charmed circle of Gloriana's subjects. His princes and princesses proved things of air, or mere Indian savages; and of Raleigh there remains nothing in Virginia save the name of the city which is called after him. The starving survivors of his settlement on the Roanoke River were taken on board by Drake's returning squadron and carried home to England, where they all arrived safely, to the glory of God, as our pious ancestors said and meant in unconventional sincerity, on the 28th of July, 1586.

The expedition, as I have said, barely paid its cost. In the shape of wages the officers received nothing, and the crews but a few pounds a man; but there was, perhaps, not one of them who was not better pleased with the honour which he had brought back than if he had come home loaded with doubloons.

Startled Catholic Europe meanwhile rubbed its eyes and began to see that the 'enterprise of England,' as the intended invasion was called, might not be the easy thing which the seminary priests described it. The seminary priests had said that so far as England was Protestant at all it was Protestant only by the accident of its Government, that the immense majority of the people were Catholic at heart and were thirsting for a return to the fold, that on the first appearance of a Spanish army of deliverance the whole edifice which Elizabeth had raised would crumble to the ground. I suppose it is true that if the world had then been advanced to its present point of progress, if there had been then recognised a Divine right to rule in the numerical majority, even without a Spanish army the seminary priests would have had their way. Elizabeth's Parliaments were controlled by the municipalities of the towns, and the towns were Protestant. A Parliament chosen by universal suffrage and electoral districts would have sent Cecil and Walsingham into private life or to the scaffold, replaced the Mass in the churches, and reduced the Queen, if she had been left on the throne, into the humble servant of the Pope and Philip. It would not perhaps have lasted, but that, so far as I can judge, would have been the immediate result, and instead of a Reformation we should have had the light come in the shape of lightning. But I have often asked my Radical friends what is to be done if out of every hundred enlightened voters two-thirds will give their votes one way, but are afraid to fight, and the remaining third will not only vote but will fight too if the poll goes against them? Which has then the right to rule? I can tell them which will rule. The brave and resolute minority will rule. Plato says that if one man was stronger than all the rest of mankind he would rule all the rest of mankind. It must be so, because there is no appeal. The majority must be prepared to assert their Divine right with their right hands, or it will go the way that other Divine rights have gone before. I will not believe the world to have been so ill-constructed that there are rights which cannot be enforced. It appears to me that the true right to rule in any nation lies with those who are best and bravest, whether their numbers are large or small; and three centuries ago the best and bravest part of this English nation had determined, though they were but a third of it, that Pope and Spaniard should be no masters of theirs. Imagination goes for much in such excited times. To the imagination of Europe in the sixteenth century the power of Spain appeared irresistible if she chose to exert it. Heretic Dutchmen might rebel in a remote province, English pirates might take liberties with Spanish traders, but the Prince of Parma was making the Dutchmen feel their master at last. The pirates were but so many wasps, with venom in their stings, but powerless to affect the general tendencies of things. Except to the shrewder eyes of such men as Santa Cruz the strength of the English at sea had been left out of count in the calculations of the resources of Elizabeth's Government. Suddenly a fleet of these same pirates, sent out, unassisted by their sovereign, by the private impulse of a few individuals, had insulted the sacred soil of Spain herself, sailed into Vigo, pillaged the churches, taken anything that they required, and had gone away unmolested. They had attacked, stormed, burnt, or held to ransom three of Spain's proudest colonial cities, and had come home unfought with. The Catholic conspirators had to recognise that they had a worse enemy to deal with than Puritan controversialists or spoilt Court favourites. The Protestant English mariners stood between them and their prey, and had to be encountered on an element which did not bow to popes or princes, before Mary Stuart was to wear Elizabeth's crown or Cardinal Allen be enthroned at Canterbury. It was a revelation to all parties. Elizabeth herself had not expected—perhaps had not wished—so signal a success. War was now looked on as inevitable. The Spanish admirals represented that the national honour required revenge for an injury so open and so insolent. The Pope, who had been long goading the lethargic Philip into action, believed that now at last he would be compelled to move; and even Philip himself, enduring as he was, had been roused to perceive that intrigues and conspiracies would serve his turn no longer. He must put out his strength in earnest, or his own Spaniards might turn upon him as unworthy of the crown of Isabella. Very reluctantly he allowed the truth to be brought home to him. He had never liked the thought of invading England. If he conquered it, he would not be allowed to keep it. Mary Stuart would have to be made queen, and Mary Stuart was part French, and might be wholly French. The burden of the work would be thrown entirely on his shoulders, and his own reward was to be the Church's blessing and the approval of his own conscience—nothing else, so far as he could see. The Pope would recover his annates, his Peter's pence, and his indulgence market.

If the thing was to be done, the Pope, it was clear, ought to pay part of the cost, and this was what the Pope did not intend to do if he could help it. The Pope was flattering himself that Drake's performance would compel Spain to go to war with England whether he assisted or did not. In this matter Philip attempted to undeceive his Holiness. He instructed Olivarez, his ambassador at Rome, to tell the Pope that nothing had been yet done to him by the English which he could not overlook, and unless the Pope would come down with a handsome contribution peace he would make. The Pope stormed and raged; he said he doubted whether Philip was a true son of the Church at all; he flung plates and dishes at the servants' heads at dinner. He said that if he gave Philip money Philip would put it in his pocket and laugh at him. Not one maravedi would he give till a Spanish army was actually landed on English shores, and from this resolution he was not to be moved.