Meantime the negotiations for peace continued, and Elizabeth, strange to say, persisted in listening. She would not see what was plain to all the world besides. The execution of the Queen of Scots lay on her spirit and threw her back into the obstinate humour which had made Walsingham so often despair of her safety. For two months after that scene at Fotheringay she had refused to see Burghley, and would consult no one but Sir James Crofts and her Spanish-tempered ladies. She knew that Spain now intended that she should betray the towns in the Low Countries, yet she was blind to the infamy which it would bring upon her. She left her troops there without their wages to shiver into mutiny. She named commissioners, with Sir James Crofts at their head, to go to Ostend and treat with Parma, and if she had not resolved on an act of treachery she at least played with the temptation, and persuaded herself that if she chose to make over the towns to Philip, she would be only restoring them to their lawful owner.
Burghley and Walsingham, you can see from their letters, believed now that Elizabeth had ruined herself at last. Happily her moods were variable as the weather. She was forced to see the condition to which she had reduced her affairs in the Low Countries by the appearance of a number of starving wretches who had deserted from the garrisons there and had come across to clamour for their pay at her own palace gates. If she had no troops in the field but a mutinous and starving rabble, she might get no terms at all. It might be well to show Philip that on one element at least she could still be dangerous. She had lost nothing by the bold actions of Drake and the privateers. With half a heart she allowed Drake to fit them out again, take the Buonaventura, a ship of her own, to carry his flag, and go down to the coast of Spain and see what was going on. He was not to do too much. She sent a vice-admiral with him, in the Lion, to be a check on over-audacity. Drake knew how to deal with embarrassing vice-admirals. His own adventurers would sail, if he ordered, to the Mountains of the Moon, and be quite certain that it was the right place to go to. Once under way and on the blue water he would go his own course and run his own risks. Cadiz Harbour was thronged with transports, provision ships, powder vessels—a hundred sail of them—many of a thousand tons and over, loading with stores for the Armada. There were thirty sail of adventurers, the smartest ships afloat on the ocean, and sailed by the smartest seamen that ever handled rope or tiller. Something might be done at Cadiz if he did not say too much about it. The leave had been given to him to go, but he knew by experience, and Burghley again warned him, that it might, and probably would, be revoked if he waited too long. The moment was his own, and he used it. He was but just in time. Before his sails were under the horizon a courier galloped into Plymouth with orders that under no condition was he to enter port or haven of the King of Spain, or injure Spanish subjects. What else was he going out for? He had guessed how it would be. Comedy or earnest he could not tell. If earnest, some such order would be sent after him, and he had not an instant to lose.
He sailed on the morning of the 12th of April. Off Ushant he fell in with a north-west gale, and he flew on, spreading every stitch of canvas which his spars would bear. In five days he was at Cape St. Vincent. On the 18th he had the white houses of Cadiz right in front of him, and could see for himself the forests of masts from the ships and transports with which the harbour was choked. Here was a chance for a piece of service if there was courage for the venture. He signalled for his officers to come on board the Buonaventura. There before their eyes was, if not the Armada itself, the materials which were to fit the Armada for the seas. Did they dare to go in with him and destroy them? There were batteries at the harbour mouth, but Drake's mariners had faced Spanish batteries at St. Domingo and Carthagena and had not found them very formidable. Go in? Of course they would. Where Drake would lead the corsairs of Plymouth were never afraid to follow. The vice-admiral pleaded danger to her Majesty's ships. It was not the business of an English fleet to be particular about danger. Straight in they went with a fair wind and a flood tide, ran past the batteries and under a storm of shot, to which they did not trouble themselves to wait to reply. The poor vice-admiral followed reluctantly in the Lion. A single shot hit the Lion, and he edged away out of range, anchored, and drifted to sea again with the ebb. But Drake and all the rest dashed on, sank the guardship—a large galleon—and sent flying a fleet of galleys which ventured too near them and were never seen again.
Further resistance there was none—absolutely none. The crews of the store ships escaped in their boats to land. The governor of Cadiz, the same Duke of Medina Sidonia who the next year was to gain a disastrous immortality, fled 'like a tall gentleman' to raise troops and prevent Drake from landing. Drake had no intention of landing. At his extreme leisure he took possession of the Spanish shipping, searched every vessel, and carried off everything that he could use. He detained as prisoners the few men that he found on board, and then, after doing his work deliberately and completely, he set the hulls on fire, cut the cables, and left them to drive on the rising tide under the walls of the town—a confused mass of blazing ruin. On the 12th of April he had sailed from Plymouth; on the 19th he entered Cadiz Harbour; on the 1st of May he passed out again without the loss of a boat or a man. He said in jest that he had singed the King of Spain's beard for him. In sober prose he had done the King of Spain an amount of damage which a million ducats and a year's labour would imperfectly replace. The daring rapidity of the enterprise astonished Spain, and astonished Europe more than the storm of the West Indian towns. The English had long teeth, as Santa Cruz had told Philip's council, and the teeth would need drawing before Mass would be heard again at Westminster. The Spaniards were a gallant race, and a dashing exploit, though at their own expense, could be admired by the countrymen of Cervantes. 'So praised,' we read, 'was Drake for his valour among them, that they said that if he was not a Lutheran there would not be the like of him in the world.' A Court lady was invited by the King to join a party on a lake near Madrid. The lady replied that she dared not trust herself on the water with his Majesty lest Sir Francis Drake should have her.
Drake might well be praised. But Drake would have been the first to divide the honour with the comrades who were his arm and hand. Great admirals and generals do not win their battles single-handed like the heroes of romance. Orders avail only when there are men to execute them. Not a captain, not an officer who served under Drake, ever flinched or blundered. Never was such a school for seamen as that twenty years' privateering war between the servants of the Pope and the West-country Protestant adventurers. Those too must be remembered who built and rigged the ships in which they sailed and fought their battles. We may depend upon it that there was no dishonesty in contractors, no scamping of the work in the yards where the Plymouth rovers were fitted out for sea. Their hearts were in it; they were soldiers of a common cause.
Three weeks had sufficed for Cadiz. No order for recall had yet arrived. Drake had other plans before him, and the men were in high spirits and ready for anything. A fleet of Spanish men-of-war was expected round from the Mediterranean. He proposed to stay for a week or two in the neighbourhood of the Straits, in the hope of falling in with them. He wanted fresh water, too, and had to find it somewhere.
Before leaving Cadiz Roads he had to decide what to do with his prisoners. Many English were known to be in the hands of the Holy Office working in irons as galley slaves. He sent in a pinnace to propose an exchange, and had to wait some days for an answer. At length, after a reference to Lisbon, the Spanish authorities replied that they had no English prisoners. If this was true those they had must have died of barbarous usage; and after a consultation with his officers Sir Francis sent in word that for the future such prisoners as they might take would be sold to the Moors, and the money applied to the redemption of English captives in other parts of the world.
Water was the next point. There were springs at Faro, with a Spanish force stationed there to guard them. Force or no force, water was to be had. The boats were sent on shore. The boats' crews stormed the forts and filled the casks. The vice-admiral again lifted up his voice. The Queen had ordered that there was to be no landing on Spanish soil. At Cadiz the order had been observed. There had been no need to land. Here at Faro there had been direct defiance of her Majesty's command. He became so loud in his clamours that Drake found it necessary to lock him up in his own cabin, and at length to send him home with his ship to complain. For himself, as the expected fleet from the Straits did not appear, and as he had shaken off his troublesome second in command, he proceeded leisurely up the coast, intending to look in at Lisbon and see for himself how things were going on there. All along as he went he fell in with traders loaded with supplies for the use of the Armada. All these he destroyed as he advanced, and at length found himself under the purple hills of Cintra and looking up into the Tagus. There lay gathered together the strength of the fighting naval force of Spain—fifty great galleons, already arrived, the largest war-ships which then floated on the ocean. Santa Cruz, the best officer in the Spanish navy, was himself in the town and in command. To venture a repetition of the Cadiz exploit in the face of such odds seemed too desperate even for Drake, but it was one of those occasions when the genius of a great commander sees more than ordinary eyes. He calculated, and, as was proved afterwards, calculated rightly, that the galleons would be half manned, or not manned at all, and crowded with landsmen bringing on board the stores. Their sides as they lay would be choked with hulks and lighters. They would be unable to get their anchors up, set their canvas, or stir from their moorings. Daring as Drake was known to be, no one would expect him to go with so small a force into the enemy's stronghold, and there would be no preparations to meet him. He could count upon the tides. The winds at that season of the year were fresh and steady, and could be counted on also to take him in or out; there was sea room in the river for such vessels as the adventurers' to manœuvre and to retreat if overmatched. Rash as such an enterprise might seem to an unprofessional eye, Drake certainly thought of it, perhaps had meant to try it in some form or other and so make an end of the Spanish invasion of England. He could not venture without asking first for his mistress's permission. He knew her nature. He knew that his services at Cadiz would outweigh his disregard of her orders, and that so far he had nothing to fear; but he knew also that she was still hankering after peace, and that without her leave he must do nothing to make peace impossible. There is a letter from him to the Queen, written when he was lying off Lisbon, very characteristic of the time and the man.
Nelson or Lord St. Vincent did not talk much of expecting supernatural assistance. If they had we should suspect them of using language conventionally which they would have done better to leave alone. Sir Francis Drake, like his other great contemporaries, believed that he was engaged in a holy cause, and was not afraid or ashamed to say so. His object was to protest against a recall in the flow of victory. The Spaniards, he said, were but mortal men. They were enemies of the Truth, upholders of Dagon's image, which had fallen in other days before the Ark, and would fall again if boldly defied. So long as he had ships that would float, and there was food on board them for the men to eat, he entreated her to let him stay and strike whenever a chance was offered him. The continuing to the end yielded the true glory. When men were serving religion and their country, a merciful God, it was likely, would give them victory, and Satan and his angels should not prevail.
All in good time. Another year and Drake would have the chance he wanted. For the moment Satan had prevailed—Satan in the shape of Elizabeth's Catholic advisers. Her answer came. It was warm and generous. She did not, could not, blame him for what he had done so far, but she desired him to provoke the King of Spain no further. The negotiations for peace had opened, and must not be interfered with.