Massacre of Huguenots: the painter Le Moine.
As the Frenchmen were on the verge of despair, Hawkins left them one of his ships in which to return to France, but he had scarcely departed when the long expected Ribaut arrived with reinforcements, and soon after him came that terrible Spaniard, Menendez, who butchered the whole company, men, women, and children, about 700 Huguenots in all. Some half dozen escaped and were lucky enough to get picked up by a friendly ship and carried to England. Among them was the painter Le Moine, who became a friend of Sir Philip Sidney, and aroused much interest with his drawings of American beasts, birds, trees, and flowers. The story of the massacre awakened fierce indignation. Hostility to Spain was rapidly increasing in England, and the idea of Coligny began to be entertained by a few sagacious heads. If France could not plant a Protestant state in America, perhaps England could. A little later we find Le Moine consulted by the gifted half-brothers, Humphrey Gilbert and Walter Raleigh.
Francis Drake.
The affair of San Juan de Ulua.
Meanwhile, in 1567, the gallant Hawkins went on an eventful voyage, with five stout ships, one of which was commanded by a very capable and well educated young man, afterwards and until Nelson's time celebrated as the greatest of English seamen. Francis Drake was a native of Devonshire, son of a poor clergyman who had been molested for holding Protestant opinions. The young sea king had already gathered experience in the West Indies and on the Spanish Main; this notable voyage taught him the same kind of feeling toward Spaniards that Hannibal cherished toward Romans. After the usual traffic among the islands the little squadron was driven by stress of weather to seek shelter in the port of San Juan de Ulua, at the present site of Vera Cruz. There was no force there fit to resist Hawkins, and it is droll to find that pious hero, such a man of psalms and prayers, pluming himself upon his virtue in not seizing some Spanish ships in the harbour laden with what we should call five million dollars' worth of silver. The next day a fleet of thirteen ships from Spain arrived upon the scene. Hawkins could perhaps have kept them from entering the harbour, but he shrank from the responsibility of bringing on a battle in time of peace; the queen might disapprove of it. So Hawkins parleyed with the Spaniards, a solemn covenant of mutual forbearance was made and sworn to, and he let them into the harbour. But the orthodox Catholic of those days sometimes entertained peculiar views about keeping faith with heretics. Had not his Holiness Alexander VI. given all this New World to Spain? Poachers must be warned off; the Huguenots had learned a lesson in Florida, and it was now the Englishmen's turn. So Hawkins was treacherously attacked, and after a desperate combat, in which fireships were used, three of his vessels were destroyed. The other two got out to sea, but with so scanty a larder that the crews were soon glad to eat cats and dogs, rats and mice, and boiled parrots. It became necessary to set 114 men ashore somewhere to the north of Tampico. Some of these men took northeasterly trails, and mostly perished in the woods, but David Ingram and two companions actually made their way across the continent and after eleven months were picked up on the coast of Nova Scotia by a friendly French vessel and taken back to Europe. About seventy, led by Anthony Goddard, less prudently marched toward the city of Mexico, and fell into the clutches of the Inquisition; three were burned at the stake and all the rest were cruelly flogged and sent to the galleys for life. When the news of this affair reached England a squadron of Spanish treasure-ships, chased into the Channel by Huguenot cruisers, had just sought refuge in English harbours, and the queen detained them in reprisal for the injury done to Hawkins.
Growing hostility to Spain in England.
News had lately arrived of the bloody vengeance wreaked by Dominique de Gourgues upon the Spaniards in Florida, while the cruelties of Alva were fast goading the Netherlands into rebellion. Next year, 1570, on a fresh May morning, the Papal Bull "declaring Elizabeth deposed and her subjects absolved from their allegiance was found nailed against the Bishop of London's door,"[9] and when the rash young gentleman who had put it there was discovered he was taken back to that doorstep and quartered alive. Two years later came the Paris Matins on the day of St. Bartholomew, and the English ambassador openly gave shelter to Huguenots in his house. Elizabeth's policy leaned more and more decidedly toward defiance of the Catholic powers until it culminated in alliance with the revolted Netherlands in January, 1578. Meanwhile the interest in America quickly increased. Those were the years when Martin Frobisher made his glorious voyages in the Arctic Ocean, soon to be followed by John Davis. Almost yearly Drake crossed the Atlantic and more than once attacked and ravaged the Spanish settlements in revenge for the treachery at San Juan de Ulua. Books and pamphlets about America began to come somewhat frequently from the press.
Size and strength of Elizabeth's England.
How the sea became England's field of war.
It is worth our while here to pause for a moment and remark upon the size and strength of the nation that was so soon to contend successfully for the mastery of the sea. There is something so dazzling in the brilliancy of the age of Queen Bess, it is so crowded with romantic incidents, it fills so large a place in our minds, that we hardly realize how small England then was according to modern standards of measurement. Two centuries earlier, in the reign of Edward III., the population of England had reached about 5,000,000, when the Black Death at one fell swoop destroyed at least half the number. In Elizabeth's time the loss had just about been repaired. Her England was therefore slightly less populous, and it was surely far less wealthy, than either New York or Pennsylvania in 1890. The Dutch Netherlands had perhaps somewhat fewer people than England, but surpassed her in wealth. These two allies were pitted against the greatest military power that had existed in Europe since the days of Constantine the Great. To many the struggle seemed hopeless. For England the true policy was limited by circumstances. She could send troops across the Channel to help the Dutch in their stubborn resistance, but to try to land a force in the Spanish peninsula for aggressive warfare would be sheer madness. The shores of America and the open sea were the proper field of war for England. Her task was to paralyze the giant by cutting off his supplies, and in this there was hope of success, for no defensive fleet, however large, could watch all Philip's enormous possessions at once. The English navy, first permanently organized under Henry VIII., grew rapidly in Elizabeth's reign under the direction of her incomparable seamen; and the policy she adopted was crowned with such success that Philip II. lived to see his treasury bankrupt.