It was in "a struggle for NATIONAL independence, liberty of conscience, freedom of the seas, against sacerdotal and world-absorbing tyranny." A plotting despot is at the bottom of it. "While the riches of the Indies continue, he thinketh he will be able to weary out all other princes." But England had soldiers and statesmen ready to fight, even though "Indies"—the King Cotton of that day—were declared arbiter of the contest. "I pray God," said one of them, "that I live not to see this enterprise quail, and with it the utter subversion of religion throughout Christendom."—"The war doth defend England. Who is he that will refuse to spend his life and living in it? If her Majesty consume twenty thousand men in the cause, the experimented men that will remain will double that strength to the realm."—"The freehold of England will be worth but little, if this action quail; and therefore I wish no subject to spare his purse towards it."—"God hath stirred up this action to be a school to breed up soldiers to defend the freedom of England, which through these long times of peace and quietness is brought into a most dangerous estate, if it should be attempted. Our delicacy is such that we are already weary; yet this journey is nought in respect to the misery and hardship that soldiers must and do endure."
"There can be no doubt," the historian remarks, "that the organization and discipline of English troops were in anything but a satisfactory state at that period."—"The soldiers required shoes and stockings, bread and meat, and for those articles there were not the necessary funds."—"There came no penny of treasure over."—"There is much still due. They cannot get a penny, their credit is spent, they perish for want of victuals and clothing in great numbers. The whole are ready to mutiny."—"There was no soldier yet able to buy himself a pair of hose, and it is too, too great shame to see how they go, and it kills their hearts to show themselves among men."—These "poor subjects were no better than abjects," said the Lieutenant-General. "There is but a small number of the first bands left," said another,—"and those so pitiful and unable to serve again as I leave to speak further of them, to avoid grief to your heart. A monstrous fault there hath been somewhere." Of what nature the "monstrous fault" was we may conjecture from the language of the Commander-in-Chief. "There can be no doubt of our driving the enemy out of the country through famine and excessive charges, if every one of us will put our minds to forward, without making a miserable gain by the wars." (We give the Italics as we find them in the text.) He believed that much of the work might be speedily done; for he "would undertake to furnish from hence, upon two months' warning, a navy for strong and tall ships, with their furniture and mariners."
In the mean time "there was a whisper of peace-overtures," "rumors which, whether true or false, were most pernicious in their effects"; for "it was war, not peace," that the despot "intended," and the "most trusty counsellors [of England] knew to be inevitable." Worse than this, there was treachery of the most dangerous kind. "Take heed whom you trust," said the brother of the Commander-in-Chief to him; "for that you have some false boys about you." In fact, "many of those nearest his person and of highest credit out of England were his deadly foes, sworn to compass his dishonor, his confusion, and eventually his death, and in correspondence with his most powerful adversaries at home and abroad."
It was a sad state of things. The General "was much disgusted with the raw material out of which he was expected to manufacture serviceable troops." "Swaggering ruffians from the disreputable haunts of London" "were not the men to be intrusted with the honor of England at a momentous crisis." "Our simplest men in show have been our best men, and your gallant blood and ruffian men the worst of all others." (The Italics again are the author's.) Yet, said the muster-master, "there is good hope that his Excellency will shortly establish such good order for the government and training of our nation, that these weak, badly furnished, ill-armed, and worse trained bands, thus rawly left unto him, shall within a few months prove as well armed, complete, gallant companies as shall be found elsewhere in Europe."
Very pleasant it must have been to the Commander-in-Chief to report to his Government that in one of the first actions "five hundred Englishmen of the best Flemish training had flatly and shamefully run away." Yet this was the commencement of the struggle which ended with the dispersion and defeat of the great Armada, and destroyed the projects of the Spanish tyrant for introducing religious and political slavery into England! It seems as if Mr. Motley's Seventh Chapter were a prophecy, rather than a history.
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An invasion and a conspiracy may always be expected to make head at first. The men who plan such enterprises are not fools, but cunning, managing people. They always have, or think they have, a primâ facie case to start with. They have been preparing just as the highwayman has been preparing for his aggressive movement. They expect to find, and they commonly do find, their victims only half ready, if at all forewarned, and to take them at a disadvantage. If conspirators and invaders do not strike heavy blows at once, their cause is desperate; if they do, it proves very little, because that is the least they expected to do.
It is very easy to run up a score behind the door of a tavern; credit is good, and chalk is cheap. But these little marks have all got to be crossed out by-and-by, and the time will surely come for turning all empty pockets wrong side out. The aggressors begin in a great passion, and are violent and dangerous at first; the nation or community assailed are surprised, dismayed, perhaps, like the good people in the coach, when they see Dick Turpin's pistol thrust in at the window.
The Romans were certainly a genuine fighting people. They kept the state on a perpetual military footing. They were never without veterans, men and leaders bred in camp and experienced in warfare. Yet what a piece of work their African invader cut out for them! It seemed they had to learn everything over again. Thousands upon thousands killed and driven into Lake Trasimenus,—fifteen thousand prisoners taken; total rout again at Cannae,—rings picked from slain gentlemen's fingers by the peck or bushel,—everything lost in battle, and a great revolt through the Southern provinces as a natural consequence. What then? Rome was not to be Africanized as yet. The great leader who had threatened the capital, and scored these portentous victories, had at last to pay for them all in defeat and humiliation on his own soil.
Even the robber Spartacus beat the Roman armies at first, with their consuls at their head, and laid waste a large part of the peninsula. These violent uprisings and incursions are always dangerous at their onset; they are just like new diseases, which the doctors tell us must be studied by themselves, and which are rarely treated with great success until near the period of their natural cessation. After a time Fabius learns how to handle the hot Southern invaders, and Crassus the way of fighting the fierce gladiators with their classical bowie-knives.