Among Standen’s contacts was his good friend the Tuscan Ambassador in Madrid, who kept him very well informed. And then there was a certain Fleming in Madrid to whom Standen had given a hundred crowns, and whose brother worked for the Marquis of Santa Cruz, and for whom the ambassador was quite happy to extend the courtesy of sending documents in the diplomatic bag back to his good friend Standen in Florence. There were others, too: Englishmen traveling about Italy (there were always Englishmen traveling about Italy); and Italians and Flemings and Frenchmen in Spain; and the spies in Parma’s army in the Low Countries; and the merchant sailors who kept their eyes open in the ports of Flanders and Italy; and the disaffected Portuguese who fed a steady stream of reports from the Iberian coasts.
As early as June 1587, Standen had been able to confirm that the Spaniards were so thrown into disarray by Drake’s raid on Cádiz that they were unlikely to do anything for the rest of the year against England. “My Fleming writeth flatly,” Berden reported to Mr. Secretary, “that this next year is undoubtedly holden they intend to visit us in England with a mighty force and that presently this year they mean no other but to secure their fleet that cometh so sick.” Walsingham at once shared this news with Burghley: “Your Lordship by the enclosed from Florence may perceive how some stay is made of the foreign preparations,” he wrote in a cover note. “I humbly pray your Lordship that Pompey’s letter may be reserved to yourself. I would be loath the gentleman should have any harm through my default.” Shortly after that, Standen reported for certain that the fleet heading out from Lisbon under Santa Cruz was bound not for England but for the Azores, in pursuit of Drake; this information had come directly from the King’s orders to Santa Cruz, which “was only known to the one and the other.”
But it was clear this was but a reprieve. Mr. Secretary was now spending Treasury money on agents like never before; it would amount to some £3,300 from the spring of 1587 to the spring of the next year. And so, throughout the summer and autumn of 1587, the reports from what was now something considerably more than a few “paid Papists,” something that indeed looked very much like a network of professional intelligence agents, flowed into Mr. Secretary’s office as he watched and waited for signs of the gathering Armada.
13
FOREARMED
Fifteen eighty-eight: another year of portents and omens. The fifteenth-century mathematician and astrologer Regiomontanus had predicted that the year would bring “either an universal consummation and final dissolution of the world, or at least a general subversion and alteration of principalities, kingdoms, monarchies and empires.” Everyone had heard that and talked of it; that, and the strange sightings that had already occurred, the thirty porpoises that had come up the Thames and gathered at the water gate of the Queen’s court, the vast number of fleas that had collected on the window of the Queen’s Presence Chamber. The Privy Council commissioned its own scholar to write a book disputing Regiomontanus’s prophecies: all based on a misreading of the position of the planet Mars, the Council’s expert explained.
From Venice and Florence and Madrid and Brussels and Paris the reports kept coming in about Spanish naval preparations. They were full of contradictions, but then other reports suggested that the reason for this was that the King of Spain was himself uncertain how and when to proceed: a maddening position for an intelligence officer trying to read his enemy’s mind, when the enemy did not know his own mind himself. Toward the end of 1587, reports had come in that Philip decided to launch his attack at once. Other reports said he was considering an assault on Scotland instead, or would suddenly send Parma’s barges across the Channel without any escort, or might try to seize the Isle of Wight. Burghley and Walsingham wanted to mobilize the fleet at once; Drake proposed another strike against the Spaniards in their ports. Elizabeth balked at the expense: she had heard too many cries of wolf before. The Council was permitted to alert the Lord Lieutenants of the counties to have their trained bands ready for service at one hour’s notice, and they were permitted to requisition merchant ships for the royal service, but Drake was not to sail. “The manner of our cold and careless proceeding here in this time of peril and danger maketh me to take no comfort of my recovery of health,” Walsingham wrote Leicester, “for that I see apparently, unless it shall please God in mercy and miraculously to preserve us, we cannot long stand.”
Mr. Secretary took refuge in planning as best he could, putting in place a system and organization to do whatever England had to do but had never had to do before. He wrote a lengthy memorandum, “A Consideration What Were Fit to be Done When the Realm shall be Assailed”:
The defence to be made by sea and land
The defence by sea committed to the Lord Admiral Defence by land—
To be considered
What number of men are put in readiness throughout the realm, horse and foot.
How they are directed to assist upon any invasion.
Who be the lieutenants of the shires and captains of the men both trained and untrained.
What pioneers appointed for every band and what carriages.
What powder appointed for every band.
What field pieces and munition is placed in certain of the maritime counties.
These being done a. Where is it likely that the enemy will attempt anything against this realm.
b. How may he best be withstood—whether by offering a fight when he has landed or in avoiding a fight (which it is likely the enemy will affect) and to make head against him with the use of the pioneers and withdrawing of victuals.
What men of sufficiency meet to be sent to those places where the descent is likely to be made.
What engineers there are in this realm meet to be used for the direction of the pioneers.
What forces were meetest to be about her Majesty’s person both of horsemen and footmen.
If anything should be attempted against the city of London which way it would be attempted and how it may be best withstood.
Stafford was still assiduously muddying the waters: he now sent a barrage of reports disparaging the Spanish threat. In January, he insisted in a letter to the Queen that the Armada had been disbanded. The report was passed on to Stafford’s brother-in-law, the Lord Admiral, Charles Howard of Effingham; Howard reacted with incredulity: “I cannot tell what to think of my brother Stafford’s advertisement; for if it be true that the King of Spain’s forces be dissolved, I would not wish the Queen’s Majesty to be at this charge that she is at; but if it be a device, knowing that a little thing makes us too careless, then I know not what may come of it.”
Stafford sent other reports, each more unlikely than the last. The Armada was headed for Algiers; it was bound for the Indies; an outbreak of plague had driven it back to Spain; Paris bookmakers were laying odds of six to one that it would never reach the English Channel. Stafford claimed he had seen in the Spanish Ambassador’s study a paper mentioning an enterprise against England, but it was obviously a ruse, Stafford explained: Mendoza must have left it out on purpose to deceive him; therefore, the Armada was surely headed anywhere but England.
Mr. Secretary had Howard feed some bilge back to his brother-in-law: a detailed report in which he exaggerated the firepower of English ships by 40 percent.
In fact, by April there could no longer be any doubt as to Spain’s true intentions, nor as to how utterly bogus Stafford’s reports were. Pinnaces sent to look into Spanish harbors could see the preparations; an intercepted and deciphered letter from the Count of Olivares in Rome to Philip spoke confidently about the “investiture” of the new sovereign of England after the conquest was complete.
On the 30th of April 1588, specific orders for the defense of the realm at last went out. Local commanders were advised of points on the coast where the water was deep enough to admit enemy vessels; at these points ramparts were to be erected, defended by trenches. At Lynn, where the Channel was narrowest, causeways were to be broken up, parapets built, and cannon emplaced. Instructi
ons were given for the destruction of bridges across the Ouse River on the approach of the enemy. Signal beacons were prepared.
And so the waiting and watching continued. Mr. Secretary’s men in Spain, still swiping the letters and orders of the Spanish commanders, continued to send meticulously detailed accounts of the Spanish force and its war plans. In May came a report from one of them, Nicholas Ousley, who had seen a dispatch from the new commander of the Armada, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia: Santa Cruz had died suddenly in February. Medina-Sidonia had twenty-five thousand men, four thousand of them mariners; victuals for six months, except for cheese, which was in only four months’ supply; fourteen galleons had departed Sanlúcar for Lisbon; four argosies, three carrying coin and one munitions, had departed from Cádiz.
In mid-May, Standen reported that a ship from Dunkirk had arrived in Lisbon carrying pilots sent by Parma to guide the invasion force.
From Rome came word that Pope Sixtus V had reissued the Bull of Excommunication against Elizabeth; from France, word that Dr. Allen had penned a violent attack on Elizabeth, printed and prepared for distribution once the Spanish invasion began, An Admonition to the Nobility and People of England. A copy of it came into Burghley’s hands, and Burghley sent it to Walsingham. Elizabeth, Dr. Allen wrote, was “an incestuous bastard begotten and born in sin of an infamous courtesan.” She was “an infamous, deprived, accursed, excommunicate heretic; the very shame of her sex and princely name; the chief spectacle of sin and abomination in this our age.” She had taken part in an “unspeakable and incredible variety of lust.” Her kingdom had become “a place of refuge and sanctuary of all atheists, Anabaptists, heretics, and rebellious of all nations.” The Catholic King had undertaken to deliver the people of England “from the yoke of heresy and thralldom of your enemies.”
Then, on the 29th of May, Standen wrote again to Walsingham, from Sanlúcar:
The army departeth this day 11 days, I say 11 days for I saw a letter that the Duke directed to one of his Council, was written that same day 10 leagues in the sea, and caused a caravel which the army met to come aboard and receive the packet. Their purpose is The Groyne, and there to remain upon further advice, as the same Councilor my very friend shewed me in secret, who believes me to be a greater friend to his country than I hope in God ever to be.
In the midst of the racking anticipations of the Armada, a delegation of Dutch Calvinists arrived: slight comic relief. Hoping to induce the Queen to accept sovereignty over the Low Countries and suppress all other worship but the truly reformed faith, they had prepared a lengthy discourse that they pressed upon Mr. Secretary; it was, in Walsingham’s words, “filled with astounding parallels between their own position and that of the Hebrews, Assyrians, and other distinguished nations of antiquity.” Walsingham suggested that they cut it down, as the Queen did not like to read papers more than one page long.
Drake had pleaded all spring to be allowed to sally forth against the Spaniards. He had won over Howard, who had originally opposed the idea as too risky; he bombarded the Queen with letters. “If your Majesty will give present order for our proceeding to the sea …” “With fifty sail of shipping we shall do more good upon their own coast than a great many more will do here at home… .” “The advantage of time and place in all martial actions is half a victory, which being lost is irrecoverable… .” “These great preparations of the Spaniard may be speedily prevented … by sending your forces to encounter theirs, somewhat far off and more near their own coast, which will be the better cheap for your Majesty and people, and much the dearer for the enemy… .”
Now, at last, the Queen assented. On the 30th of May, the fleet sailed from Plymouth—only to be driven back by fierce winds. “We have danced as lustily as the gallantest dancers in Court,” Howard quipped to Walsingham, determined to make light of the battering they had just weathered, determined to try again. But the Queen now again forbade it, ordering Howard to “ply up and down” in home waters instead, lest the Armada slip past him at sea.
Howard retorted sarcastically, “I must and will obey; and am glad there be such there as are able to judge what is fitter for us to do than we here; but by my instructions which I had, I did think it otherwise.”
The Queen relented again; again the fleet was blown back.
Then, on the 19th of July, the Spanish fleet was spotted off The Lizard, the southwestern tip of England. A hundred and thirty sail in all, a staggering force: for all of the strategic warning that Walsingham had so painstakingly gathered, the Spanish had achieved tactical surprise. The Armada threatened to catch Drake and Howard bottled up in Plymouth Harbor; the following day, with the wind against them, they warped their way painstakingly out: a small boat carrying the anchor ahead, dropping it, the ship’s cable drawn up on the capstan to heave forward.
Then beating tack upon tack into the night, westward, until, at two in the morning of the 21st, the English had the weather gauge, the wind behind them, the Spanish before them.
Howard was a man of Walsingham’s own stamp, tactful, free of vanity, concerned more with results than glory; there had been worries how the vain and hotheaded Drake would take to being placed under his command, any man’s command; Howard had pulled it off with near genius. In May, he had sailed into Plymouth flying the flag of an admiral and vice-admiral; in full view of Drake and all his cheering men, he had lowered the vice-admiral’s flag, sent it across by his pinnace, and bidden Drake to send it aloft on his ship. Howard had reported to Walsingham, “I must not omit to let you know how lovingly and kindly Sir Francis Drake beareth himself and also how dutifully to her Majesty’s service and unto me, being in the place I am in.” The English navy had Howard and Drake; it also had ships that were weatherly and fleet; the largest of them mostly no more than five hundred tons, half the size of the Spanish galleons; they could maneuver and turn to fire two broadsides in the time the big ships could manage but one; they carried light culverins on wheeled carriages that could fire fast and far compared with the older, heavier, and clumsier Spanish guns.
And so there began a week’s running battle up the Channel; the Spanish trying to get close enough to grapple and board with their hordes of men, the English nimbly keeping out of range and playing long bowls with their guns.
Chivvied like a flock of sheep they went: a keg of gunpowder went off in one Spanish galleon; another lost its bowsprit in a collision, fell behind, and was snapped up by Drake, its crew taken prisoner and sent to London to be interrogated by the Privy Council. On the 27th, the Armada anchored off of Calais.
Early the next morning, in a high wind and heavy sea, the English set ablaze eight merchant ships packed with combustibles and sent them drifting toward the Spanish. Their cannon had been loaded, double-shotted, so they would go off as the heat of the flames reached them: more a psychological threat than real, it did its work. As the fire ships approached, the Spanish in a panic cut their cables, left their anchors on the sea bottom, and fled. In the ensuing confusion, the flagship of the galleases suffered a wrenching collision that damaged its rudder and sent its mainmast crashing by the board; seeking to evade capture, the Spanish admiral ordered his ship grounded at the entrance to Calais. Howard sent in an assault party on boats and carried the ship in a violent hand-to-hand struggle, the Spanish admiral shot in the head in the fight.
The following day, the 29th, the scattered Spanish were set upon in earnest. Medina-Sidonia managed to gather thirty-two of the Armada’s ships together as he sought to cover Parma’s embarkation ports; the English came on at closer range than ever, so close the crews could shout insults at one another, yet still not so close that the Spanish could use their grappling hooks. “Cowards!” “Lutheran chickens!” the Spanish crews cursed. The Spanish flagship was struck by more than a hundred cannonballs. Two other galleons were battered and ran aground on the Zealand shoals. A third Spanish ship, crippled but still afloat, sank suddenly, taking her crew of 175 to the bottom with rescue ships in sight.
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nbsp; The surviving Spanish ships had lost so much leeway that now they, too, were in danger of being broken apart on the sandbanks; only a last-minute change in the wind saved them, but now they were flying north, and all hope of making their way back to the Channel gone. Parma and his invasion force and barges were bottled up in Dunkirk by the wind and the English and Dutch forces.
Though Howard did not know it, the battle was over. That evening he cautiously wrote to Mr. Secretary: “I will not write unto her Majesty before more be done. Their force is wonderful great and strong; and yet we pluck their feathers by little and little.” Howard pursued the Spanish as far as the Firth of Forth in Scotland, then returned, sick at heart for the suffering of his men, who were dying by the thousands of typhus and scurvy. “Sickness and mortality begins wonderfully to grow amongst us,” he wrote, “and it is a most pitiful sight to see, here at Margate, how the men having no place to receive them into here, die in the streets, I am driven myself, of force, to come a-land, to see them bestowed in some lodging; and the best I can get is barns and outhouses. It would grieve any man’s heart to see them that have served so valiantly to die so miserably.”
But it was victory; though the realization took time, it came with savage glee when it did. Two months later, the news filtered back of the Spaniards’ ultimate fate. They had rounded Scotland, the long way home; they had then wrecked on the coasts of Ireland in violent storms. Half of the ships were lost, thousands drowned, and then a thousand or more who had survived shipwrecks and made it ashore simply butchered, several hundred after they had surrendered. The massacre had been egged on by fantastic yet widely believed rumors that the Spanish prisoners in London had confessed they had been ordered to kill every Englishman over age seven, that their ships were supplied with special whips of cord and wire for flaying alive the English heretics.
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