The Confident Hope of a Miracle

by Neil Hanson

  New companies of foot soldiers were formed and the older ones strengthened with new recruits, while experienced troops were recalled from the garrisons of Naples and Sicily and replaced with pressed men. Every armoury was ransacked for weapons; the Secretary of State for War claimed that “not a single arquebus, pike or musket is left in all Spain.” Thousands of picks, shovels and gabions (wicker or metal baskets filled with stones as fortifications or gun emplacements) were stockpiled, and tents, packs, leather canteens and 12,000 pairs of shoes were bought from Seville. The King’s agents began scouring Europe for cannons, culverins, powder and shot, sailcloth and rigging, oil, wine, ship’s biscuit and dried fish and salt meat. The Lisbon shipyards were set to work repairing the old galleons and constructing new ones, and, as was routinely done in time of war, merchantmen were converted to fighting ships by the addition of extra armaments and complements of fighting soldiers. Yet even this large fleet was still well below the required strength. The deficiency was made up by “embargoing”—impounding—ships of every nationality that could be found in Spanish ports.

  Dozens of English, Dutch, German, French, Genoese, Neapolitan, Venetian, Danish and Ragusan (from modern Dubrovnik) galleons and hulks were impounded, 23 from Ragusa alone, to carry the men, munitions and equipment for the great invasion force. The viceroy of Sicily seized a number of ships including the Genoese La Rata Santa Maria Encoronada and two Ragusan ships, the San Juan de Sicilia and the Anunciada, and, to the helpless fury of the Venetians, two of their huge armed merchant ships, the Trinidad Valencera and the Juliana, were also seized when they docked at Lisbon to unload cargo. “These ships were the finest, the best armed and manned of all that lay in Lisbon and on no account should His Majesty let them go.” A number of Baltic hulks, including the Gran Grifon of Rostock, were impounded at Lisbon, the English ship Charity was seized at Gibraltar and a Scottish trading vessel, the St. Andrew, was taken in Malaga.14

  The Grand Duke of Tuscany also lost his most prized possession, the galleon Florencia, in a similar manner. The war in the Spanish Netherlands had severely disrupted the spice trade centred on Antwerp, and the Duke saw the chance to make Florence the new fulcrum of the trade. Such was the value of the cargo that only the most heavily armed ship would deter pirates and corsairs and, after reaching satisfactory agreements with Philip, the Duke sent his prized new galleon to transport the spices from the New World stored in the warehouses of Lisbon. But the captain found his loading date postponed again and again while Spanish sea-captains and admirals, including the Marquis of Santa Cruz, made admiring visits to the Florencia. After delays stretching into months, the Duke, now thoroughly alarmed, ordered his captain to set sail for home. The Spaniards refused him permission to leave and warned him that the shore batteries had orders to sink his ship if he attempted to make a clandestine departure. The next time the Florencia left harbour, it had been renamed the San Francisco and was sailing as part of the Armada, the finest and most heavily armed ship in the fleet. The Grand Duke of Tuscany never saw his ship again.

  The scale of Spanish preparations for war did not escape the notice of the spies, agents and ambassadors of the European powers. But there was as yet no complete consensus on what it portended. Despite the mounting clamour for action from the Pope in Rome, Mendoza in Paris and the colonies of English exiles who had fled the persecution and confiscation of Catholic estates after the failure of the Rising of the North, Philip continued his unshakeable habit of moving at snail’s pace, believing that “in so great an Enterprise as that of England it is fitting to move with feet of lead.” By an irony that must have haunted him, Philip himself had urged the strengthening of the English navy when he was married to Mary Tudor: “The kingdom of England is and must always remain strong at sea since on this, the safety of the realm depends.” Now his Armada would have to face it in battle.

  The ruinous expense also terrified him. The fleet assembled for the Battle of Lepanto had emptied Spain’s coffers, even though the costs had been shared between Spain, Venice and the Papacy. This enterprise was on an even larger scale and of infinitely greater duration and, barring a putative contribution from Pope Sixtus V, the cost was to be borne by Spain alone. Philip’s Treasury was merely a way-station for the vast wealth plundered from his imperial territories in the New World and the Indies. Although in English eyes “his treasure comes to him as our salads to us,” Spanish cynics referred to the fabulous cargoes as “rain-drops,” for as fast as they were brought to Spain they vanished like rain falling on the parched earth of the Andalusian plains. Each year’s flota, or treasure fleet, was mortgaged before it had even put to sea, and its revenues were dispensed throughout Europe as soon as they were received, to pay bankers, traders and manufacturers, and meet the costs of maintaining Philip’s huge armies and the sprawling networks of paid spies, informers, agents provocateurs and foreign clients.15

  When Ferdinand and Isabella drove the Moors from Granada in 1492, their troops included large contingents from England, Italy, France and Germany and their weapons were imported from Flanders, Venice and Milan. Spanish dependence on foreign supplies of everything from foodstuffs to military manpower had grown still greater over the following century. Spanish noblemen found no honour in commerce, trade or industry, and Spain produced only a fraction of the goods it needed and even those were often of poor quality. As a result, almost everything—ships, cannon and the articles of war, basic commodities like grain, iron and textiles, and the luxuries sought by the rich—was manufactured abroad and imported at vast expense. A French economist noted that in the thirty-five years since the Spanish conquest of Peru, “more than a hundred million of gold and twice as much silver” had been shipped to Spain and yet “the Spaniard, being compelled by unavoidable necessity to come here for wheat, cloths, stuffs, dyestuffs, paper, books, even joinery and all handicraft products, goes to the ends of the earth to seek gold and silver and spices to pay us.” The continual creation of vast quantities of new gold and silver coins also fuelled ferocious inflation throughout Europe, driving up the prices that Spain had to pay and forcing the destitute to the brink of starvation.

  Fearing war “as a burnt child dreads the fire,” every cautious instinct had held Philip back as his allies and officials were urging him forward, but a week after receiving the news of Mary, Queen of Scots’, death, he at last took the final, irrevocable decision to launch the Enterprise of England. The execution of Mary should have altered nothing but the identity of Elizabeth’s successor on the throne, but in the two years between the formation of the plan and the sailing of the Armada, Philip made one other crucial change to the strategy he had laid down. The King of Poland was among those cautioning Philip to secure a base for the Armada before proceeding with the main invasion, “first seizing Ireland and the Isle of Wight as both of them will afford ports for the fleet . . . It would be better to take no steps at all than to take them insufficient to secure a victory,” but Philip ignored the advice. Far from making a feint or establishing any kind of toehold on Irish, Welsh or English territory, the Armada was now to head immediately for the Straits of Dover and a rendezvous with Parma’s invasion force. How that was to be achieved was almost the only aspect of the entire operation that Philip did not lay down in advance; it was simply assumed that as soon as the Armada hove into view, Parma’s invasion force would put to sea to meet it. “He [Santa Cruz] will sail up the Channel and anchor off Margate Point [the North Foreland on the Kent coast] . . . When you [Parma] see the passage assured by the arrival of the fleet . . . you will, if the weather permits, immediately cross with the whole army in the boats that you will have ready.” One of the most basic of military tenets is that no forces should ever attempt to effect a rendezvous within sight of the enemy. Philip’s plan for the commanders of his land and sea forces to “join hands off the Cape of Margate” violated this principle, but no attempt was ever made to bring them together to co-ordinate their tactics before the Armada sailed, or even to brie
f them about this crucial facet of the Enterprise. Philip and his officials made many mistakes in the preparation of the Armada, but none was to have more catastrophic consequences than this. 16

  His invasion plan required a spring tide—a particularly high tide— and a south-easterly wind set fair for the coast of England, yet a night calm enough to allow the flat-bottomed boats to make the crossing. It also required the thousands of troops to embark at breakneck speed and to do so either in such complete secrecy that the English and Dutch fleets would not be able to impede the crossing, or after the Armada had completely destroyed them. It was a combination of events that even a person with the most unquestioning faith in the power of the Almighty would have regarded as optimistic. However, preparations now began in earnest. A flurry of orders issued from the Escorial. Santa Cruz was to make ready to sail that spring. The galleys based at Barcelona were to join him at Lisbon and all available ships’ stores and “warlike provisions” were to be sent there at once. His agents were to redouble their efforts to find armaments, powder and shot, and food. Ship’s biscuit was procured from Alicante, Cartagena, Lisbon and Malaga—forty new ovens were built in Malaga to cope with the demand—and huge quantities of foodstuffs, masts, timbers, sailcloth, cordage and Stockholm tar (pitch) were brought to Spain from Scandinavia and the Baltic.

  The goods were shipped by the long route around the north of Scotland to avoid interception by the privateers and Queen’s galleons patrolling the Channel, and Elizabeth made furious complaint to the King of Denmark at this furtive trading with the Catholic enemy: “How cunningly the merchants of Danzig, Lubeck and other ports . . . have this summer time made great provision of grain and other victual and of all things belonging to shipping and carried the same to Spain by passing the north of Scotland and west of Ireland.” Rice was imported from Milan, cheese from the Baltic, and “1,000 pecks of corn and half a score horses” were shipped from Waterford to Lisbon for the use of the Armada; but the harvest throughout Europe had been poor and the Spanish demand drove the price of grain to unprecedented levels. Dried and salted fish, bacon, beans and lentils, wine, vinegar and olive oil also had to be acquired by purchase or compulsion from a Spanish population that was already suffering hardship. In the poorest regions, such as Estremadura, grain was so scarce that men were forced to supplement their diet with flour ground from acorns.17

  Among those charged with obtaining supplies was Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, an old campaigner who had fought at the battle of Lepanto in 1570, where he was wounded in the head and lost his left hand. He was captured by Moorish corsairs as he sailed for home and imprisoned for five years in Algiers, “fettered and manacled and threatened with death by impalement,” until a ransom of 500 gold ducats was paid. Cervantes’ travels over the searing high plains of Andalusia and Cordoba, requisitioning wheat and olive oil for the Armada, helped to inspire his greatest work, Don Quixote. He carried out his requisitioning duties with such enthusiasm that he was excommunicated twice by the Vicars General of Ecija and Cordoba for depleting the ecclesiastical granaries, but the opacity of the accounts he presented for his purchases led to his incarceration for a time in a Lisbon jail. He was still imprisoned there when the Armada sailed.

  Philip’s preparations were not confined to the logistics of manning, arming and equipping the fleet. Parma’s Army of Flanders was reinforced: 2,000 Spanish troops arrived in 1586 and a further 13,500— two thirds from Naples, the remainder from Spain—the following year, marching overland along “the Spanish Road,” the military corridor stretching 600 miles from Milan and Franche-Comté to Flanders. The Archduke Ferdinand of Austria also sent a regiment of troops, commanded by his son the Marquis of Burgholt. Spanish agents and ambassadors also began a diplomatic offensive to enlist support, further isolate England and protect Spain’s vulnerable flank in Flanders.

  Philip had to reconcile two incompatible aims. The Pope, the Emperor and the other Catholic sovereigns could be expected to support a Spanish invasion of England only if it was done in the name of a Holy Crusade to restore the country to Catholicism. Yet to avoid alarming the Protestant princedoms and kingdoms of Germany and Scandinavia (particularly the King of Denmark, who had a powerful fleet) and provoking them into forming a defensive alliance with Elizabeth, Philip had to give them the impression that the Enterprise of England was merely European war as usual—a dispute over trade and interference in Spain’s “domestic” affairs in The Netherlands, not a crusade.

  The Spanish ambassador in Paris, Don Bernardino de Mendoza, was a key figure in Philip’s plans, and he urged him to complete secrecy about the Enterprise of England, “in order not to awaken the evil action which would be exerted in all parts from France.” Mendoza had been expelled from England in January 1584 because his plots and intrigues against Elizabeth had “disturbed the realm.” As he boarded the ship taking him out of London, he turned to the Privy Counsellors who were escorting him. “Tell your Mistress that Bernardino de Mendoza was born not to disturb kingdoms but to conquer them.” He was determined to return in triumph and was one of the most active and strong proponents of the Enterprise of England. Given his head by Philip, he at once began to issue a stream of disinformation to keep Elizabeth and her Council off balance, while putting into operation long-planned strategies to foment insurrection in France, Ireland and Scotland, denying Elizabeth French support and threatening her with a war on two or even three fronts.18

  One of the few surviving portraits of Mendoza, in the collection of a Madrid museum, shows that, like his master, he favoured plain, black clothes, with no more decoration than a small ruff of fine lace at his neck. He had fine features and the high forehead of an intellectual, and covered his receding hair with a black velvet cap. His dark eyes stare out from the painting, directing a keen and penetrating gaze, not at the viewer, but at something hidden from our sight, and his mouth is slightly pursed as if in disapproval of the sinful world in which he finds himself. There is no visible warmth in his expression, only a cold and calculating air.

  No one in Europe, not even the Venetians, had more contacts and sources of information than Mendoza, and as the representative of the richest and most powerful nation on earth, the guardian of Catholic orthodoxy, he had access to people and areas barred to all other ambassadors. Ministers of the Crown sought him out and King Henri III of France often summoned him to discourse on policy. Henri’s comments were usually tailored with an eye to their ultimate audience at the Escorial in Spain, but Mendoza was shrewd enough to discern at least some of his true intent. The French King’s mother, Catherine de’ Medici, also sought Mendoza’s help and advice, and released titbits of gossip and information to him. She was his equal in guile and intrigue and he believed little of what she told him, but Spanish gold bought him many additional informants. The Duc de Guise and his brothers in the Catholic League, lavishly funded by Spain, yielded much valuable information and had the ability to destabilize the French Crown by force of arms. Mendoza was also closely allied with the Society of Jesus—the Jesuits—and maintained a link with the Paris Committee of Sixteen, a shadowy body ready to bring the Paris mob onto the streets.

  In addition, English, Scottish and Irish exiles brought Mendoza their information and sought his support for intrigues against Elizabeth. Even the English ambassador in Paris, Sir Edward Stafford, unpaid by the Queen and burdened by gambling debts, let it be known that he was eager to serve the King of Spain providing it was “not against the interest of his Mistress the Queen.” He did not elaborate on how betraying state secrets to the Spaniards could fail to be against the Queen’s interest. His treachery should not have been unexpected, for his brother had been involved in a plot to murder Elizabeth, and in January 1587, Stafford duly became Mendoza’s most valued informant, identified only as “Julio” or “the new confidant” in even the most secret dispatches. So valuable was he that, until a suitable go-between could be found, Mendoza even took “the risk of going to his house at night” to obtain
his information. In recognition of his services, Stafford received ever greater amounts of Philip’s largesse, beginning with “2,000 crowns” on 28 February 1587, which he earned by relaying the news of the execution just ten days earlier of Mary, Queen of Scots, and he fed Mendoza a stream of information about the state of England’s military preparations and the comings and goings of the fleets of Francis Drake and the Lord Admiral, Charles Howard.19

  The ambassador in Rome, Henriquez de Guzman, Count of Olivares, was meanwhile ordered to seek an immediate audience with Pope Sixtus V, Felice Peretti. Sixtus’s preference had been for Mary to be queen with an English Catholic prince or lord as her successor, and there was considerable acrimony between Rome and Madrid over the vexed question of who should now inherit Elizabeth’s throne. One of the Queen of Scots’ last acts had been to send a letter, smuggled out by her apothecary, urging Philip, “notwithstanding her death, [to] persevere in the English Enterprise as the quarrel was in the cause of God and was worthy of being maintained by so Catholic a King.” Philip needed no urging and was already taking steps to secure the documents that would bolster his flimsy claim to the thrones of England and Scotland. He ordered Mendoza to keep the letter “with great care,” together with the previous letter Mary had written detailing the bequest of her rights in the throne, and told him to take steps to “secure”—to keep under his control, by force if necessary—the witnesses to her wishes and actions. “If the other two [the apothecary and Mary’s secretary] have any inkling of it . . . they also may be treated in the same way.”