The Confident Hope of a Miracle

by Neil Hanson

  Medina-Sidonia at once sent Captain Pedro Heredia, “a soldier of great experience,” to Giraud de Mauleon, Seigneur de Gourdan and the Governor of Calais, to advise him of “the cause of our presence there and to offer him our friendship and good offices.” He found him “on the shore in a coach with his wife, watching to see whether there would be a battle.” Like his townspeople, scenting profit or the entertainment of a sea battle before their eyes, Gourdan had seen the fleets approaching and hurried to a vantage point. “Flemings, Walloons and Frenchmen came thick and threefold to behold it, admiring the exceeding greatness of the ships and their warlike order.” The cliffs of Dover were also lined with spectators, peering into the afternoon haze in the hope of seeing the decisive battle.

  Calais had been liberated from English rule only thirty years before and anti-English sentiment was still strong in the town. Gourdan, who had lost a leg fighting in that battle, showed his own private sympathy for the Spanish cause by sending his nephew “with a present of refreshments” for Medina-Sidonia. He also warned him that “the place wherein he had anchored was dangerous to remain, because the currents and counter-currents of that channel were very strong,” but, reluctant to identify himself too closely with the Spanish cause when the destiny of the French throne still hung in the balance, Gourdan was less accommodating to requests for supplies than Medina-Sidonia might have hoped, or Howard must have feared. He refused him the articles of war he was seeking but offered him the chance to purchase whatever additional provisions he needed, and boats were soon plying between the shore and the Armada. “Fresh victuals straight were brought abroad; captains and cavaliers for their money might have what they would, and gave the French so liberally as within twelve hours an egg was worth fivepence”—more than twenty times what they had been fetching before the Armada dropped anchor. A Spanish provision party was also sent ashore with 6,000 ducats to buy food but there was not enough in the whole region, let alone the town, to feed so many thousands of men and, while the officers and gentlemen adventurers were able to dine for a while on fresh fish, meat, fruit and vegetables, most of their men continued to subsist on a meagre diet from their ships’ dwindling stores of rotting provisions. 3

  Medina-Sidonia had also sent Secretary Geronimo de Arceo ashore with a further message for Parma, “to advertise him of the place where he now was, and that he could not tarry there without endangering the whole fleet.” “I am anchored here two leagues from Calais with the enemy’s fleet on my flank. They can cannonade me whenever they like and I shall be unable to do them much harm. If you can send me forty or fifty flyboats of your fleet I can, with their help, defend myself here until you are ready to come out.” It was the same futile request that he had made twenty-four hours earlier and his misunderstanding of the strength of Parma’s naval forces shows how poorly briefed he had been by his King. Philip had continued to give Medina-Sidonia specific instructions to rendezvous with Parma at sea or “off the Cape of Margate” as though Parma’s fleet was capable of sailing there unaided, even though the King well knew the true state of affairs. Parma had reminded him in January: “Your Majesty is well aware that without the support of the fleet, I could not cross over to England with these boats.” Dunkirk is separated from Margate by some forty sea miles. Had the invasion barges been able to cross those perilous waters, evading the Dutch flyboats in the coastal shallows and the English warships on the open ocean, they would scarcely have needed the assistance of the Armada to make a landing on English soil.

  Had Medina-Sidonia brought more galleys with him, and had they been able to survive the storms in the Bay of Biscay and the Western Approaches, they might have tipped the balance off Flanders, where they would have been more than a match for the Dutch flyboats. But Philip chose to ignore the pleas of both Santa Cruz and Medina-Sidonia for a galley fleet to be added to the Armada strength and instead had retained his fleets in the Mediterranean to guard against a surprise attack by the Turks and ward off raids by Barbary corsairs. Only four galleys had sailed with the Armada and all had been driven to part from it by the storms that assailed them before they had even reached the Channel. Medina-Sidonia’s galleasses might have made short work of the Dutch flyboats, but he dared not spare them from the defence of the Armada; he feared being overwhelmed if he divided his forces. Parma had hired 16 ships for use as transport craft and impounded almost 30 others, but claimed to have fewer than a dozen flyboats available. Seymour reported that Parma had rather more—“40 sails of flyboats”—but even if this were true, they were far outnumbered by those of the Dutch rebels, who mustered at least 400. Parma had made some attempts to remedy his shortage of such craft but he delegated the supervision of the task to others and the construction of new flyboats in the shipyards around Dunkirk was beset with problems. Among the shipwrights and carpenters were many sympathizers with the rebel cause intent on sabotage. So slow was the work and so poor the workmanship that some completed ships had to be dismantled to remove the green or rotten planks used in building them; one had no running rigging and another had no guns and its mast had been left unstepped. Yet another was so unseaworthy that it was left stranded and waterlogged on a mudbank as soon as it was launched. 4

  Many of the invasion barges were no better constructed. The seams of some were left uncaulked and sprang leaks as soon as they were lowered into the water. Others began to leak when they were loaded and one sank to the bottom of the canal with its full complement of soldiers during a practice embarkation. English spies were well aware of their deficiencies and Seymour dismissed any idea that they could be used for an invasion. “The flat-bottomed boats . . . be no boats to be hazarded to the sea, no more than wherries or cockleboats.” The majority were “60–70 feet long and 15–20 feet wide, and draw no more than three feet of water. They can carry men on and below deck, 200 men each,” but equipped with neither guns, masts nor sails, nor even oarlocks, the flat-bottomed barges were virtually incapable of being moved under their own power and were helpless against the fast, agile and heavily armed flyboats. Parma was also “short of good pilots and even of seamen . . . the reason for this is not that the few we have are not well-treated or that we have neglected to obtain more, but because the well-disposed ones are so few and the Hollanders and Zeelanders are forbidden under heavy penalties to serve us.”

  Parma had been the first to propose an invasion from Flanders but the repeated postponements of the Armada and the loss of secrecy and surprise had caused a rapid waning of his enthusiasm. He voiced so many criticisms of the Enterprise that, tiring of his nephew’s complaints, the King eventually ordered him to silence and acquiescence. Despite this, Parma had urged in April that the Armada should be deferred long enough to give him the opportunity to take the deep-water port of Flushing and the island of Walcheren, and when Philip refused to consider this, Parma’s emissary, Luis Cabrera de Cordoba, warned him that it was going to be impossible for Parma’s barges ever to meet the Armada. “The Spanish galleons draw 25 or 30 feet, and around Dunkirk they will not find that much water for several leagues. The enemy [Dutch] ships draw so much less that they can safely place themselves to prevent anything coming out of Dunkirk. Since the junction of the barges from Flanders with the Armada is the whole point of the enterprise, then it is impossible—why not give it up now and save much time and money?”5

  On 22 June Parma again wrote to the King, complaining that Medina-Sidonia “seems to have persuaded himself that I may be able to go out and meet him with these boats. These things cannot be . . . If I were to attempt going out to meet the Duke and we came across any armed English or rebel ships, they could destroy us with the greatest of ease. Neither the valour of our men nor any other human effort could save us. This was one of the principal reasons which moved your Majesty to lay down the precise and prudent orders you did.” Philip wrote in the margin, “God grant that no embarrassment may come of this,” but sent no reply. Martin de Bertendona, commander of the Levant squadron, also raised with the
King the issue of the lack of a deep-water port in the Channel, but similarly failed to elicit a response.

  However, in a later annotation he made on a dispatch from Medina-Sidonia, Philip showed that he was aware that the absolute, overriding requirement to rendezvous with Parma’s forces off the Cape of Margate could not be achieved until Medina-Sidonia had cleared the seas of the English fleet. After receiving Medina-Sidonia’s letter of 10 June asking for details of where they were to rendezvous, Parma had sent yet another furious dispatch to Philip, once more pointing out the impossibility of his landing craft putting out to sea to meet the Armada offshore. “These vessels cannot run the gauntlet of warships; they cannot even withstand large waves.” Unfortunately for Medina-Sidonia, the officer who left Flanders on 14 July to convey a similar message to the Armada was delayed and diverted by storms, shipwreck and the presence of the English fleet, and his message never arrived.

  As long ago as 13 May, Parma had been “anxiously looking from hour to hour for news of the Duke,” and he complained again on 18 July that he was “greatly grieved at receiving no news.” Medina-Sidonia was no less disturbed that at nightfall on Saturday 6 August he was still awaiting a reply from Parma. One dispatch had been lost, and due allowance needs to be made for the difficulties in maintaining communications over long distances, especially when one of the parties was aboard a fleet on the high seas, but they can easily be exaggerated. The roads were undoubtedly terrible, and the threat from robbers, partisans, religious opponents and gangs of deserters on land, and of privateers, pirates, Sea Beggars and the English navy off the coast was real enough, but dispatches were sent in fast, armed and oared pinnaces, often sailing under false colours in hostile waters. There is some evidence that Juan Gil used such a subterfuge. Two English couriers sailing out of Rye encountered some fishermen who told them that a many-oared ship “full of Englishmen,” and flying the Queen’s flag as well as the banner of Santiago, had passed them, claiming to be on the way to bring news of the Armada to the Squadron of the Narrow Seas.6

  Given the relative speed of a fast zabra or pinnace and the snail-like pace of the Armada, at least one of the stream of messages that Medina-Sidonia began sending as soon as the Armada reached the open sea should certainly have been with Parma weeks before the arrival date ascribed to it. He had showed himself willing to wait weeks and even months before replying to urgent communications from his King, and he was perfectly capable of delaying a response to Medina-Sidonia. The one message he did send had not reached Medina-Sidonia, but had another dispatch been sent while the Armada was at sea, only similarly atrocious bad luck or bad navigation would have prevented it from reaching its destination. The course the Armada was to follow was known and a fleet occupying several square miles of sea space was almost impossible to miss in the close confines of the Channel. In the event, the first dispatch from Parma did not arrive until the Armada was already anchored beneath the cliffs of Calais. The “fatal misunderstanding” between the two men “which wrecked the campaign” had continued to the end.

  Communications between the English and Dutch fleets were as bad as those between Medina-Sidonia and Parma, but had Elizabeth or her commanders had greater faith in the ability of the Dutch to keep Parma’s troops pinned in harbour, Seymour’s Squadron of the Narrow Seas could have joined Howard from the start of the campaign. Seymour had seen no more of the Dutch navy than an occasional sloop patrolling the coast close inshore, but the Dutch were more than ready. Defeated again and again on land, the rebels would not have spurned the chance to attack Parma’s forces in their cumbersome barges at sea. If there were few ships visible, it was because Justin of Nassau was hoping to lure Parma’s forces out of harbour by giving them the impression that the Dutch navy was elsewhere or unprepared.

  Each appearance of Seymour’s blockading squadron over the horizon must have driven the Dutch to distraction, for they could not alert their English allies to their plan without risking its betrayal: had two commanders of the English land forces in The Netherlands not recently taken Parma’s bribes to surrender their fortified positions without a shot being fired? Nor had they much reason to trust the English when Elizabeth and her commissioners displayed every sign of being willing to conclude a peace treaty that would deliver them into Philip’s hands. However, the news that the Armada was in the Channel and that the English had so far failed to dent it, let alone defeat it, changed Dutch plans. They could not risk a confrontation with the powerful warships of the Armada by pursuing Parma’s barges out to sea, and instead the flyboats emerged from their hiding places and took up positions blockading the inshore waters along the coast around Dunkirk, where Justin of Nassau “was resolved there to live and die.”

  Seymour’s pleas to be relieved of his blockading duties were finally successful when the two fleets reached Calais and fresh orders arrived from Court. “Forasmuch as Her Majesty sees how it imports her service to have somewhat done to distress the Spanish navy before they shall join with the Duke of Parma’s forces by sea, her pleasure is that you should join with the Lord Admiral to do your best endeavour.” His squadron of “36 ships . . . whereof five were large galleons,” including the Rainbow and the Vanguard, the newest and finest ships in the entire fleet, was now rapidly approaching Calais, tacking into the breeze. Unlike those of the rest of the fleet, their shot-lockers and powder stores had not been depleted by the fighting in the Channel and, fully armed, Seymour’s men must have been thirsting for their share of the action as they took up station “off Scales Cliffs, about eight in the evening.”7

  Medina-Sidonia’s mood must have grown even blacker as he saw this potent new addition to the already powerful English fleet, but his position was about to worsen still more. Parma had deliberately scattered his troops to confuse the Dutch and their English allies about his intentions and prevent them from massing their fleet and forces near Dunkirk. In this he was successful; the Dutch remained uncertain of his true target—was it to be England or a sudden attack on one of their own strongholds?—and they held back many of their ships to maintain the blockades on Sluys, Antwerp and the northern coast. The obvious disadvantage in Parma’s tactics was that, once he had definite news of the Armada’s arrival, it would take him time to move his troops to the embarkation point. Medina-Sidonia’s first indication of that came only as he rode at anchor off Calais at dawn the following morning, Sunday 7 August, when Don Rodrigo Tello, sent ahead by pinnace two weeks previously to tell Parma that the Armada had reached Ushant, at last returned to the flagship in Calais Roads. The news he brought must have been profoundly dispiriting to Medina-Sidonia. Tello had found Parma still in Bruges and “although he had shown great satisfaction at the news of the Armada being arrived” and promised that within six days everything would be ready, when Tello left Dunkirk the previous evening Parma had still not arrived there and “they were not embarking either the men or the munition.”

  Another of Medina-Sidonia’s returning messengers, Juan Gil, reported that Parma kept state in his opulent apartments and showed little apparent urgency for the task at hand. One witness claimed that Parma acted “as if he did not believe that the news of the Armada’s coming could be true,” but after the number of times he had been told by his King to stand ready for the Armada, only to be then informed that its sailing had been postponed, Parma could have been forgiven that reaction. There is other evidence that the Armada’s arrival came as something of a surprise to at least some of the Spaniards in The Netherlands. The English commissioners still engaged in the prolonged and meaningless peace negotiations with Parma’s representatives at Bourbourg did not receive word from England that the first battle had been fought off Plymouth until 6 August. They at once broke off talks and left, to the surprise of their counterparts, who wrote to Parma claiming that this might be a negotiating ploy. However, the fact that they were not informed of the impending arrival of the Armada does not mean that Parma was equally unaware, and he was clearly taking steps to preserve what
secrecy he could, for on 5 August it was reported that he had “suffered no stranger this seven or eight days to come to him, or to see his army and ships, but he has blindfolded them.”8

  Twenty-four hours after Rodrigo Tello reported back to Medina-Sidonia, Secretary Arceo sent word from Dunkirk that Parma had still not arrived there, “the munitions were not embarked, and that it seemed to him impossible that all things would be prepared within a fortnight.” This was much too pessimistic an assessment, and Arceo may have misunderstood a comment by one of Parma’s aides: “God give us fifteen days of calm weather to do what we must,” which presumably included the time required to cross the Channel, make the landing and secure the bridgehead. Medina-Sidonia could only send yet another dispatch to Parma “to urge him to come out suddenly,” and he also sent the Inspector-General of the Armada, Don Jorge Manrique, to give Parma a personal account of “the state of the Armada and to represent to you the urgent need of providing a port for it, without which it will doubtless be lost.” How Parma was supposed to provide this was not specified, but his conversation with Manrique degenerated into a furious row. Manrique accused him of failing to prepare his forces and sabotaging the Enterprise of England and Parma had to be restrained from attacking him.

  As soon as Manrique had been hustled out of his presence, Parma wrote to the King defending his preparations for the invasion. He had reacted with disbelief to the suggestion that he should send flyboats to aid the Armada and expressed his anger that, far from the Armada’s having cleared the Channel of enemy shipping, it had arrived in Calais bringing with it the entire English fleet. The seven leagues that separated him from Medina-Sidonia might as well be seventy; if the Armada could secure the seas, Parma was ready and willing to embark his troops and proceed with the invasion, but he could not be expected to fight the Armada’s naval battles for it, or to put to sea without the protection of a fleet. Contrary to the claims of Medina-Sidonia’s emissaries, “the boats are, and have been for months, in a proper condition for the task” and though “the boats are so small that it is impossible to keep the troops on board of them for long—there is no room to turn round and they would certainly fall ill, rot and die—the putting of the men on board . . . is done in a very short time and I am confident that in this respect, there will be no shortcoming in Your Majesty’s service.”9