<1>The gloomy anticipations of some of the members of the dissolved House of Commons with respect to their personal safety were not realised. Aug. 12.The leaders of the Commons untouched.Phelips and Seymour, Coke and Glanville returned in peace to their homes. Mansell, indeed, was summoned before the Council; but he answered boldly that he could not be touched without a violation of the liberties of Parliament, and was dismissed with nothing worse than a reprimand.[1]
In fact it was no part of Buckingham’s policy to drive the nation to extremity. Full of confidence in himself, he fancied that Buckingham’s intentions.he had but to use the few months’ breathing space allowed him to convince the electors that their late representatives had been in the wrong. The time had come which he had apparently foreseen when he conversed with Eliot at Westminster. He had asked for necessary support, and had been denied. A few days would show the King of France at peace at home, turning his sword against Spain and the allies of Spain abroad. A few months would <2>show the great English fleet returning with the spoils of Spanish cities and the captured treasures of the New World. Then a fresh Parliament would assemble round the throne to acknowledge the fortitude of the King and the prescience of his minister.
A few days after the dissolution news came from France which dashed to the ground the hopes which had been formed of The peace with the Huguenots comes to nothing.the cessation of the civil war. Many persons about the Court of Louis had no liking for Richelieu’s policy of toleration. The Prince of Condé, if report spoke truly, sent a hint to Toiras, who commanded the French troops outside Rochelle, that peace must in one way or another be made impossible. To carry such counsels into execution presented no difficulties to Toiras. The Rochellese, pleased with the news that peace had been made at Fontainebleau, pressed out without suspicion into the fields to gather in their harvest. Toiras directed his cannon upon the innocent reapers. Many of them were slain, and Toiras then proceeded to set fire to the standing corn. Loud was the outcry of Aug. 10.the indignant citizens within the walls. It was impossible, they said, to trust the King’s word. The ratification of the treaty was refused, and the war seemed likely to blaze up once more with all its horrors.[2] The English ships were now in the hands of the French admiral, and in a naval engagement which took place off Rochelle, Sept. 5.Defeat of Soubise.on September 5, Soubise was entirely defeated, and driven to take an ignominious refuge in an English port.
Although such a calamity could hardly have been foretold by anyone, it was none the less disastrous to Buckingham’s How it affected Buckingham.design of conciliating the English nation. All the long intrigue carried on with the assistance of Nicholas was rendered useless. The English ships were in French hands, and they would doubtless be used against Rochelle. It was easy to foresee what a handle would thus be given to Buckingham’s accusers.
<3>It is probable that the renewal of hostilities was already known to Charles when the Privy Council met at Woodstock on August 14, Aug. 14.the Sunday after the dissolution. It was evidently the King’s intention to show that he would take no serious step without the advice of the Privy Council. Its members Banishment of the priests resolved on.unanimously approved of a proclamation for the banishment of the Roman Catholic priests, of the continuance of the preparations for The fleet to go, and Privy seals to be issued.sending out the fleet, and of the issue of Privy seals, to raise what was practically a forced loan, in order to meet its expenses.[3]
If money had been needed for the fleet alone, there would have been no such pressing need. In addition to the 10,000l. borrowed in August, no less than 98,000l. were brought into the Exchequer in the months of August and September on account of the Queen’s portion,[4] and Charles, before August was over, was quietly talking to the French ambassador of diverting part of the new loan to some other purpose.[5] In point of fact Sept. 17.The Privy seals at last issued.the order for preparing the Privy seals was not issued till September 17,[6] and the fleet was at sea before a single penny of the loan came into the King’s hands. Charles, however, had many needs, and he may perhaps have thought that there would be less opposition to the loan if he demanded it for the purpose of fitting out the fleet.
Charles had thus, after dismissing his Parliament, been able to convince or cajole his Privy Council. But he could neither August.Charles’s domestic troubles.convince nor cajole his wife. The promises lightly made when hope was young he had repudiated and flung aside. He was unable to understand why the Queen, who had, upon the faith of those promises, consented to leave her mother’s care for a home in a strange land, <4>should feel aggrieved when the Catholics, whom she had come to protect, were again placed under the pressure of the penal laws. A few days after the dissolution he was at Beaulieu, hunting in the New Forest, whilst Henrietta Maria was established at Titchfield, The Queen at Titchfield.on the other side of Southampton Water. There he visited her from time to time; but, in the temper in which they both were, there was little chance of a reconciliation. Charles never thought of taking the slightest blame to himself for the estrangement which had arisen between them. It was his wife’s business, he held, to love and obey him, just as it was the business of the House of Commons to vote him money. Sometimes he sent Buckingham to threaten or to flatter the Queen by turns. Sometimes he came in person to teach her what her duties were. If he was blind to his own errors he was sharpsighted enough to perceive that his wife’s French attendants were doing their best to keep her displeasure alive, and were teaching her to regard herself as a martyr, and to give as much time as possible to spiritual exercises and to the reading of books of devotion.[7] Dispute about the Ladies of the Bedchamber.To counteract these tendencies in the Queen, Charles wished to place about her the Duchess of Buckingham, the Countess of Denbigh, and the Marchioness of Hamilton, the wife, the sister, and the niece of his own favourite minister, and he desired her at once to admit them as Ladies of the Bedchamber.
Although this demand was not in contradiction with the letter of the marriage treaty,[8] it was in complete opposition to its spirit, and the young Queen fired up in anger at the proposal. She told Charles that what he asked was contrary to the contract of marriage. Nothing, she told her own followers, would induce her to admit spies into her privacy.
<5>The strife grew fierce. The guard-room at Titchfield was used on Sundays for the service of the English Church, according to The English sermon at Titchfield.the custom which prevailed in houses occupied by the King. Against this the Queen protested as an insult to herself, and argued that whilst Charles was at Beaulieu, she was herself the mistress of the house. Lady Denbigh, however, took part against her, and the service was not discontinued. At last the Queen lost all patience, made an incursion into the room at sermon time, and walked up and down laughing and chattering with her French ladies as loudly as possible. Practical jokes upon the preacher.The preacher soon found himself a butt for the practical jokes of the Frenchmen of the household. One day, as he was sitting on a bench in the garden, a gun was fired off behind a hedge close by. The frightened man fancied an attempt had been made upon his life, and pointed to some marks upon the bench as having been made by the shot aimed at himself. Tillières, who had come back to England as chamberlain to the Queen, was called in to adjudicate, and, having sat down on several parts of the bench, gravely argued that as he could not sit anywhere without covering some of the marks, and as, moreover, the clergyman was very corpulent, whilst he was himself very thin, the shot which had made the marks must certainly have passed through the person of the complainant, if his story had been true.[9]
If Charles was hardly a match for his wife, he had no doubt at all that he was a match for half the Continent. Those vast enterprises which he had been unable to bring himself to disavow Rusdorf urges Charles to assist the King of Denmark.in the face of the House of Commons had still a charm for his mind. In vain Rusdorf, speaking on behalf of his master, the exiled Frederick, urged upon him the necessity of concentrating his forces in one quarter, and argued that the ten thousand landsmen on board the fleet would be useless at Lisbon or Cadiz, but would be invaluable on the banks of the Elbe or the Weser, where <6>Christian of Denmark was with difficulty making head against Tilly.[10]
As the attack upon Spain was the first object with Charles, he listened more readily to the Dutch Commissioners, who had The Dutch Commissioners in England.come to England in order to draw up a treaty of alliance. Naturally the Dutchmen cared more about the war with Spain than about the war in Germany, and when the treaty which they came to negotiate was completed it fixed accurately the part to be taken by the two countries in common maritime enterprise, whilst everything relating to hostilities on land was expressed in vague generalities. The States-General had already agreed to lend Charles 2,000 English soldiers in exchange for the same number of recruits, and to send twenty vessels to join the fleet at Plymouth.[11] By Sept. 8.The Treaty of Southampton.the new treaty, which was signed at Southampton on September 8, an alliance offensive and defensive was established between England and the States-General. The Flemish harbours were to be kept constantly blockaded by a Dutch fleet, whilst the English were to perform the same task off the coast of Spain. Whenever a joint expedition was concerted between the two nations the States-General were to contribute one ship for every four sent out by England. The details of a somewhat similar arrangement for joint operations by land were left, perhaps intentionally, in some obscurity.[12]
To Rusdorf the preference shown for maritime over military enterprise was the death-knell of his master’s hope of recovering the Palatinate. Charles was far too sanguine to take so gloomy a view of the situation. He had now openly Open breach with Spain.broken with Spain. He had recalled Trumbull, his agent at Brussels, and he had no longer any minister residing in the Spanish dominions. He had followed up this step by the issue of letters of marque to those who wished to prey on Spanish commerce. Yet he had no idea of limiting hostilities to a combat between England and Spain. “By the <7>grace of God,” he said to a Swedish ambassador who visited him at Titchfield, “I will carry on the war if I risk my crown. I will have reason of the Spaniards, and will set matters straight again. My brother-in-law shall be restored, and I only wish that all other potentates would do as I am doing.”[13]
In fact, it was because Charles had not been content to pursue a mere war of vengeance against Spain, that he had entered upon those extended engagements which more than anything else had brought him into collision with the House of Commons. Those engagements he had no intention of abandoning, and he hoped that if some temporary way of fulfilling them could be found, the success of the fleet would give him a claim to the gratitude of his subjects, and would enable him to place himself at the head of an alliance more distinctly Protestant than when he had been hampered by the necessity of looking to France for co-operation. In the Treaty of Southampton the foundation for such an alliance had been laid, and it now only remained to extend it, with the needful modifications, to the King of Denmark and the North German Princes. Buckingham to go to the Hague.It was therefore arranged that Buckingham should go in person to the Hague, where the long-deferred conference was expected at last to take place. It was useless for him to go with empty hands. If Charles could not procure the money which he had already bound himself to supply to the King of Denmark, it was hardly likely that Christian would care to enter into fresh negotiations with so bad a paymaster. Yet, how was the money to be found? One desperate resource there was, of which Charles had spoken already in a rhetorical flourish, and of which he was now resolved to make use in sober earnest. The Crown jewels to be pawned.The plate and jewels of the Crown, the hereditary possession of a long line of kings, might well be pledged in so just and so holy a cause. In England, it was true, no one would touch property to which his right might possibly be challenged, on the ground that the inalienable possessions of the Crown could not pass, even for a time, into the hands of a subject; but on the Continent there <8>would be no fear of the peculiar doctrines of English law. The danger was that, if once the precious gems were sent to the Continent, there might be some difficulty in recovering them. At last it was decided that the plate and jewels should be carried by Buckingham to Holland. It was probably argued that in that rich and friendly country men might be found who would both accept the security and be faithful to their trust.[14]
Want of money is a sad trial to any Government, and in one part of England it had already brought Charles into difficulties with his subjects. Towards the end of August serious apprehensions were entertained for the safety of Harwich. It was known that Dunkirk was alive with preparations for war, and August.The Essex trained bands at Harwich.no part of England was so liable to attack as the flat and indented coast of Essex. Orders were therefore issued by the Privy Council to put Landguard Fort in repair, and to occupy Harwich with a garrison of 3,000 men, chosen from the Essex trained bands. So far everything had been done according to rule. Each county was bound to provide men for its own defence. But the Crown was also bound to repay the expenses which it might incur, and this time there was an ominous silence about repayment. Under these circumstances the Earl of Warwick, Holland’s elder brother — who was now in high favour with Buckingham — made a proposition which looks like the germ of the extension of ship-money to the inland counties. The adjacent shires, he said, were interested in the safety of Harwich. Let them, therefore, be called on to contribute to its defence in men and money. The adjacent shires, however, refused to do anything of the kind; and the vague promises of payment at some future time, which was all that the Government had in its power to offer, were met by the firm resolution of the Essex men that they, at any rate, would not serve at their own charges. Making a <9>virtue of necessity, the Council ordered the men to be sent back to their homes, and directed Pennington, who, since his return from Dieppe, had been watching, with a small squadron, the movements of the Dunkirk privateers, to betake himself to the protection of Harwich. Thus ended Charles’s first attempt so to construe the obligations of the local authorities as to compel them to take upon themselves the duties of the central Government.[15]
With all Charles’s efforts to conciliate public opinion by a bold and, as he hoped, a successful foreign policy, there was no thought of throwing open the offices of State to those who were likely to be regarded with confidence by the nation. Yet it was not long before Sept. 6.Death of Morton.an opportunity occurred of which a wise ruler would have taken advantage. On September 6, Morton died of a fever which seized him a few days after his return from the Netherlands. The vacant secretaryship was at once conferred upon Sir John Coke, the only man Sir John Coke, secretary.amongst the Government officials who had incurred the positive dislike of the Opposition leaders of the Commons, in whose eyes the subserviency which he always showed to Buckingham more than counterbalanced the excellent habits of business which he undoubtedly possessed. The honesty of purpose upon which that subserviency was based was unlikely to make any impression on their minds.
Buckingham was not left without a warning of the danger he was incurring by his refusal to make any effort to conciliate public opinion. Sept. 8.Cromwell’s letter.Lord Cromwell, who had left his service under Mansfeld for a more hopeful appointment in the new expedition, had brought back with him from the Netherlands his old habit of speaking plainly. “They say,” he wrote to the Duke, “the best lords of the Council knew nothing of Count Mansfeld’s journey or this fleet, which discontents even the best sort, if not all. They say it is a very <10>great burden your Grace takes upon you, since none knows anything but you. It is conceived that not letting others bear part of this burden now you bear, it may ruin you, which Heaven forbid.”[16]
The expedition upon which so many hopes were embarked was by no means in a prosperous condition. For a long time the August.Bad condition of the troops at Plymouth.soldiers had been left unpaid. Before the end of August there was a new press of 2,000 men, to fill up the vacancies caused by sickness and desertion.[17] The farmers of South Devon, upon whom the soldiers were billeted, refused to supply food to their unwelcome guests as soon as they discovered that their pockets were empty. Like Mansfeld’s men eight months before, the destitute recruits made up their minds that they would not die of starvation. Roaming about the country in bands, they killed sheep before the eyes of their owners, and told the farmers to their faces that rather than famish they would kill their oxen too.[18]
At one time there had been a talk of Buckingham’s taking the command in person, and a commission had been made out in his name; but he could not be at the Hague and on the coast of Spain at the same time, and he perhaps fancied that he could do better service as a diplomatist than as an admiral. At all events, whilst, much to the amusement of the sailors, he retained the pompous title of generalissimo of the fleet, he appointed Cecil to command the expedition.Sir Edward Cecil, the grandson of Burghley and the nephew of Salisbury, to assume the active command, with the more modest appellation of general.[19] Cecil had served for many years in the Dutch army, with the reputation of being a good officer. He was now for the first time to be trusted with an independent command, and the selection was the more hazardous as he was entirely unacquainted with naval warfare. From the first he had attached himself closely to Buckingham, who had in vain supported his <11>claims to the command in the Palatinate in 1620, but who had now sufficient influence to reverse the decision then come to in favour of Sir Horace Vere. Essex and Denbigh.The Earl of Essex, who was to go as Vice-Admiral, knew as little of the sea as Cecil himself; and the same might be said of the Rear-Admiral, the Earl of Denbigh, whose only known qualification for the post lay in the accident that he was married to Buckingham’s sister.
Whatever Cecil’s powers as a general may have been, he had at least a soldier’s eye to discern the deficiencies of the troops Sept. 8.Cecil’s report on the troops.under his orders, and he professed himself as puzzled as the Commons had been to discover why, if no attempt had been made to convert the recruits into trained soldiers, they had been levied in May for service in September. Buckingham, too, he complained, had been recommending officers to him who were not soldiers at all, and whom ‘he neither could nor durst return.’ The arms which the men should have been taught to handle were still on board ship in the harbour. On September 8, only three out of the twenty Dutch ships promised had arrived at Plymouth.[20]
There was, however, one direction in which Cecil’s energy could hardly be thrown away. In answer to the complaints made in Parliament Measures taken against pirates.it had been announced that Sir Francis Steward would be sent out with a squadron to clear the English seas of the Sallee rovers. Steward’s attempt had ended in total failure. According to the Mayor of Plymouth, his ships had been outsailed by the pirates. According to his own account the weather had been against him. Parliament, he said, instead of grumbling against the King’s officers, ought to have passed an Act ensuring them a fair wind.[21]
The outcry from the western ports waxed louder than ever. It was reported that danger had arisen from another quarter. No less than ten privateers had slipped through the Dutch <12>blockading squadron in front of Dunkirk,[22] and were roaming the seas to prey upon English commerce. Cecil, Sept. 9.Argall’s cruise.when he heard the news, sent out Sir Samuel Argall in search of the enemy. Argall, after a seven days’ cruise, returned without having captured a single pirate or privateer; but he was followed by a long string of French and Dutch prizes, which he suspected of carrying on traffic with the Spanish Netherlands. Amongst these was one, the name of which was, a few months later, to flash into sudden notoriety — the ‘St. Peter,’ of Havre de Grace.[23]
On September 15[24] the King himself arrived at Plymouth to see the fleet and to encourage the crews by his presence. The King and Buckingham at Plymouth.Charles went on board many of the ships, and reviewed the troops on Roborough Downs.[25] When he left on the 24th, Buckingham, who had accompanied him, remained behind to settle questions of precedence amongst the officers, and to infuse, if it were possible, some of his own energetic spirit into the commanders. As usual, he anticipated certain success, and he was unwise enough to obtain from the King a public declaration of his intention to confer a peerage upon Cecil, on the ground that the additional rank would give him greater authority over his subordinates. It was given out that the title selected was that of Viscount <13>Wimbledon, though there was not time formally to make out the patent before the sailing of the fleet. Buckingham seems to have forgotten that honours granted before success has crowned an undertaking are apt to become ridiculous in case of failure.
This was not the only foolish thing done by Buckingham at Plymouth. The sight of Glanville, the author of the last address of Glanville sent on board the fleet.the Commons at Oxford, quietly fulfilling his duties as Recorder of the Devonshire port, inspired him with the idea of maliciously sending a Parliamentary lawyer to sea as secretary to the fleet. Glanville pleaded in vain that the interruption to his professional duties would cause him a heavy loss, and that, as no one but his clerk could, even under ordinary circumstances, decipher his handwriting, it was certain that when he came to set down the jargon of sailors, even that confidential servant would be unequal to the task.[26]
At last, on October 3, forty sail of the great fleet were sent on to Falmouth. The remainder lay in the Sound waiting for their Dutch comrades. Oct. 3.Sailing of part of the fleet.They had not long to expect their coming; on the 4th the Dutch ships were descried, showing their topsails above the waves, as if, as men said, they had come to escort the English fleet upon its voyage. On the 5th the anchors were weighed, and the united fleet passed out of the harbour and rounded the point where the soft woods of Mount Edgcumbe slope down to the waters of the Sound. Its fair prospects were soon interrupted. The wind chopped round to the south-west, and began to blow hard. Essex, with the foremost vessels, took refuge in Falmouth, but The storm at Plymouth.the bulk of the fleet put back to its old anchorage. Plymouth harbour was no safe refuge in such a gale, in the days when as yet the long low line of the breakwater had not arisen to curb the force of the rolling waves. By the next morning all bonds of discipline had given way before the anxious desire for safety, and the waters of the Sound were covered with a jostling throng of vessels hurrying, regardless of the safety of each other, to the secure retreat of the <14>Catwater. Orders, if given at all, met with but little attention, and Cecil himself was forced to get into a boat, and to pass from vessel to vessel, in order to exact the least semblance of obedience.
Cecil had long ceased to look upon the expedition with his patron’s confidence of success. Little good, he thought, would come of Cecil’s despondency.a voyage commenced so late in the season, The spectacle of disorder which he now witnessed left a deep impression on his mind. The discipline which comes from an energetic and well-arranged organisation was entirely wanting, and it was not replaced by the discipline which springs from old habits of comradeship, or from the devotion which makes each man ready to sacrifice himself to the common cause. Buckingham, who in 1624 had fancied that military power was to be measured by the number of enterprises simultaneously undertaken, fancied in 1625 that the warlike momentum of a fleet or army was to be measured by its numerical size. He had yet to learn — if indeed he ever learnt it — that thousands of raw recruits do not make an army, and that thousands of sailors, dragged unwillingly into a service which they dislike, do not make a navy. Cecil knew it, and the expedition carried with it the worst of omens in a hesitating and despondent commander.[27]
On the 8th the fleet, laden with the fortunes of Buckingham and Charles, put to sea once more. It sailed, as it had been gathered together, Oct. 8.The fleet again puts to sea.without any definite plan. There were general instructions that a blow should be struck somewhere on the Spanish coast before the treasure ships arrived, but no special enterprise had been finally selected. At a council held in the King’s presence at Plymouth, Lisbon, Cadiz, and San Lucar had been mentioned as points of attack. The general opinion had been in favour of an attempt on San Lucar, which, if captured, might be used as a basis of operations against Cadiz and the expected treasure fleet. Objections had, however, been raised, and the whole question had been reserved for further discussion on the spot. <15>As soon, therefore, as the fleet rounded Cape St. Vincent, Cecil called a council. The masters of the ships declared that it would be Oct. 20.The council of war at sea.dangerous to enter the harbour of San Lucar so late in the year. Some who were present were strongly in favour of seizing Gibraltar as a place of great strength, and easy to be manned, victualled, and held if once taken. The majority concurred in rejecting the proposal, but hesitated between Cadiz and San Lucar. Upon this Argall observed that an easy landing could be effected at St. Mary Port in Cadiz Bay. From thence a march of twelve miles would bring the troops to San Lucar, a place which was certain to capitulate to so large a force without difficulty.
Argall’s advice was adopted, and orders were given to anchor off St. Mary Port; but as the fleet swept up to the station Oct. 22.The fleet in Cadiz Bay.a sight presented itself too tempting to be resisted. Far away on the opposite side of the bay lay twelve tall ships with fifteen galleys by their side,[28] covering a crowd of smaller vessels huddled under the walls of Cadiz. Essex, who led the way in Argall’s ship, the ‘Swiftsure,’ disobeyed his orders, and dashed at once upon the prey.
No provision had been made for this conjuncture of affairs. To do him justice, Cecil did his best to repair his mistake. Sailing through Essex’s division, he shouted orders to right and left to crowd all sail after the Vice-Admiral. But he shouted now as vainly in Cadiz Bay as he shouted a few weeks before in Plymouth harbour. The merchant captains and the merchant crews, pressed unwillingly into the service, had no stomach for the fight. Essex was left alone to his glory and his danger, and Cecil, who did not even know the names of the vessels under his command, was unable to call the laggards to account.
Of all this the Spanish commanders were necessarily ignorant. Instead of turning upon the unsupported ‘Swiftsure,’ they cut their cables and fled up the harbour. It was a <16>moment for prompt decision. Had a Drake or a Raleigh been Flight of the Spaniards.in command, an attempt would doubtless have been made to follow up the blow. Cecil was no sailor, and he allowed his original orders for anchoring to be quietly carried out.
At nightfall a council of war was summoned on board the flagship. The project of marching upon San Lucar was abandoned, as it was discovered that the water at St. Mary Port was too shallow to allow the boats to land the men with ease. Though it was not known that a mere handful of three hundred men formed the whole garrison of Cadiz,[29] the flight of the Spanish ships had given rise to a suspicion that the town was but weakly defended. Some voices, therefore, were raised for an immediate attack upon the town. The majority, however, too prudent to sanction a course of such daring, preferred to think first of obtaining a safe harbour for the fleet. The council therefore Puntal to be attacked.came to a resolution to attack the fort of Puntal, which guarded the entrance, barely half a mile in width, leading to the inner harbour, where the vessels had taken refuge. The obstacle did not seem a serious one. “Now,” said one of the old sailors, “you are sure of these ships. They are your own. They are in a net. If you can but clear the forts to secure the fleet to pass in safely, you may do what you will.” Nothing could be easier, it was thought, than to take the fort. Sir William St. Leger alone protested against the delay. Part of the fleet, he argued, would be sufficient to batter the fort. The remainder might sail in at once against the ships whilst the enemy’s attention was distracted. St. Leger, however, was not a sailor, and, good as his advice was, it was rejected by a council of war composed mainly of sailors.
Five Dutch ships and twenty small Newcastle colliers were accordingly ordered to attack the fort at once. As Cecil watched the flashes of the guns lighting up the night, he flattered himself that his orders had been obeyed. But when morning dawned he learned <17>that the English colliers had taken advantage of the darkness to remain quietly at anchor, whilst the Dutchmen, overmatched in the unequal combat, had been compelled to draw off before midnight with the loss of two of their ships.
A rope at the yard-arm would doubtless have been Drake’s recipe for the disease. Cecil was of a milder nature. Rowing from ship to ship, he adjured the cowards to advance for very shame. Finding that he might as well have spoken to the winds, he went on board the ‘Swiftsure,’ and directed Essex to attack. The ‘Swiftsure’ was Second attack.at once placed opposite the enemy’s batteries, and was well seconded by her comrades of the Royal Navy. Nothing, however, would induce the merchant crews to venture into danger. Clustering timidly behind the King’s ships, they contented themselves with firing shots over them at the fort. At last one of them clumsily sent a shot right through the stern of the ‘Swiftsure,’ and Essex, losing patience, angrily ordered them to cease firing.
Such an attack was not likely to compel the garrison to surrender, and it was only upon the landing of a portion of the troops that Surrender of Puntal.the fort at last capitulated. The Spanish commander, Don Francisco Bustamente, struck by the gallant bearing of the ‘Swiftsure,’ asked who was in command. “Do you know,” was the reply, “who took Cadiz before?” “Yes,” he said, “it was the Earl of Essex.” “The son of that earl,” he was told, “is in the ship.” “Then,” replied the Spaniard, “I think the devil is there as well.” A request that he might be allowed to pay his respects to Essex was promptly accorded, and his reception was doubtless such as one brave man is in the habit of giving to another.
It was late in the evening before Puntal was in the hands of the English. By that time all hope of taking Cadiz by surprise was Reinforcements for Cadiz.at an end Whilst Essex was battering Puntal Spanish troops were flocking into Cadiz, and that night the town was garrisoned by four thousand soldiers. It was true that the place was only provisioned for three days, but the Spanish galleys quickly learned that they could bring in succours in spite of the English, and Cadiz was soon provisioned as well as guarded.
<18>On the morning of the 24th Cecil was busily employed in getting ashore the army of which, as a soldier, he wished to Oct. 24.The troops to be landed.take the command in person. By his orders Denbigh called a council of war, which was to decide what was next to be done. The council recommended that provisions should be landed for the soldiers, that an attempt should be made to blockade Cadiz, and that the Spanish ships at the head of the harbour should at last be pursued.
Whilst the council was still sitting, a scout hurried in with intelligence that a large force of the enemy was approaching The march northwards.from the north, where the island, at the southern end of which Cadiz was situated, swelled out in breadth till it was cut off from the mainland by a narrow channel which was crossed by only one bridge. Fearing lest he should be taken between this force and the town, Cecil gave hasty orders to advance to meet the enemy. The Spaniards, however, were in no hurry to bring on an action against superior numbers, and prudently drew back before him.
After a six miles’ march the English discovered that no enemy was in sight. Cecil, however, did not appear to be in the least disconcerted. “It seemeth,” he said to those who were near him, “that this alarm is false; but since we are thus forwards on our way, if you will, we will march on. It may be we may light on some enemy. If we do not, we may see what kind of bridge it is that hath been so much spoken of.”[30]
Cecil, in fact, lighted on an enemy upon whose presence he had failed to calculate. In the hurry of the sudden march no one had The soldiers among the wine-casks.thought of seeing that the men carried provisions with them. It is true that stores had been sent from the ships, in pursuance of the decision of the council of war. Yet even if these had been actually landed, they would hardly have reached the army, which was already engaged in its forward march, till too late to provide a meal for <19>that day. As a matter of fact, they were never landed at all. The officer in command of Fort Puntal alleged that he had no orders to receive them, and sent them back to the ships. Cecil’s force was thus in evil plight. Many of the soldiers had not tasted food since they had been landed to attack Puntal the day before. Ever since noon they had been marching with the hot Spanish sun beating fiercely on their heads. Cecil, in mercy, ordered a cask of wine to be brought out of a neighbouring house to solace the fasting men. Even a little drop would have been too much for their empty stomachs, but the houses around were stored with wine for the use of the West India fleets. In a few minutes casks were broached in every direction, and well-nigh the whole army was reduced to a state of raving drunkenness. Interference was useless, and the officers were well content that the enemy was ignorant of the chance offered him.
Disgraceful as the scene was, it had no appreciable effect upon the success or failure of the expedition. Oct. 25.Retreat to Puntal.When morning dawned it was evident that the men could not be kept another day without food, even if there had been any object to be gained by their remaining where they were.[31] Failure of the attack upon the ships.Leaving therefore a hundred poor wretches lying drunk in the ditches to be butchered by the Spaniards, Cecil returned to Puntal, to learn that the attack which he had ordered upon the Spanish ships had not <20>been carried out. Their commanders had made use of their time whilst the English were battering Puntal. Warping their largest vessels up a narrow creek at the head of the harbour, they had guarded them by sinking a merchantman at the entrance. Argall, to whom the attack had been entrusted by Denbigh, had only to report that the thing was impracticable. However great may be the risk in forming an opinion on imperfect data, it is difficult to resist the impression that a combined attack by sea and land would not have been made in vain, and that if Wimbledon, instead of wasting his time in pursuing a flying enemy, had contented himself with acting in conjunction with Argall, a very different result would have been obtained.
However this may have been, it was now too late to repair the fault committed. A reconnaissance of the fortifications of Cadiz convinced the English commanders that the town was as unassailable as the ships. The Mexico fleet, the main object of the voyage, was now daily expected, and there was Oct. 27.The men re-embarked.Oct. 28.no time to linger any longer. On the 27th the men were re-embarked. The next day Puntal was abandoned, and the great armament stood out to sea as majestic and as harmless as when it had arrived six days before.
On November 4 the English fleet arrived at its appointed station, stretching out far to seaward from the southern coast of Portugal. Though Nov. 4.The look-out for the Mexico fleet.no man on board knew it, the quest was hopeless from the beginning. The Spanish treasure ships, alarmed by the rumours of war which had been wafted across the Atlantic, had this year taken a long sweep to the south. Creeping up the coast of Africa, they had sailed into Cadiz Bay two days after Cecil’s departure.[32]
It may be that fortune was not wholly on the side of Spain. Judging by the exploits of the merchant captains before Puntal, it is at least possible that, if a collision had taken place, instead of the English fleet taking the galleons, the galleons might have taken the English fleet. At all events, if the Spaniards had trusted to flight rather than to valour, the English vessels would <21>hardly have succeeded in overtaking them. With their bottoms foul with weeds, and leaking at every pore from long exposure to the weather, Nov. 16.Return to England.they found it hard to keep the sea at all. Cecil at first resolved to keep watch till the 20th, but on the 16th he gave orders to make sail for home with all possible speed.
There was indeed no time to lose. The officials who had been charged with supplying the fleet had been fraudulent or careless. Hulls and tackle were alike rotten. One ship had been Bad condition of the ships and men.sent out with a set of old sails which had done service in the fight with the Armada. The food was bad, smelling ‘so as no dog in Paris Garden would eat it.’[33] The drink[34] was foul and unwholesome. Disease raged among the crews, and in some cases it was hard to bring together a sufficient number of men to work the ships. One by one, all through the winter months, the shattered remains of the once powerful fleet came staggering home, to seek refuge in whatever port the winds and waves would allow.
It was certain that so portentous a failure would add heavily to the counts of the indictment which had long been gathering against Buckingham. December.Buckingham’s part in the matter.Some indeed of the causes of failure were of long standing. In the King’s ships both officers and men were scandalously underpaid, and many of them thought more of eking out their resources by peculation than of throwing themselves heart and soul into the service of their country. Nor was it fair to expect, after the long peace, that efficiency which is only attainable under the stress of actual warfare. Yet, if the actual conduct of the expedition were called in question, it would be in vain for Buckingham, after his defiant challenge to public opinion at Oxford, to argue before a new House of Commons that he was not answerable for Cecil’s neglect of his opportunities at Cadiz, and still less for the accident by which the Mexico fleet had escaped. <22>After all allowances have been made for exaggeration, is it easy to deny that the popular condemnation was in the main just? The commanders of the expedition, and the officials at home by whom the preparations were made, were Buckingham’s nominees, and the system of personal favouritism, the worst canker of organisation, had never been more flourishing than under his auspices. Nor was it only indirectly that the misfortunes of the expedition were traceable to Buckingham. If, upon his arrival at Cadiz, Cecil had been too much distracted by the multiplicity of objects within his reach to strike a collected blow at any one of them, so had it been with the Lord High Admiral at home. Undecided for months whether the fleet was to be the mere auxiliary of an army which was to lay siege to Dunkirk, or whether the army was to be the mere auxiliary of a fleet of which the main object was the capture of the Plate fleet, he had no room in his mind for that careful preparation for a special object which is the main condition of success in war as in everything else.
If Cecil’s errors as a commander were thus the reflection, if not the actual result, of Buckingham’s own errors, the other great cause of failure, the misconduct of the merchant captains, brings clearly before us that incapacity for recognising the real conditions of action which was the fertile source of almost all the errors alike of Buckingham and of Charles. The great Cadiz expedition, of which Raleigh had been the guiding spirit, had been animated, like all other successful efforts, by the joint force of discipline and enthusiasm. A high-spirited people, stung to anger by a lifelong interference with its religion, its commerce, and its national independence, had sent forth its sons burning to requite their injuries upon the Spanish nation and the Spanish king, and ready to follow the tried and trusted leaders who had learned their work through a long and varied experience by sea and land. How different was everything now! It is hardly possible to doubt that the war of 1625 never was and never could have been as popular as the war of 1588 and 1597. Charles was not engaged in a national war, but in one which was political and religious, awakening strong popular sympathies, indeed, so long as the home danger of a <23>Spanish marriage lasted, but liable to be deserted by those sympathies when that danger was at an end. Nor, if enthusiasm were lacking, was its place likely to be supplied by discipline. The commanders were personally brave men, and most of them were skilled in some special branch of the art of war, but they had been utterly without opportunities for acquiring the skill which would have enabled them to direct the motions of that most delicate of all instruments of warfare, a joint military and naval expedition. It is possible that after eight or ten years of war so great an effort might have been successful. It would have been next to a miracle if it had been successful in 1625.
The worst side of the matter was that Charles did not see in the misfortunes which had befallen him any reason for attempting to No serious investigation.probe the causes of his failure to the bottom. Some slight investigation there was into the mistakes which had been committed in Spain; but nothing was done to trace out the root of the mischief at home. Sir James Bagg and Sir Allen Apsley, who had victualled the fleet before it sailed, were not asked to account for the state in which the provisions had been found, and they continued to enjoy Buckingham’s favour as before. No officer of the dockyard was put upon his defence on account of the condition of the spars and sails. There was nothing to make it likely that if another fleet were sent forth in the next spring it would not be equally unprovided and ill-equipped. In the meanwhile the King and his minister had fresh objects in view, and it was always easy for them to speak of past failures as the result of accident or misfortune.
[1] Johnston, Hist. Rerum Britannicarum, 666. Tillières to Louis XIII., Aug. 21⁄31, King’s MSS. 137, p. 121.
[2] Resolution of the Town of Rochelle, Aug. 10⁄20; Lorkin to Conway, Aug. 11⁄21, S. P. France.
[3] Meautys’s Note, Aug. 14, S. P. Dom. v. 41; Tillières to Louis XIII., Aug. 21⁄31, King’s MSS. 137, p. 121.
[4] Receipt Books of the Exchequer.
[5] Tillières to Louis XIII., Aug. 21⁄31, King’s MSS. 137, p. 131.
[6] The King to the Council, Sept. 17, S. P. Dom. vi. 70.
[7] See a curious letter, said to be from a gentleman in the Queen’s household (Oct. 15, S. P. Dom. vii. 85), which looks genuine. But even if it is not, the statements in it are in general accordance with what is known from other sources.
[8] By Article 11 all the attendants taken from France were to be Catholics and French, and all vacancies were to be filled up with Catholics. Louis had forgotten to provide for the case of Charles wishing to add Protestants when there were no vacancies.
[9] Tillières, Mémoires, 99–104; Rusdorf to Oxenstjerna, Sept. 30⁄Oct. 10, Mémoires de Rusdorf, ii. 73.
[10] Rusdorf’s advice, Aug. 31⁄Sept. 10, Mémoires de Rusdorf, i. 611.
[11] Agreement, July 23⁄Aug. 2, Aitzema, i. 468.
[12] Treaty of Southampton, ibid. i. 469.
[13] Rusdorf to Frederick, Sept. 10⁄20, Mémoires de Rusdorf, i. 623.
[14] The earliest mention of Buckingham’s intended journey is, I believe, in Rusdorf’s letter to Oxenstjerna, Sept. 9⁄19, (Mém. ii. 63). The first hint about the jewels is in an order from Conway to Mildmay, the Master of the Jewel House, to give an account of the plate in his hands. Conway to Mildmay, Sept. 4, Conway’s Letter Book, 227, S. P. Dom.
[15] Coke to Buckingham, Aug. 25; Coke to Conway, Aug. 26; Order of Council, Aug. 30; Sussex to the Council, Sept. 9; Warwick to Conway, Sept. 10; Warwick to the Council, Sept. 18, 23; The Council to Warwick, Oct. 2, S. P. Dom. v. 85, 99; vi. 38, 44, 76, 98; vii. 4.
[16] Cromwell to Buckingham, Sept. 8, S. P. Dom. vi. 30.
[17] The King to Nottingham and Holderness, Aug. 23, ibid. v. 62.
[18] Commissioners at Plymouth to the Council, Aug. 12, Sept. 1, S. P. Dom. vi. 3.
[19] Eliot, Negotium Posterorum.
[20] Cecil to Conway, Sept. 8. S. P. Dom. vi. 36.
[21] The Mayor &c. to the Council, Aug. 12; Steward to Buckingham, Aug. 16, S. P. Dom. v. 36, 49.
[22] Hippisley to Buckingham, Sept. 9, S. P. Dom. vi. 67, 120.
[23] Narrative of the Expedition, Sept. 16; Examination of the masters of the prizes; ibid. vi. 67, 120.
[24] Cecil’s Journal, printed in 1626, has been usually accepted as the authority for the voyage. But it should be compared with his own despatches, and with the letters of other officers, such as Sir W. St. Leger, Sir G. Blundell, and Sir T. Love, which will be found amongst the State Papers. We have also now Glanville’s official narrative, edited by Dr. Grosart for the Camden Society. The Journal of the ‘Swiftsure’ (S. P. Dom. xi. 22) contains a full narrative of the proceedings of the squadron under Essex, whilst the proceedings of Denbigh and Argall are specially treated of in an anonymous journal (S. P. Dom. x. 67). Geronimo de la Concepcion’s Cadiz Ilustrada gives the Spanish story. In the Tanner MSS. (lxxii. 16) there is a MS. copy of Wimbledon’s Journal, annotated by some one hostile to the author, thus bearing witness to the correctness of his assertions where they are not questioned.
[25] Glanville, 3.
[26] Glanville’s reasons, Sept. (?) Woodford to Nethersole, Oct. 8, S. P. Dom. vi. 132; vii. 44. Was Glanville’s objection the origin of the old joke, or did he use it for want of an argument?
[27] Glanville, 7. Cecil to Coke, Oct. 8, undated in Cabala, 370; Cecil to Buckingham, April 28, Sept. 26, 1626, S. P. Dom. Addenda.
[28] There is a discrepancy about the numbers. I take them from Cecil’s Journal. Glanville says there were fifteen or sixteen ships, and eight or nine galleys.
[29] Geronimo de la Concepcion, 458.
[30] This would be almost incredible, if it did not stand on Cecil’s own authority. The marginal note in the copy amongst the Tanner MSS. remarks: “The first time an army marched so far to answer a false alarm, and it were fit his Lordship would name those some of the council he spake to, that were not against his going to the bridge.”
[31] Let Cecil be judged by his own Journal. “Now this disorder happening,” he writes, “made us of the council of war to consider that since the going to the bridge was no great design, but to meet with the enemy and to spoil the country, neither could we victual any men that should be left there, and that the galleys might land as many men as they would there to cut them off: and that when my Lord of Essex took Cadiz, Conyers Clifford was taxed by Sir Francis Vere … with mistaking the directions that were given him to go no further from the town than the throat of the land, which is not above two miles, where he might be seconded and relieved, and be ready to relieve others; but he went to the bridge, which was twelve miles off; so in regard there was no necessity, this disorder happening and want of victuals, we resolved to turn back again, which we did.” The marginal note to this is, “Why did his Lordship then go to the bridge without victuals and to lose time, having such a precedent against it?”
[32] Atye to Acton, Dec. 28⁄Jan. 7, S. P. Spain. See, however, Mr. Dalton’s Life of Sir E. Cecil, where is the best account of this voyage.
[33] Sir M. Geere to W. Geere, Dec. 11, S. P. Dom. xi. 49.
[34] Beverage, the term used in these letters, is the usual word in Devonshire now for common cyder, but it seems, from a passage in one of Cecil’s letters (Glanville, xxxiv.), to have been made with sack. It was probably wine and water.