The Last Armada

by Des Ekin

  By this stage, the two commanders were barely speaking to each other. Brochero had been so slapdash in his haste to leave that he’d allowed his men to dump the vital food supplies onto a shore of wet sand, where they had quickly soaked up seawater. Most of the ship’s biscuit remained on board ship. The admiral explained that he had no time to unload it.

  —You will get them on my return, presently, he told Águila.

  The army commander tried another approach.

  —Conditions here are bad, he implored Brochero. At least assist me before you leave.

  Águila explained he needed timber from the wooded area across the river, not just for firewood but to construct the vital willow-branch baskets that could make fortification barriers.

  —If you provide the boats, three or four trips should be enough, Águila explained.

  The admiral rejected that request as well.

  However, the final insult came when Águila stalked down to the shore to find his Steward of Artillery engaged in fierce argument with Brochero’s sailors.

  —I can’t be held accountable for this, the steward was shouting.

  Águila followed his pointing finger. The precious gunpowder, wadding and matches for his field guns had been carelessly dumped at the very edge of the shoreline, where the tide lapped across the sodden sand. ‘With great haste [Brochero’s seamen] caused the munitions to be landed, which they left upon the shore without account or reason,’ Águila later complained to Spain. ‘Such was the haste, that on the dirt and ooze of the shore they were ill handled, and wet.’ Clearly, Brochero’s contribution to the campaign was almost at saboteur level.

  Even before this incident, Águila had already faced a difficult decision about the guns themselves. The ships that had survived the stormy voyage to Kinsale contained some twenty pieces of artillery. Without drayhorses, the cannon would be extremely difficult to move around. They would commit him to staying in Kinsale even if the town proved indefensible. Even worse, they could end up in enemy hands.

  The discovery of the ooze-soaked munitions settled the matter. Without enough gunpowder, the twenty guns would become a liability. He would take only a few guns – just enough for his meagre supply of powder. The remainder could be brought back in the next wave of the invasion.

  By this stage Brochero had already unloaded four medium-sized guns. There were two field pieces – wheeled guns which could easily be moved around on a battlefield – and two mediocanon. These demi-cannon were smaller and more portable than regular cannon. Three-and-a-half metres in length and weighing 1,800kg, they featured longer barrels which could accurately propel a 15kg ball through a bore as wide as a man’s splayed hand. Águila decided to make do with those four, ‘leaving the rest of the artillery unlanded, not having munitions sufficient for so much artillery, for that the powder and match which remains is little, and the greater quantity came wet,’ he explained.

  He did not want to be ‘encumbered with so much artillery without horses to draw it’. He trusted that ‘in the next succours [reinforcements] may be sent munitions enough’.

  His trust was misplaced. For the entire duration of the campaign, further succour would never arrive in Kinsale. He was on his own.

  What happened after he announced his decision on the guns was quite bizarre. Águila was angrily challenged by his own Father Confessor, James Archer. Like Oviedo, Fr Archer considered himself an expert in military matters. He argued vehemently with Águila that all twenty guns should be taken ashore. The commander was in no mood to listen. To the astonishment of the watching soldiers and townspeople, the emotional and mercurial Fr Archer suddenly dropped to kneel before the army commander, his long black coat staining in the mud.

  ‘On my knees,’ the priest pleaded, ‘on my knees I beg you to keep the twenty guns.’

  Águila was not impressed. His attitude was that the clerics should do their job and leave him to do his.

  —Your place is to pray, teach doctrine and hear confessions, he snapped with open disdain.

  It was a snub that Fr Archer would never forgive. Águila had made a bitter and implacable enemy.

  Brochero sailed off eight days after the landing, with around a thousand seamen and the remaining fourteen guns still intact in his hold. Only few of the merchant ships remained in the harbour.

  Now, would Águila have made the same decision if he had known that he was about to spend three months in his beleaguered ‘hole’, deprived of help and pinned down by a relentless bombardment from the expert gunners of the English army? Probably not.

  Still, the news wasn’t all bad. From out at sea, several ships were looming out from the mists. The cheers from the troops guided the armada’s scattered latecomers into Kinsale harbour.

  Their arrival doubled Águila’s force to around 3,400 (although some English sources estimated it at between 4,000 and 4,300) and brought him a few more guns. Two-thirds of his troops were Spanish regulars – the Venetian observers described these as ‘a picked body of infantry’ – and they were accompanied by some 1,000 Italian soldiers and around 200 Irish expatriates. Many were toughened veterans whose fighting ability was well respected by the English. As Charles Blount wrote: ‘The captains … are most ancient men, their bands – some from Italy, some from the Terceras … specially well armed.’

  Strangely enough, there were also a dozen or so English dissident fighters. ‘The rest,’ said John Meade scathingly, ‘are poor slaves not worth the reckoning.’

  Don Juan del Águila would not have disagreed with that assessment. When he carried out his first careful muster of his troops, he realised that a significant number were young and inexperienced. Another commander furiously described the original force as ‘four thousand men, half of them boys’.

  Others were ‘besognies’ – rookies whose firearms training had to begin here, on the front line. ‘Not knowing the use of their piece [firearms], nor how to discharge them, they are drawn out to exercise their arms daily,’ Águila reported to Spain.

  Two of his most experienced field marshals were missing – one had been too sick to leave Spain, and the other was with Zubiaur. There was a dire shortage of skilled workers like carpenters and smiths.

  Sickness was an increasing problem. Soon, one man in every thirty-four would be an invalid, adding to the commander’s problems. Oviedo was put in charge of a field hospital where – presumably aided by the nuns – he set to work tending the sick and injured. There were no medics. ‘Send two doctors,’ Águila implored, ‘because there is none in the regiment of Spaniards.’

  Águila’s second major mistake was to underestimate the importance of a quirk in the Cork coastline. In a twisting, convoluted shoreline that can often frustrate the best of mariners, the Oysterhaven posed a special hazard to the invaders.

  We’ve already seen how Kinsale sits to the north of the River Bandon which flows south-eastward in a routine, conventional manner until it almost reaches the sea. But just before the Bandon hits saltwater and loses its identity forever, it does a last hurrah, a sort of celebratory somersault, going up and around and down again in a shape rather like a horseshoe. Kinsale sits on the left bank, at the top of the upward curve. Opposite the town, on the south side of the river, embraced by the horseshoe, is the north-pointing promontory that contains Castle Park fortress. The river’s final stretch (the downward bit of the horseshoe) forms the harbour entrance. Halfway down it, to the right, is Rincorran fort.

  Águila had a good eye for terrain. He recognised the importance of fortifying the two forts that guarded the entrance. From his vantage point on the Desmond Castle his keen eye also noted the 60-metre high crest of Knockrobin, part of a ridge of hills to the north and west. He identified a second hill – Ardmartin – as another useful height.

  Águila saw all this. What he failed to pay proper attention to was the Oysterhaven. This skinny saltwater estuary begins about a kilometre east of Kinsale harbour, and penetrates diagonally inland towards the northwest. From a
military viewpoint it is crucial because the estuary sneaks up behind Kinsale on the landward side, to a point called Brownsmills where it directly faces the town’s north gate. Here, the walls are almost within artillery range. So the English navy didn’t need to assault the harbour entrance – they just needed to sail up the Oysterhaven to this perfect attack point.

  This long, narrow, silvery estuary was a stiletto aimed at Águila’s back. He just didn’t realise it yet.

  When the Spanish troops combed the nearby countryside for supplies, they reported back with more bad news. Carew’s troops had smashed all the mills and burned any farmhouses. There were a few cattle, but the locals were in no mood to contribute to the cause – they wanted paid, and they wanted top dollar. ‘[The Spanish] had some beeves and muttons out of the country nearest the town,’ one English report read, ‘but paid treble the prices accustomed.’ The clergyman John Rider wrote: ‘A hen is worth five shillings, a little carrion cow six pounds, yet no man will scarce bring these to them.’ He claimed some locals sold thirty cows to the Spanish, but stole them back the following night.

  Disenchanted, Águila wrote: ‘We receive neither flesh nor any other thing, except some few cows from the poor people, which they sell rather [than give] unto us. We pay them what they demand, yet within a few days there will be no flesh had.’ He couldn’t obtain local help for love nor money. ‘I procure to draw from the country people, by love and rewards, all that I can,’ he explained, ‘yet withal this, find no assistance from them.’

  Águila wrote home that he had found very little food in Kinsale itself. His men were particularly short of bread, wine, oil and vinegar. However, he had unloaded from the ships 4,800 bushels (around 130 tonnes) of wheat which he had safely stored in the town’s granaries.

  Bottom line?

  —Those supplies that I have landed will last me, at most, fifty to sixty days, Águila wrote.

  More than anything else, he needed horses. The local insurgent chiefs were supposed to provide him with mounts for his cavalry officers. ‘The Irish priests promised them 1,000 Irish hobs to be delivered within ten days of their landing,’ crowed John Rider, ‘and so they brought 1,000 brave saddles.’ Actually, the true figure was even higher – 1,600 saddles. A shadowy figure called Richard Owen – Hugh O’Neill’s envoy to Spain – had convinced the Spaniards that no horses would be needed, only the riding gear.

  Águila announced that he would pay six shillings a day – nine times a labourer’s wage – to Irish soldiers with horses. Even this generous offer was largely ignored. ‘It is a wonder unto us that … [the local Irish] fall not into flat defection,’ wrote Blount’s astonished secretary Fynes Moryson. According to John Rider, some Irish mercenaries signed up, took a month’s pay in advance, and then scarpered.

  Andrew Lynch, the Galway merchant, was in Oviedo’s house when two minor Irish chieftains appeared offering seven hundred soldiers and a hundred cavalrymen to the Spanish … at a high price. Oviedo cursed them.

  —We are coming to defend you, he said. And you seek money before you’ll do any service?

  If one or two Irish horsemen did accept, Águila quickly realised that the word ‘cavalry’ meant a different thing to the Irish than it did to the Spanish. Irish warriors rode small, frisky horses which were ideal for hill trekking, but useless for withstanding a cavalry charge. Irish horsemen disdained the use of stirrups – those were for amateurs. It was indeed a great achievement to control a galloping horse while holding a spear aloft and allowing your feet to trail almost to ground level, but it left the Irish dismally vulnerable to the shocks and impacts of modern warfare. ‘[All] that they have are small horses,’ Águila explained to his disbelieving masters in Spain, ‘and their soldiers … do only fight with half pikes and saddles without stirrups.’

  The English were well aware of Águila’s disadvantage and immediately exploited it. ‘Two days after their arrival, the cavalry began to harass them,’ spies reported. It set a pattern that would continue throughout the siege. A group of English horsemen would thunder out from cover and ride right up to the town walls, guns blazing in bravado. Without horses of their own, the defenders were powerless to fend off their tormentors. It was a source of intense frustration to the proud Spanish cavalry officers.

  According to the Spaniard Alférez Bustamante, the English horsemen had the Spanish almost completely pinned down within the first nine days. ‘The English cavalry had the run of the country, stealing cattle,’ he wrote. ‘It was impossible to leave the town or the forts without a large strike-force of troops.’

  Later, Águila’s critics were to claim that the commander had ‘one whole month in which he was undisturbed by the enemy’ but failed take advantage of this lull. In fact, the records show that the Spanish and English troops first clashed within twenty-four hours of the landing. When a Captain Francis Slingsby appeared with a company of infantry the day after the landing, ‘a skirmish for a little space was entertained’, says one English report. ‘There were some hurt, but none slain.’

  Águila soon had to face the harsh reality that his only friends were hundreds of kilometres away … across the stormy sea in Spain, or in the remote north of Ireland. They might as well have been on the far side of the moon.

  He had already written to Spain seeking help. Now, as October ushered in chillier weather, he selected his speediest Irish messenger to convey an urgent plea to the insurgent leaders Hugh O’Neill and Hugh O’Donnell. Written by Oviedo, the Latin message said: ‘We have arrived in Kinsale with the fleet and army of our King, Felipe. We look forward each hour to Your Excellencies’ arrival. Come as quickly as you can, bringing with you a supply of horses, of which we are most in need … I will not say more. Farewell.’ The first sentence was significant. This was no semi-official, deniable mission like Smerwick. This was an all-out hostile invasion by a foreign power.

  Águila added his own understated, soldierly contribution, giving no hint of his desperate situation. ‘We are here,’ he said austerely, ‘awaiting your most illustrious lordships.’

  His wait would be a long one.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IACTA EST ALEA – THE DIE IS CAST’

  Richmond Palace, Thursday, 4 October 1601

  Thirteen days after the invasion

  ELIZABETH heard the news as she was working on correspondence at Richmond Palace.

  The Queen loved the tranquillity of Richmond. It was her ‘warm winter box to shelter my old age’. Every room, every corridor in the old palace echoed with memories of family history. It had been built by her grandfather, Henry VII. In the reign of Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, it had become a setting for the court’s extravagant Christmas revelries. But in light of the bad news that she had just received, there was a very real chance that, this Christmas, the palace would instead resonate to the voices of Spanish monks chanting the Catholic Mass.

  Elizabeth had been composing a letter to her commander in Ireland, Charles Blount, when the unwelcome intelligence of the Spanish landing came through.

  Picture her as an ambassador described her at Richmond, dressed ‘in taffety of silver and white, trimmed with gold; her dress was somewhat open in front and showed her throat encircled with pearls and rubies … her hair was of a light colour never made by nature.’

  Up to that point in her letter to Blount, she had been referring to invasion as an ‘if’. Her writing had been dull and businesslike. But confronted with yet another Spanish threat to her realm, the sixty-eight-year-old woman’s eyes lit up with the same fire that had inspired her troops at Tilbury in the year of the Great Armada. On that legendary occasion, Elizabeth had thundered: ‘I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king.’

  This time she could not address her soldiers directly. But she instructed Blount to read out a brief message affirming her troops’ ability to defeat the Spanish. ‘Every hundred of them will beat a thousand,’ she said, ‘and every thousand, thei
rs doubled.’

  Charles Blount wasn’t so sure about that as he inspected his soldiers, many of them already weak and injured from battles in the north. But when he received the Queen’s letter, what struck him most was that she had personally handwritten the final sentences and – unusually – signed it underneath. She had expressed her full confidence in him and addressed him as ‘right truly and well beloved’.

  That came as an enormous relief to a man who was still living under a shadow of suspicion after the abortive Essex coup. Not so long ago he had planned to flee to France to escape the executioner’s axe. He knew that there were elements in London who would dearly love to see his innards torn out publicly, while he was still alive, in the traditional punishment for traitors. Blount could breathe easier knowing that he still enjoyed the Queen’s protection. But for how long? He was one mistake away from catastrophe. And what would happen when Elizabeth’s death left him fully exposed to the cold revenge of his many enemies?

  Blount had first met the Virgin Queen nearly two decades ago. She was aged fifty. He was barely out of his teens – ‘brown haired, of a sweet face … tall in his person’, as one contemporary witness wrote.

  Blount had come from Dorset, where his family estate had been virtually run into the ground by an eccentric father who’d squandered a fortune on alchemy and an older brother who’d squandered another on alcohol. A noble family that could trace its origins back to a Prince of Denmark in the year 885 was now facing ruin.

  Acutely conscious of his family’s status as endangered species, young Charles was looking around for opportunities after achieving a law degree from Oxford. But in 1583, a casual visit to the royal court ‘to see the fashion’ changed his life forever.