The Last Armada

by Des Ekin

  The night of 19 October saw the first real clash between the two sides as Águila’s Spaniards sallied out from their trenches and clashed with Blount’s front-line guards. There were no injuries, but (at least according to the English) Águila was impressed with the courage of his enemy’s troops.

  —I never saw any [men] come more willingly to the sword, he said.

  The following night, war erupted in earnest with the first casualties of the conflict. Águila despatched up to half of his entire force in a major offensive. Marching silently in the darkness, they wheeled around behind Knockrobin Hill and climbed the rise until they were directly overlooking the enemy camp. But a night patrol spotted them on the hill and beat them back into Kinsale. Four Spaniards died in that first engagement.

  The English consolidated their first victory with a propaganda coup. They enlisted the aid of an Irish clan leader called Cormac McDermot, who had first offered his services to Águila but had now switched sides.

  Earlier, McDermot had sent a gift of a hackney horse to the Spanish commander in Kinsale. Águila, who desperately needed warhorses, had looked at the delicate trotting-horse and responded in despair: ‘Doth the country yield no greater horses than these?’

  Blount ordered McDermot to march his Irish troops right up to the Spanish trenches in order to test his loyalty. As a precaution, he posted a larger force out of sight behind a hill.

  But Blount need not have worried. McDermot launched an all-out attack on the Spanish, driving them out of their trenches before pulling back.

  Blount threw in his reserve force under his friend Sir William Godolphin, a Cornishman who consolidated the Irishmen’s victory and managed to pull off a spectacular rescue in the process. One English cavalry officer who had charged deep into the Spanish ranks had lost his horse and become stranded. Glancing around, he ‘espied himself in great danger’. Ignoring the blistering fire from the Spanish muskets, Godolphin charged between the parallel lines of enemy trenches to rescue him. An eyewitness said Godolphin returned unhurt ‘to the marvel of all the beholders, considering the multitude of shot made at them’.

  Encouraged by the episode, the English decided to try to force an entry into the town itself. After dark on 25 October, a strike force of three hundred troops mounted a concentrated attack with pikes. The Spanish guards were surprised and retreated into Kinsale. The English ‘fell into the gate with them’, killing more than twenty Spanish before being beaten back again.

  A pattern was being established, and it wasn’t in the Spaniards’ favour. Inside Kinsale, Águila was rapidly losing patience with his officers. And his officers were rapidly losing patience with him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CONFESSIONS AND CONSPIRACIES

  Kinsale is a famous sepulchre to [the Spaniards’] honour: that climate perhaps having as natural an antipathy to intruders, as to noisome and venomous beasts.

  – Paolo Sarpi, A Discourse, 1628

  INSIDE the town, Águila was fighting another, more insidious, battle. Some half a dozen captains were secretly plotting against him – and it came as no surprise that the nucleus of all this dissent was Brother Mateo de Oviedo. ‘Jealousies and disputes arose between [Águila] and his captains, and Matthew Oviedo,’ Philip O’Sullivan recorded.

  Oviedo was a prickly individual who fell out with most people, including, eventually, King Felipe. He even detested Fr Archer. (His rages were legendary. When one finance official queried Oviedo’s accounts at Kinsale, Oviedo threatened to excommunicate him.)

  Águila learned about the plots from a loyal officer who had spotted the captains creeping into Oviedo’s house for confessions. In reality, they were voicing grievances against Águila and speculating that he was in league with the English. To these aggrieved officers, it all seemed to add up. If this were not true, why were they in such a weak fortress? Why hadn’t Águila moved on? Since he’d stayed, why hadn’t he built better fortifications? Why hadn’t he installed more soldiers in the two forts? And why had he spurned O’Sullivan Beare’s offer of two thousand troops?

  Throughout it all, Brother Mateo nodded sympathetically. Oviedo seems to have been one of those people who crop up in every crisis – the carping critic who quickly identifies the spark of negativity in others, stokes it up into a roaring flame, and then uses the dissidents as a proxy for his own disaffection.

  Oviedo was carefully keeping a log of all Águila’s mistakes. This deflected attention from his own errors – for instance, his choice of destination and his misjudgement of local support. He would later plead to Lerma: ‘Failure to succeed is commonly blamed on those least at fault.’

  He maintained that more Irish would have supported the invaders if they had fortified Kinsale. ‘[The] entire country would have joined us if they had seen we were serious about defending our position,’ he claimed confidently. Instead, ‘like women, we let ourselves be surrounded and besieged by land and sea’.

  Águila was furious about the meetings. He knew it was not the first time that Oviedo had undermined a commander in mid-campaign. It had happened before – in a place whose very name evoked dread among the Spanish troops. It was a place of horror called Smerwick.

  It was a September day in 1580. A much younger and more idealistic Brother Mateo stepped ashore at the isolated port of Smerwick in County Kerry, after a four-week voyage from Spain. He watched with pride as 300 crack Spanish and Italian troops marched ashore, carrying the crossed-keys banner of Pope Gregory XIII. Eyes afire with religious fervour, Oviedo was determined to free the Irish from ‘that yoke imposed by the English heretics’.

  It was the thirty-three-year-old theologian’s second stab at the same task. The previous summer, in July 1579, he had sailed into Smerwick on a secret mission to Ireland ‘to bring that isle back to Christ’. He hadn’t achieved this ambitious goal, but he had returned to Spain with glowing reports. Oviedo was convinced that a quarter of the Irish population was in rebellion and that the other three-quarters would follow as soon as military aid arrived. These statistics were insanely optimistic, but he had managed to convince both Pope Gregory and King Felipe II that just a slight push would send Ireland tumbling into full-scale religious revolt.

  Now, in 1580, Brother Mateo was back in Smerwick again, leading a second force. He was much more than just a chaplain. According to one authority on the invasion, Oviedo was ‘the principal promoter of this undertaking’. The invasion was ostensibly a religious expedition sponsored by Pope Gregory. Its commander was an experienced Italian colonel named Sebastiano di San Giuseppe. As the expedition’s ‘apostolic commissary’, Oviedo brandished a letter from the Pope and promised the bemused locals the same indulgences that were granted to the Crusaders.

  San Giuseppe had more earthly considerations. Fearing an imminent English blockade, he dug in at Dún an Óir (the Fortress of Gold) a natural fastness surrounded by rocks. Immediately, Oviedo began to question his authority.

  —This is not a good place to fortify, he told San Giuseppe.

  —I am the military commander here, San Giuseppe replied. This is my decision and it stands.

  Furious, Oviedo invoked the Pope’s name. But San Giuseppe was not for turning.

  What happened next was open to different interpretations. Brother Mateo’s supporters claimed that Oviedo quit ‘in disgust’, left the expedition, and ‘retired … to the interior of the country’.

  But in San Giuseppe’s eyes, it was simple desertion – especially since Oviedo had persuaded most of the Irish insurgents and some key members of the invasion force to leave with him. Alone and abandoned on his exposed rock at the world’s end, San Giuseppe didn’t stand a chance without the mass Irish support that Oviedo had first promised and then snatched away. The insurgents had left a few hundred ‘chosen troops’ at the fort, but they were not nearly enough.

  Oviedo stayed in Ireland a mere six weeks. In October, with the drama still escalating, he sailed back to the safety of Spain. The reason, or perhaps the
pretext, was that he would plead for more troops. Despite San Giuseppe’s protests, Oviedo took the best ships with him. The commander was left only with three smaller craft.

  In November, the English battered the fort from land and sea. Although seriously outnumbered, the invaders repulsed one attack and left many English dead. But their position became hopeless – and with no sign of any relief from the Irish insurgent force, San Giuseppe was forced to plead for terms.

  After a parlay with Lord Arthur Grey, the English commander, San Giuseppe believed that the invaders’ lives would be spared if they surrendered. The English commander later claimed he made no such commitment, but told them that they would be treated as stateless adventurers who must yield to his will, for life or death. The distinction hardly matters: what followed was equally inexcusable.

  As one English writer approvingly – and chillingly – recorded: ‘[Lord Grey] decided their quarrel by sheathing his sword in their bowels.’

  Here’s how Grey himself recalled it: ‘Morning came … [and they] presented [their ensigns] unto me with their lives and the fort … then I put in certain bands, who straight fell to execution. There were 600 slain.’

  San Giuseppe was spared to tell of the slaughter. He returned to a frosty welcome in a Spanish prison cell. Oviedo had already condemned him in his absence to anyone who would listen.

  A year later, a friend wrote to San Giuseppe hoping that he would soon be freed ‘to plead your cause … against Father Matthew de Oviedo … [who has] accused you of a thousand things’.

  However, another source said that San Giuseppe obtained affidavits from officers testifying it was Oviedo’s indiscipline that led to the force’s destruction.

  There was never any doubt about who would come off better in the dispute.

  Oviedo retreated to the tranquillity of his rural convent. But he couldn’t get Ireland out of his system. He had been bitten by the bug. He would continue to dream up plans for further Spanish missions to Ireland – probably never suspecting that, nearly two decades after Smerwick, he would be back in another indefensible coastal fortress, trying to explain away the lack of support from his beloved insurgent allies, and collecting evidence against yet another military commander who, infuriatingly, would not do what he was told.

  In Kinsale, the dissident captains continued their secret meetings. But in attacking Águila, they may have had a hidden agenda which had nothing to do with this expedition. The underlying factors could have had more to do with social class, power and ambition. According to one source, these disaffected officers were annoyed because they were not receiving promotions.

  If this is the case, it reflected the tensions that were tearing apart the Spanish army throughout Europe at this time. Old-style commanders like Juan del Águila had little in common with the new generation of young officers. They seemed to inhabit different worlds.

  Although a nobleman, Águila had joined the army as a grunt soldier. There was a reason for this. When he was a teenager, the Spanish tercio regiments had risen to unprecedented prestige under the brilliant but brutal general the Duke of Alba. Known as the Iron Duke, Alba had insisted that all aspiring officers work their way up through the ranks. They had to drill until they dropped. They had to become masters of the pike and musket. Only the best candidates would be selected. Alba fostered a sense of individualism as well as obedience, camaraderie and esprit de corps. His elite officers were given freedom to dress as they chose. One regiment was known as ‘the dandies’ because of their ‘plumes, finery and bright colours’. Another, ‘the sextons’, wore fashionable black. What they rarely wore was a military uniform. As one veteran remarked disdainfully, they did not want to look like shopkeepers.

  In the 1590s, a decade or so after Alba died, his methods were allowed to die with him. New officers no longer had to serve probation. The nobles, who comprised a tenth of Spain’s population, were allowed to go straight into positions of army command. In one unintentionally hilarious exchange, some courtiers fretted that nobles should get at least some military training. Very well, said others, quite seriously: we’ll teach them how to tilt with lances in jousting tournaments.

  An unexpected side-effect was a logjam of young officers awaiting promotion. These pressures often exploded into mutiny.

  Was this a factor behind the insubordination at Kinsale? It’s interesting to speculate. Were the disaffected captains at Kinsale part of this widespread campaign against class bias, or part of the new influx of favoured courtiers who resented having to take orders from anyone?

  Only one thing is clear: this was a clash of generations and of ideologies. Águila was from the old school of hard training and unquestioning obedience. These captains, with their constant criticism and resentment of authority, represented the new wave of Spanish officers – a generation who would live to see Alba’s dreams turn to dust as the golden years of the tercios came to an end.

  Meanwhile, tensions were rising between the townspeople and the invaders. Beef was running short. There were maggots in the bread. Águila reported home that his men could buy ingredients for tortillas locally ‘but so expensively that it is an incredible thing. Now everything is gone.’

  With no food to be purchased anywhere, the Spanish started to requisition what few supplies the townsfolk had. John Clerk, the Scots merchant, witnessed cows being commandeered. This was a shift from Águila’s original position – ‘we pay them what they demand’ – and it created widespread resentment. ‘The townspeople forsake [the Spanish],’ Clerk said, ‘because they kill up their cattle without payment.’

  There were also disputes over living space. With a normal population of up to two thousand, and only two hundred houses within the walls, it had always been a bit crowded in Kinsale. With the arrival of 3,700 troops, the town became claustrophobic. The best and most spacious premises had gone to the officers, and other homes were requisitioned to cope with the overflow from the hospital.

  The plague of dysentery exacerbated the problem. Águila summed up the increasingly horrific situation in a letter to the King. ‘We have many sick and they are collapsing every day,’ he wrote. ‘They have too little food and too much work to do. The sentries can never leave their guns out of their hands. The winter alone is bad enough.’

  Winter. It was the invisible enemy that devastated both sides in this conflict, and for those men used to warmth and sunshine, it must have been particularly hard. ‘[One] can readily picture the gloom and horror of the position of its defenders fresh from the sunny lands of Spain,’ wrote Florence O’Sullivan, a local historian, in 1905. ‘The almost incessant rain and fog of these months, the narrow ill-paved streets, dark as Erebus, the few hours of daylight, the deep depression of the position dominated by dark frowning cliffs … all combined to render the task of the Spaniards an heroic one.’

  Meanwhile, another sound was drowning out the Spaniards’ shouted orders and the locals’ cries of protest. It came from outside. It was the rhythmic tramp of marching boots.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘CRESTED PLUMES AND SILKEN SASHES’

  IN THE DISTANCE, they would have appeared a curious sight – a bit like rectangular hedgehogs, or shoeshine brushes with the bristles upraised.

  Watching from the ramparts of Kinsale, Don Juan del Águila saw the grim column of English reinforcements march over the horizon and realised the seriousness of his predicament. With the arrival of every new English soldier, the odds against him were mounting. The Spanish had around 3,500 effective troops, and the number was dropping daily. By late October, Blount had 6,900 foot soldiers, increasing daily. Blount had 611 cavalry. Águila had none. You did not need to be a genius at mathematics to deduce the problem.

  As Blount’s thousands of Irish-based reinforcements approached the English camp, the details became clearer. The spines or bristles were actually hundreds of fighting pikes carried across the shoulders of specialist infantrymen. Each pikeman bore a strong ashwood pole two and a half times
the height of a tall man. At the business end was a long, sharpened steel spear-head designed to skewer a charging horse. These pikemen formed the core of defence in battle and were highly esteemed for their unflinching courage. Even for a son of royalty, it was a noble profession to ‘trail a pike’ – although royal pikemen were a rarity and the weapons were often wielded by pitiable conscripts.

  A full-scale Elizabethan army on the march was an awesome sight – enough to make a lesser commander than Águila throw open the gates in despair.

  ‘All were exceedingly well furnished with all kinds of arms,’ Philip O’Sullivan wrote of a similar English column. ‘Foot and horse were sheathed in mail. The musketeers were equipped for the fight, some with heavy and some with light guns, girded with sword and dagger, and having their head protected with helmets. The whole army gleamed with crested plumes and silken sashes … brass cannon mounted on wheels were drawn by horses.’

  A contemporary illustration gives a sense of the dread that such a force could inspire. The column is led by mounted cavalry officers, each with a long ‘partisan’, or half-sized pike, held vertically. Full-bearded and grim-faced under their shining helmets, they are followed by two flanking units of musketeers, with guns shouldered and swords sheathed at the hip. A fighting dagger is strapped at waist level behind their backs. A drummer keeps marching time with steady taps.

  Here in Kinsale, it was late October, so the troops would be wearing winter gear. Common soldiers were issued – in theory at least – with a cotton-lined cassock or long coat, a canvas doublet or jacket lined with linen, a coloured cap, a shirt, long socks and leather shoes, and Venetians (long trousers) of ‘broad Kentish cloth’ lined with linen. The tough linen was strong enough to stop a weak blade-thrust from breaking the skin. Officers wore much the same basic gear, but with silk buttons and lace trimmings.