The Last Armada

by Des Ekin

  He was so prescient that many Irish were convinced George Carew possessed a witchlike ‘familiar’. His enemies would whisper: ‘They say [Carew] knows all things. Nothing can be hidden from him.’ The truth was less glamorous – he had succeeded in compromising many key figures among the Irish insurgents. His double agents were everywhere.

  Yes, Carew knew all things. But what he knew particularly well was guns.

  —You are aiming too high.

  Carew had been a master gunner for years, so he knew what he was talking about. He had been watching as Jolly’s team blasted Rincorran, and he wasn’t happy.

  —Your shots are landing up on the spikes of the castle. And they never land in the same place twice, he told the surprised experts.

  The master gunners must have been taken aback. Theirs was an arcane profession. For many years they had been a semi-secret guild, jealously guarding their mysteries. They were not used to being questioned.

  —Stand aside, Carew told them. I am taking over.

  He grabbed a gunner’s quadrant, a specialist instrument that had been invented only a few decades beforehand. Deceptively simple, it consisted of two 60cm wooden rulers joined in an L-shape. It had a plumbline, with a brass gauge to measure its angle of fall. First, Carew checked that the gun was level by putting one arm of the quadrant into the cannon mouth and adjusting the gun’s angle until the plumbline fell true.

  The next thing (and, knowing Carew’s personality, he was probably reciting all this aloud as he worked) was to find the distance to his target. The ingenious procedure involved a gunner’s staff – a pole 240cm long, held vertically on the ground. Standing on a step, you set the quadrant on top and adjusted its angle until you could sight the base of the castle along one of its arms. Your assistant ran a thread along the other quadrant arm to the earth, creating a right-angled triangle with the pole, the thread and the small space of ground that separated them. Measure that space. Find its ratio to the length of the pole. Multiply pole length by that same ratio and you had the distance to your target.

  The next question: was the target at point-blank, or beyond it? ‘Point blank’ was a technical term for the gun’s effective range when held level. It was the furthest point at which a horizontal cannon, aimed directly at a mark of similar height, would hit it precisely. After that, the impetus faded and gravity took over. Point blank was usually not very far – just 200 paces in the culverin’s case. But by tilting the barrel upwards in stages, you could extend its range 180 paces at a time. Eventually, at the maximum of 45 degrees, the range would increase tenfold to 2,000 paces. There were all sorts of mathematical tables to fix the appropriate elevation, but they were seldom accurate.

  While concentrating on all this, it was easy to forget that you were in the front line of a war zone. Carew was literally under fire as he worked, and he had a narrow escape as two Spanish musket shots ricocheted off the gunmetal: ‘One lighted upon the muzzle of the piece, the other upon the carriage.’

  Finally the powder was ladled in and the cannonball rammed home. The gun snorted fire and the iron ball arced through the grey sky. But it rarely hit its mark the first time. ‘Every shot will come shorter and shorter, as the gun grows hotter and hotter,’ explained one contemporary expert.

  When the shot began to land true on the same small area of wall, it was just a matter of pounding away until it yielded. The culverin could shoot eight rounds an hour, with sixty minutes’ cooldown every three or four hours. When three guns fired in combination, the barrage never ceased. Carew had calculated his aim so carefully that he could continue firing accurately, even in pitch-blackness.

  For the defenders – and certainly for the helpless civilians and their children – it was a horrific experience. The constant roar of cannon, the crash of splintering masonry, the sprays of earth and the showers of jagged rocks must have been truly terrifying. The onslaught was continuous and relentless: ‘without intermission’, according to Moryson. Or, as the Irish annalist put it: ‘[The English] allowed the garrison there neither quiet, rest, sleep nor repose.’

  While the cannon continued to bombard the hapless fort, Águila assembled five hundred of his best troops and ordered them to charge directly at the English lines. But this was a feint – the true purpose was to divert attention from the sea, where another force would again attempt to relieve the castle by boat.

  The resulting battle of 31 October to 1 November was one of the greatest clashes of English and Spanish forces on Irish soil. In the first phase, two hundred charging Spanish pikemen and musketeers were held back by a hundred English cavalrymen. Thirty English musketeers returned the Spaniards’ fire.

  The Spanish pikemen charged the cavalry, who held firm and beat them back towards the town walls in the familiar pattern. But Águila had a surprise in store for them – he had dozens of marksmen hidden on the rooftops and turrets. They let loose with withering musket fire on the attackers below, and the encounter deteriorated into a long and bruising brawl. By the time the melee ended, ten Spanish and five English lay dead on the field. Seventy Spaniards were injured, some critically.

  At the height of the fighting, the marshal of the English forces, Sir Richard Wingfield, spotted one Spanish officer who had fearlessly led his troops deep into the English lines. He was now surrounded and Wingfield’s men were about to kill him.

  —Stop! Wingfield shouted. This is a man of some account. We need to take him alive.

  They captured the officer and brought him back to camp. He gave his name as Sergeant Major Juan de Contreras – the legendary veteran of Brittany.

  Wingfield, who had also served there, kept Contreras as his personal prisoner and formed something of a bond with him.

  —You look very sad, Wingfield told him at one stage. Be merry. It is but the fortune of war.

  —I have served in the wars since my young days, the veteran replied. And I have never known the Spanish to take such falls at the hands of any nation.

  Throughout the entire fray, Captain Thomas Button and his patrol ship The Moon had managed to hold back the entire seaborne force as well.

  At nightfall on 1 November, Rincorran was still unrelieved.

  The culverin ‘snake’ and the other big guns continued their relentless battering of Rincorran until six that evening. With massive breaches appearing in his walls and no relief in sight, Ensign Clavijo realised that defeat was inevitable.

  Just after six, a drum thundered out from Rincorran requesting a parlay. Carew, who was overseeing the attack, ceased fire and waited impatiently as a lone figure walked out of the castle to negotiate. To his surprise, it was not the Spanish commander but an Irishman from nearby Cork.

  —We will relinquish the fortress, the Irishman proposed. Simply let us withdraw into Kinsale town with all our arms and equipment.

  Carew was contemptuous.

  —Send out your commander if you want to talk, he snapped. And my only terms are these: that you yield to Her Majesty’s mercy.

  Ever since Smerwick, everyone knew that ‘yielding to Her Majesty’s mercy’ could mean massacre. When they heard Carew’s response, a sizeable element of dissident Spanish soldiers – allegedly led by the sergeant Pedro de Heredia – began planning a secret getaway with the Irish volunteers of Don Dermutio MacCarthy.

  Unaware of this, Ensign Clavijo sounded another drum for parlay. This time he sent Sergeant Heredia. But once again, Carew refused to talk.

  By this time it was pitch black. Another drumbeat rolled across the heath, and as the guns fell silent, a figure emerged from the darkness. This time it was Ensign Clavijo. He made Carew exactly the same offer and was told, once again, to yield to the Queen’s mercy.

  The parlay ended abruptly and the English stepped up their bombardment. By midnight a serious breach was opening in the wall. This in itself was not a catastrophe: the usual response was to build a ‘retirata’, a ditch with a new barricade just inside the opening. Protected by this barrier, the defenders could pi
ck off the attackers one by one as they entered the gap.

  At 2am, the commander called for another parlay. An increasingly irritated Carew ignored the drum and continued firing.

  Behind Clavijo’s back, there was a fever of activity. The Irish volunteers had decided to make a run for it. Sergeant Heredia opted to join them, along with some fifty-three Spaniards. At a later inquiry, where he was accused of desertion, he would maintain that he had simply ‘issued to make discovery’ – presumably to seek out the enemy and engage. Heredia later pointed out that he could easily have scarpered while meeting Carew. ‘[If] I had any ill intention,’ he protested, ‘I might [have escaped] the day before.’

  Águila didn’t buy that argument.

  Another Spanish officer, Alférez Bustamante, had no doubts about the motive. He said Rincorran fell purely because Heredia and Don Dermutio abandoned the fort, taking with them eighty Spanish and Irish soldiers.

  Whatever their intention, the escapees stole out of the castle in the pre-dawn hours, accompanied by many of the Irish civilians. We can imagine the drama as they crept down towards the rocky shore. The Irish locals peering into the darkness to find landmarks. The terrified mothers, hushing their sobbing children. The Spanish soldiers, lost and bewildered in an alien land. Don Dermutio tense with the knowledge that he was only one step away from the torture-engine.

  Few of them made it to safety. An English patrol spotted them and opened fire. They encountered little resistance. ‘The enemy shot not a shot,’ recalled one English source, ‘but as men amazed, lay still.’ Within minutes, thirty of the fugitives lay dead and twenty-three more were in captivity. One officer, Captain Roger Harvey, boasted that he personally ‘had the killing of ten of them upon the rock’.

  With local knowledge, several of the Irish escaped. But Don Dermutio – a most-wanted fugitive, the ‘ace of clubs’ in the English pack – was seized and marched back to the delighted Carew.

  Amid the chaos, Sergeant Heredia managed to slip away and dash across the fields towards freedom. And for a time, it looked as though he might make it.

  Back in the English camp, Blount was growing increasingly annoyed with Carew’s bull-headed handling of the parlays. A skilled negotiator, the English commander knew it was better to leave some door open rather than back an opponent into a corner.

  —It’s important that we take this fort speedily, Blount told Carew. We need it to control the harbour before any Spanish reinforcements arrive.

  Carew was adamant that the defenders must yield to unspecified ‘mercy’.

  —It’s not just Rincorran, Blount argued back. We will soon be inflicting the same misery on Kinsale. If we are seen to humiliate the defenders of Rincorran, Águila will fight to the last man. No, we will offer to spare their lives and give them safe passage to Spain.

  Carew nodded, and trudged back to his cannon. Meantime, Clavijo had independently decided to moderate his demands.

  —We will surrender our arms, he told Carew. Just allow us to join our comrades in Kinsale.

  Carew did not make the agreed counter-offer. He simply refused. The proud Spanish officer was left struggling for air.

  —Then spare my men, he requested. I alone will keep my weapons and march into Kinsale.

  Again, Carew refused.

  Clavijo had been pushed over the edge.

  —Very well, he snapped. I will bury myself in the ruins of Rinjora before I give it up.

  He strode back into the castle and informed his few remaining men. But his troops had had enough.

  —We want to submit to mercy, one of them retorted.

  The others backed him up, but Clavijo would not budge.

  —If you don’t submit, they yelled, we will throw you out of that gap in the wall.

  After hours of tense negotiations, the English and Spanish finally reached a compromise. The defenders would disarm within the castle, proving that they had not abandoned it. Clavijo would keep a symbolic sword by his side as he yielded the castle to Carew.

  It was a nerve-racking moment for the Spaniards as Captain Roger Harvey entered Rincorran. Once they were disarmed, they would be vulnerable to another Smerwick-style massacre. However, in this case, the victors kept good faith.

  The final haul from Rincorran was eighty-six Spanish prisoners and ‘four women’ who were distinguished from the ‘Irish churls, women and children’ who were also taken. Presumably the four were Spanish wives who had sailed to Ireland in the belief that they were founding a peaceful new colony. After the prisoners had gone, Blount’s men pillaged the castle for valuables.

  As for Clavijo, Fynes Moryson reported that he wore his sword until the final moment of surrender. But Carew’s memoir smugly added another detail: that Clavijo had yielded his sword to Carew ‘upon his knees’.

  Sergeant Heredia had almost got away. He had dashed across the field towards freedom, but in the pitch-black night had run straight into some English horsemen. He recalled: ‘I fled, but the cavalry took me in the field, and brought me prisoner.’

  He said Blount and Carew threatened to hang him because he had not been among those who had surrendered. But Blount ‘using all clemency and mercy towards me, did me the favour to give me my life’.

  Heredia was taken to Cork alongside Don Dermutio. There, their paths diverged. The Spaniard was deported. ‘To me, with the rest of the prisoners there, passage was given to France.’

  Dermutio, ‘because he was a vassal of the Queen’, was doomed to be executed. But first he faced the ordeal of interrogation.

  After the castle fell, Blount sent a messenger to Águila in Kinsale.

  —We have two prisoners you may want to ransom, he said. Ensign Bartholomew Paez de Clavijo, and your sergeant-major, Juan Hortensio de Contreras.

  —I will pay a ransom for the sergeant, Águila declared. Because he was taken while fighting.

  —And Ensign Clavijo? What shall we do with him?

  Blount expected a larger ransom. But he didn’t reckon on the ‘cold commander’. It was then that Águila gave his notorious response.

  —Do whatever you like with him, he replied. But if I had him here I would know what to do with him: hang him.

  As for the runaway sergeant Heredia … Águila held him responsible for the loss of Rincorran Castle. Later, back in Spain, he would charge him with desertion. It was a vendetta that Águila would continue right up until his own death – and even beyond.

  The Irish insurgent leader Don Dermutio was placed in the tender care of an inquisitor with the wonderfully Hogwartsian name of William Malefant. The English maintained that the resulting confession was ‘voluntary’, which was perhaps a euphemism for ‘signed with no fingernails’. Or perhaps Dermutio thought he could avoid execution. Whatever the reason, he told all. He named all the Irish leaders in Kinsale, and their sympathisers nearby. He divulged the expedition’s mission plan, and revealed that its force had been reduced ‘by death and sickness’. He told how Hugh O’Neill was due to march south with 10,000 men, and disclosed that Águila hoped to receive 6,000 reinforcements from Spain by Christmas.

  After he had been milked dry of information, he was instantly executed.

  When George Carew pored over the resulting transcript, one name leaped out at him. It was the name of his great nemesis. If Dermutio was Carew’s Ace of Clubs – then his Ace of Spades was the Jesuit priest and political activist Fr James Archer.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘THE MOST BLOODY AND TREACHEROUS TRAITOR’

  IF THE JESUITS lived up to their description as the Vatican’s shock troops, Fr James Archer was one of their top special-ops men. A tall, melancholy figure whose long, solemn face was further elongated by a salt-and-pepper beard, he looked an unlikely Pimpernel – which is probably how he managed to evade capture during his extended secret missions.

  One description read: ‘Archer the traitor is black of complexion, his hair spotted grey, his apparel commonly a white doublet.’ Another said he was ‘t
all, black, and in visage long and thin’. He was dubbed ‘the poison of Ireland’ and officials were told: ‘To have him taken would be a great service.’

  Aged in his early fifties at the time of the invasion, Archer was much more than a humble priest. As an envoy for the Irish insurgent leader Hugh O’Neill, he had ready access to King Felipe of Spain and the Archduke of Austria as well as the Vatican’s top diplomats. The English regarded him as ‘a principal plotter to draw [the Spanish] into Ireland’ – and he would have taken that as a compliment.

  What made him particularly dangerous was that he posed a threat to the life of La Inglesa, the English Queen. Nine years beforehand, Archer had allegedly asked a sympathiser to find him an assassin – a ‘tall soldier, an Irishman’ – who would be willing to kill Queen Elizabeth. Archer explained that it would be ‘a most godly act’. He offered 2,000 crowns, a pension, and eternal salvation.

  A Tipperary man named Hugh Cahill volunteered for the contract.

  —Go to London and buy a horse, Cahill was instructed. When La Inglesa rides out to take the air, set spurs to your horse and strike your sword at her head.

  Failing that, Cahill should wait at a palace door and ‘thrust a dagger or a strong knife into her body’. Cahill went to London all right, but instead went straight to the authorities and confessed everything.

  Whatever truth lay behind this story, it was enough to elevate Archer to the ‘most wanted’ list. Every English reference to Archer burns with genuine loathing. ‘Detestable’ is a typical description. ‘The most bloody and treacherous traitor,’ says another. His power was said to be ‘absolute’. The greatest Lords held him in awe. ‘None dare gainsay him.’