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THE GREAT AND MOST FORTUNATE NAVY
Pray to God, that in England, He gives me a house of some very rich merchant where I may place my ensign, which the owner thereof do ransom . . . me 30,000 ducats.
Antonio de Taso Aquereis, commander of two hundred Spanish troops, writing home from Lisbon.1
Santa Cruz, the commander of the Armada, died in Lisbon on 9 February 1588 from ‘ship’s fever’ (or typhus) after being purged and bled for eleven days by his physicians. The sixty-two-year-old admiral had been exhausted both by his struggles to bring the Spanish fleet up to a full war footing and by the torrent of instructions from a fixated, pedantic and bureaucratic monarch who sought to micromanage every detail of the invasion plans. Some whispered that the malicious criticism of the admiral prevalent at Philip’s court had also contributed to his death.2 Few mourned the passing of this egotistical grandee of the ocean: only four persons accompanied the coffin to his grave in the parish church of El Viso in Córdoba.3
Two days later, Philip appointed Spain’s premier duke, Don Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, ‘el Bueno’ [the Good], Seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia, as Santa Cruz’s successor and his captain-general of the ocean. After the exasperating delays in readying the ships, the king was sanguine about the impact of Santa Cruz’s death, maintaining coldly that ‘God had shown him a favour by removing the marqués now, rather than when the Armada was at sea’.4
For months Philip had been vacillating over when to launch his ‘Enterprise of England’. At the end of September 1587, he had urged Parma to immediately (and single-handedly) invade enemy soil when the English fleet concentrated at Plymouth leaving the Thames estuary vulnerable to Spanish attack. The duke had given assurances that he would be ready to put to sea on 25 November, but then Philip, suddenly overtaken by his legendary caution, realised with chilling clarity that his troops, once ashore, could find themselves marooned without naval support and their supply lifelines threatened. He therefore ordered Santa Cruz to sail immediately to protect Parma’s invasion barges, despite the lateness of the season, the uncertainty of the weather and the fact that only thirty-five of his warships were ready.
A powerful cyclonic storm on 16 November had badly damaged many of the Armada’s vessels and one hundred and four were now rated unseaworthy. A number were beached for repairs, leaving the admiral with only thirteen ‘great ships’ – and the hull of one of these was so rotten he harboured grave doubts whether it could survive the outward voyage.5 What’s more, the food loaded on board or waiting on the quayside was putrid, and soldiers and sailors were dying like flies from typhus and other diseases. Santa Cruz pleaded that sailing should be delayed until the spring, predicting that if the fleet attacked England ‘with all this disease . . . there is great danger that after a month at sea, especially in this cold season, it will be either destroyed or seriously damaged’.
The well-informed Venetian ambassador to Madrid, Hieronimo Lippomano, reported in December that the Armada preparations were ‘not going on as vigorously as previously, although they are still fitting out some vessels, and putting ammunition on board, squadron by squadron’. He confirmed that, through sickness and desertion, the number of troops and sailors ‘will be far less than they thought, to such an extent that his majesty will be forced to raise new levies’.6 The envoy had also heard of more bad news for Philip: the flagship of the ‘new Spanish squadron, in clearing the River Tagus at Sacavém, [had been driven] on to the rocks’.7
For all his self-possession, the king could not conceal his chagrin at these continuing delays. He dispatched the Count of Fuentes to Lisbon to accelerate the pace of preparations, beginning with the embarkation of the siege artillery, partly in the mighty 1,100-ton Trinidad Valencera.8 Lippomano reported in February: ‘They have embarked twelve heavy siege guns and forty-eight smaller ones with a double supply of gun carriages and wheels for the field batteries and six hundred mules. In addition, there is a large quantity of iron and wood for the construction of a fort.’9 Fuentes was outspoken in his criticism of the commissariat and artillery ‘because they were not prompt in their preparations’, but now he began provisioning the ships for eight months’ service and every day new recruits marched into Portugal to replace the dead or those who had deserted.10
Philip’s furious spate of energy and the anxiety of those uncertain weeks at the end of 1587 had sapped his health and he took to his bed suffering from another attack of gout in the hand, together with stomach pains and fever, and was reported ‘very languid and weak’. Orders were, however, sent to Santa Cruz early in January, granting him permission to fight the English fleet off Margate – but only to ensure Parma’s safe passage to England.
If this can be done without fighting, either by stratagem or otherwise, it would be better so to manage it and keep our forces intact . . . You must not land or act alone or on your own opinion without the concurrence of the duke, the engaging of the enemy on the sea . . . being the only thing in which you are to act independently.
Following a successful invasion, Santa Cruz could return home with the Armada, ‘calling in on Ireland on his way’ and transporting Parma’s Italian and German mercenaries ‘who may appear necessary for the Irish business’.11
Parma was appalled that the secret plans for the invasion had become common knowledge: ‘from Spain, Italy and all parts come, not only news of the expedition, but full details of it’. His arrival in Bruges ‘and the stay of troops in the neighbourhood have given rise to much talk. The affair is so public that I can assure your majesty there is not a soldier [who] has not something to say about it . . .’ So much for the secrecy which he had insisted was a prerequisite for the success of his landing in Kent.
The duke still nurtured considerable resentment and rage at the strategic folly of his monarch’s opportunism of November and December in urging him to invade across the Straits of Dover without the Armada’s protection.
Your majesty is perfectly aware that without the support of the fleet I could not cross over to England with these boats and you very prudently ordered me in your letter of 4 September not to attempt to do so until the marqués arrived. If the marqués had come then, the crossing would have been easily effected with God’s help . . .
You know also that . . . Santa Cruz has not come and the reason for his delay and yet, notwithstanding all this, you suppose that I may be there [?in England].
I must confess that has caused me great sorrow.
Your majesty has the right to give absolute orders . . . but for you to write . . . with a presumption diametrically opposite to the orders sent naturally causes me great pain.
Parma added sniffily: ‘I humbly beg your majesty to do me the great favour of instructing me how I am to act. I shall make no difficulties in anything, even if I have only a pinnace to take me across.’12
Philip’s choice of successor to Santa Cruz was curious. The new captain-general had never been to sea. He was the first to reinforce Cadiz during Drake’s raid on the city the previous April, and had been appointed captain-general of Andalusia as ‘conspicuous proof’ of the king’s favour.13 The new admiral’s skills lay purely in organisation; he was an experienced administrator who had been involved in equipping the Armada warships in Andalusia as well as raising army recruits in the region. His personal qualities were also exemplary: Lippomano described him as not only ‘prudent and brave but of a nature of extreme goodness and benignity’. Medina Sidonia, he told the Doge of Venice, was ‘generally beloved’.14
However, the Armada’s new commander was reluctant to take up the post – the king put this down to his natural modesty – and pleaded poor health and poverty as excuses in a letter that may have been long and rambling but at least smacked of honesty and realism:
I humbly thank his majesty for having thought of me for such a great task and I wish I possessed the talents and strength necessary for it.
But sir, I have not health for the sea, for I know by the smal
l experience that I have had afloat that I soon become sea-sick and have many humours [fevers] . . .
Since I have no experience either of the sea or of war, I cannot feel that I ought to command so important an enterprise.
I know nothing of what the marqués of Santa Cruz has been doing or of what intelligence he has of England, so I feel I should give but a bad account of myself, commanding thus blindly and being obliged to rely on the advice of others without knowing good from bad – or which of my advisers might want to deceive me or displace me.
On top of this, he was stony broke – this at a time when commanders were expected to help fund expeditions. ‘I am in great need, so much so that when I have had to go to Madrid, I have been obliged to borrow money for the journey. My house [family] owes 900,000 ducats (£225,000) and I am therefore quite unable to accept the command. I have not a single real15 I can spend on the expedition.’16
After considering the matter for two days, Medina Sidonia made clear his absolute conviction that the Armada was a grave mistake that had little hope of success. Only a miracle, he added in this frank and outspoken second missive, could save it.17 The king’s councillors, horror-struck at its contents, dared not show the letter to Philip: ‘Do not depress us with fears for the fate of the Armada because in such a cause, God will make sure it succeeds,’ they begged. As for his suitability for the command, ‘nobody knows more about naval affairs than you,’ they assured him. Then their tone became menacing: ‘Remember that the reputation and esteem you currently enjoy for courage and wisdom would entirely be forfeited if what you wrote to us became generally known (although we shall keep it secret).’18 Doggedly, the new commander sought an audience with the king, but his request was refused.
Happily ignorant of his new admiral’s misgivings, Philip ordered him to Lisbon with instructions to ensure that the Armada sailed on 1 March ‘at latest’. Rather more encouragingly, in a second letter he declared: ‘I am quite confident that thanks to your great zeal and care, you will succeed very well.’ Unconsciously echoing his advisers’ pious hopes, the king added: ‘It cannot be otherwise in a cause so entirely devoted to God as this. There is no reason for you to trouble about anything but the preparation of the expedition and I am quite sure you will be diligent in this respect.’19
Whether or not his doubts were assuaged, the new commander began his task by reviewing his fleet of one hundred and twenty large ships, with 1,730 sailors and 12,810 troops, excluding volunteers. He recruited the experienced Don Diego de Maldonado and Captain Marolín de Juan. They, together with his squadron commanders, Pedro de Valdés, Juan Martínez de Recalde and Miguel de Oquendo, formed the beginnings of his operational council of war.20
At the end of February 1588, Philip imposed an embargo on all shipping in Spanish and Portuguese waters, seizing vessels to augment the strength of the Armada. The English military commander in the Low Countries, Peregrine Bertie, Thirteenth Baron Willoughby de Eresby,21 heard that a ‘great and infinite number of merchant ships [had been] pressed and embarked for this service [from] diverse other nations as well as Spanish, the French only excepted . . . There was chase given to fourteen sail of English, Scottish, Flemish and French ships as they came out of the [Gibraltar] Straits . . . whereof five were taken.’22
A powerful 960-ton galleon belonging to the Duke of Tuscany had earlier been sequestered and renamed the San Francesco de Florencia. Now the Spanish commandeered two Venetian ships, the Ragazona, 1,294 tons, and the Lavia, 728 tons, which were waiting to unload cargoes of sugar in Lisbon harbour.23 Philip’s commissioners reported that they were ‘the finest, best armed and manned of all that lay in Lisbon . . . and were so powerful that they could give battle to ten or twelve English [ships]’.24 Around twelve galleons were also ‘requisitioned’ from Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik) – probably a diplomatic euphemism to disguise Ragusan support for the Armada, thus avoiding retribution from their Turkish suzerains.25 The Spanish continued the ruse by choosing new names for the ships that suggested they were of Italian origin.
Despite these reinforcements, the Spanish king was growing frantic about the slow progress in dispatching the Armada. New departure dates such as 18 April (Palm Sunday) came and went, and Philip began to shed his customary caution and circumspection. The spring weather did not help. As well as constant rain, another ‘great storm’ in early March tore at the ships moored in the harbour, causing ‘the loss of many anchors and the destruction of many cables’.
All these problems were swept aside by a king who had gambled his personal prestige and that of his kingdom on the success of this sacred mission. There was never any question of scrapping the invasion plan. Philip was determined that it would sail ‘as he was convinced there is no other remedy for the ills [done by England] except to strike at the head of the queen’.26 The Armada had become a personal obsession, driven by the ‘mortal hate’ he felt for Elizabeth, ‘from whom he receives daily injuries inflicted with base ingratitude, for he freed her from prison when he was in England’, according to Lippomano.27 For all his penny-pinching intransigence over funding the mission, Sixtus V freely acknowledged that ‘His majesty has God’s justice and pity on his side – God’s justice for he is defending God’s cause; God’s pity, for it is to be held that God will extend His pity to the many poor Christians who are in the kingdom of England and will not leave them a prey to that woman.’28
After twenty months of preparations, Philip’s financial position was again critical.29 Despite the Pope’s vocal support, it seemed unlikely that the Vatican would tide the king over with an advance on the agreed subsidy, part payable on Spanish troops landing in England. Olivares, Philip’s long-suffering ambassador in Rome, was still sparring with an intractable Pope on the issue, even prostrating himself at the papal feet in desperate supplication. The envoy was pessimistic of any prospect of an immediate loan: Sixtus was ‘so fond of money that he would rather lose the interest than let it go out of the castle [his treasury in Castel di Sant’ Angelo in Rome]’, he declared.30 A few days later, Olivares reported the Pope’s angry reaction to news that the invasion plan was really in earnest and that the Armada was moving towards departure. The prospect that Sixtus would have to pay his 1,000,000 gold ducats had caused him ‘extreme and extraordinary perturbation’:
The things he says about it are very strange. He does not sleep at night. His manners to all are more than ordinarily abrupt.
He talks to himself and generally conducts himself most shamefully.
In addition, the Pope was also complaining about ‘the mint of money’ he had been forced to shell out for the new English cardinal, Dr William Allen, ‘whereas, all he has given is a thousand ducats for his outfit and a hundred a month for his maintenance’. The days in the Vatican dragged wearily on for Olivares, with a pervasive and ominous papal silence about any advance. ‘We might as well cry for the moon as ask for it before. I am trembling for fear that [Sixtus] may give me many a bitter pill even before I can get it, seeing how he seems to love this money,’31 he admitted despondently.
Philip was now spending 700,000 crowns (£187,500 or £40,000,000 at 2013 prices) each month on preparing for war – ‘a thing truly almost incredible’ to the Venetians. He tried again to raise money from the Italian banks belonging to the Spinola, Cantanei and Grimaldi families and also sent appeals for cash to his dominions in Italy and Flanders. Closer to home, he sought subsidies from the Spanish clergy to help him pay for ‘this cause of God and state’. Gaspar de Quiroga y Vela, Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, alone faced a demand for £250,000.32
For the preoccupied and worried king, there were tensions and unrest everywhere. In the Spanish Netherlands, Parma complained vociferously about the setback in the Armada’s sailing date. ‘This delay is causing the total ruin of the province of Flanders and is hardly less disastrous to the rest,’ he told Philip that January.33 In annexed Portugal, merchants were losing money through English privateer attacks on their shipping. Its citizen
s were restive under the burden of supplying grain to the Armada and were now ‘at their wits’ end’. A number of conspiracies against Spanish rule were also uncovered34 and Philip, ‘greatly disturbed’, saw ‘no possibility of winning the affection of that people by kindness’. He briefly considered policing his new dominion with six thousand additional Spanish and German soldiers and charging the cost of their maintenance to the Portuguese. Instead he ordered his nobility to mobilise troops to reinforce his garrisons in Portugal once the Armada had sailed.35
In London that February, Elizabeth had her own frustrations and fears. She had been enraged by a request for more financial assistance from the rebel Dutch States (or parliament), and fell into a typical Tudor tantrum:
It is very strange they should ask for further aid without giving her any account of what had been done for them before.
She swore by the living God it was terrible and she does not believe such ungrateful people . . . live upon the earth. She has sent them thousands of men, whom they have not paid but let die of hunger and despair or else desert to the enemy. Was that not enough to exasperate England? Were not the States ashamed that Englishmen say they had found greater civility from Spaniards than from them?
She cannot suffer such conduct and in future shall please herself.
She can do without them!
They are not to think she is obliged to help them for her own safety: nothing of the sort.
It is true she does not want Spaniards for her near neighbours as they are her enemies at present, but why should she not live at peace and be friendly with the King of Spain, as she was originally.
He has always desired her friendship and has even sought her in marriage.
The Spanish Armada Page 12