So, while saluting you as a brother at arms, I am entitled to say and bound to believe that if you have never trailed a pike, then you don’t know your arse from a kettle bottom. Do you follow me this far? God’s blood and sweat you ought to!
You want to know some things about being a soldier.
Well, you have come to a man who can tell you. There are many around and about—I will mention no names—who would tell you a Jordan pot full of lies.
If that’s what you want, go elsewhere to find it. I’ll flatter no man—unless he has a dagger’s point at my throat. In which case I’ll fawn like a puppy dog. At least until I have gained an advantage of him. At which time, sir, though he lick my boots till they shine like brass, and he swear I am the Hector of the English, though he offer me money and use of his wife and daughters, I shall have his heart parboiled and served upon a treen platter and feed the rest of him from a bucket to my hogs.
I’m a kind-hearted man. But I would be no man at all if I had lived by less than my full wit and for more return upon my investments than eye for an eye.
There’s many a man who needs schooling. I count you among them. So, head up, eyes front, pay attention and listen well.
If you have anything to ask or say, you shall have your chance.
We now have a season of peacetime. Now while Sir Walter Ralegh naps on a bed in the gatehouse. Peace ever since, in 1604, the King and his clever little man, Robert Cecil, settled the war with Spain. Fourteen years for what it may be worth. A long time in the history of this nation or any I know of.
Making peace between England and Spain, that was King James’ first purpose when he came to the throne. All his life the King has been strong for peace. And no wonder, with Scotland so often torn by risings and wars among the lairds, with Scotland, alone, a short march and an easy campaign for the English when they had a mind and a reason to fight. To survive he had to bolster himself with alliances, in truth and illusion, with France and Spain, especially Spain. Fearing war so much, and hating it too—though never a soldier himself, fearing and hating from hard experience—he deemed he could know power when he saw it. On paper, that is. Power of the Spanish Army, power of the flota, power of wealth and resolute, ruthless kings. He added the sum of that power and trembled. He weighed that power against what he knew of English strength and shuddered at the thought of what would become of us.
It was said, when the Armada came against us in ’88, that, once the Spaniard had cleared the British Sea and put their army from the Netherlands ashore, down would come James with an army from Scotland to finish us off and take the throne. And that might have happened except that the winds and the sea made slops of the Spanish strategy.
Do you know what the Queen did then, sir? On the face of it, it’s hard to believe. From her spies—best in the world and worth ten thousand men in the field—she knew what James was thinking. So the Queen did what he least expected. She withdrew all but a token force, a few guards, from the only garrison on the Scots border at Berwick. And she sent the musters from the northern counties south to the army at Tilbury, leaving all the North an open door to the Scots if they came. No doubt James took her to be a lunatic woman, crazed with unwarranted confidence; but however he took it, he did not move against us.
Because, to him, it might have been a trap. Supposing she knew something he did not. Supposing she was not crazed with fear or arrogance either.…
If the Spaniards failed—as they did—he would be caught at war with England, would lose his army, likely his kingdom, maybe his life, and for certain any chance to gain the throne.
He could only fret and wait. When the Armada came to nothing, he could breathe easy at first, conceiving himself wise in his fearful delay. Then later he learned the truth of it—how it was not the English, by land or sea, who dispersed the power of Spain, but bad fortune and bad weather; and he knew that the failure of the Armada was not the end of anything, for, where there’s wealth and power and resolution, new fleets can be built, new men mustered; how he had been tricked by a woman and had failed in all things; how he now had ruined the chance of an open alliance with Spain, for all the succor he could offer was to fish out some few half-drowned Spanish seamen and send them safe home.
After that and in the years that followed until the Queen died, all he could do was to pray for the fortunes of the foolish English and hope that when he was their King—if he were to gain the throne—he could find a way to make peace with Spain. Robert Cecil, who could make a treaty with the devil, did it for him.
No wonder, though, when you think on it, Ralegh was a thorn in his side. And Ralegh did not ease his fears by offering the King, on his arrival into England, powerful arguments against peace and all for more war with Spain.…
Well, we are at peace now and have been for a time. Too long a time to be true, if you ask me. More of a calm than a peace. A stagnant calm with wind and weather building black castles all around the sky. A peace which only a fool can imagine will be prolonged forever.
But let me speak of the times before, when there was no peace worth mentioning, in the reign of the late Queen.
When Queen Elizabeth came to the throne in ’58, lucky to have a head on her shoulders to put a crown on, she came to rule in a kingdom as ringed with troubles as the seas around us. Beset, too, with dangers within.
Under King Edward there had been rebellions in ’49, Kett’s Rebellion, and the Western Rising. Put down, true enough, and in bloody battles. But the backbone of the King’s forces were mercenary soldiers from foreign countries. Well-trained in killing and more than a match for our yeomen.
Though, please to remember, those yeomen were decent armed. More arquebuses than longbows, even in those days.
Soon after came Queen Mary, whom some call the Spanish Tudor and some Bloody Mary. Her aim was peace abroad and surety at home—aim of all princes.
She failed in both by the end.
Surety at home.…
Her reign commenced with doubt and with rebellion. Lady Jane Grey named Queen in the Tower. Which for nine days served her as palace, and for the rest of her days as home. Anyway she was spared the inconvenience in the moving of bag and baggage.
No great shakes of war there, but making the throne of England a shaky chair to sit upon.
And soon as she was settled enough to marry the Spanish King, Philip, troubles were real enough. They were able to nip in the bud a large stratagem which would have overturned her easy enough. For only one small part of that plot, the rising in Kent under Wyatt, came as close as the thickness of Ludgate to victory.
The long and the short: Wyatt took Rochester. Down came the Queen’s men, two hundred of the Guard and six hundred whitecoats of London city bands and a couple of companies of loyal Kentish men. When the time to fight came, the Queen’s forces went over to Wyatt. And their commander, the Duke of Norfolk, rode away to save his life, leaving a litter of his armor behind.
On toward London comes Wyatt and, before he enters Southwark, the last of the Queen’s Guard are already close to mutiny. True to her blood, the Queen goes down to the Guildhall of the city. Makes her plea and makes many promises. London stands with her, the gates are closed, and the bands mustered. Then much confusion, false rumors, tricks, and counters. A little fighting and Wyatt yields.
Now, unlike your sleeping Ralegh there, I have never stood guard beside a Queen. Never so much as entered a presence chamber. I know nothing of these things. But I know a little of leading fractious men. Have seen a mutiny or two among our own men and those of other nations. When a mutiny’s spent or crushed, there’s only one choice to be made. The man in command can come down like Jehovah upon Gomorrah. Fire and brimstone and holy terror. And I’ve seen that done and work for a time. But now, sir, that leader has spent his choice forever. Must therefore continue to maintain authority by terror. Must thereafter, unless he’s a fool, live in fear that the same will happen again.
By hard experience I learned to take anot
her choice. Justice for a few of the worst malefactors, mercy for all the others. And some consideration of the causes. Which, if they cannot be cured, can be blunted by a willingness to try. Do you see?
Under Philip and Mary we had our time of Spanish discipline. And cruelty, too, for we were likewise enemies. But not so much of either as to leave us as we did Munster in Ireland. Too short a time before Queen Mary died.
But in that time English power fell into decay. We lost Calais, our stronghold in France—whose gates for two centuries carried the inscription: “Then shall the Frenchman Calais win/When iron and lead like cork shall swin.”—in a siege of a week.
Queen Elizabeth came to the throne with the kingdom poor, wounded within, and with more danger from enemies abroad than ever before.
Scotland on the border, hostile and suspicious, close kin to France.
Ireland hostile, in open rebellion, and, truly, never having been subdued. Ireland close kin to Spain.
Neither France nor Spain friendly, each a threat and together overwhelming.
And what was her power? Her Guard and pensioners, the file of warders at the Tower, some crumbling garrisons of soldiers, few in number, mostly at Berwick and Dover. And the militia, men of the musters of counties and cities. And these having chiefly proved they could rise up and work mischief.
The walls and cities with their fortifications and the old strongpoints were useless beyond repair and too costly to consider repairing.
The Navy, small as it had been, having wasted and declined further.
Say, then, that she began her reign with no power at all.
Now, that can be reduced to the bare-shank terms that a common soldier can understand. From the beginning, outnumbered and outgunned everywhere, she could take only one tactic—delay. A soldier might surrender, gambling on his life. But surrender of a nation ends its life.
I believe the Queen at heart was a good English captain. Of all her generals and marshals of armies, there wasn’t any, except the last one, Charles Blount, the Lord Mountjoy, worth the tailfeathers off an Irish crow. Call the roll of pompous fools, who could kill more men by ignorance, folly, and rash stupidity than plague and famine together, and scratch your head to recollect a victory by any of them: William Grey, Lord Grey; Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester; Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon; Edward de Fiennes, Lord Clinton; Thomas Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex; Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby; Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick; Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex; Sir Henry Bagenal; Sir Francis Vere; Sir John Norreys, and some others whose names even I, mercifully, have clean forgotten.
Masters of proud musters, and able to present a procession of troops marching out and away in time to the beat of the drum. They were also mighty skilled in arranging that armies would not have an excess of food to waste upon themselves, nor too much powder and shot to injure the enemy, nor such regular payment as to make their purses heavy. Those soldiers who, by luck and by God, escaped the fevers and starvation, were given occasion to escape this mortal coil, this wicked world, by being sent out upon ill-conceived skirmishes and impossible assaults.
Christ, is it any wonder she hastened first to repair the tiltyards of her palaces and castles? So these men could play at war and hurt only each other. Let them throw snot about, by which I mean weeping, for the noble death of Sir Philip Sidney at Zutphen, but waste no tears for many thousands gone.
Take Essex, who had every chance to prove his mettle matched his mouthing. At Cadiz he raced ahead of everyone to scale the wall and got stuck there while others smashed the gates and entered the town. At Lisbon he stood before the fortress and issued the old-fashioned challenge for single combat with their champion. And shook his fist at answering laughter from the walls. He never served so low as a captain. Had small use for captains and none for common soldiers, whom he called artificers and clowns who apprehend nothing but what they see before them.
Well, sir, there are many sorts of clowns. Give me one who sees what’s in front of his eyes instead of that clown with a general’s baton who sees Agincourt wherever he is.
The Queen was our captain. But when the time came we most needed a general, she was there.
The English Army at Tilbury never had to fight. And that’s the best tribute to a general.
It was more than mere show when she donned silver armor in ’88, while the Armada was still in the sea, and rode bare headed, jewels in her hair, on a white horse before the troops at Tilbury. And there was hard sense in her words to them.
“I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which, rather than any dishonor shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms. I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarded of every one of your virtues in the field.”
Our little wars were in Scotland and Ireland, in France and in Spain and Portugal, in bits and pieces, and scattered across years.
Many musters and alarms in England. Some, I think, to practice the business of mustering and to bring people together against a common danger. But only one at home that might be truly called war—the rising of the Northern Earls in ’69. A sad, foolish, vainglorious affair, settled between October and Christmas, in that miserable country up beyond the Trent, all pasture and moor, forest, bogs, and rock-strewn uplands. Old castles and poor crumbling towns. The earls in their old armor and lacking artillery, raising much dust, but accomplishing little. It was settled for good by musters from the South. Who picked them as clean as the Spaniards would have. And when the dust settled, we hanged more men by martial law than we killed in the fighting.
Many—Essex for one—were strong pleaders for a standing Army, like other nations. Something secure for the soldier. And men well trained, not clumsy farm boys who must be taught and blooded anew each time. And they argued that already there were too many rogues and vagabonds about, masterless men; and the poor, cast out of old crafts by the new or pushed off of the farms by enclosures, wandering the roads, suffering themselves and causing mischief to others.
When you add to this the number of men from armies, discharged and sent home to shift for themselves, there was even more danger. Men with nothing to show for their service but scars and the holes in their clothes and shoes. Men who had skill in use of weapons and the habit of using them.
But truth is standing armies cause more danger. Spain, with the largest and proudest of armies, had many desertions and mutinies. Witness the Fury of Antwerp in ’76, when the King of Spain could not pay his men.
Better separate vagabonds in England than battalions and regiments of them.
And it was either too late or too early for England to forge a fighting Army. In Europe, where land wars took place, they were ahead of us in equipment and tactics. We still had fools extolling the virtues of longbow against arquebus, musket, and caliver; who believed armor was manly and useful; who would rather die by the broadsword blow than a thrust from a rapier.
Some thought of using mercenary soldiers. All other nations, from France to far Turkey, had mercenaries. But we had seen them here in England. They were hated here, and are always dangerous and costly. We have used them sometimes in Europe, but not with much success.
On the other hand, it was useful to have Englishmen serving as mercenaries for others. Those who wished to could fight elsewhere at the expense of someone else. If they lived to return, they could become what we lacked—veterans around which an Army can always be made. So Englishmen fought in all the wars, and often on both sides.
From these came our veterans and captains, including myself. And if we could not whip green mustered boys into such shape as to match Spanish foot or German light horse, why, we could put the fear of God into them and lead them as well as men can be led.
You should know, too, something that is too seldom said. There is a point at which a green, but drilled soldier has an edge of advantag
e over the veteran. The fear of the green soldier can serve to advantage. He will obey commands in faith and go careful, by the book. He fears, but does not yet know how much he has to fear. Your old soldier knows all dangers and has long since concluded his life is a matter of luck. Has no faith in commanders. He may break and run if he feels he’s lost the last of his luck. Or he may become careless, a ghost of a man, whose only safety, he conceives, is that he has shrugged off his life in advance.
We had captains, who had been to other wars, to lead companies in ours. Some, I am sad to report, took time out to write books. When every country gent who’s trooped a line at a muster can publish the final word on the art of fighting, my view is the ones that know should ignore books and stick to their business.
I’ll mention two men and be done with the subject.
One is Sir Roger Williams. Now, Williams was a Welshman, a hardass weasel with a head like a dented burgonet. Was as bitter and sharp as a pulled leek with earth still clinging to it. Sour as last season’s cider. He was half outrage and the other half pure exasperation.
But he saw a lot of service in his time. Fought in the Netherlands for Spain, for the States, and even, at last, for the English. Was at Tilbury when the Armada came. Made the voyage to Portugal and back. In the nineties served in France. Commanded the port of Dieppe and greeted Essex when the Earl landed there with his men. I have my doubts he was ever in Scotland or Ireland, but I can’t be sure.
When I knew him, he had seen and suffered so much folly that nothing would ever surprise him again. Except, perhaps, an example of common sense. Drank too much and loved wenching. But he wrote brief and to the point. Allowed himself only few occasions to lie. And he was tough as a bear and intended to keep alive as long as he could. You could call him a good captain to follow unless a better one came along.
The other I call to mind wrote more words than many a poet and fancied himself the supreme scholar of war. Sir John Smythe, all blood and iron, iron of his armor and blood of our wounds! Praise be, he never was a general. He had the makings for that. But he wrote himself out of all chances.
Death of the Fox: a novel about Ralegh Page 22