Elizabeth
Page 31
Rising from her seat the moment the show ended, Elizabeth was overheard muttering loudly that ‘If she had thought there would have been so much said of her, she would not have been there that night.’ She then went straight to bed.8 She might have been angrier still had she caught sight of another of Bacon’s notes, in which he reminded the Earl that it was ‘the Queen’s unkind dealing, which may persuade you to self-love’.9
• • •
A few weeks before the pageant, Essex had described Elizabeth as a sphinx whose riddles he could not unravel.10 Unlike his stepfather, whose ambition and sexual indiscretions she eventually found it within herself to forgive, or the faithful Christopher Hatton, whose love and constancy had kept him single for the whole of his career, to the point where he was forced to refute claims that he was sleeping with the queen, Essex never really understood her.11
The fact that he was serving a woman ruler had begun to create serious difficulties for Essex.12 Burghley in his youth had never masked his doubts, telling Elizabeth that ‘to serve Your Majesty in anything that myself cannot allow must needs be an unprofitable service.’ Now, however, in his old age, ‘sore sick’ and ‘with pain of head, heart and hand’, and deaf to the point where visiting ambassadors had to shout loudly at him, he longed to live out his remaining days in peace and had finally come round to accepting his sovereign on her own terms. In the spring of 1596, he would address to Robert Cecil what would become the quintessence of his political creed in his declining years:
I do hold and will always [take] this course in such matters as I differ in opinion from Her Majesty as long as I may be allowed to give advice. I will not change my opinion by affirming the contrary for that were to offend God to whom I am sworn first. But as a servant I will obey Her Majesty’s commandment, and no wise contrary the same, presuming that she being God’s chief minister here, it shall be God’s will to have her commandments obeyed.13
This was never Essex’s way. If Elizabeth would not yield to his petitions or flattery, then he would try to cajole her, even force her to submit to his will.14 With his hunger as urgent as ever for a fresh military command and for promotion to the full responsibilities of Walsingham’s former position, the importunate Earl began bombarding her with verses and sonnets, some to be sung by her favourite lutenist, Robert Hales. Inevitably, he could not resist etching into them thinly veiled protests against what he believed to be her ill-treatment of him, stereotyping her as his cruel, inconstant mistress, as in the double-edged line: ‘And if thou should’st by Her be now forsaken,/ She made thy Heart too strong for to be shaken.’15
Soon, he would go further, declaring, ‘I shall never do her service but against her will.’16 In his frustration, he began plotting behind her back, giving secret directions to Sir Henry Unton, sent once more as the queen’s ambassador to France, despite a serious riding accident, in an attempt to force her to ratchet up the war effort. Whereas Elizabeth had instructed Unton, though to little avail, to complain to Henry IV that she had been assisting him for far longer than she had ever intended, Essex incited him to stir her into action by feeding the French a false report that her true plan was to make a secret unilateral peace with Spain. Playing with fire, he even urged Unton to warn Henry that it was the tight-fisted Lord Treasurer and his son who opposed further military aid for the French king.17
Such flagrant transgressions did not go unobserved. Unton, however in awe of Essex for his relationship with the queen and his high status, regarded Burghley as his chief point of contact with the Privy Council: he kept him fully briefed about the disinformation he was reporting on the Earl’s behalf, even if he did not always disclose its exact source.18
But, for the moment, Essex’s greatest offence in Elizabeth’s eyes was his attempt to reap the maximum rewards from his costly pageant by circulating highlights from the script among his friends and admirers and having a portrait miniature of himself painted in his tournament garb by Nicholas Hilliard. In this image, most likely meant to be distributed in life-sized and half-sized copies by lesser artists, Essex stands wearing gold-filigreed armour, his right hand casually resting on his waist, his left hand on the table with his matching helmet. On his sword-belt, and woven in and out of the skirt of his armour, was inscribed the impresa, or badge, he sported on that day, a single diamond with the Latin motto Dum Formas Minuis (‘While you fashion it, you diminish it’), referring to the cutting and shaping of diamonds by a jeweller. The glove Elizabeth gave him as a favour at the beginning of the tournament is clearly visible, tied to his upper right arm with a large ribbon, a symbol of his claim to be her champion, whether she wanted it or not.19
• • •
What Essex most sought was another chance to prove his martial valour in war. Already entering its eleventh year, the struggle was gathering momentum again after a relative lull of almost two years. In 1595, Henry IV had declared outright war against Spain. He felt confident to do so, as Brittany was largely back in his control after a successful guerrilla campaign by Norris’s auxiliaries, whom the queen had then recalled. But, despite all his best efforts, Henry had lost ground in Picardy and Champagne to crack divisions of the Army of Flanders slipping across the frontier, ably led by their new commander, Don Pedro Enríquez de Azevedo, Count of Fuentes. First, Fuentes stormed Doullens and massacred its garrison. Turning eastward, he then marched off and laid siege to the important fortress of Cambrai. More threateningly, rumours abounded that the incoming replacement as the Spanish governor in the Netherlands, Archduke Albert of Austria, was planning a sweeping attack on Calais as part of a plan to gain at least partial control over the English Channel.20
Philip, meanwhile, was rebuilding his navy. Throughout the summer of 1595, Elizabeth had been confronted by a succession of scares that he was preparing to launch a second Gran Armada. It was in these circumstances that she grudgingly entertained a fresh plan of attack. Although for ever cured of the notion that an aggressive European land campaign could work in her best interests, she was willing to consider a cheaper seaborne alternative. Developed by Burghley, in consultation with Lord Admiral Howard and Sir Francis Drake, the plan was modelled on Ralegh’s idea of throttling Philip’s supply of treasure at the dispatching end in Panama or off the coast of Cuba.21
Essex talked down the plan.22 Adamant that victory could be won only by taking the struggle to the beating heart of Philip’s worldwide empire, he began lobbying Elizabeth for a direct attack on the Spanish mainland and ports. Nothing less than a full-scale counter-Armada, he argued, would be sufficient.
In August 1595, after weeks of fruitless discussion, Elizabeth put both proposals on ice, approving instead a much smaller privateering venture to be jointly led by Drake and Sir John Hawkins. They were to sail to the Caribbean with twenty-seven ships and 2,500 men to capture and loot a 350-ton treasure ship, the Begoña, that was known to lie stranded in Puerto Rico. According to eyewitness reports, the cargo was worth two and a half million ducats (some £800 million today).23
But after leaving Plymouth, Drake and Hawkins quarrelled. In late September, Drake, ever the daring, improvising opportunist, tried unsuccessfully to capture Las Palmas on the island of Gran Canaria, and further bickering ended only on the late afternoon of 12 November, when the English ships came to weigh anchor off the coast of Puerto Rico.24 By then, Hawkins was already gravely ill. He died hours later and was buried at sea.25 Undeterred, Drake launched his attack, but the Spaniards were ready for him. The master seafarer who had played the leading role in the defeat of the 1588 Armada had his stool shot from under him as he sat on deck eating his supper.26
Now, Drake decided to revert to Burghley’s plan of intercepting a treasure fleet at its principal departure point. But he reached Nombre de Dios, at the northern end of the jungle track across the Panama Isthmus, only to find the town had been evacuated. He ordered his men to march over the mountain pass to Panama City, but they were repulsed by Spanish
snipers and forced to return. All he could do was burn Nombre de Dios and the ships in its harbour before taking to sea again.
By January 1596, dysentery was rampaging through the English fleet. Drake was stricken by the deadliest form of the disease and died on the morning of the 27th. He was buried the next day at sea, not ‘slung atween the round shot’, as in Sir Henry Newbolt’s famous ballad, written in 1885, but sealed in a lead coffin. The survivors made a footfall at Portobelo to replenish their water barrels and then set a mournful course for home. After battling the winter gales and a Spanish ambush off the coast of Cuba, some thirteen of the original twenty-seven ships finally slipped through the Straits of Florida into the Atlantic, the last of them reaching Plymouth in early May.
• • •
Elizabeth considered the expedition yet another fiasco. Far from making a handsome return on her investment, she had lost two of her finest seamen and was left nursing losses in excess of £32,000.27 Worse still, at dawn on 30 March, while Drake’s ships were sailing home, Archduke Albert unexpectedly diverted his crack divisions from La Fère, near Saint-Quentin in Picardy, and laid siege to Calais.28 The artillery bombardment of the walls was so intense the queen could actually hear the thunder of the Spanish cannon from her barge on the Thames.29
Henry protested that he could no longer sustain the burden alone and threatened to make a separate peace with Spain if Elizabeth did not offer him fresh aid, and quickly.30 Grudgingly, she began negotiations for a new treaty, ratified in May, by which, in a secret clause, she undertook to provide the French king with four thousand men to fight in Picardy and Normandy. This was the very least she could get away with – a commitment she promptly halved. Confirmed by mutual oaths, the treaty specified that neither ruler would make peace without the other’s consent.31
By then, Calais had fallen and even Burghley was advocating a more aggressive war strategy.32 Intelligence had reached him by way of Genoa that a hundred or more of Philip’s galleons from the Biscay ports were preparing to sail for Calais or Marseilles, where they were to be joined by warships from Lisbon.33 What finally gave Essex the chance for which he had waited so long was the threat of a second Gran Armada using Calais as a base. For once showing a degree of tact, he joined forces with Lord Admiral Howard and handed Elizabeth a fully worked-out plan to send a counter-Armada to Spain.34
Determined to outflank all opposition, Essex set about mending his fences with Robert Cecil. Meanwhile, Lord Howard sent for Ralegh, whose naval expertise he considered indispensable.35 Still languishing at Sherborne Castle, dreaming of a second expedition up the Orinoco, Ralegh at first dragged his heels. According to Anthony Bacon, this was not through ‘sloth or negligence, but upon pregnant design, which will be brought forth very shortly’.36
Ralegh gambled that the queen would refuse to allow Lord Howard and Essex to leave her side, leaving the way open for him to command the entire venture. In this, he was mistaken. Howard’s command was never in question. And although Elizabeth changed her mind twice before allowing Essex to go, she finally agreed that he could. He certainly meant to make the most of it. His chance, he was convinced, had come to assert his masculinity by forcing upon her his own, more realistic (as he imagined) conception of how the war should be waged.37
The detailed plan of attack was Howard’s contribution, and it was he who selected Cádiz as the target. Security throughout was tight; few of the officers, let alone the men, knew their exact destination until they arrived. The fleet consisted of one hundred and twenty ships: seventeen warships from the royal navy, a squadron of eighteen lent by the Dutch States General and the rest armed merchantmen or transport vessels hastily requisitioned. Aboard were 1,300 mariners and 6,300 soldiers, accompanied by 1,000 gentlemen volunteers. Sir Francis Vere, still serving in the Netherlands as the captain of the English auxiliary forces, was summoned, with nine hundred of his veterans, and a further thousand experienced troops were provided by the Dutch.38
Elizabeth appointed Howard and Essex as Lords General in overall command, with equal, overlapping authority. Vere was given operational control over the army, while Ralegh was to direct the fleet. A Council of War, made up of these four and a few of their immediate subordinates, was to decide in more detail how the mission should be conducted.39
Elizabeth’s vision for the venture, once again, was strictly limited. In her final written instructions, badly scorched in a fire in 1731 and now only partly legible, she ordered the Lords General to attack and destroy Philip’s warships at Cádiz, taking care to salvage any naval supplies and equipment that she could recycle. Casualties were to be avoided, and (in a clause directed at Essex) she made it explicit that no ‘desperate or doubtful actions of offence in a strange country’ were to be committed. The temptation to create a more permanent military and naval base was to be firmly resisted. If any towns had to be levelled, the women, children and ‘aged men not able to bear arms’ should be spared. If, however, any of Philip’s carracks or treasure ships happened to come within range, they were to be seized with their cargoes as a way of financing the whole operation.40
• • •
On Thursday, 3 June 1596, Lord Howard led the fleet out of Plymouth Sound with Essex chasing up the loiterers. They sighted Cádiz on the 20th, when Essex’s bid to land troops in a surprise assault on the west side of the town was thwarted by perilously high waves, but at dawn the next day the vanguard of the fleet, commanded by Ralegh, entered the bay and launched a naval attack. Some seventy Spanish ships lay at anchor, including a dozen or so warships, four of which were brand-new, eighteen galleys, three treasure ships and a flotilla of thirty-four large merchantmen about to depart for the West Indies. On board the merchant ships were munitions, cash, wine, oil, silks, cloth of gold and other commodities said to be worth an eye-watering 12 million ducats (£3.5 billion in modern values). This was more than ten times the queen’s ordinary annual revenue.41
Seeing Ralegh’s vanguard advancing, Diego de Soto, the captain of the Spanish galleons, raised the alarm. By the time the main body of the English fleet had entered the bay on the morning tide, the Spanish had moved their ships closer in, towards the inner harbour, guarding the entrance by stationing their biggest warships astride it in a defensive line. The English engaged the warships in a gun battle lasting eight hours, policing this passageway until two of Philip’s galleons were grounded as the tide gradually ebbed. When a third had to be abandoned after an exploding barrel of gunpowder set it on fire, the smaller, lighter English vessels were able to pound all three to pieces. As the tide rose again, more of the larger Spanish ships attempted to make for the safety of the inner harbour but ran aground. The English pounced, capturing two of Philip’s fine new warships, along with 1,200 cannon, and sinking or burning the rest. In the melee, Ralegh received ‘a grievous blow in my leg, larded with many splinters which I daily pull out’. For months afterwards, he walked with a cane, a sign of his war wound.42
Essex, meanwhile, thirsting for glory, made a catastrophic misjudgement. Neglecting the poorly defended merchantmen with their priceless cargoes, he impetuously rushed two thousand troops ashore to the beat of a drum. When the great wooden gates of the city were slammed in his face, he gained entrance by sending an advance party to scale the medieval wall, leaving Vere’s veterans to batter down the gates. After a fierce fight, the town hall was seized, as well as a munitions dump, a sugar warehouse and the customs house. By sunset, Essex and Vere were the masters of the streets.
The next day, the Spaniards who had taken refuge overnight in the castle negotiated ransoms. The city was then apportioned among the English and Dutch officers and systematically plundered by the soldiers. Elizabeth’s instructions, superficially at least, were obeyed. Lord Howard afterwards declared that no women were raped or children or old men harmed, but the Spaniards told a different story.
The queen’s generals had delivered the most complete and dramatic victory of the
long war. The glaring loose end was the thirty-four merchantmen. Against Ralegh’s sage advice, Essex wasted a whole day entertaining ransom offers from the owners of their cargoes. Fearing that the English would seize their ships regardless, Don Luis Alfonso Flores, the supreme commander of the flota, then ordered them to be set on fire and scuttled. The ensuing inferno lasted three days and nights, as 12 million ducats went up in smoke. Only twelve of Philip’s galleys escaped. After rowing deep into the recesses of the inner harbour and dismantling a bridge, their crews were able to drag them along a creek running between the port and the open sea to safety.
• • •
But with the victory won, the struggle, from Essex’s viewpoint, was barely beginning. Having captured Cádiz, what should he do with it? Elizabeth had never wavered in her instructions. No captured Spanish towns were to be held on any account as bases for future English operations.
And yet this was exactly what Essex suggested. Shortly before leaving Plymouth, he had sent a long letter to his fellow privy councillors indicating his inclination on strategic grounds to defy the queen’s orders. He pleaded with them to coax her into allowing him to establish a permanent bridgehead at Cádiz. Once garrisoned with up to three thousand men, he said, it would function as ‘a continual diversion and . . . as it were, a thorn sticking in his [Philip’s] foot’.43 Instead of giving the Spanish king a single blow from which he might soon recover, Essex aspired to establish footholds on the Iberian coast, supplied from England by sea. Possession of these towns and their valuable seaports – he elsewhere proposed Lisbon as a prime target – would allow the royal navy to blockade the coastline. Cut off from his treasure fleets, Philip would be strangled into submission. Only in this way, Essex argued, could Elizabeth become ‘an absolute Queen of the Ocean’.44
With unusual passion even for him, Essex now commended his ideas to his fellow officers in the Council of War. An integrated military and naval strategy such as his, he vociferously maintained, was beyond the imagination of an ageing spinster who had never left English shores. It was up to her generals, experienced men of war such as themselves, to take the initiative while they still could.