Rightly so, for Walter Ralegh is a soldier. And if he saw no future in soldiering and left it, do not forget that he found a future by soldiering.
But he was a special kind of a soldier. I do not mean your candy soldier out of London and Westminster. Nor your tavern bully or brawling courtier, ready to cross swords over a slight; though record shows he did not fear a tavern brawl with rowdies or a duel with a swordsman either. It shows, too, he sought neither brawls nor duels. In truth—read his own words, sir, and match them with and against what you know—he had contempt for dueling and such deadly games. Was not easily provoked into quarrels of that kind.
Need I tell you—for surely the world in its age has not grown so ignorant of the nature and humors of man—that because he was not quick to fight he was the greater challenge? And that sooner or later, especially when he was young, he would be pushed into a wall with his back to it, and then would fight as well as any.
To a soldier a sword is not a toy or a decoration. When he draws sword, he means to kill with it and stands ready to be killed.
Another mark against Ralegh from the beginning in the ledger book of King James.
The world knows he will not permit an unsheathed blade, sword or dagger, in his presence. Knows, too, the padded bulk of the King’s clothing comes from the heavy sort of waistcoat, leather and links, he wears always next to his skin. ’Tis said to be proof against any blade or pistol. There are many who will tell you his fear of blades began in his mother’s womb, for she was large with him when his father and a band of the lairds took swords and daggers to David Rizzio, her secretary—and some say her lover—directly before her eyes. And he was a child when he saw his uncle sliced to fillets in swordplay. His life was in close danger many times in that land where even the noblemen are cutthroat ruffians. We now celebrate as a holiday his deliverance from the hands of Gowrie. Lord, no wonder he fears brawling and blades!
No wonder he feared Ralegh, swordsman for the Queen, her Captain ever ready to kill in a moment or at a sign.
No surprise he would believe that Ralegh conspired against him in ’03 and that Ralegh was chosen to carve up the King, his Queen and all the children.…
Ralegh was a soldier but not a kitchen garden sort of soldier.
Was off to France first, a boy, in a gentleman’s troop of horse from the Westcountry to serve the Huguenots. Few of them well-to-do. And himself with a name, a horse, his trooper’s gear, and not much else. An ordinary horse soldier, then, with not a pisspot to call his own and to fear to lose. A difference from many another young gentleman. Starting not an ensign bearer with eyes up on a captaincy.
Beginning in ignorance and innocence. No doubt he was trained in use of his weapons and a good horseman too. He would not have been there otherwise. And no doubt he must have heard many a story from old fellows much like me. He had kinsmen who had ventured far to fight the Turk. They would tell him what they could. But all that is nothing until you take the knowledge to you like a woman. There is no training known can ready a man for his first time in battle. When someone, near or far, seen or unseen, is carefully trying to kill—him. A man is never the same after that dawning. He’s as startled by not having imagined it before, by the lost innocence, as he is by the naked ambush of truth.
If he lives through that first encounter, he’s a soldier then, for better or worse. Whatever he was before is dead and gone.
Now, the way they used horse was to support the infantry. No more charges as of old. Horsemen worked as wings of the infantry, guarding flanks on the march and in battle. And they served as the Forlorn Hope, working ahead in the point and behind in retreat as a screen. And they scouted and skirmished and set up ambushes. And they reconnoitered and carried dispatches and messages.
It was lonesome duty, liable to be deadly any time. Their chief enemy would be the enemy’s horse soldiers, up to the same things. Killing was done with pistols and caliver or, when thick and close together, with bare swords. Two groups of men must come close to deliver fire, each close enough for the other to hit them. Pistols fired at fifty feet, calivers at a hundred yards, and usually dismounted. Not blocks of men in mob and melee, confusion of shot and shell, with screams and cries and drums beating the orders. But meeting a face you can see and remember. Cool craft of murder required.
Ralegh learned with dispatch or he would not have lived long enough to matter.
And all the while he soldiered like any other, except that a horseman has more to worry about: his mount, whose health is his own, and woe to the man who loses a mount. It was custom to degrade him down to the pick and shovel pioneers. Then all that saddle and bridle and gear to care for. And finding food for two.
All this in a strange country in the service of a foreign Army nearly as hostile as the enemy. And all in a war of religion. Which is the worst kind. For then there is no cruelty. That it cannot be justified.
The boy who went as a horseman to fight in those wars received an education in the art of war, which, if it didn’t kill him or cure him, was likely to last.
Proof of which comes later when he went to Ireland as a captain of infantry.
You know some of the stories from that time.
How once alone he held off a seneschal and twenty men with a pistol at the edge of a ford to rescue a comrade who had fallen off horse in the stream. Risking, wagering neither the seneschal nor any of his horsemen would volunteer to be the one man killed by his pistol.
A good cavalry wager.…
How once when an English army was on the march, he hid his company and remained behind when camp broke to march on. Waiting until the Irish appeared to poke in the ashes of campfires, to scavenge for what they could find. Ambushed them there, in their own style of warfare. Took prisoners. One of them carrying a bunch of willow withies.
Captain Ralegh asks him what they are for. “To hang English churls,” he replies. “Then,” says Ralegh, “they will serve as well for an Irish kern.” And orders the fellow hanged with his own withies from the nearest branch.
A soldier’s sense of jest. Without false pity or imaginary fear.
How he marched his company all night across hostile countryside and captured a town and seized the castle by a ruse. Then marched them back with the lord of the castle as prisoner. And all at the cost of one life, a man who fell in a bog.
Might have made it without harm to any if one fellow had watched where his feet were taking him.
Damn fools can’t and won’t be saved in peace or war. Will choke to death on roast beef or drown in a brass bathing tun. So shovel him under, poor boy, and God rest his foolish soul.…
How one day at Smerwick …
Here we had best pause to consider. For the story of that day’s work is well known. If James of Scotland heard it or learned of it later as an English king, he would have nightmares and would be confirmed beyond question to keep Sir Walter Ralegh forever far away and out of sight, dead or alive. Because he has always been thick and close to Spain, I’ve no doubt that he’s heard it, maybe many times.
It was Italians, soldiers of the Pope of Rome, who landed there, threw up an earth and timber fort, and began to prepare a permanent one. Some say it was Spaniards, and there may have been a few of them there among that motley band. But for certain it was not the Spanish Army. How do I know? Because Spaniards would never have yielded. Proof of that? Look how the Spaniard, less than four hundred in a similar fort at Crozon, guarding Brest, held long and fast against Sir John Norreys’ whole army in ’94. The Spaniards fought and died to the man.
Down to Smerwick, perched on the windy southeast cheek of the arse of Ireland, came Lord Grey with an English army. Forced marching in hellish haste, for they left behind much undefended country; and there was already news of an Irish army gathering against them. Why leave the country undefended to march across Ireland and take a little fort? Because there was every reason to believe this Fort del Oro, as they called it, was designed to be the handhold for landing a l
arge expedition of the Pope’s soldiers or Spain’s or both, who were already thought to be at sea. If they waited to see, they could be caught between the Irish and a foreign expedition like a walnut in a cracker.
With the weather miserable and bound to get worse, they arrived at Smerwick, bone-weary and on short rations; and they mounted an attack on the fort. Which, being well set on high ground and with the sea at its back, proved more than they had bargained for. After Lord Grey had killed off sufficient of his number to prove the fort could not be taken without ordnance, they settled in to wait for an English fleet. The last of the rations were vanishing and the weather was only worse. Then up sailed a patrol of English ships to blockade the fort and off-load cannon. Fort del Oro was so nicely placed that the ships could not come close to bring their fire to bear upon it. And even as the cannon began to do their work on the earthworks and timber, the ships pulled in anchors, hoisted canvas, and sailed away on new, urgent orders. Leaving the soldiers, even in victory, with the prospect of a march back at double pace and with next to no rations.
The English spared no powder and pounded the fort with cannonballs until a white flag appeared and the Italians parleyed for terms. Now, Lord Grey was not among the best of even our generals, but he was not such a fool as to embark upon a forced march with six hundred prisoners to guard and feed and prod along. He demanded an unconditional surrender and promised them nothing. The poet Spenser, serving as his secretary there, has borne witness to this. Some say that neither the Italians nor the English understood each other in the parleys, but there were a goodly number of Irish and English renegades in the Pope’s forces.
Consider the ways of warfare. Even when all the old rules of chivalry are invoked—of which I doubt the knights of old heeded one—any man who surrenders to the enemy is gambling skin and bones unless there are the strictest conditions and the means to enforce them. In Ireland the luckiest prisoners on both sides were those hanged or beheaded on the spot.
Most likely neither the English nor the Pope’s men were plain or clear with each other. It smacks of double-dealing, but there can be advantages both ways in ambiguity. Lord Grey may have hoped to persuade the last ships to take on prisoners and carry them home to be held for ransom. If so, they were unable or unwilling. The last ships sailed away.
The garrison yielded, laid down weapons and took its chances. Maybe hoping the English could not stomach the slaughter of so many. But Lord Grey gave the order that they should all die and quickly. He orders two captains, Ralegh and another, to take their companies and to do the work. To hang the Irish and English renegades, breaking their arms and legs first. To put the rest, every living soul, to the sword. There were women and children among them. No matter.
They killed them swift and sure while the rest of the army packed and prepared to leave. Then the two companies, without taking time to clean the clotted blood, packed bag and baggage, adding weapons and sparse loot, stripping corpses of anything worth keeping, and marched away.
Until they found time and water to wash themselves, his company must have looked more like a gathering of barber-surgeons then soldiers.
Most interesting is why Lord Grey chose Ralegh for the duty.
I can think of reasons.
Ralegh had already proved a good soldier. Though not always perfect for obedience, he would do what he was told. And his men would follow him.
News of Ralegh’s other adventures, having reached the Court and Council in dispatches, captured the interest of men in high places. And Captain Ralegh was now taking time to write letters to these men. Letters concerning the state of things in Ireland. Letters in which he did not hesitate to be critical of Lord Grey. And more sure than if it was sealed in butter, Grey would know about this. For Ralegh, following notions of his half brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and all his Carew kinsmen, favored the rule of Ireland by blood and iron. And then repopulation with Englishmen.
I see Lord Grey say to himself: Here’s an impudent man who can lay an ambush and seize a castle, who can kill in battle and is not afraid. He knows something of war and soldiering. Blood and iron? Well, here’s an inescapable occasion for both. Let us see if he has stomach for it.
And Ralegh, knowing his commander, taking the order without raising an eyebrow. Performing it without losing his appetite.
Perhaps, too, who knows? Lord Grey rightly feared the displeasure of the Queen at the thought of all that ransom money wasted on blood-soaked earth. Let Captain Ralegh take a share of blame.
Ralegh was a good horse soldier and hard as they come. But wars are not won by the cavalry on the wings or in skirmishes or ambush. Wars are won by the plodding infantry square. He commanded his company as he had ridden his horse. And no doubt loved his company in much the same way. If he had ever fought much in close ranks with pike or black bill in the common sweat and slaughter, he would have learned a different sort of lesson.
I do not know what he learned at Smerwick.
His story and the stories they tell of him show he always remained the sort of leader of men he had been in Ireland. By land or by sea. At Cadiz, sailing the Warspite into the harbor. And is he different at Fayal in the Azores, limping along with his cane, bareheaded and a large white scarf tied to his arm for all to see, leading a ragtag and bobtail crew up a narrow exposed rocky trail under a beehive of Spanish bullets, his cape as full of holes as a piece of Geneva cheese, to storm and take the Spanish fort there? I think it is the same man.
No doubt he knew what he was doing and the reasons why. Believed circumstances called for the gamble. For though he might and did often take risks, he was never a rash—and vainglorious in my humble opinion—man like Essex.
I think if he had not been on his back, wrestling fever for his life, he would have taken the Spaniards at San Thome and maybe have found his gold mine there.
Still, I believe he learned a lesson in Ireland. And maybe at Smerwick. Learned that it was already too late to unlearn old habits. Too late for him to change the cavalry style. Learning that war stark naked is more than the canter of cavalry. For after that time in Ireland, he never favored the use of large English armies on land. He fought by sea and sometimes on shore when a landing must be made; and he only soldiered in defense of the realm.
Ride hard, hit fast, and run was his style, the only style he knew. Well, he could have it that way on a ship, I’d reckon. But not for him to lead armies. He let Essex do that and fail and fail again. He watched Mountjoy do it and succeed.
No, he did not lose his appetite for fighting at Smerwick. But I’ll wager he lost his stomach for the tedious butcher’s work of blood and iron.
And he saw Lord Grey carry that idea of blood and iron to the extremity in Munster. Lay waste to all, denuding the land and leaving a wealth of bones, some living on as walking bags of bones, it is true, behind. Where the only thing, man or plant or beast, left thriving and fat was the wide-winged, slow-soaring, insatiable kite in the sky.
After Ireland, he was chiefly in and of the Court. In and out of favor with the Queen.
She took a threadbare knave of a soldier and made him one of the richest men in the kingdom. Showered gold and honors on his head.
Let me not pretend to understand all the why’s and the wherefore’s. But, casting aside envy, I have some opinions.
I note that in a very short time the Queen made him from nothing to a great man, almost overburdened with the weight of riches. I note, too, that even when he was in disgrace because of a secret marriage out of necessity to one of her maids of honor in ’91, even then she did not deprive him of what she had given—estates, perquisites, offices.
For the whole time that he was forbidden the Court, he retained and she left vacant—a very strange thing it seems to me—his post as Captain of the Guard.
And I note, too, sir, that although in her reign he held many offices, his chief and only office of the Court was always that—the Captain of the Guard. Never, in spite of intriguing, was he elevated to
the Council.
All this whets my interest. A little puzzle game. Childish it may seem to those who know the ways of Courts, but for me it is a knot to untangle.
I say these things to myself:
She who was Captain of England chose one of the best of her military captains to be her own.
She, who the world knows was frugal as a poor farmer’s wife, nevertheless was fantastical in her rewards to this man. More than to any, directly, if you consider it. For she may or may not have given more to other favorites, but he was given most, because changed most. From nothing to great wealth is more and means more than any addition to the man who possesses an estate.
She, who was fierce in retribution to all who betrayed her confidence and trust, let him off with a punishment so light it was, in the ways of the Court, I imagine, no more than a frown. It was Bess Throckmorton who suffered most.
Now, sir, much has been said of the Queen’s fondness for her favorites and her womanly jealousy and suchlike. I’ll not deny that, since I don’t know enough to affirm or deny.
What I do know is what can be easily known and proved. That, allowing for misjudgments, the late Queen had a marvelous habit of choosing the right man for the proper office. I cannot imagine Court or Council which contained so many good servants. True, they were often opposed to one another and their advice and counsel was contradictory. Just so. I understand this. When I was a captain I listened to my lieutenant, my green ensign, my sergeants and corporals. Indeed, I would listen to a pikeman if he had something to tell me. Listened and weighed all, then made my own free choice and issued my orders. In the nature of things, each speaking out of his own view, from his own vantage, their counsel would be different. Which is fine. God help me if they had ever agreed in perfect harmony.
The Queen could, likewise, listen to Ralegh and listen to Essex. Hear Burghley and Leicester, Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Walsingham, Gresham. Oh, name a hundred more. Could, as one of her mottoes says, see everything and say nothing.
Death of the Fox Page 24