A supply of wine and provisions was secured, but gold was as scarce as inhabitants, more scarce indeed. For one man was discovered. He said that five years before the city had been looted and destroyed by French privateers, and that on the approach of Drake’s fleet the Governor and the Bishop and the citizens, fearing a repetition of the disaster, had withdrawn up the hills to the small inland town of San Domingo. Drake sent the man off with a message that there would indeed be a repetition unless the authorities and the people returned and treated with him. Drake waited for an answer, but the days slipped by and no answer came. Drake marched with a force of two hundred men up to San Domingo, twelve miles away — only to find that place deserted now. The Bishop and his flock had decamped again. Drake waited until the evening, but since no envoy appeared, he gave San Domingo to the flames and marched back to Santiago. He was followed at a great distance by horsemen, but he was not attacked. But a ship’s boy straggled away in the darkness and was brutally mutilated and murdered. The discovery of the boy’s disfigured body sealed the fate of Santiago. Drake burnt it to the ground, leaving the hospital the only house standing. But before he departed he held a muster of the troops. Whether the failure to find any treasure, or the abundance of wine which was found, was the cause, some disorder had broken out amongst them. An oath was now administered to them company by company, by which they swore to acknowledge Her Majesty as their supreme Governor, to do their utmost, each man in his station, to forward the voyage and to yield obedience to the General and his officers.
Drake had not quite done with the island. Six days after his arrival, one of the inhabitants of Santiago had come down into the town and been captured. This man, being subjected to the question, thought to ease his own position by a statement agreeable to his captors. He declared that a great store of gold was hidden in Porto Praya, a small town on the promontory to the east of Santiago, and that he knew where it was. Captain Sampson, accordingly, with a couple of companies, was sent forward in Richard Hawkins’ ship the Galliot Duck to find it, whilst Drake shipped the guns from the forts of Santiago and his men. Captain Sampson found no gold in Porto Praya, and Drake, bringing up his fleet to the town in the evening in a rage, put that town to the flames too. On the morning of November 26th he stood away at last for the West Indies.
The whole episode of this attack upon Santiago is deplorable. It was not in the original plot of the voyage, and Burghley probably knew nothing about it whatever until it was all over. It was a piece of private revenge. Four or five years before, the Bishop of Santiago had made and broken some such promise as the Viceroy of Mexico had made at St. John de Ulua to John Hawkins, and men, Plymouth men, had been murdered. John Hawkins was a relation of Drake, and Drake was a strong Plymouth man; and he had a long memory for injuries and wrongs. Rio de la Hacha, St. John de Ulua, the names were obstinate on his lips and obstinate in his mind. His resentment was increased by what he would consider to be the insolence of the Bishop in refusing to come down from the hinterland and treat with him for the ransom of his city; and then inflamed by the mutilation and murder of his ship’s boy. He allowed no outrage of that kind to go unpunished if he could help it, he might plead. But none the less, he had allowed just such outrages to go unpunished, as in the case of the island of Mocha.
He had left three towns three heaps of ashes; he had lost a fortnight when engaged upon an expedition in which secrecy and speed were conditions of success; he had met circumstances which had provoked insubordination amongst his troops; and he came out no richer than when he went in. Some small advantage no doubt he gained. He had no further trouble with his soldiers after the parade. “By this provident counsel and laying down this good foundation beforehand,” wrote Walter Biggs, the Captain of a company, “all things went forward in a due course to the achieving of our happy enterprise.” He obtained, too, the benefit of a full-strength rehearsal in Carleill’s night-march to the city.
The experiences of Cartagena, of Nombre de Dios, of Valparaiso and half a dozen cities on the Pacific coast had taught him that ships alone could raid, blockade and destroy a town, but could not capture and hold it. For this latter achievement land forces were essential working in combination with the ships. The principle still holds good. It was forgotten in the first attack upon Gallipoli in 1915, and we paid dearly for our forgetfulness. At Santiago, Drake was able to use this tactical combination of an unexpected onslaught from the land and an open bombardment from the sea for the first time. He used it again and again with unfailing success during the months which followed, and no doubt the experience which the troops gained during that first expedition in the Cape Verde Islands stood him in good stead. The assault upon Santiago was a blunder with compensations.
Santiago none the less took a heavy toll of its destroyers. They carried away an evil deadly to small and crowded ships. For seven days the fleet sped to the west through the green and gold of tropic seas, the crews eager, light-hearted and confident. Hardly a rope needed to be touched from dawn to dawn. The wake was a path of snow by day and of white fire by night. And then on the eighth day a man fell and died. Yellow Jack had come out of its hiding-place and stalked through the fleet. Had it been sailing with a head-wind blowing clean and sweet between the decks, the infection might have been stayed. But the north-east trades drove steadily on the starboard quarter. Two hundred men died of the fever and many more were left pale fibreless creatures with wandering wits. Eighteen days after he had departed from Santiago, Drake reached Dominica, the nearest point in the curved rim of the Leeward Islands to a traveller from Europe. Savages with painted bodies occupied it. They had a few Spanish prisoners, by whom they were able to communicate with Drake’s officers, and were strong handsome people willing to help. They gave the sailors white bread of the cassava root and tobacco, which was held by sailors to counteract infection, and cheerfully helped to fill the water-barrels from the river. Drake requited them with trinkets and glass beads which had been collected at Santiago. But he did not trust them, and though they prayed him to stay, he sailed on northwards to St. Kitts before the day was out.
This island was more to his liking, for it was quite uninhabited. He could give his crews, cramped and sickened by their close quarters, the run of it; and whether it was this new freedom or the fresh wild fruits which could be gathered, or the healing qualities of the tobacco, the contagion passed as quickly as it had appeared. Christmas was celebrated upon St. Kitts, and the ships cleaned and aired. The sick recovered their strength; the soldiers were drilled; games were played; expectation was in the air; and Drake called a council in his cabin. Martin Frobisher, Francis Knollys, the two Flag-Officers, Carleill the Lieutenant-General, and all the ships’ Captains attended it. Drake announced to them his plan. The men were now at their best. It was the moment to strike. The richest island of the West Indies was at hand, Hispaniola, and on that island stood the capital city of Philip’s Empire in the West, San Domingo.
It was a city of splendour, built of marble and white stone. In the centre of it a great church, magnificently appointed, housed the bones of Christopher Columbus. It had an inner and an outer harbour and a castle which commanded both. It was a place of gardens and spacious houses panelled with polished wood. It had a large population, for it was the hub of West Indian commerce, and behind it stretched a land of inexhaustible wealth. It was the pearl of the Antilles. No marauder had ever attacked it. To its inhabitants no marauder had ever dared to dream of attacking it; and they were right, until Drake did on New Year’s Day of the year 1586 to the glory of God and the high honour of his Queen.
Drake was always learning and combining his new knowledge with his old; so that each campaign was in its design and performance a progress and extension of the one which had gone before. He began with his old plan of making friends with the Maroons who inhabited the woods and the jungles on the heights beyond the town. He had Captains of ships now who had been simple mariners on the Nombre de Dios expedition. These men knew how he wo
rked, and he sent them forward with a section of his fleet under Frobisher to get into touch with the Maroons and secure their friendship. On the way a small trading frigate bound for the harbour was caught up and arrested. It had a Greek pilot on board who was able to give valuable information about the approach from the sea. A long spit of sand and scrub, on which the surf broke with a roar, ran out at the east end of the town and curved so as to make a mole. On the west the land made a curve, and between the point of the spit and the promontory of the land there was a bar. Once the bar was crossed, the city front was visible, but it was enclosed behind a limestone wall and the only place of landing was straight ahead at a corner where the inner harbour was recessed; and this corner could not be used since it was directly commanded by the fifty guns mounted in the castle. On the promontory to the west, however, a shallow bay ten miles from the city and within the bar offered an easy disembarkation. But this beach was guarded by watch-houses which were occupied each night by a company from the garrison of the castle.
Frobisher then landed secretly some men who were to seek an alliance with the Maroons, and, himself, made a demonstration before the town. Fires were lighted in the Spanish country houses on the uplands, as a warning, but Frobisher was not hiding his demonstration. On the contrary. “He played with the Spaniards for three days,” says the Spanish Chronicle, “making many feints and so tired them out.” After three days his messengers had returned from the Maroons. The Spaniards had one great disadvantage in a conflict with a man like Drake. They learned nothing ever. As in Darien, so in Hispaniola. They were amongst gentle, kindly natives, but they killed and went short of service. They tortured and made bitter enemies. They never condescended to make a friend. They were the Lords of the world. For their captives there were the iron rule and the booted heel. The Maroons assured the English that they need not worry. None of the castle garrison would be on guard in the watch-houses on the night when Drake landed. Nor would there be an outcry. They would see to that.
Drake was lying out of sight with the greater number of his ships, and on this first day of the year 1586 he led his fleet over the bar and took up his anchorage in full view of the town, but outside the reach of the castle guns. It was afternoon when he crossed the bar and he was apparently busy with his ships until darkness fell. Across the water lights flashed and went out in the houses on the water-front and in the castle. Away on the dark promontory to his left there was not the glimmer of a match or the ring of a musket against a stone. Silently a thousand soldiers were embarked in the ships’ long-boats and the pinnaces. Drake himself and Carleill, who was to command the troops, sat in the stern of the leading boat, and without a light showing and with little more noise than the dripping of the water from the blades of the oars, the flotilla moved across the lagoon to the appointed landing-place. They were not challenged from the watch-house. The Maroons had done their work silently and completely. As soon as the troops were landed they bivouacked for the night, and Drake, having with his own eyes satisfied himself of their safety, returned to his ship: Carleill was to march at eight in the morning and reach the city gates at noon.
The night passed quietly. But in the morning Drake moved his ships forward and began with his heavy guns to bombard the castle. The attack had as its first and chief object to distract the attention of the defenders from the approach of Carleill. But he pressed it none the less, and when the hour drew towards noon, he made a great pretence of hoisting out his boats as if he proposed to attempt a landing. The ruse succeeded. That he would strike for the barbican at the junction of the harbours was out of the question. None but madmen would dream of it, and though the English were mad, as all the world knew, they were not quite so daft as that. But to the west, just beyond the two gates of the town, the land curved down to the water. There was no limestone wall there, there was no castle, there were no cannon. A body of horsemen, a troop of muskets hurried out from the city, turned southwards from the gates and formed up on the edge of the lagoon.
They had hardly taken up their position when the beating of drums and the ringing challenge of trumpets from the jungle behind them on their right flank took them by surprise. Carleill was coming up punctual to his appointment. With the troop of muskets were a hundred and fifty horsemen and some gentlemen of the town. They turned and charged. But Carleill was ready and they were received with such a hail of small shot and so fierce a play of the pikes that they broke. They reformed a little way off and tried again but with no better success. They rounded up a herd of oxen and drove them against the invaders in the hopes of throwing their ranks into confusion, but the cattle in their turn broke before the serried pikes and the blaze of muskets. Meanwhile the foot-soldiers of the garrison had taken what cover they could among the bushes along the road to the gate. There were two gates, both facing to the west and parallel to one another. Carleill pressed on towards them. For they were mounted with heavy ordnance, and about them clustered in continually increasing numbers fresh soldiers from the castle, the muskets from the ambuscade, what horsemen were left — any that could run or ride and had a weapon in their hands.
Carleill divided his force. He gave one half of it to Captain Powell with the order to attack the northern gate. He cried out that with God’s good favour he would not rest until the twain met in the marketplace, and he led the other half against the gate nearest to the sea. The guns were fired and some execution was done by them. A man fell dead by the General’s side. He gave the command to charge, and before the guns could be reloaded he was through, invaders and defenders tumbling through the entrance pell-mell. But the defenders had had enough. “We gave them,” wrote Captain Biggs, “more care every man to save himself by flight than reason to stand any longer to their broken fight.”
The Fugger News-Letter gives a more detailed and a more humorous story, but does not make a better fight out of it. The correspondent of that famous house of merchants relates that the populace bolted in such numbers that only one hundred and twenty men could be mustered to defend the city. They had four Captains, the Licentiate Juan Fernandez de Mercado, the Licentiate Balthasar de Villa Fane, local Auditor of the Royal Council, the Fiscal Licentiate Aliago and the Licentiate Arero, of the Council; and over them all was the President-General. This pompously commanded troupe marched out to meet Carleill, accompanied by Don Diego Orsinio the Captain of the Flagship. As they drew near, the President and his horse unfortunately sank into a bog in the presence of his men and were both retrieved covered with mud. This was held to be of ill omen, and the aged President with the equally venerable Arero were persuaded to go home. A little later, the defenders saw the attacking force and were filled with fear. The Licentiate Balthasar, however, who was not to be daunted, gave the soldiers a Christian admonition, and the Licentiate Mercado showed himself no less ardent and brave. These two took up their positions in front of the troops and called on the soldiers to follow. But they, heedless of all admonitions and threats which followed on the admonitions, broke into flight. The Licentiate Balthasar shouted to them to turn back and face at least two discharges of bullets, so that God and the whole world might see that they had done their duty. But the appeal was of no avail. From the gate three cannon were fired at the enemy and thereafter all resistance ceased.
Carleill reached the marketplace first, and in a little while Captain Powell joined him. The day was theirs, and from the top of a tower the great ensign of St. George waved “victory” to the fleet.
The day was theirs but the city as yet was not. It was too big for Carleill to occupy. He pushed out on each side his troops as far as he dared and closed the streets with barricades. There remained the castle with its heavy artillery. Carleill dared not leave it till the morning. He led his men against it, weary as they were, a little after midnight. But, said Biggs, “they who had the guard of the castle, hearing us busy about the gates of the said castle, abandoned the same; some being taken prisoners and some fleeing away by the help of boats to the other side of the h
aven and so into the country.” The Governor of San Domingo, a civilian, had preceded them. For he ran away from the town as soon as Drake’s ships crossed the bar into the lagoon.
Drake himself landed the next day, bringing with him heavy artillery — probably the guns taken away from Santiago. He took under his control a wider portion of the city and fortified it with his new cannon and stronger barricades. He had the inner harbour at his back quite under his control. The Spaniards had sunk three hulks in the mouth of the inner harbour, and the ships imprisoned behind them fell without a shot fired into his hands. Amongst them was the Flagship of the station, some coasting barks and a big new French-built galleon of six hundred tons, the like of which there was none in all Spain. It had the admirable name of The Grand Guy, and Drake took it away with him loaded with his booty when he departed from San Domingo.
But there was to be the reckoning before he departed; and for the second time in this voyage the Spaniards learned that those who harmed one of Drake’s men except in fair fight must be prepared to pay a heavy penalty for their cowardice. “Messages” were already passing between the authorities of the city and the General for an armistice, and in the course of these Drake sent out a black boy with a letter under a flag of truce. Unfortunately the boy, once outside the barricade, fell in with a group of officers from the Flagship. One of these, furious at the unseemliness of the choice of a black boy for an envoy, seized the lance of a trooper and ran the boy through. The boy was just able to stumble back into the General’s presence, and there fell dead at his feet. Drake took two friars from amongst his prisoners, sent them out with the Provost-Marshal and a sufficient guard, and hanged them then and there on the spot where the boy had been struck. He sent out another prisoner immediately afterwards to explain why he had hanged the friars and to add that until the murderer was delivered for punishment into his hands no day should pass but he would hang two more in just the same way, until he had not a single prisoner left. The officer was delivered up the next day, but Drake was no longer content. He made the Spaniards hang the officer themselves in his presence and before the eyes of his men.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 882