The Dutch Government promised six ships of war; and an army was to be raised from the veteran English soldiers in Holland and the Walloons. Norreys crossed at once to the States and returned towards the end of the year triumphant. He had secured — on paper — an English cavalry regiment of six hundred sabres, thirteen companies of English veterans and ten companies of Walloons, a force of twenty thousand men. Drake meanwhile set about the collection and the organization of his fleet — one hundred and twenty ships to be divided into five squadrons, each with one of the Queen’s ships for its Admiral, or rather for its Squadron-Colonel. For it was perhaps significant of where the real authority was in this expedition that military rather than naval nomenclature was adopted. Five of the Queen’s ships were the Revenge with Drake for its Colonel, the Nonpareil with Sir John Norreys, the Swiftsure under Sir Roger Williams, a Welsh soldier, conceited, pedantic, valorous, with whom Shakespeare surely must have spent an analytic hour, the Foresight under John’s brother, Sir Edward Norreys, and the Dreadnought under Thomas Fenner. Each of these ships had again a staff with military titles consisting of a Lieutenant, a Corporal, a Captain of the Watch and a Chief Master, who was in ordinary naval parlance the Captain of the ship. The sixth of the Queen’s vessels was the Aid, commanded by William Fenner, the Rear-Admiral of the Fleet. Her business was to control the squadrons and make sure that each carried out its orders. This odd medley of naval and military titles, due no doubt to a desire on Drake’s part as much as on that of Norreys to graft on to the Navy the stricter discipline of the soldiers, was accompanied by a much more questionable circumstance. Three of the squadrons were commanded by soldiers who had no naval experience whatever. That these officers would look to Norreys rather than to Drake as their chief, even when engaged in the special tactics of the sea, and practise, if not claim, an unusual independence of naval control, is obvious. And, indeed, the action of Sir Roger Williams on the Swiftsure did, as will be seen, cause an embarrassment to Drake and do him an injury with the Queen, which he would certainly have avoided but for this duality of control.
These, however, were the arrangements made; and at once began those dilatory wants which Leicester had found to wait upon all sudden hurly-burlys. The expedition was to start on February 1st, and on February 1st there was just one man ready, and he the man who had only to pack his trunks. Neither the siege-train nor the cavalry ever put in an appearance. Only half of the English soldiers were furnished by the counties, and only six companies of the Walloons were brought over from the Netherlands. Important subscribers like the Earl of Northumberland withdrew their subscriptions; and when Drake went in March to Dover to hoist his flag on the Revenge, he found the six Dutch men-of-war lacking and little more than half the number of ships present which he required for the transport of the troops. He was, however, trained in such emergencies. He set out for Plymouth with what he had got, and had the singular good fortune to catch up sixty Dutch flyboats sailing in ballast with Spanish passes, “most of them new and strong, twenty of them, as I think, built within these three months. Whereupon,” he adds laconically, “we thought meet by consent to stay them.”
It is probable that they might have found it difficult not to consent to be stayed. But Drake made his terms with the Masters and carried them all along to Plymouth. There his name brought volunteers by the score. But the victuals were still short. Drake was not greatly distressed by the deficiency, since the harvest both in Spain and Portugal would begin at the end of the month of April. “Upon my credit with your Lordship,” he wrote on the eve of his departure, “there was never any army in better order than this, nor greater hope of good, if God grant relief of victual, which I distrust not.”
More serious, indeed, was the action of the Queen and her Council. No doubt they were alarmed by the greatness of the force which they had authorized and the wide authority which they had granted to its Generals. They began to pare it away with Instructions. Before it attempted the port of Lisbon, it was to distress the King of Spain’s ships in the harbours of Guipuscoa, Biscay and Galicia. To this Instruction the Queen firmly clung. Obeyed, it destroyed all hope of a swift, unexpected dash for Lisbon. And it had to be obeyed. Elizabeth was under the delusion that the galleons of the Armada which had struggled home could be and were being refitted for a renewal of the Enterprise of England. No arguments dissuaded her. The most of them were at Santander, and the first duty of Norreys and Drake was to destroy them. Whether the exact harbour which sheltered them was at this time conveyed to Drake is doubtful. Certainly she was in a rage with him afterwards for not seeking them in Santander and he had nothing better than a lame excuse to offer her in reply. He took them to be in Coruña, backed his judgment by his action, and was wrong. What is odd in this affair is not that he was wrong, but that he accepted with so easy a compliance the Queen’s shattering amendment to his plan.
There had been an occasion not a year old when the Queen and the Council had interfered with his design to carry the war to the coast of Spain. He had not acquiesced then. He had appealed to Walsingham, he had secured the help of Leicester, he had written to the Queen herself, he had stamped the corridors of Whitehall, and in the end the amendments had been rescinded. He had had his way. How was it that now, with his plan whittled down, he made no fight? And how was it that the Swiftsure was allowed to slip out of Plymouth Harbour, one of the Queen’s ships, the leader of one of his five squadrons, to sail away by itself and disappear?
There are puzzling circumstances in Drake’s conduct of his life at this time, acquiescences, cloudy judgments, which one is at a loss to reconcile with the clear direct vision of just what he wanted to do and just how to set about it which had distinguished him through the great years which preceded the Armada. He had trodden reverentially with the Queen, loyally with Walsingham, deferentially with Burghley, comradely with Leicester, but otherwise he had been no great respecter of great persons and high titles. He had shouldered his way a little too roughly for the liking of a great many people, but results had borne him out. And his acceptance of the departure of the Swiftsure is all the more difficult to understand in that he had a precedent in his own life to guide him. Once before, a favourite of Elizabeth, eager for fame and adventure and tired of — again the French phrase must stand — the amitié amoureuse of the Queen, Sir Philip Sidney, had bolted from the Court, galloped down to Plymouth and sought a respite with Drake in a voyage to those magic seas with which Drake’s name was linked. But Drake had seen the danger in those days, not merely of the Queen’s wrath but of a claim to a division of authority. He had acted immediately, diplomatically, and he had disembarrassed himself of his ardent but inconvenient volunteer. Now it was Essex. He, too, ran away down the same long road to the sea, and was taken on board the Swiftsure, commanded by his friend, Sir Roger Williams, at Falmouth. The Queen’s messengers — Sir Francis Knollys, and after him Lord Huntingdon — came thundering after him, with orders for Sir Roger Williams’ execution. But the Swiftsure was out of reach. Both Norreys and Drake pleaded that it had all happened without their knowledge; and they accepted Sir Roger Williams’ defection. The very thing which Drake had dreaded in the case of Sidney happened in the case of Essex. Essex interfered. “But though I had no charge, I made my brother general of the horse, and my faithful friend, Sir Roger Williams, colonel general of the infantry, seven or eight of my fast friends colonels and twenty at least of my domestics captains, so as I might have authority and party enough when I would.”
Essex stole a march on Drake, and very much to the hurt and hampering of the expedition. And one is forced to wonder. Drake was only forty-four years old. But men aged more quickly then, and he had lived hard with few intervals of leisure. Had he passed his great climacteric! Had he found some savour in acquiescence which he had never known before? Had that iron nerve weakened? The question recurs again and again throughout the faltering, unhappy course of the Lisbon expedition.
On April 7th, 1589, it set sail from Plymouth
, a fleet of eighty-three English and sixty Dutch ships, with a muster-roll of seventeen thousand three hundred and ninety soldiers, fifteen hundred volunteers, two hundred and ninety pioneers, three thousand two hundred English and nine hundred Dutch seamen. But the first ships had not weathered Rame Head — how often has this prelude to an Elizabethan enterprise to be recited? — so often indeed that it might almost be taken for a promise of success — when the wind swerved round into the south and all must put back into the Sound. For eleven days the embargo lasted. The surrounding country had already been ransacked for provisions. The great force was compelled to live upon the ships’ stores. The masters of the Dutch ships entered a further complaint that the soldiers whom they were transporting were treating them and their crews as enemies rather than friends, and that they would rather sacrifice their ships and go than put to sea and starve. The two Generals were forced to notify the Council that unless victuals for a month were immediately provided in accordance with the promises made, they must turn twenty thousand hungry men loose upon the country to feed themselves as best they could. Elizabeth, already furious at the expense which had been incurred and the equivocal denials of the Generals that they were parties to the flight of Essex, was not mollified by the peremptory message. But she could not face the alternative. She sent an order that the fleet was to be fed at her cost until it sailed, and that victualling ships with a month’s provisions would follow it when it did sail.
On April 18th, Drake, leaving an old friend, Captain Robert Crosse, who had commanded the Hope at Gravelines, to follow him with the victualling ships, put out with the fleet. The weather was still so unpropitious that some ships carrying two thousand soldiers never rounded Ushant — either because they couldn’t or they wouldn’t — and returned. But after two days the wind shifted into the north and the fleet was off Coruña on the 24th. By the Queen’s Instructions, the first port visited should have been Santander, and Coruña should have been omitted. The disobedience of the two Generals received the severest rebukes from the Queen and has been the occasion of a good deal of hostile criticism ever since. But both Norreys and Drake when called to account explained that the wind had backed into the east and they could not make the north coast of Spain. Neither of them could have been anxious to incur more of the Queen’s wrath than they were already booked for. The Tower had an ever-open door, and once within it, residence was apt to be prolonged. Their statement was not contradicted and there is no reason why it should be disbelieved.
The great mistake was made when it was determined to make a full-dress attack upon Coruña. There was only a single ship of the Armada fleet anchored there, the San Juan, with four smaller ships of war and two galleys, and the place itself was formidable. But the soldiers had their way, and the folly of that divided authority, against which Drake’s life had been one long and successful protest, was never more clearly proved.
Coruña stands much like Cadiz, on a promontory curving round the south-west side of a bay and joined to the mainland by a narrow neck. There was a high town on the seaward end of the promontory, protected by battlements and heavily fortified, and a base town on the flat, cut off from the mainland by a wall which crossed the isthmus from sea to sea. Beyond the promontory to the east lay the fortified island of San Antonio narrowing the entrance to the harbour, but it made no contribution to the defence. The English fleet anchored in the outer roads at three in the afternoon, and according to a report of the evidence given by Norreys and Drake to the Council, seven thousand men were landed on the eastern side of the harbour within three hours. So rapid a disembarkation, however, is out of the question, nor was anything like that number of troops employed until some days had elapsed. But certainly a strong party was landed, and in spite of gunfire from the San Juan and a couple of galleys, it advanced over the rocks and sand round the bay and drove a screen of skirmishers back behind their wall. Then the evening turned to rain and storm. Outside the wall, however, stood a suburb of mills and villas, and here the force bivouacked for the night. In the morning Norreys, who was leading the attack, sent off to Drake for a couple of heavy cannon to answer the fire from the ships. These were landed safely, mounted in a commanding position and so well served that the two galleys hoisted their anchors and made for Ferrol and the guns of the San Juan were silenced.
Meanwhile Norreys reconnoitred the defences and concerted with Drake a plan to storm the lower town from three different points. A force of fifteen hundred men in ships’ galleys, armed with cannon, were to force a landing on the water-front. At the same time, five hundred were by escalading the wall to enter the town at its eastern end; and a like number under Colonel Sampson, who had used the same stratagem at Cartagena in 1585, were to wade in the sea round the western edge. Thomas Fenner, who had led the boat attack at Cartagena, was to lead it again against Coruña. The attack was carried out that night, and only at one point met with a serious resistance. The beach shelved too quickly at the western end of the wall for Sampson to march round the wall. He was forced to attempt an escalade and was held up until the soldiers from the boats charged down upon the rear of the defenders. Then they broke, and for a little while the narrow streets climbing towards the high town were filled with a jostling, yelling crowd of fugitives and their hunters. Five hundred were put to the sword, and a few prisoners who might be worth a good ransom taken; amongst them Don Juan de Luna, the Governor of the town. The slaughter would no doubt have been greater had there not been more persuasive attractions. But the stores were bursting with provisions, collected, it was said, by Philip with a view to another Enterprise. Beef, wheat, salt, oil, beans and peas at the elbows of the English soldiers, and barrels of wine to wash them down. So the night which began with a battle ended in an orgy.
In the morning the crews of the Spanish ships set fire to them and took refuge in the upper town. The ships had been riddled by the English fire. One who was present declared, “We might stand upon the land and see through the ships as through glass windows, we did so tear them with our pieces.” Still, sixteen guns were saved from the San Juan; the San Bernardo ran ashore and the hull fell into English hands; and altogether a hundred and fifty brass guns with a shipload of small arms were added to the armoury of Drake’s fleet.
The wind was still in the north, and sufficient provisions could have been shipped quickly from the lower town and partitioned out at sea, as Drake had done often enough before, to last the fleet until the victualling squadron caught them up. To reach Lisbon before troops could be gathered and weak places fortified was clearly the wise policy. A resounding triumph there might even avert the Queen’s wrath from them on their return. But some curse lay heavy on their deliberations, and it was determined to send out foraging parties far and wide, drive in the cattle, collect the corn and wheat, fill their ships with what they wanted and burn the rest. But in another day the wind was blowing hard from the south-west, and, whereas yesterday they could have sailed, today they must remain. The Generals decided to use the delay in the destruction of the higher city and the devastation of the surrounding country. By the 29th a battery of two demi-cannon (thirty-pounders) and two culverins (long eighteens) had been based on a suitable foundation, and a tower on the ramparts close to the spot where the ramparts were to be breached was mined. It took the besiegers four days to open a breach. On the fifth day the mine was fired, and though part of the tower crashed in ruins, some of the walls stood tottering. The attack was sounded, and as Norreys’ soldiers scrambled up the rocks, the rest of the tower collapsed and buried them under its ruins. The companies advancing on the breach had little better fortune. They came to pike-thrust on the breach, but the rubble and debris up which they had climbed gave way beneath their weight and they were flung back down the slope. The soldiers who had survived the fall of the tower had run away already. There was nothing left for the party which had set out to storm the breach except to retire in what good order they could. This unsuccessful assault was made on the 4th of May, and whils
t it was proceeding, Drake, to set the balance level, destroyed the castle on the island of San Antonio.
It was the intention to renew the assault the next day, but a prisoner was brought in with a story to tell which caused a revision of the plan. The prisoner said that five or six miles up the River Mero, which falls into the sea to the east of Coruña Bay, stood a village, Puente de Burgos. Behind that village a bridge crossed the river. And in the village and in the country on the further side of the bridge a large army had been assembled under the Count of Altamira to relieve Coruña and drive the invaders into the sea. Arrangements were made at once to deal with this menace. Drake with five thousand men was left to invest the upper town of Coruña whilst the brothers Norreys with seven thousand marched up the river to Puente de Burgos.
The village had the advantage of stone walls and a body of veteran soldiers to defend it. But the prisoner’s story of the army assembled was a gross exaggeration. Norreys sent forward a vanguard of two thousand men in three divisions, a main body and two outflanking wings, but the right wing was not called upon, and the Spaniards were driven out of the village and across the bridge. At the end of the bridge, however, they made a stand. The width of it allowed no more than three men to walk abreast, and its length was two hundred yards. A strong barricade was raised, and an altogether formidable barrier stayed the advancing troops. The battle which followed was the battle of the heroes on the beaches before Troy. The younger Norreys ran forward with a pike at the head of his men. Braving the musket bullets, he leaped upon the barricade, thrust his pike into the first enemy with so much violence that he tottered and received a sabre cut on the head. Colonel Sidney at his side ran his assailant through and dragged Norreys back. Then the elder Norreys, not panoplied for war, but a plain, unarmoured gentleman, snatched another pike from a soldier and rushed to his brother’s side. Of such a battle the reader must find his account in the Iliad. In prose it is enough to say that the enemy fled, that twelve hundred of their soldiers bit the dust, and of the English some say seven, others five, and yet others one officer and two men.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 899