Read The Spanish Armada Online
Authors: Robert Hutchinson
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Great Britain, #Military, #Naval, #General
The Spanish Armada (17 page)
After twenty months of preparations, Philip’s financial position was again critical.
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Despite the Pope’s vocal support, it seemed
unlikely that the Vatican would tide the king over with an advance on the agreed subsidy, part payable on Spanish troops landing in England. Olivares, Philip’s long-suffering ambassador in
Rome, was still sparring with an intractable Pope on the issue, even prostrating himself at the papal feet in desperate supplication. The envoy was pessimistic of any prospect of an immediate loan:
Sixtus was ‘so fond of money that he would rather lose the interest than let it go out of the castle [his treasury in Castel di Sant’ Angelo in Rome]’, he declared.
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A few days later, Olivares reported the Pope’s angry reaction to news that the invasion plan was really in earnest and that the Armada was moving
towards departure. The prospect that Sixtus would have to pay his 1,000,000 gold ducats had caused him ‘extreme and extraordinary perturbation’:
The things he says about it are very strange. He does not sleep at night. His manners to all are more than ordinarily abrupt.
He talks to himself and generally conducts himself most shamefully.
In addition, the Pope was also complaining about ‘the mint of money’ he had been forced to shell out for the new English cardinal, Dr William Allen, ‘whereas,
all he has given is a thousand ducats for his outfit and a hundred a month for his maintenance’. The days in the Vatican dragged wearily on for Olivares, with a pervasive and ominous papal
silence about any advance. ‘We might as well cry for
the moon as ask for it before. I am trembling for fear that [Sixtus] may give me many a bitter pill even before I
can get it, seeing how he seems to love this money,’
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he admitted despondently.
Philip was now spending 700,000 crowns (£187,500 or £40,000,000 at 2013 prices) each month on preparing for war – ‘a thing truly almost incredible’ to the
Venetians. He tried again to raise money from the Italian banks belonging to the Spinola, Cantanei and Grimaldi families and also sent appeals for cash to his dominions in Italy and Flanders.
Closer to home, he sought subsidies from the Spanish clergy to help him pay for ‘this cause of God and state’. Gaspar de Quiroga y Vela, Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, alone faced a
demand for £250,000.
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For the preoccupied and worried king, there were tensions and unrest everywhere. In the Spanish Netherlands, Parma complained vociferously about the setback in the Armada’s sailing date.
‘This delay is causing the total ruin of the province of Flanders and is hardly less disastrous to the rest,’ he told Philip that January.
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In annexed Portugal, merchants were losing money through English privateer attacks on their shipping. Its citizens were restive under the burden of supplying grain to the
Armada and were now ‘at their wits’ end’. A number of conspiracies against Spanish rule were also uncovered
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and Philip,
‘greatly disturbed’, saw ‘no possibility of winning the affection of that people by kindness’. He briefly considered policing his new dominion with six thousand additional
Spanish and German soldiers and charging the cost of their maintenance to the Portuguese. Instead he ordered his nobility to mobilise troops to reinforce his garrisons in Portugal once the Armada
had sailed.
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In London that February, Elizabeth had her own frustrations and fears. She had been enraged by a request for more financial assistance from the rebel Dutch States (or parliament), and fell into
a typical Tudor tantrum:
It is very strange they should ask for further aid without giving her any account of what had been done for them before.
She swore by the living God it was terrible and she does not believe such ungrateful people . . . live upon the earth. She has sent them thousands of men, whom they have not paid but let die
of hunger and despair or else desert to the enemy. Was that not enough to
exasperate England? Were not the States ashamed that Englishmen say they had found greater
civility from Spaniards than from them?
She cannot suffer such conduct and in future shall please herself.
She can do without them!
They are not to think she is obliged to help them for her own safety: nothing of the sort.
It is true she does not want Spaniards for her near neighbours as they are her enemies at present, but why should she not live at peace and be friendly with the King of Spain, as she was
originally.
He has always desired her friendship and has even sought her in marriage.
Therein lies the clue to the cause of Elizabeth’s robust response. She had been caught out secretly seeking peace with Spain. Beneath her bluster and regal indignation was
a tacit acknowledgement that she sought negotiations to avert the threat of invasion and to end her costly war in the Low Countries. The Dutch States may have issued an edict forbidding the
discussion of peace but, after all, compared to princes, they were just ordinary people: ‘Princes can discuss matters together as private persons cannot do.’ But she did promise they
would not suffer: ‘Let princes act as they think fit . . .’ Whatever else she may do for them in future, she expected to be better treated in return.
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Elizabeth’s efforts to find a peaceful solution arose from a letter from Parma the previous November. Walsingham believed it a trick to lower England’s guard and told Leicester that
the letter ‘has bred in her such a dangerous security as all advertisements of perils and danger are neglected’. Plainly depressed by developments, he added:
A well-placed Spanish spy in London heard that Elizabeth was ‘determined to make peace at any cost, it being most important for her to be sure of Spain, now that France is
in so disturbed state’. Walsingham and Leicester, whilst vehemently arguing against any
peace negotiations, insisted, as a fallback, that any treaty terms should be
honourable.
At eleven o’clock at night, after the queen had heard a comedy, she flew into a passion with the Earl of Leicester and told him that it behoved her at any cost to be
friendly with the king of Spain ‘because I see that he has great preparations made on all sides. My ships have put to sea and if any evil fortune should befall them, all would be lost for
I shall have lost the walls of my realm.’
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At the end of January, Parma informed Philip that intelligence he had received ‘seems to prove that the Queen of England really desires to conclude peace and that her
alarm and the expense that she is incurring are grieving her greatly . . . It cannot be believed that she is turning good except under the stress of necessity . . . If the negotiations are opened
at once, we shall at least be able to see what they are up to.’
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Unbeknown to Elizabeth, the peace process had turned into a meaningless charade. Philip, unswervingly committed to invasion, instructed Parma not to agree a treaty on any terms. The five English
commissioners to the negotiations crossed from Dover to Ostend that March and began the plenary discussions at Bourbourg, near Dunkirk, on 23 May. In the weary weeks ahead, they faced constant and
deliberate delaying tactics by the Spanish.
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But the queen’s fervour for peace remained undiminished, her fears doubly increased by events in
France.
On 12 May, the largely Catholic population in Paris rose in rebellion after the French king Henri III deployed his Swiss Guard to preserve order in the capital. Barricades were thrown up on
street corners and by nightfall the king had fled, defiantly vowing his revenge on the city: ‘When next I enter you, it shall be through a breach in your walls.’ The Duke of Guise, with
his Spanish-subsidised Catholic League – Philip had recently handed over 100,000 ducats (£25,000) – was left in control and afterwards the damaged monarch was forced unwillingly
to appoint him lieutenant-general of the kingdom. The French ambassador in Madrid warned Henri that June: ‘The corruption of these times and Spanish money will make a scar on the subjects of
your majesty that will not easily be effaced and a wound in your kingdom that will not heal.’
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In March, Sixtus boldly voiced his sneaking admiration for the Queen of England. He had heard that Elizabeth had promised the Turks a bribe of 300,000 ducats
(£75,000) to send their fleet out into the Mediterranean as a diversionary tactic against the Spanish. ‘She is a great woman,’ he announced, ‘and were she only Catholic she
would be without her match and we would esteem her highly. She omits nothing in the government of her kingdom and is now endeavouring, by way of Constantinople, to divert the King of Spain from his
enterprise.’
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Later that month, the Pope learned that the English were fully ready to repel any Spanish invasion. Embarrassingly, he then
launched into another bout of panegyric praise of Elizabeth. ‘She certainly is a great queen,’ he told his increasingly disconcerted audience. ‘Were she only a Catholic, she would
be our dearly beloved.’ His eulogy became ever more enthusiastic:
Just look how well she governs. She is only a woman – only mistress of half an island – and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the [Holy Roman]
Empire,
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by all. She enriches her kingdom by Spanish booty, besides depriving Spain of Holland and Zeeland.
The Pope, reported Giovanni Gritti, the Venetian ambassador to the Holy See, went on ‘with pleasure to dwell on the praises and valour of the queen’, much to the
astonishment and confusion of his listeners.
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In July 1588, Sixtus acknowledged to several cardinals that he had done all that he could to persuade Elizabeth to return to the Catholic faith. He had offered a new ‘investiture of her
kingdom, in spite of the deprivation pronounced by Pope Pius V and to give her the bishops she might approve’. It all came to nothing: the queen characteristically replied that ‘the
Pope would do well to give her some of his money’.
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Therefore Sixtus (perhaps regretfully) renewed her excommunication and transferred all
her titles to Philip, who now became King of England and Ireland and protector of the Catholic faith in those countries, according to the Vatican, at least.
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This new declaration of anathema against the queen was not the sole weapon in the Church’s campaign of words against Elizabeth. Cardinal Allen published a pamphlet in Antwerp that was
extraordinarily vituperative. His
Admonition to the Nobility and People of
England and Ireland Concerning the Present Wars
repeated Sixtus’s confirmation of
excommunication ‘concerning her illegitimation and usurpation and deprivation in respect of her heresy, sacrilege and abominable life’. No one in England could obey or defend Elizabeth
but should be ready ‘at the arrival of his Catholic majesty’s forces . . . to join the said army . . . to help towards his restoring of the Catholic faith and deposing the usurper . . .
as by the General of this holy war shall be appointed’. The queen was ‘an incestuous bastard, begotten and born in sin of an infamous courtesan’. Her kingdom was ‘a place of
refuge and sanctuary of all atheists, Anabaptists,
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heretics and rebellious of all nations’.
Oozing malice, Allen went on to describe Elizabeth’s crimes against God and mankind and denounced both her public and private life. English Catholics, he urged, must now show whether they
will endure ‘an infamous, depraved, accursed excommunicate heretic; the very shame of her sex and princely name; the chief spectacle of sin and abomination in this our age and the only
poison, calamity and destruction of our noble church and country’. They should not fight the Spanish invaders:
Fight not, for God’s love. Fight not in that quarrel, in which, if you die, you are sure to be damned.
Fight not against all your ancestors’ souls and faith, nor against the salvation of all our dearest wives [and] children.
This is the hour of God’s wrath against her and all her partakers.
Forsake her therefore . . . that you be not enwrapped in all her sins, punishment and damnation.
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Vitriolic stuff! Olivares sent a copy to Parma, who planned to have it printed ‘and spread all over England at the time of the invasion’.
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As the peace negotiations dragged on, Dr Valentine Dale, one of the English commissioners – ‘an old man, very stout and heavy’ – formally
complained about Allen’s pamphlet to Parma. The duke ‘excused it as well as I could by saying I did not understand the language, nor was I acquainted with the secret information which
might justify [Allen’s] statements’.
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He was of course dissembling.
If Walsingham worked long and hard to build a network of spies to monitor the Armada’s progress, the Spanish too had agents in London who produced remarkably accurate reports on
Elizabeth’s
defences. A Portuguese spy, Antonio de Vega, was one of the most energetic and possessed good contacts at court, but in late April he heard of inquiries
being made about him by Walsingham and begged permission to leave England before the spymaster’s net closed on him.
Other agents fed intelligence through Bernardino Mendoza in Paris, who may have coloured his digests with some wishful thinking, or in the hope of providing the news that his master would be
pleased to read. On 23 February he told Philip that every gun had been taken out of the Tower of London to arm the queen’s ships ‘and they even brought down the pieces which were
mounted in the White Tower, as they call it. The queen’s arsenals and all the country is very short of [gun]powder.’ On 5 April, Mendoza reported a cannon exploding on board
Drake’s flagship, the
Revenge
, killing thirty-five men and wounding seven; the English, he said, looked upon this as ‘an evil omen’.
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Another spy’s report at the end of March claimed that Plymouth was ‘badly defended at present as the [crews] have been landed to save the victuals in the ships . .
. Colonel Norris exercises and drills his troops every day in London. They are not very handy yet but will really become so in time. There is therefore danger in delay.’ The agent went on to
report some of the government propaganda that was being distributed in England:
