History of the English People Volume Iv Part 11

[Sidenote: The gathering of the Armada.]

The strife between Puritanism and the Crown was to grow into a fatal conflict, but at the moment the Queen's policy was in the main a wise one. It was no time for scaring and disuniting the ma.s.s of the people when the united energies of England might soon hardly suffice to withstand the onset of Spain. On the other hand, strike as she might at the Puritan party, it was bound to support Elizabeth in the coming struggle with Philip. For the sense of personal wrong and the outcry of the Catholic world against his selfish reluctance to avenge the blood of its martyrs had at last told on the Spanish king, and in 1584 the first vessels of an armada which was destined for the conquest of England began to gather in the Tagus. Resentment and fanaticism indeed were backed by a cool policy. The gain of the Portuguese dominions made it only the more needful for Philip to a.s.sert his mastery of the seas. He had now to shut Englishman and heretic not only out of the New World of the West but out of the lucrative traffic with the East. And every day showed a firmer resolve in Englishmen to claim the New World for their own. The plunder of Drake's memorable voyage had lured fresh freebooters to the "Spanish Main." The failure of Frobisher's quest for gold only drew the n.o.bler spirits engaged in it to plans of colonisation. North America, vexed by long winters and thinly peopled by warlike tribes of Indians, gave a rough welcome to the earlier colonists; and after a fruitless attempt to form a settlement on its sh.o.r.es Sir Humphry Gilbert, one of the n.o.blest spirits of his time, turned homewards again to find his fate in the stormy seas. "We are as near to heaven by sea as by land," were the famous words he was heard to utter ere the light of his little bark was lost for ever in the darkness of the night. But an expedition sent by his brother-in-law, Sir Walter Raleigh, explored Pamlico Sound; and the country they discovered, a country where in their poetic fancy "men lived after the manner of the Golden Age," received from Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, the name of Virginia.

[Sidenote: Scotland and Philip.]

It was in England only that Philip could maintain his exclusive right to the New World of the West; it was through England only that he could strike a last and fatal blow at the revolt of the Netherlands. And foiled as his plans had been as yet by the overthrow of the Papal schemes, even their ruin had left ground for hope in England itself. The tortures and hangings of the Catholic priests, the fining and imprisonment of the Catholic gentry, had roused a resentment which it was easy to mistake for disloyalty. The Jesuits with Parsons at their head pictured the English Catholics as only waiting to rise in rebellion at the call of Spain, and reported long lists of n.o.bles and squires who would muster their tenants to join Parma's legions on their landing. A Spanish victory would be backed by insurrection in Ireland and attack from Scotland. For in Scotland the last act of the Papal conspiracy against Elizabeth was still being played. Though as yet under age, the young king, James the Sixth, had taken on himself the government of the realm, and had submitted to the guidance of a cousin, Esme Stuart, who had been brought up in France and returned to Scotland a Catholic and a fellow-plotter with the Guises. He succeeded in bringing Morton to the block; and the death of the great Protestant leader left him free to enlist Scotland in the league which Rome was forming for the ruin of Elizabeth. The revolt in Ireland had failed. The work of the Jesuits in England had just ended in the death of Campian and the arrest of his followers. But with the help of the Guises Scotland might yet be brought to rise in arms for the liberation of Mary Stuart, and James might reign as co-regent with his mother, if he were converted to the Catholic Church. The young king, anxious to free his crown from the dictation of the n.o.bles, lent himself to his cousin's schemes. For the moment they were foiled. James was seized by the Protestant Lords, and the Duke of Lennox, as Esme Stuart was now called, driven from the realm. But James was soon free again, and again in correspondence with the Guises and with Philip. The young king was lured by promises of the hand of an archd.u.c.h.ess and the hope of the crowns of both England and Scotland. The real aim of the intriguers who guided him was to set him aside as soon as the victory was won and to restore his mother to the throne. But whether Mary were restored or no it seemed certain that in any attack on Elizabeth Spain would find helpers from among the Scots.

[Sidenote: The League.]

Nor was the opportunity favourable in Scotland alone. In the Netherlands and in France all seemed to go well for Philip's schemes. From the moment of his arrival in the Low Countries the Prince of Parma had been steadily winning back what Alva had lost. The Union of Ghent had been broken. The ten Catholic provinces were being slowly brought anew under Spanish rule. Town after town was regained. From Brabant Parma had penetrated into Flanders; Ypres, Bruges, and Ghent had fallen into his hands. Philip dealt a more fatal blow at his rebellious subjects in the murder of the man who was the centre of their resistance. For years past William of Orange had been a mark for a.s.sa.s.sin after a.s.sa.s.sin in Philip's pay, and in 1584 the deadly persistence of the Spanish king was rewarded by his fall. Reft indeed as they were of their leader, the Netherlanders still held their ground. The union of Utrecht stood intact; and Philip's work of reconquest might be checked at any moment by the intervention of England or of France. But at this moment all chance of French intervention pa.s.sed away. Henry the Third was childless, and the death of his one remaining brother, Francis of Anjou, in 1584 left the young chief of the house of Bourbon, King Henry of Navarre, heir to the crown of France. Henry was the leader of the Huguenot party, and in January 1585 the French Catholics bound themselves in a holy league to prevent such a triumph of heresy in the realm as the reign of a Protestant would bring about by securing the succession of Henry's uncle, the cardinal of Bourbon. The Leaguers looked to Philip for support; they owned his cause for their own; and pledged themselves not only to root out Protestantism in France, but to help the Spanish king in rooting it out throughout the Netherlands. The League at once overshadowed the Crown; and Henry the Third could only meet the blow by affecting to put himself at its head, and by revoking the edicts of toleration in favour of the Huguenots. But the Catholics disbelieved in his sincerity; they looked only to Philip; and as long as Philip could supply the Leaguers with men and money, he felt secure on the side of France.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth attacks Philip.]

The vanishing of all hope of French aid was the more momentous to the Netherlands that at this moment Parma won his crowning triumph in the capture of Antwerp. Besieged in the winter of 1584, the city surrendered after a brave resistance in the August of 1585. But heavy as was the blow, it brought gain as well as loss to the Netherlanders. It forced Elizabeth into action. She refused indeed the t.i.tle of Protector of the Netherlands which the States offered her, and compelled them to place Brill and Flushing in her hands as pledges for the repayment of her expenses. But she sent aid. Lord Leicester was hurried to the Flemish coast with eight thousand men. In a yet bolder spirit of defiance Francis Drake was suffered to set sail with a fleet of twenty-five vessels for the Spanish Main. The two expeditions had very different fortunes. Drake's voyage was a series of triumphs. The wrongs inflicted on English seamen by the Inquisition were requited by the burning of the cities of St. Domingo and Carthagena. The coasts of Cuba and Florida were plundered, and though the gold fleet escaped him, Drake returned in the summer of 1586 with a heavy booty. Leicester on the other hand was paralyzed by his own intriguing temper, by strife with the Queen, and by his military incapacity. Only one disastrous skirmish at Zutphen broke the inaction of his forces, while Elizabeth strove vainly to use the presence of his army to force Parma and the States alike to a peace which would restore Philip's sovereignty over the Netherlands, but leave them free enough to serve as a check on Philip's designs against herself.

[Sidenote: The Catholic Plots.]

Foiled as she was in securing a check on Philip in the Low Countries, the Queen was more successful in robbing him of the aid of the Scots.

The action of King James had been guided by his greed of the English Crown, and a secret promise of the succession sufficed to lure him from the cause of Spain. In July 1586 he formed an alliance, defensive and offensive, with Elizabeth, and pledged himself not only to give no aid to revolt in Ireland, but to suppress any Catholic rising in the northern counties. The pledge was the more important that the Catholic resentment seemed pa.s.sing into fanaticism. Maddened by confiscation and persecution, by the hopelessness of rebellion within or of deliverance from without, the fiercer Catholics listened to schemes of a.s.sa.s.sination to which the murder of William of Orange lent a terrible significance.

The detection of Somerville, a fanatic who had received the Host before setting out for London "to shoot the Queen with his dagg," was followed by measures of natural severity, by the flight and arrest of Catholic gentry and peers, by a vigorous purification of the Inns of Court where a few Catholics lingered, and by the despatch of fresh batches of priests to the block. The trial and death of Parry, a member of the House of Commons who had served in the royal household, on a similar charge fed the general panic. The leading Protestants formed an a.s.sociation whose members pledged themselves to pursue to the death all who sought the Queen's life, and all on whose behalf it was sought. The a.s.sociation soon became national, and the Parliament met together in a transport of horror and loyalty to give it legal sanction. All Jesuits and seminary priests were banished from the realm on pain of death, and a bill for the security of the Queen disqualified any claimant of the succession who instigated subjects to rebellion or hurt to the Queen's person from ever succeeding to the Crown.

[Sidenote: Death of Mary Stuart.]

The threat was aimed at Mary Stuart. Weary of her long restraint, of her failure to rouse Philip or Scotland to her aid, of the baffled revolt of the English Catholics and the baffled intrigues of the Jesuits, Mary had bent for a moment to submission. "Let me go," she wrote to Elizabeth; "let me retire from this island to some solitude where I may prepare my soul to die. Grant this and I will sign away every right which either I or mine can claim." But the cry was useless, and in 1586 her despair found a new and more terrible hope in the plots against Elizabeth's life. She knew and approved the vow of Anthony Babington and a band of young Catholics, for the most part connected with the royal household, to kill the Queen and seat Mary on the throne; but plot and approval alike pa.s.sed through Walsingham's hands, and the seizure of Mary's correspondence revealed her connivance in the scheme. Babington with his fellow-conspirators was at once sent to the block, and the provisions of the act pa.s.sed in the last Parliament were put in force against Mary. In spite of her protests a Commission of Peers sate as her judges at Fotheringay Castle; and their verdict of "guilty" annihilated under the provisions of the statute her claim to the Crown. The streets of London blazed with bonfires, and peals rang out from steeple to steeple at the news of Mary's condemnation; but in spite of the prayer of Parliament for her execution and the pressure of the Council Elizabeth shrank from her death. The force of public opinion however was now carrying all before it, and after three months of hesitation the unanimous demand of her people wrested a sullen consent from the Queen. She flung the warrant signed upon the floor, and the Council took on themselves the responsibility of executing it. On the 8th of February 1587 Mary died on a scaffold which was erected in the castle-hall at Fotheringay as dauntlessly as she had lived. "Do not weep," she said to her ladies, "I have given my word for you." "Tell my friends," she charged Melville, "that I die a good Catholic."

[Sidenote: Philip and England.]

The blow was hardly struck before Elizabeth turned with fury on the ministers who had forced her hand. Cecil, who had now become Lord Burghley, was for a while disgraced, and Davison, who carried the warrant to the Council, was sent to the Tower to atone for an act which shattered the policy of the Queen. The death of Mary Stuart in fact seemed to have removed the last obstacle out of Philip's way. It had put an end to the divisions of the English Catholics. To the Spanish king, as to the nearest heir in blood who was of the Catholic Faith, Mary bequeathed her rights to the Crown, and the hopes of her more pa.s.sionate adherents were from that moment bound up in the success of Spain. The blow too kindled afresh the fervour of the Papacy, and Sixtus the Fifth offered to aid Philip with money in his invasion of the heretic realm.

But Philip no longer needed pressure to induce him to act. Drake's triumph had taught him that the conquest of England was needful for the security of his dominion in the New World, and for the mastery of the seas. The presence of an English army in Flanders convinced him that the road to the conquest of the States lay through England itself. Nor did the attempt seem a very perilous one. Allen and his Jesuit emissaries a.s.sured Philip that the bulk of the nation was ready to rise as soon as a strong Spanish force was landed on English sh.o.r.es. They numbered off the great lords who would head the revolt, the Earls of Arundel and Northumberland, who were both Catholics, the Earls of Worcester, c.u.mberland, Oxford, and Southampton, Viscount Montacute, the Lords Dacres, Morley, Vaux, Wharton, Windsor, Lumley, and Stourton. "All these," wrote Allen, "will follow our party when they see themselves supported by a sufficient foreign force." Against these were only "the new n.o.bles, who are hated in the country," and the towns. "But the strength of England is not in its towns." All the more warlike counties were Catholic in their sympathies; and the persecution of the recusants had destroyed the last traces of their loyalty to the Queen. Three hundred priests had been sent across the sea to organize the insurrection, and they were circulating a book which Allen had lately published "to prove that it is not only lawful but our bounden duty to take up arms at the Pope's bidding and to fight for the Catholic faith against the Queen and other heretics." A landing in the Pope's name would be best, but a landing in Philip's name would be almost as secure of success. Trained as they were now by Allen and his three hundred priests, English Catholics "would let in Catholic auxiliaries of any nation, for they have learned to hate their domestic heretic more than any foreign power."

[Sidenote: Philip and France.]

What truth there was in the Jesuit view of England time was to prove.

But there can be no doubt that Philip believed it, and that the promise of a Catholic rising was his chief inducement to attempt an invasion.

The operations of Parma therefore were suspended with a view to the greater enterprise and vessels and supplies for the fleet which had for three years been gathering in the Tagus were collected from every port of the Spanish coast. Only France held Philip back. He dared not attack England till all dread of a counter-attack from France was removed; and though the rise of the League had seemed to secure this, its success had now become more doubtful. The king, who had striven to embarra.s.s it by placing himself at its head, gathered round him the politicians and the moderate Catholics who saw in the triumph of the new Duke of Guise the ruin of the monarchy; while Henry of Navarre took the field at the head of the Huguenots, and won in 1587 the victory of Coutras. Guise restored the balance by driving the German allies of Henry from the realm; but the Huguenots were still unconquered, and the king, standing apart, fed a struggle which lightened for him the pressure of the League. Philip was forced to watch the wavering fortunes of the struggle, but while he watched, another blow fell on him from the sea. The news of the coming Armada called Drake again to action. In April 1587 he set sail with thirty small barks, burned the storeships and galleys in the harbour of Cadiz, stormed the ports of the Faro, and was only foiled in his aim of attacking the Armada itself by orders from home. A descent upon Corunna however completed what Drake called his "singeing of the Spanish king's beard." Elizabeth used the daring blow to back some negotiations for peace which she was still conducting in the Netherlands. But on Philip's side at least these negotiations were simply delusive. The Spanish pride had been touched to the quick. Amidst the exchange of protocols Parma gathered seventeen thousand men for the coming invasion, collected a fleet of flat-bottomed transports at Dunkirk, and waited impatiently for the Armada to protect his crossing. The attack of Drake however, the death of its first admiral, and the winter storms delayed the fleet from sailing. What held it back even more effectually was the balance of parties in France. But in the spring of 1588 Philip's patience was rewarded. The League had been baffled till now not so much by the resistance of the Huguenots as by the att.i.tude of the king. So long as Henry the Third held aloof from both parties and gave a rallying point to the party of moderation the victory of the Leaguers was impossible.

The difficulty was solved by the daring of Henry of Guise. The fanatical populace of Paris rose at his call; the royal troops were beaten off from the barricades; and on the 12th of May the king found himself a prisoner in the hands of the Duke. Guise was made lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and Philip was a.s.sured on the side of France.

[Sidenote: The Armada sails.]

The revolution was hardly over when at the end of May the Armada started from Lisbon. But it had scarcely put to sea when a gale in the Bay of Biscay drove its scattered vessels into Ferrol, and it was only on the nineteenth of July 1588 that the sails of the Armada were seen from the Lizard, and the English beacons flared out their alarm along the coast.

The news found England ready. An army was mustering under Leicester at Tilbury, the militia of the midland counties were gathering to London, while those of the south and east were held in readiness to meet a descent on either sh.o.r.e. The force which Parma hoped to lead consisted of forty thousand men, for the Armada brought nearly twenty-two thousand soldiers to be added to the seventeen thousand who were waiting to cross from the Netherlands. Formidable as this force was, it was far too weak by itself to do the work which Philip meant it to do. Had Parma landed on the earliest day he purposed, he would have found his way to London barred by a force stronger than his own, a force too of men in whose ranks were many who had already crossed pikes on equal terms with his best infantry in Flanders. "When I shall have landed," he warned his master, "I must fight battle after battle, I shall lose men by wounds and disease, I must leave detachments behind me to keep open my communications; and in a short time the body of my army will become so weak that not only I may be unable to advance in the face of the enemy, and time may be given to the heretics and your Majesty's other enemies to interfere, but there may fall out some notable inconveniences, with the loss of everything, and I be unable to remedy it." What Philip really counted on was the aid which his army would find within England itself. Parma's chance of victory, if he succeeded in landing, lay in a Catholic rising. But at this crisis patriotism proved stronger than religious fanaticism in the hearts of the English Catholics. The news of invasion ran like fire along the English coasts. The whole nation answered the Queen's appeal. Instinct told England that its work was to be done at sea, and the royal fleet was soon lost among the vessels of the volunteers. London, when Elizabeth asked for fifteen ships and five thousand men, offered thirty ships and ten thousand seamen, while ten thousand of its train-bands drilled in the Artillery ground. Every seaport showed the same temper. Coasters put out from every little harbour. Squires and merchants pushed off in their own little barks for a brush with the Spaniards. In the presence of the stranger all religious strife was forgotten. The work of the Jesuits was undone in an hour. Of the n.o.bles and squires whose tenants were to muster under the flag of the invader not one proved a traitor. The greatest lords on Allen's list of Philip's helpers, c.u.mberland, Oxford, and Northumberland, brought their vessels up alongside of Drake and Lord Howard as soon as Philip's fleet appeared in the Channel. The Catholic gentry who had been painted as longing for the coming of the stranger, led their tenantry, when the stranger came, to the muster at Tilbury.

[Sidenote: The two fleets.]

The loyalty of the Catholics decided the fate of Philip's scheme. Even if Parma's army succeeded in landing, its task was now an impossible one. Forty thousand Spaniards were no match for four millions of Englishmen, banded together by a common resolve to hold England against the foreigner. But to secure a landing at all, the Spaniards had to be masters of the Channel. Parma might gather his army on the Flemish coast, but every estuary and inlet was blocked by the Dutch cruisers.

The Netherlands knew well that the conquest of England was planned only as a prelude to their own reduction; and the enthusiasm with which England rushed to the conflict was hardly greater than that which stirred the Hollanders. A fleet of ninety vessels, with the best Dutch seamen at their head, held the Scheldt and the shallows of Dunkirk, and it was only by driving this fleet from the water that Parma's army could be set free to join in the great enterprise. The great need of the Armada therefore was to reach the coast of Flanders. It was ordered to make for Calais, and wait there for the junction of Parma. But even if Parma joined it, the pa.s.sage of his force was impossible without a command of the Channel; and in the Channel lay an English fleet resolved to struggle hard for the mastery. As the Armada sailed on in a broad crescent past Plymouth, the vessels which had gathered under Lord Howard of Effingham slipped out of the bay and hung with the wind upon their rear. In numbers the two forces were strangely unequal, for the English fleet counted only eighty vessels against the hundred and forty-nine which composed the Armada. In size of ships the disproportion was even greater. Fifty of the English vessels, including the squadron of the Lord Admiral and the craft of the volunteers, were little bigger than yachts of the present day. Even of the thirty Queen's ships which formed its main body, there were but four which equalled in tonnage the smallest of the Spanish galleons. Sixty-five of these galleons formed the most formidable half of the Spanish fleet; and four galleys, four gallea.s.ses armed with fifty guns apiece, fifty-six armed merchantmen, and twenty pinnaces made up the rest. The Armada was provided with 2500 cannons, and a vast store of provisions; it had on board 8000 seamen and more than 20,000 soldiers; and if a court-favourite, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, had been placed at its head, he was supported by the ablest staff of naval officers which Spain possessed.

[Sidenote: The fight with the Armada.]

Small however as the English ships were, they were in perfect trim; they sailed two feet for the Spaniards' one; they were manned with 9000 hardy seamen, and their Admiral was backed by a crowd of captains who had won fame in the Spanish seas. With him were Hawkins, who had been the first to break into the charmed circle of the Indies; Frobisher, the hero of the North-West pa.s.sage; and above all Drake, who held command of the privateers. They had won too the advantage of the wind; and, closing in or drawing off as they would, the lightly-handled English vessels, which fired four shots to the Spaniards' one, hung boldly on the rear of the great fleet as it moved along the Channel. "The feathers of the Spaniard," in the phrase of the English seamen, were "plucked one by one." Galleon after galleon was sunk, boarded, driven on sh.o.r.e; and yet Medina Sidonia failed in bringing his pursuers to a close engagement.

Now halting, now moving slowly on, the running fight between the two fleets lasted throughout the week, till on Sunday, the twenty-eighth of July, the Armada dropped anchor in Calais roads. The time had come for sharper work if the junction of the Armada with Parma was to be prevented; for, demoralized as the Spaniards had been by the merciless chase, their loss in ships had not been great, and their appearance off Dunkirk might drive off the ships of the Hollanders who hindered the sailing of the Duke. On the other hand, though the numbers of English ships had grown, their supplies of food and ammunition were fast running out. Howard therefore resolved to force an engagement; and, lighting eight fire-ships at midnight, sent them down with the tide upon the Spanish line. The galleons at once cut their cables, and stood out in panic to sea, drifting with the wind in a long line off Gravelines.

Drake resolved at all costs to prevent their return. At dawn on the twenty-ninth the English ships closed fairly in, and almost their last cartridge was spent ere the sun went down.

[Sidenote: Flight of the Armada.]

Hard as the fight had been, it seemed far from a decisive one. Three great galleons indeed had sunk in the engagement, three had drifted helplessly on to the Flemish coast, but the bulk of the Spanish vessels remained, and even to Drake the fleet seemed "wonderful great and strong." Within the Armada itself however all hope was gone. Huddled together by the wind and the deadly English fire, their sails torn, their masts shot away, the crowded galleons had become mere slaughter-houses. Four thousand men had fallen, and bravely as the seamen fought, they were cowed by the terrible butchery. Medina himself was in despair. "We are lost, Senor Oquenda," he cried to his bravest captain; "what are we to do?" "Let others talk of being lost," replied Oquenda, "your Excellency has only to order up fresh cartridge." But Oquenda stood alone, and a council of war resolved on retreat to Spain by the one course open, that of a circuit round the Orkneys. "Never anything pleased me better," wrote Drake, "than seeing the enemy fly with a southerly wind to the northwards. Have a good eye to the Prince of Parma, for, with the grace of G.o.d, I doubt not ere it be long so to handle the matter with the Duke of Sidonia, as he shall wish himself at St. Mary Port among his orange trees." But the work of destruction was reserved for a mightier foe than Drake. The English vessels were soon forced to give up the chase by the running out of their supplies. But the Spanish ships had no sooner reached the Orkneys than the storms of the northern seas broke on them with a fury before which all concert and union disappeared. In October fifty reached Corunna, bearing ten thousand men stricken with pestilence and death. Of the rest some were sunk, some dashed to pieces against the Irish cliffs. The wreckers of the Orkneys and the Faroes, the clansmen of the Scottish Isles, the kernes of Donegal and Galway, all had their part in the work of murder and robbery. Eight thousand Spaniards perished between the Giant's Causeway and the Blaskets. On a strand near Sligo an English captain numbered eleven hundred corpses which had been cast up by the sea. The flower of the Spanish n.o.bility, who had been sent on the new crusade under Alonzo da Leyva, after twice suffering shipwreck, put a third time to sea to founder on a reef near Dunluce.

[Sidenote: Its effect on England.]

"I sent my ships against men," said Philip when the news reached him, "not against the seas." It was in n.o.bler tone that England owned her debt to the storm that drove the Armada to its doom. On the medal that commemorated its triumph were graven the words, "The Lord sent his wind, and scattered them." The pride of the conquerors was hushed before their sense of a mighty deliverance. It was not till England saw the broken host "fly with a southerly wind to the north" that she knew what a weight of fear she had borne for thirty years. The victory over the Armada, the deliverance from Spain, the rolling away of the Catholic terror which had hung like a cloud over the hopes of the new people, was like a pa.s.sing from death unto life. Within as without, the dark sky suddenly cleared. The national unity proved stronger than the religious strife. When the Catholic lords flocked to the camp at Tilbury, or put off to join the fleet in the Channel, Elizabeth could pride herself on a victory as great as the victory over the Armada. She had won it by her patience and moderation, by her refusal to lend herself to the fanaticism of the Puritan or the reaction of the Papist, by her sympathy with the ma.s.s of the people, by her steady and unflinching preference of national union to any pa.s.sing considerations of safety or advantage. For thirty years, amidst the shock of religious pa.s.sions at home and abroad, she had reigned not as a Catholic or as a Protestant Queen, but as a Queen of England, and it was to England, Catholic and Protestant alike, that she could appeal in her hour of need. "Let tyrants fear," she exclaimed in words that still ring like the sound of a trumpet, as she appeared among her soldiers. "Let tyrants fear! I have always so behaved myself that under G.o.d I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects! And therefore I am come among you, as you see, resolved in the midst and heat of the battle to live and die amongst you all." The work of Edward and of Mary was undone, and the strife of religions fell powerless before the sense of a common country.

[Sidenote: Its European results.]

Nor were the results of the victory less momentous to Europe at large.

What Wolsey and Henry had struggled for, Elizabeth had done. At her accession England was scarcely reckoned among European powers. The wisest statesmen looked on her as doomed to fall into the hands of France, or to escape that fate by remaining a dependency of Spain. But the national independence had grown with the national life. France was no longer a danger, Scotland was no longer a foe. Instead of hanging on the will of Spain, England had fronted Spain and conquered her. She now stood on a footing of equality with the greatest powers of the world.

Her military weight indeed was drawn from the discord which rent the peoples about her, and would pa.s.s away with its close. But a new and lasting greatness opened on the sea. She had sprung at a bound into a sea-power. Her fleets were spreading terror through the New World as through the Old. When Philip by his conquest of Portugal had gathered the two greatest navies of the world into his single hand, England had faced him and driven his fleet from the seas. But the rise of England was even less memorable than the fall of Spain. That Spain had fallen few of the world's statesmen saw then. Philip thanked G.o.d that he could easily, if he chose, "place another fleet upon the seas," and the despatch of a second armada soon afterwards showed that his boast was a true one. But what had vanished was his mastery of the seas. The defeat of the Armada was the first of a series of defeats at the hands of the English and the Dutch. The naval supremacy of Spain was lost, and with it all was lost; for an empire so widely scattered over the world, and whose dominions were parted by intervening nations, could only be held together by its command of the seas. One century saw Spain stripped of the bulk of the Netherlands, another of her possessions in Italy, a third of her dominions in the New World. But slowly as her empire broke, the cause of ruin was throughout the same. It was the loss of her maritime supremacy that robbed her of all, and her maritime supremacy was lost in the wreck of the Armada.

[Sidenote: The counter-attack on Spain.]

If Philip met the shock with a calm patience, it at once ruined his plans in the West. France broke again from his grasp. Since the day of the Barricades Henry the Third had been virtually a prisoner in the hands of the Duke of Guise; but the defeat of the Armada woke him to a new effort for the recovery of power, and at the close of 1588 Guise was summoned to his presence and stabbed as he entered by the royal bodyguard. The blow broke the strength of the League. The Duke of Mayenne, a brother of the victim, called indeed the Leaguers to arms; and made war upon the king. But Henry found help in his cousin, Henry of Navarre, who brought a Huguenot force to his aid; and the moderate Catholics rallied as of old round the Crown. The Leaguers called on Philip for aid, but Philip was forced to guard against attack at home.

Elizabeth had resolved to give blow for blow. The Portuguese were writhing under Spanish conquest; and a claimant of the crown, Don Antonio, who had found refuge in England, promised that on his landing the country would rise in arms. In the spring of 1589 therefore an expedition of fifty vessels and 15,000 men was sent under Drake and Sir John Norris against Lisbon. Its chances of success hung on a quick arrival in Portugal, but the fleet touched at Corunna, and after burning the ships in its harbour the army was tempted to besiege the town. A Spanish army which advanced to its relief was repulsed by an English force of half its numbers. Corunna however held stubbornly out, and in the middle of May Norris was forced to break the siege and to sail to Lisbon. But the delay had been fatal to his enterprise. The country did not rise; the English troops were thinned with sickness; want of cannon hindered a siege; and after a fruitless march up the Tagus Norris fell back on the fleet. The coast was pillaged, and the expedition returned baffled to England. Luckless as the campaign had proved, the bold defiance of Spain and the defeat of a Spanish army on Spanish ground kindled a new daring in Englishmen while they gave new heart to Philip's enemies. In the summer of 1589 Henry the Third laid siege to Paris. The fears of the League were removed by the knife of a priest, Jacques Clement, who a.s.sa.s.sinated the king in August; but Henry of Navarre, or, as he now became, Henry the Fourth, stood next to him in line of blood, and Philip saw with dismay a Protestant mount the throne of France.

[Sidenote: Henry the Fourth.]

From this moment the thought of attack on England, even his own warfare in the Netherlands, was subordinated in the mind of the Spanish king to the need of crushing Henry the Fourth. It was not merely that Henry's Protestantism threatened to spread heresy over the West. Catholic or Protestant, the union of France under an active and enterprising ruler would be equally fatal to Philip's designs. Once gathered round its king, France was a nearer obstacle to the reconquest of the Netherlands than ever England could be. On the other hand, the religious strife, to which Henry's accession gave a fresh life and vigour, opened wide prospects to Philip's ambition. Far from proving a check upon Spain, it seemed as if France might be turned into a Spanish dependency. While the Leaguers proclaimed the Cardinal of Bourbon king, under the name of Charles the Tenth, they recognized Philip as Protector of France. Their hope indeed lay in his aid, and their army was virtually his own. On the other hand Henry the Fourth was environed with difficulties. It was only by declaring his willingness to be "further instructed" in matters of faith, in other words by holding out hopes of his conversion, that he succeeded in retaining the moderate Catholics under his standard. His desperate bravery alone won a victory at Ivry over the forces of the League, which enabled him to again form the siege of Paris in 1590. All recognized Paris as the turning-point in the struggle, and the League called loudly for Philip's aid. To give it was to break the work which Parma was doing in the Netherlands, and to allow the United Provinces a breathing s.p.a.ce in their sorest need. But even the Netherlands were of less moment than the loss of France; and Philip's orders forced Parma to march to the relief of Paris. The work was done with a skill which proved the Duke to be a master in the art of war. The siege of Paris was raised; the efforts of Henry to bring the Spaniards to an engagement were foiled; and it was only when the king's army broke up from sheer weariness that Parma withdrew unharmed to the north.

[Sidenote: England and Henry.]

England was watching the struggle of Henry the Fourth with a keen interest. The failure of the expedition against Lisbon had put an end for the time to any direct attacks upon Spain, and the exhaustion of the treasury forced Elizabeth to content herself with issuing commissions to volunteers. But the war was a national one, and the nation waged it for itself. Merchants, gentlemen, n.o.bles fitted out privateers. The sea-dogs in ever-growing numbers scoured the Spanish Main. Their quest had its ill chances as it had its good, and sometimes the prizes made were far from paying for the cost of the venture. "Paul might plant, and Apollos might water," John Hawkins explained after an unsuccessful voyage, "but it is G.o.d only that giveth the increase!" But more often the profit was enormous. Spanish galleons, Spanish merchant-ships, were brought month after month to English harbours. The daring of the English seamen faced any odds. Ten English trading vessels beat off twelve Spanish war-galleys in the Straits of Gibraltar. Sir Richard Grenville in a single bark, the Revenge, found himself girt in by fifty men-of-war, each twice as large as his own. He held out from afternoon to the following daybreak, beating off attempt after attempt to board him; and it was not till his powder was spent, more than half his crew killed, and the rest wounded, that the ship struck its flag. Grenville had refused to surrender, and was carried mortally wounded to die in a Spanish ship. "Here die I, Richard Grenville," were his last words, "with a joyful and a quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a good soldier ought to do, who has fought for his country and his queen, for honour and religion." But the drift of the French war soon forced Elizabeth back again into the strife. In each of the French provinces the civil war went on: and in Britanny, where the contest raged fiercest, Philip sent the Leaguers a supply of Spanish troops. Normandy was already in Catholic hands, and the aim of the Spanish king was to secure the western coast for future operations against England.

Elizabeth pressed Henry the Fourth to foil these projects, and in the winter of 1591 she sent money and men to aid him in the siege of Rouen.

[Sidenote: Henry's conversion.]

To save Rouen Philip was again forced to interrupt his work of conquest in the Netherlands. Parma marched anew into the heart of France, and with the same consummate generalship as of old relieved the town without giving Henry a chance of battle. But the day was fast going against the Leaguers. The death of their puppet-king, Charles the Tenth, left them without a sovereign to oppose to Henry of Navarre; and their scheme of conferring the crown on Isabella, Philip's daughter by Elizabeth of France, with a husband whom Philip should choose, awoke jealousies in the house of Guise itself, while it gave strength to the national party who shrank from laying France at the feet of Spain. Even the Parliament of Paris, till now the centre of Catholic fanaticism, protested against setting the crown of France on the brow of a stranger. The politicians drew closer to Henry of Navarre, and the moderate Catholics pressed for his reconciliation to the Church as a means of restoring unity to the realm. The step had become so inevitable that even the Protestants were satisfied with Henry's promise of toleration; and in the summer of 1593 he declared himself a Catholic. With his conversion the civil war came practically to an end. It was in vain that Philip strove to maintain the zeal of the Leaguers, or that the Guises stubbornly kept the field. All France drew steadily to the king. Paris opened her gates in the spring of 1594, and the chief of the Leaguers, the Duke of Mayenne, submitted at the close of the year. Even Rome abandoned the contest, and at the end of 1595 Henry received solemn absolution from Clement the Eighth.

From that moment France rose again into her old power, and the old national policy of opposition to the House of Austria threw her weight into the wavering balance of Philip's fortunes. The death of Parma had already lightened the peril of the United Provinces, but though their struggle in the Low Countries was to last for years, from the moment of Henry the Fourth's conversion their independence was secure. Nor was the restoration of the French monarchy to its old greatness of less moment to England. Philip was yet to send an armada against her coasts; he was again to stir up a fierce revolt in northern Ireland. But all danger from Spain was over with the revival of France. Even were England to shrink from a strife in which she had held Philip so gloriously at bay, French policy would never suffer the island to fall unaided under the power of Spain. The fear of foreign conquest pa.s.sed away. The long struggle for sheer existence was over. What remained was the Protestantism, the national union, the lofty patriotism, the pride in England and the might of Englishmen, which had drawn life more vivid and intense than they had ever known before from the long battle with the Papacy and with Spain.

END OF VOL. IV