History of the United Netherlands, 1587c | Page 9

Queen, and with twenty-four furnished by the
merchants of London, and other private individuals. It was a bold
buccaneering expedition--combining chivalrous enterprise with the
chance of enormous profit--which was most suited to the character of
English adventurers at that expanding epoch. For it was by England,
not by Elizabeth, that the quarrel with Spain was felt to be a mortal one.
It was England, not its sovereign, that was instinctively arming, at all
points, to grapple with the great enemy of European liberty. It was the
spirit of self-help, of self-reliance, which was prompting the English
nation to take the great work of the age into its own hands. The
mercantile instinct of the nation was flattered with the prospect of gain,
the martial quality of its patrician and of its plebeian blood was eager to
confront danger, the great Protestant mutiny. Against a decrepit
superstition in combination with an aggressive tyranny, all impelled the

best energies of the English people against Spain, as the embodiment of
all which was odious and menacing to them, and with which they felt
that the life and death struggle could not long be deferred.
And of these various tendencies, there were no more fitting
representatives than Drake and Frobisher, Hawkins and Essex,
Cavendish and Grenfell, and the other privateersmen of the sixteenth
century. The same greed for danger, for gold, and for power, which,
seven centuries before, had sent the Norman race forth to conquer all
Christendom, was now sending its Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman
kindred to take possession of the old world and the new.
"The wind commands me away," said Drake on the 2nd April, 1587;
"our ship is under sail. God grant that we may so live in His fear, that
the enemy may have cause to say that God doth fight for her Majesty
abroad as well as at home."
But he felt that he was not without enemies behind him, for the strong
influence brought to bear against the bold policy which Walsingham
favoured, was no secret to Drake. "If we deserve ill," said he, "let us be
punished. If we discharge our duty, in doing our best, it is a hard
measure to be reported ill by those who will either keep their fingers
out of the fire; or who too well affect that alteration in our government
which I hope in God they shall never live to see." In latitude 40 deg. he
spoke two Zeeland ships, homeward bound, and obtained information
of great warlike stores accumulating in Cadiz and Lisbon. His mind
was instantly made up. Fortunately, the pinnace which the Queen
despatched with orders to stay his hand in the very act of smiting her
great adversary, did not sail fast enough to overtake the swift corsair
and his fleet. Sir Francis had too promptly obeyed the wind, when it
"commanded him away," to receive the royal countermand. On the 19th
April, the English ships entered the harbour of Cadiz, and destroyed ten
thousand tons of shipping, with their contents, in the very face of a
dozen great galleys, which the nimble English vessels soon drove under
their forts for shelter. Two nights and a day, Sir Francis, that "hater of
idleness," was steadily doing his work; unloading, rifling, scuttling,
sinking, and burning those transportships which contained a portion of
the preparations painfully made by Philip for his great enterprise.
Pipe-staves and spikes, horse-shoes and saddles, timber and cutlasses,
wine, oil, figs, raisins, biscuits, and flour, a miscellaneous mass of

ingredients long brewing for the trouble of England, were emptied into
the harbour, and before the second night, the blaze of a hundred and
fifty burning vessels played merrily upon the grim walls of Philip's
fortresses. Some of these ships were of the largest size then known.
There was one belonging to Marquis Santa Cruz of 1500 tons, there
was a Biscayan of 1200, there were several others of 1000, 800, and of
nearly equal dimensions.
Thence sailing for Lisbon, Sir Francis, captured and destroyed a
hundred vessels more, appropriating what was portable of the cargoes,
and annihilating the rest. At Lisbon, Marquis Santa Cruz, lord high
admiral of Spain and generalissimo of the invasion, looked on,
mortified and amazed, but offering no combat, while the Plymouth
privateersman swept the harbour of the great monarch of the world.
After thoroughly accomplishing his work, Drake sent a message to
Santa Cruz, proposing to exchange his prisoners for such Englishmen
as might then be confined in Spain. But the marquis denied all
prisoners. Thereupon Sir Francis decided to sell his captives to the
Moors, and to appropriate the proceeds of the sale towards the purchase
of English slaves put of the same bondage. Such was the fortune of war
in the sixteenth century.
Having dealt these great blows, Drake