The Spanish Armada (16 page)

S
anta Cruz, the commander of the Armada, died in Lisbon on 9 February 1588 from ‘ship’s fever’ (or typhus) after being purged
and bled for eleven days by his physicians. The sixty-two-year-old admiral had been exhausted both by his struggles to bring the Spanish fleet up to a full war footing and by the torrent of
instructions from a fixated, pedantic and bureaucratic monarch who sought to micromanage every detail of the invasion plans. Some whispered that the malicious criticism of the admiral prevalent at
Philip’s court had also contributed to his death.
²
Few mourned the passing of this egotistical grandee of the ocean: only four persons
accompanied the coffin to his grave in the parish church of El Viso in Córdoba.
³

Two days later, Philip appointed Spain’s premier duke, Don Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, ‘el Bueno’ [the Good], Seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia, as Santa Cruz’s
successor and his captain-general of the ocean. After the exasperating delays in readying the ships, the king was sanguine about the impact of Santa Cruz’s death, maintaining coldly that
‘God had shown him a favour by removing the marqués now, rather than when the Armada was at sea’.
⁴

For months Philip had been vacillating over when to launch his ‘Enterprise of England’. At the end of September 1587, he had urged Parma to immediately (and single-handedly) invade
enemy soil when the English fleet concentrated at Plymouth leaving the Thames
estuary vulnerable to Spanish attack. The duke had given assurances that he would be ready to put
to sea on 25 November, but then Philip, suddenly overtaken by his legendary caution, realised with chilling clarity that his troops, once ashore, could find themselves marooned without naval
support and their supply lifelines threatened. He therefore ordered Santa Cruz to sail immediately to protect Parma’s invasion barges, despite the lateness of the season, the uncertainty of
the weather and the fact that only thirty-five of his warships were ready.

A powerful cyclonic storm on 16 November had badly damaged many of the Armada’s vessels and one hundred and four were now rated unseaworthy. A number were beached for repairs, leaving the
admiral with only thirteen ‘great ships’ – and the hull of one of these was so rotten he harboured grave doubts whether it could survive the outward voyage.
⁵
What’s more, the food loaded on board or waiting on the quayside was putrid, and soldiers and sailors were dying like flies from typhus and other diseases. Santa Cruz
pleaded that sailing should be delayed until the spring, predicting that if the fleet attacked England ‘with all this disease . . . there is great danger that after a month at sea, especially
in this cold season, it will be either destroyed or seriously damaged’.

The well-informed Venetian ambassador to Madrid, Hieronimo Lippomano, reported in December that the Armada preparations were ‘not going on as vigorously as previously, although they are
still fitting out some vessels, and putting ammunition on board, squadron by squadron’. He confirmed that, through sickness and desertion, the number of troops and sailors ‘will be far
less than they thought, to such an extent that his majesty will be forced to raise new levies’.
⁶
The envoy had also heard of more bad news for
Philip: the flagship of the ‘new Spanish squadron, in clearing the River Tagus at Sacavém, [had been driven] on to the rocks’.
⁷

For all his self-possession, the king could not conceal his chagrin at these continuing delays. He dispatched the Count of Fuentes to Lisbon to accelerate the pace of preparations, beginning
with the embarkation of the siege artillery, partly in the mighty 1,100-ton
Trinidad Valencera
.
⁸
Lippomano reported in February: ‘They
have embarked twelve heavy siege guns and forty-eight smaller ones with a double supply of gun carriages and wheels for the field batteries
and six hundred mules. In addition,
there is a large quantity of iron and wood for the construction of a fort.’
⁹
Fuentes was outspoken in his criticism of the commissariat and
artillery ‘because they were not prompt in their preparations’, but now he began provisioning the ships for eight months’ service and every day new recruits marched into Portugal
to replace the dead or those who had deserted.
¹⁰

Philip’s furious spate of energy and the anxiety of those uncertain weeks at the end of 1587 had sapped his health and he took to his bed suffering from another attack of gout in the hand,
together with stomach pains and fever, and was reported ‘very languid and weak’. Orders were, however, sent to Santa Cruz early in January, granting him permission to fight the English
fleet off Margate – but only to ensure Parma’s safe passage to England.

Following a successful invasion, Santa Cruz could return home with the Armada, ‘calling in on Ireland on his way’ and transporting Parma’s Italian and German
mercenaries ‘who may appear necessary for the Irish business’.
¹¹

Parma was appalled that the secret plans for the invasion had become common knowledge: ‘from Spain, Italy and all parts come, not only news of the expedition, but full details of
it’. His arrival in Bruges ‘and the stay of troops in the neighbourhood have given rise to much talk. The affair is so public that I can assure your majesty there is not a soldier [who]
has not something to say about it . . .’ So much for the secrecy which he had insisted was a prerequisite for the success of his landing in Kent.

The duke still nurtured considerable resentment and rage at the strategic folly of his monarch’s opportunism of November and December in urging him to invade across the Straits of Dover
without the Armada’s protection.

Parma added sniffily: ‘I humbly beg your majesty to do me the great favour of instructing me how I am to act. I shall make no difficulties in anything, even if I have only
a pinnace to take me across.’
¹²

Philip’s choice of successor to Santa Cruz was curious. The new captain-general had never been to sea. He was the first to reinforce Cadiz during Drake’s raid on the city the
previous April, and had been appointed captain-general of Andalusia as ‘conspicuous proof’ of the king’s favour.
¹³
The new
admiral’s skills lay purely in organisation; he was an experienced administrator who had been involved in equipping the Armada warships in Andalusia as well as raising army recruits in the
region. His personal qualities were also exemplary: Lippomano described him as not only ‘prudent and brave but of a nature of extreme goodness and benignity’. Medina Sidonia, he told
the Doge of Venice, was ‘generally beloved’.
¹⁴

However, the Armada’s new commander was reluctant to take up the post – the king put this down to his natural modesty – and pleaded poor health and poverty as excuses in a
letter that may have been long and rambling but at least smacked of honesty and realism:

On top of this, he was stony broke – this at a time when commanders were expected to help fund expeditions. ‘I am in great need, so much so that when I have had to
go to Madrid, I have been obliged to borrow money for the journey. My house [family] owes 900,000 ducats (£225,000) and I am therefore quite unable to accept the command. I have not a single
real
¹⁵
I can spend on the expedition.’
¹⁶

After considering the matter for two days, Medina Sidonia made clear his absolute conviction that the Armada was a grave mistake that had little hope of success. Only a miracle, he added in this
frank and outspoken second missive, could save it.
¹⁷
The king’s councillors, horror-struck at its contents, dared not show the letter to
Philip: ‘Do not depress us with fears for the fate of the Armada because in such a cause, God will make sure it succeeds,’ they begged. As for his suitability for the command,
‘nobody knows more about naval affairs than you,’ they assured him. Then their tone became menacing: ‘Remember that the reputation and esteem you currently enjoy for courage and
wisdom would entirely be forfeited if what you wrote to us became generally known (although we shall keep it secret).’
¹⁸
Doggedly, the new
commander sought an audience with the king, but his request was refused.

Happily ignorant of his new admiral’s misgivings, Philip ordered him to Lisbon with instructions to ensure that the Armada sailed on 1 March ‘at latest’. Rather more
encouragingly, in a second letter he declared: ‘I am quite confident that thanks to your great zeal and care, you will succeed very well.’ Unconsciously echoing his advisers’
pious hopes, the king added: ‘It cannot be otherwise in a cause so entirely devoted to God as this. There is no reason for you to trouble about anything but the preparation of the expedition
and I am quite sure you will be diligent in this respect.’
¹⁹

Whether or not his doubts were assuaged, the new commander began his task by reviewing his fleet of one hundred and twenty large ships, with 1,730 sailors and 12,810 troops, excluding
volunteers.
He recruited the experienced Don Diego de Maldonado and Captain Marolín de Juan. They, together with his squadron commanders, Pedro de Valdés, Juan
Martínez de Recalde and Miguel de Oquendo, formed the beginnings of his operational council of war.
²⁰

At the end of February 1588, Philip imposed an embargo on all shipping in Spanish and Portuguese waters, seizing vessels to augment the strength of the Armada. The English military commander in
the Low Countries, Peregrine Bertie, Thirteenth Baron Willoughby de Eresby,
²¹
heard that a ‘great and infinite number of merchant ships [had
been] pressed and embarked for this service [from] diverse other nations as well as Spanish, the French only excepted . . . There was chase given to fourteen sail of English, Scottish, Flemish and
French ships as they came out of the [Gibraltar] Straits . . . whereof five were taken.’
²²

A powerful 960-ton galleon belonging to the Duke of Tuscany had earlier been sequestered and renamed the
San Francesco de Florencia
. Now the Spanish commandeered two Venetian ships, the
Ragazona
, 1,294 tons, and the
Lavia
, 728 tons, which were waiting to unload cargoes of sugar in Lisbon harbour.
²³
Philip’s
commissioners reported that they were ‘the finest, best armed and manned of all that lay in Lisbon . . . and were so powerful that they could give battle to ten or twelve English
[ships]’.
²⁴
Around twelve galleons were also ‘requisitioned’ from Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik) – probably a diplomatic
euphemism to disguise Ragusan support for the Armada, thus avoiding retribution from their Turkish suzerains.
²⁵
The Spanish continued the ruse by
choosing new names for the ships that suggested they were of Italian origin.

Despite these reinforcements, the Spanish king was growing frantic about the slow progress in dispatching the Armada. New departure dates such as 18 April (Palm Sunday) came and went, and Philip
began to shed his customary caution and circumspection. The spring weather did not help. As well as constant rain, another ‘great storm’ in early March tore at the ships moored in the
harbour, causing ‘the loss of many anchors and the destruction of many cables’.

All these problems were swept aside by a king who had gambled his personal prestige and that of his kingdom on the success of this sacred mission. There was never any question of scrapping the
invasion plan. Philip was determined that it would sail ‘as he was convinced there is no other remedy for the ills [done by England] except to strike at the head of the
queen’.
²⁶
The Armada had become a personal obsession, driven by the ‘mortal hate’ he felt for Elizabeth, ‘from whom he
receives daily injuries inflicted with base ingratitude, for he freed her from prison when he was in England’, according to Lippomano.
²⁷
For
all his penny-pinching intransigence over funding the mission, Sixtus V freely acknowledged that ‘His majesty has God’s justice and pity on his side – God’s justice for he
is defending God’s cause; God’s pity, for it is to be held that God will extend His pity to the many poor Christians who are in the kingdom of England and will not leave them a prey to
that woman.’
²⁸