The Year after the Armada, and Other Historical Studies. Martin A. S. Hume
at a little hamlet a mile off. In the early dawn a cry was raised of "Viva el Rei Dom Antonio!" which was the usual friendly salutation of the country folk. The young English sentries fraternised with those who approached, and admitted them into the sleeping-camp. It was an ambuscade, and many of the English were slain, but the enemy was finally driven off by two companies of Englishmen who were lodged near. The next day, at a village near Lisbon, a large number were treacherously poisoned by the bad water from a well, or, as some said, by the honey which they found in the houses. This was three miles from Lisbon, at a place called Alvelade, and at eleven o'clock at night Essex left the camp with Sir Roger Williams and 1,000 men to lie in ambuscade near the town. When they had approached almost to the walls a few of them began banging at the gates and otherwise trying to alarm those within and provoke a sally. But the device was too transparent, and a few men shot and a sleepless night were the only result. When the English had arrived at Alvelade, Count de Fuentes, with the main body of Spaniards, was at Alcantara, a mile or so nearer Lisbon. Thither Albert hastily summoned a council of war, and urged his officers at last to make a stand at once before the English could co-operate with their friends within the walls of Lisbon. Fuentes and the other Spanish commanders were of the same opinion, but the Portuguese Colonel, Fernando de Castro, made a speech pointing out that the English were short of stores, cut off from their base, and weakened by sickness and short commons. "Let us," he said, "fall back into the city and conquer them by hunger and delay. Behind our walls they will be powerless to injure us, whilst we can draw abundant supplies from across the river, and they cannot blockade us even by land with less than 40,000 men." This exactly suited the other Portuguese, who were never comfortable unless they had a good thick wall between themselves and their enemies. The opinion of the Spaniards was overborne, and the defending force entered the gates of Lisbon on Corpus Christi day, midst the ringing of bells and the more or less sincere rejoicing of the populace. Lisbon feasted and welcomed its defenders, whilst poor Dom Antonio, we are told, at Alvelade just outside, had not a fowl or even a loaf of rye bread to eat. "You may guess how he is hated by the Portuguese," says my Portuguese diarist, "that he being so near his native Lisbon not even a costermonger or a down dared to send him a meal, whilst we in the city had plenty."
Most of the houses adjoining the walls had been blown up, but the monastery of the Trinidade, down the hill towards the river, still remained. The prior was understood to be in favour of Dom Antonio, as were nearly all churchmen, and Ruy Diaz de Lobo, one of the few nobles with Dom Antonio, undertook to negotiate with him to admit the English to the city through the monastery garden. By the aid of two sympathetic monks he obtained access to the prior. But the latter had been gained over by the Spaniards, and a few hours afterwards the pale heads of Ruy Diaz de Lobo and the two monks were grinning with half-closed, lustreless eyes from the top of three poles on the great quay, whilst Sir Roger Williams and his men, when they approached the monastery in expectation of a friendly reception, were received with a shower of harquebuss balls, and fell back. The rest of the day, now that the main body of English had come up, was spent in quartering the men in the suburbs of the city, entrenched camps being formed, protected by breastworks of wine-pipes filled with earth. Tired with their six days' march and their labour in the trenches, Norris' little army were glad to pass their first night before Lisbon in such peace as the besieged would allow them.
If the enterprise was ever to succeed this was the moment. The English were more numerous as regards men bearing arms, but they had come upon their wild-goose chase against a fortified city without any battering artillery or proper appliances for a siege, whilst the Spaniards were behind strong walls, with unlimited sources of supply from the river front across the Tagus. Norris, on the other hand, was short of supplies, with fifteen miles of defensible country between him and Cascaes, the point where the fleet was to await him. The advantage, therefore, was clearly on the side of the besieged, but for the one element of the disaffection of Lisbon itself from within, and in this lay Dom Antonio's last chance. A letter written by Don Francisco Odonte, adjutant-general in Lisbon, on the day following the arrival of the English forces before the walls, gives a vivid description of the state of affairs there at the time.[26]
"Dom Antonio," he says, "spent the night in the house of the Duke d'Aveiro, and then early in the morning completed the investment of the city and continued his search for some secret gate by which he might enter. But the garrison harassed him as much as they could. Don Sancho Bravo and Captain Alarcon have been skirmishing all day outside the city, and have sent in 25 or 30 English prisoners who have been consigned to the galleys; and if they could only do the same by all those who are really fighting us, whilst feigning to be our friends, they might man more galleys than are to be found in all Christendom this day, for those who have shown their colours during the last three days, and that without a blush, are simply infinite, nor is there any wonder that Dom Antonio has attempted this enterprise, owing to the promises held out to him; for from the moment he disembarked, he has been supplied with abundance of provisions,[27] whilst not a man has offered us his services. All the aldermen of the city are against us but two, the rest are all in hiding, and some even have supplied Dom Antonio's troops, with as little shamefacedness as if they had come from England with him. In this quarter of the city there is not a man left. Some have fled across the river, some are hidden, some have joined Dom Antonio. The troops under the four colonels publicly declare they will not fight. Dom Antonio was certain the moment he appeared the city would rise, and on this account we are in great alarm and have passed a very bad night. God help us!"
But the English did not sleep tranquilly either. In the first hours of the morning of the 25th of May Don Garcia Bravo, with 500 Spanish troops from Oporto, arrived in Lisbon. They were hungry, ragged, and weary, but they were eager to meet the foe, and barely gave themselves time to snatch a hurried meal before sallying from the gate of San Anton and up the hill to the quarters of Colonel Brett in the farm of Andres Soares. Another force at the same time came from the gate of Santa Catalina and forced Brett's trenches from that side. The long rows of windows of the monastery of San Roque on the hill were lined by Spanish musketeers, who kept up a deadly fire on the English, whilst two of the great guns of the castle were brought to bear upon one exposed side of the invaders' camp. The attack was made before dawn, and Brett had hardly time to muster his men in the darkness and confusion, when a cannon-shot from the walls laid him low. Captain Carsey and Captain Carr were mortally wounded, and 200 other officers and men slain. The rest of the English forces were aroused, and came to the rescue under Colonel Lane and Colonel Medkirk, and "put them to a sodain fowle retreate, insomuch as the Earle of Essex had the chase of them even to the gates of the High towne, wherein they left behind them many of their best commanders." A body of Spanish horse, sallying from the gates of San Anton to support their comrades, met the latter in full retreat in a narrow lane, and unwillingly trampled them down; thus adding to the confusion, which was completed by a flank charge upon the struggling mass by Yorke's cavalry. The English chronicler claims that the Spanish loss tripled ours, but my diarists say that they had only twenty-five killed and forty wounded, and the Portuguese tries to account for the heavy loss of wounded by accusing the English of using poisoned bullets. The next day the English tried to get in through the monastery, but they found the city forewarned and on the alert, although the monks had done their best for them. The day after they bribed a Portuguese captain in charge of the wall at the nearest point to the river to let them pass round at low tide, but the spies told the Archduke, and the English found their ally replaced by a Spaniard with a strong force, who sent them flying back again. And so three days passed in constant skirmishes, whilst Norris was chafing and helpless without. The fatal mistake he had made in leaving the fleet was now apparent. The time, too, they had lost at Corunna was irreparable. Fernando de Toledo was approaching with relief, and the first dismay in Spain had now given way to desperate energy. The loss of men in the English camp from sickness and wounds was terrible, supplies and munitions were desperately short, there was no medical aid or transport for the sick and disabled, whilst the Portuguese in Lisbon, from whom everything had been hoped, still made no sign.
Dom Antonio still put a brave face on the matter, but his heart was sinking. For the first two days he had lodged in the rear of the English camp, outside Santa Catalina, but on the third, says my Portuguese diarist, he began to fear for his safety, and,