The Year after the Armada, and Other Historical Studies. Martin A. S. Hume
or at least promising, much, and assuring them all of his protection.
But if their new sovereign was chary of oppressing them, no such scruples afflicted their Castilian masters. My Portuguese diarist says that the Spaniards retaliated for Araujo's treachery in surrendering Peniche by stealing everything belonging to the Portuguese they could lay their hands upon, and he cites one case in which they took the large sum of two thousand crowns from one of the most influential friends of the Spanish cause. "But," he says, apologetically, "in confused times such as these soldiers will act so."
Dom Antonio's bodyguard was armed with muskets and pikes from the castle, and here the poor King kept his rough-and-ready Court for two days. He was tenacious of his regal dignity, and had many a little wrangle with the English about the scant ceremony with which they treated him. But greater disappointments were yet in store for him. The friars and peasants flocked in to salute their native king, but, alas, Antonio hoped and looked in vain for the coming of the lords and gentry from whom he expected so much. Wily Philip had been once more too cunning for his enemy. At the first whisper of the expedition he had banished to distant places in his own dominions every Portuguese noble—seventy of them in all—who was not pledged hard and fast to the Castilian cause. One of Antonio's false friends, too, had escaped at Corunna, and had gone straight to Philip and divulged all the pretender's plans and the names of his supporters still in Portugal who were to help him into Lisbon. Their shrift, as may be supposed, was a short one, and when Antonio came to his kingdom he found none but monks and clowns to greet him. Such of the gentry as he approached were usually too panic-stricken to side with him, seeing the fate of others of their class, and my Portuguese scoffs at the insolence of the idea that Antonio and the English could hold Lisbon, even if they won it against all the might of Spain, or of the common Portuguese rising without the "fidalgos," and courting the ruin that would befall them if the "heretics" got the upper hand without the fidalgos to restrain them.
But Antonio put a brave face on matters, and was all eagerness to push on to his faithful capital of Lisbon, which he was confident awaited him with open arms. His confidence to a certain extent seems to have been shared by Norris, and here the second great mistake of the expedition was made. The first vital error was the fruitless waste of time at Corunna; the second was the resolution now arrived at by Norris, entirely against Drake's judgment, to march from Peniche overland forty-two miles to Lisbon. Drake, true to the sea and to the tactics by which he had so often beaten the Spaniards, was in favour of pushing on to Lisbon by sea, letting three or four fireships drift about the castle of São Gian, which commanded the entrance to the harbour, so that the smoke should spoil the aim of the guns, and then make a dash for the city—and doubtless, thought Drake, for the galleon, with its million gold crowns, lying in front of the India house. Dom Antonio, whose one idea was to keep foot on the land where he was king, sided with Norris. In vain Drake pointed out that they had no baggage train or proper provisions for a march through an enemy's country; that they had only one weak squadron of cavalry, of which the cattle was out of condition; that they had no fitting field artillery; and that once inland they would lose the support and protection of the fleet.
It was all of no avail; Dom Antonio and Norris had their way, and a single company was left to garrison Peniche,[25] supported by six ships, whilst the whole of the land forces were to march to Lisbon, and Drake undertook to bring the rest of the fleet to Cascaes, at the mouth of the river, when the weather would allow him to do so.
During the night after the landing, some cavalry under Captain Alarcon had joined the Spaniards, and a force of Portuguese militia had also been sent in by Don Luis Alencastro, but they soon deserted their colours and left their officers to shift for themselves. The next morning at four o'clock Captain Alarcon and a few of the Spanish cavalry reconnoitred the position at Peniche, but found the enemy too many for them, and could only scour back as hard as they could ride to Luis Alencastro, the Grand-Commander of the Order of Christ, who was endeavouring to reorganise a body of Portuguese a few miles off, on the road to Lisbon. But terrible tales of the strength of the English had already spread; and when Alarcon and Guzman reached the Grand-Commander they found his hasty levies in a panic at the story that Drake had brought with him nine hundred great Irish dogs as fierce as lions, and "capable of eating up a world of folks." So they flatly refused to stir; and the Grand-Commander could do no more than hasten back to Lisbon to inform the Cardinal-Archduke Albert of the state of affairs, whilst Guzman, with the troops, fell back upon Torres-Vedras, to hold if possible the road to Lisbon.
In the meanwhile the capital was in a state of intense excitement. The native inhabitants, with a lively recollection of the sacking of the city by Alba, flocked to the other side of the Tagus, notwithstanding the strict orders of the Cardinal-Archduke to the contrary. Provisions and munitions of war were hastily sent from Spain, and the Prior Fernando de Toledo was already on the move, slowly bringing such troops as he could muster for the relief of Lisbon, whilst the castles and walls of the city were put into a state of defence. The Castilians, few in number and intensely hated by the townsfolk, knew that in a fight the brunt would fall upon them, and that the Portuguese, even though they might not help the enemy, and this was by no means certain, would not raise a finger to support the dominion of Philip. The priests went from house to house, strong adherents of Dom Antonio almost to a man, whispering that the English were not, after all, such bad people; that there were many Catholics amongst them who were better Christians than the Castilians themselves, and, as the Spanish diarist says, other things of the sort which will not bear repeating. To the well-to-do they said that as soon as a native king was on the throne their wealth would enormously increase, whilst the poor were told that "fishing in troubled waters was profitable to the fisherman."
On the other hand, the Archduke, knowing the people with whom he had to deal, established a veritable reign of terror, and sacrificed without mercy—often without evidence—any person who was even suspected of open sympathy with the invaders, although it was well known in Madrid that the populace of Lisbon had tacitly agreed to open the gates to Dom Antonio and to massacre the Spaniards on his approach. Some Portuguese nobles had left the Archduke on the first landing of Dom Antonio, but, finding that most of their order had been terrorised into quiescence, returned to Lisbon and tendered their submission. They were at once beheaded or imprisoned, and the rest became more slavish than ever in their professions of attachment to the Archduke. Terrible stories were spread at the same time of the "impious abominations" of the English heretics, and the dreadful fate that awaited all Catholics if the invader succeeded, until, as my Portuguese diarist says, "there was not even a loafer on the quay who did not know that he would be cast out or ruined if the English came." But it was all insufficient to make them willing to fight. The exodus still continued, and under cover of night the people stole across the river by thousands, and a boat whose usual freight was two ducats could not now be hired under fifty, whilst a bullock-cart and bullocks which could be bought right out in normal times for fifty ducats now charged sixty for a single journey to Aldea Gallega, on the other side of the Tagus. The people of the provinces, says my Portuguese diarist, oppressed the flying citizens more than the English, until the scandal became so great that the Archduke had to interfere and check their rapacity. Under some excuse or another every Portuguese was anxious to get away and leave the fighting to be done by some one else. The Portuguese diarist stoutly denies that his countrymen were cowards or traitors, but always explains that the common people could not have risen without the lead of the native nobles; and we have seen the methods by which they were terrorised and made powerless. The Spaniard, on the other hand, makes no secret of his contempt for the white-livered Lisbonenses, and uses much strong language about them. My Portuguese diarist greatly resents this feeling, and gives a little personal experience of his own to show how harsh were the words used by the Castilians towards the craven citizens. "On the morning," he says, "that the enemy fled I went up to the castle to get some things of mine out of my boxes which I had left there in the rooms of one of the officers, where I had determined to await my fate if things came to the worst. As I was on my way down to the palace again the rumour spread that the enemy was retreating, whereupon some soldiers ascended the watch tower to enjoy the sight. I asked them when they returned if the good news were true that the enemy was really flying, and one of them answered me roughly that they who were flying were not the enemy but those