The Portuguese Affair by Ann Swinfen Page B

imagine the bloody conflict which had taken place over these waters so few months earlier, when ears were deafened with the thunder of artillery and nostrils choked with the bitter stench of gunpowder. If all went according to plan, we would experience our own share of naval artillery in Portugal, but the plan was for a quick campaign, catching the Spanish forces in Portugal unawares, with capitulation and peace negotiations to follow.
    ‘These houses must have witnessed the battle,’ I said to Dr Nuñez as we leaned on the rail, looked over at the peaceful activity in the harbour.
    ‘Perhaps, but probably not. They would have seen the fleet depart, but I think the fighting in this part of the Channel was further off. The people of Plymouth should be glad we are taking the fight across the seas,’ he said. ‘They came very near finding Spanish soldiers marching up their streets.’
    ‘I wonder how many of those Spanish soldiers found their way home again.’
    ‘Not many. All through the final months of last year despatches arrived from my agents handling the Spanish and Portuguese trade. Broken ships trailing in, manned by skeleton crews. Their losses were terrible.’
    I did not answer, torn two ways. Part of me was fiercely glad that so many of the invaders had died, yet I could not forget what I had seen at Gravelines, men slaughtered on deck or drowning in the unforgiving sea.
    The plan set forth in London before we departed was that we would remain in Plymouth no more than a week or so. We had brought some of the new ‘army’ with us from London; others had been gathered at Plymouth from all parts of the country, drawn by the prospects of looting which Dom Antonio had been forced to concede to the Queen in order to gain her support for the invasion. They were not to loot just in Spain, for – as I was to learn much later – once the soldiers had seized Lisbon, they were to be allowed to loot the city, as payment for their services. Thereafter the Dom had pledged such vast sums to Elizabeth that he would sit a beggar on his throne. Portugal was to become a province of England, her precious trade in the hands of English merchants, her castles manned by English garrisons. When I had heard this, I could not understand how the old men like Lopez and Nuñez and Dunstan Añez could consent to such terms. How could Portugal be free, loaded with such chains? But perhaps, like me, they were too entangled to escape the inexorable current of fate which was carrying us all onwards.
    This ‘army’ which had been mustered was as vile, dirty, vicious, and ungovernable a rout of men as you have ever seen – beggars and thieves, wastrels and men fresh out of prison. When we reached Plymouth, those recruits we had on board scrambled ashore (they had puked all the way down the Channel) and joined their fellows who had been gathering here on land. This landward group had already discovered the warehouses where the provisions for the voyage were stored. Now more than doubled in their numbers, this army of gallant men set to, besieged the warehouses and took them in a matter of hours.
    Over the next days, while we awaited the arrival of a trained contingent of soldiers who were to join us from the Low Countries, all the provisions – meat, drink, flour, salted fish, ship’s biscuit, dried fruit and vegetables – found their way down the gullets of these starving wretches. When they had devoured our substance, like a biblical plague of locusts, they descended upon the taverns and inns of Plymouth and the surrounding villages. Boasting that they were the Queen’s army and must be fed, they told the frightened innkeepers to send their bills to London, where they would be paid by the Privy Council or the Queen herself. When the inns ran out of food, they broke into houses and ransacked them. The terrified people of Plymouth cowered behind bolted doors and prayed for the arrival of the ships from the Netherlands, hoping to see the