was prevented by bad
weather and head-winds from sailing up the Tagus, it seemed a difficult
matter to carry the city. A few cannon, and the co-operation of the
fleet, were hardly to be dispensed with on such an occasion. Nevertheless
it would perhaps have proved an easier task than it appeared--for so
great was the panic within the place that a large number of the
inhabitants had fled, the Cardinal Viceroy Archduke Albert had but a very
insufficient guard, and there were many gentlemen of high station who
were anxious to further the entrance of the English, and who were
afterwards hanged or garotted for their hostile sentiments to the Spanish
government.

While the leaders were deliberating what course to take, they were
informed that Count Fuentes and Henriquez de Guzman, with six thousand
men, lay at a distance of two miles from Lisbon, and that they had been
proclaiming by sound of trumpet that the English had been signally
defeated before Lisbon, and that they were in full retreat.

Fired at this bravado, Norris sent a trumpet to Fuentes and Guzman, with
a letter signed and sealed, giving them the lie in plainest terms,
appointing the next day for a meeting of the two forces, and assuring
them that when the next encounter should take place, it should be seen
whether a Spaniard or an Englishman would be first to fly; while Essex,
on his part, sent a note, defying either or both those boastful generals
to single combat. Next day the English army took the field, but the
Spaniards retired before them; and nothing came of this exchange of
cartels, save a threat on the part of Fuentes to hang the trumpeter who
had brought the messages. From the execution of this menace he refrained,
however, on being assured that the deed would be avenged by the death of
the Spanish prisoner of highest rank then in English hands, and thus the
trumpeter escaped.

Soon afterwards the fleet set sail from the Tagus, landed, and burned
Vigo on their way homeward, and returned to Plymouth about the middle of
July.

Of the thirteen thousand came home six thousand, the rest having perished
of dysentery and other disorders. They had braved and insulted Spain,
humbled her generals, defied her power, burned some defenceless villages,
frightened the peasantry, set fire to some shipping, destroyed wine, oil,
and other merchandize, and had divided among the survivors of the
expedition, after landing in England, five shillings a head prize-money;