Meanwhile Farnese sat chafing under the unjust reproaches heaped upon him, as if he, and not his master, had been responsible for the gigantic blunders of the invasion.

“As for the Prince of Parma,” said Drake, “I take him to be as a bear robbed of her whelps.”  The Admiral was quite right.  Alexander was beside himself with rage.  Day after day, he had been repeating to Medina Sidonia and to Philip that his flotilla and transports could scarcely live in any but the smoothest sea, while the supposition that they could serve a warlike purpose he pronounced absolutely ludicrous.  He had always counselled the seizing of a place like Flushing, as a basis of operations against England, but had been overruled; and he had at least reckoned upon the Invincible Armada to clear the way for him, before he should be expected to take the sea.

With prodigious energy and at great expense he had constructed or improved internal water-communications from Ghent to Sluy’s, Newport, and Dunkerk.  He had, thus transported all his hoys, barges, and munitions for the invasion, from all points of the obedient Netherlands to the sea-coast, without coming within reach of the Hollanders and Zeelanders, who were keeping close watch on the outside.  But those Hollanders and Zeelanders, guarding every outlet to the ocean, occupying every hole and cranny of the coast, laughed the invaders of England to scorn, braving them, jeering them, daring them to come forth, while the Walloons and Spaniards shrank before such amphibious assailants, to whom a combat on the water was as natural as upon dry land.  Alexander, upon one occasion, transported with rage, selected a band of one thousand musketeers, partly Spanish, partly Irish, and ordered an assault upon those insolent boatmen.  With his own hand—­so it was related—­he struck dead more than one of his own officers who remonstrated against these commands; and then the attack was made by his thousand musketeers upon the Hollanders, and every man of the thousand was slain.

He had been reproached for not being ready, for not having embarked his men; but he had been ready for a month, and his men could be embarked in a single day.  “But it was impossible,” he said, “to keep them long packed up on board vessels, so small that there was no room to turn about in the people would sicken, would rot, would die.”  So soon as he had received information of the arrival of the fleet before Calais—­which was on the 8th August—­he had proceeded the same night to Newport and embarked 16,000 men, and before dawn he was at Dunkerk, where the troops stationed in that port were as rapidly placed on board the transports.  Sir William Stanley, with his 700 Irish kernes, were among the first shipped for the enterprise.  Two-days long these regiments lay heaped together, like sacks of corn, in the boats—­as one of their officers described it—­and they lay cheerfully hoping that the Dutch fleet would be swept out of the sea by the Invincible Armada, and patiently expecting the signal for setting sail to England.  Then came the Prince of Ascoli, who had gone ashore from the Spanish fleet at Calais, accompanied by serjeant-major Gallinato and other messengers from Medina Sidonia, bringing the news of the fire-ships and the dispersion and flight of the Armada.