mines beyond the Atlantic which had so often rewarded Spanish chivalry
with fabulous wealth. And there were men in those galleons who
remembered the sack of Antwerp, eleven years before--men who could tell,
from personal experience, how helpless was a great commercial city, when
once in the clutch of disciplined brigands--men who, in that dread 'fury
of Antwerp,' had enriched themselves in an hour with the accumulations of
a merchant's life-time, and who had slain fathers and mothers, sons and
daughters, brides and bridegrooms, before each others' eyes, until the
number of inhabitants butchered in the blazing streets rose to many
thousands; and the plunder from palaces and warehouses was counted by
millions; before the sun had set on the 'great fury.' Those Spaniards,
and Italians, and Walloons, were now thirsting for more gold, for more
blood; and as the capital of England was even more wealthy and far more
defenceless than the commercial metropolis of the Netherlands had been,
so it was resolved that the London 'fury' should be more thorough and
more productive than the 'fury' of Antwerp, at the memory--of which the
world still shuddered. And these professional soldiers had been taught
to consider the English as a pacific, delicate, effeminate race,
dependent on good living, without experience of war, quickly fatigued and
discouraged, and even more easily to be plundered and butchered than were
the excellent burghers of Antwerp.

And so these southern conquerors looked down from their great galleons
and galeasses upon the English vessels. More than three quarters of them
were merchantmen. There was no comparison whatever between the relative
strength of the fleets. In number they were about equal being each from
one hundred and thirty to one hundred and fifty strong--but the Spaniards
had twice the tonnage of the English, four times the artillery, and
nearly three times the number of men.