3. =The Expedition to Cadiz. 1625.=--Charles thought that, if he could gain a great victory, there would be no further talk about mismanagement. Scraping together what money he could, he sent a great fleet and army, under the command of Sir Edward Cecil, to take Cadiz, the harbour of which was the port at which the Spanish treasure ships arrived from America once a year, laden with silver and gold from the mines of America. The greater part of Cecil's fleet was made up of merchant-vessels pressed by force into the king's service. Neither soldiers nor sailors had any heart in the matter. The masters of the merchant-vessels did all they could to keep themselves out of danger. The soldiers after landing outside the town got drunk in a body, and would have been slaughtered if any Spaniards had been near. Cecil failed to take Cadiz, and after he left it, the Spanish treasure-ships from America, which he hoped to capture, got safely into Cadiz harbour, whilst he was looking for them in another part of the sea. The great expedition sent by Buckingham to Cadiz was as complete a failure as that which he had sent out the year before under Mansfeld. Whilst Cecil was employed in Spain Buckingham himself went to the Hague to form a continental alliance for the recovery of the Palatinate, hoping especially to secure the services of Christian IV., king of Denmark. Finding Christian quite ready to fight, Buckingham tried to pawn the king's jewels at Amsterdam in order to supply him with 30,000_l._ a month, which he had promised to him. No one would lend money on the jewels, and Buckingham came back, hoping that a second Parliament would be more compliant than the first. [Illustration: King Charles I.: from a painting by Van Dyck.]