for 40,000 men for six months--was placed on board. The overthrow of this armament was effected by the navy and the elements. From the Queen's parsimony the State had only 36 ships in the fleet; but the City of London furnished 33 vessels; 18 were supplied by the liberality of private individuals; and nearly 100 smaller ships were obtained on hire; so that the fleet was eventually brought up to nearly 30,000 tons, carrying 16,000 men, and equipped with 837 guns. But there was sufficient ammunition for only a single day's fighting. Fortunately for Elizabeth's Government, the Spaniards, having been long driven from the channel by privateers, were now unacquainted with its currents; and they could procure, as the Dutch were in revolt, only two or three competent pilots. The Spanish commander was the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, an incapable man, but he had under him some of the ablest of Philip's officers. When the ships set out from the Tagus, on the 29th May, 1588, a storm came on, and the Armada had to put into Coruña to refit. From that port the Armada set out at the beginning of July, in lovely weather, with just enough wind to wave from the mastheads the red crosses which they bore as symbols of their crusade. The Duke of Medina entered the Channel on the 18th July, and the rear of his fleet was immediately harassed by a cannonade from the puny ships of England, commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham (Lord High Admiral), with Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, Winter, Fenner, and other famous captains. With the loss of three galleons from fire or boarding, the Spanish commander, who was making for Flanders to embark Parma's army, anchored in Calais roads. In the night fire-ships--an ancient mode of warfare which had just been reintroduced by the Dutch--passed in among the Armada, a fierce gale completed their work, and morning revealed the remnant of the Invincible Armada scattered along the coast from Calais to Ostend. Eighty vessels remained to Medina, and with these he sailed up the North Sea, to round the British Isles. But the treacherous currents of the Orkneys and the Hebrides were unknown to his officers, and only a few ships escaped the tempests of the late autumn. More than two-thirds of the expedition perished, and of the remnant that again viewed the hills of Spain all but a few hundreds returned only to die." _H. R. Clinton, From Crécy to Assye, chapter 7._