in the Channel, he could not wait for Parma off the shoally Flemish coast. The first panic in England had been succeeded by feverish activity; all that could inflame patriotic zeal was done. The Spaniards, it was said, were bringing cargoes of scourges and instruments of torture, all adults were to be put to death, and 7000 wet-nurses were coming in the Armada to suckle the orphan infants. Such nonsense as this was firmly believed, and the echoes of it have not even yet entirely died out. Corporations and individuals vied with each other in providing means for defence; but withal the land forces, assembled in two _corps d’armée_, one on each side of the Thames, were but hasty levies, half drilled and armed, and commanded by the incompetent Leicester. The queen was personally popular, but if Parma had landed and she had fallen, it is probable that there would have been no great resistance on the part of the people at large to the adoption of the Catholic religion. They had changed too often to care very much about it, if they were allowed to go about their business without molestation and had a firm, peaceful government. Parma had from the first insisted that his force was purely for land warfare, and his boats were merely flat-bottom barges for the transport of his men. He had been kept terribly short of money, and had borrowed the last ducat he could get at most usurious interest. His army, moreover, was small for the work it had to do, and he continued to insist that he must have the 6000 Spanish soldiers from the Armada which had been promised him. The English fleets consisted of 197 sail in all, with, at most, 18,000 men on board. Most of these ships--as also was the case with the Spaniards--were small cargo boats, lightly armed, and quite unfit for severe fighting. The largest Spanish ship, the _Regazona_, was 1249 tons burden, and the largest English ship, the _Triumph_, 1100 tons, but, generally speaking, the Spanish fighting ships were much larger, as they certainly were of much higher build than the English, the tactics of the latter always being to fire low into the hulls of their opponents and avoid grappling and boarding, which they could do, as their lines were finer and the vessels much more handy.