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Cecil no signs of supporting him, he fell back to his station and anchored off St. Mary's.

Meantime the Spaniards cut their cables and fled up the inner harbour. Had the Swiftsure been supported, the enemy must have been destroyed. Cecil attempted afterwards to throw the blame on the captains of the squadron, and especially on the merchant skippers. He alleged that he went in among them and called on them to follow the Swiftsure, but that they tacitly refused to obey and let go their anchors. This statement is, however, at variance with that of Essex, and almost all the other superior officers of the army. It was suspected from the flight of the ships that Cadiz was without defence, as indeed it was, and it was proposed to attack it at once. Essex, Sir John Burgh, and Lord Cromwell urged this measure with vehemence; but Cecil was incapable of any resolution, and determined rather to attack the fort of Puntales, which commanded the entrance of the harbour. But even this attack was made in a very half-hearted way. Orders were sent to twenty of the merchant ships to support five Dutch ships and to cannonade the fort. The orders were never delivered; and though the officer sent with them was Sir Thomas Love, the captain of the Royal Anne, carrying Cecil's flag, Cecil was apparently left in ignorance till the next morning. Essex with his squadron and some other ships were then ordered in, but no care was taken in stationing them, and the cannonade was weak and desultory. It was not till towards evening that the fort capitulated to a body of troops landed in its rear under the command of Sir John Burgh.

On the following morning, 24 Oct., the soldiers were landed at Puntales. The general's hope was vaguely to reduce the town by blockade; but on an alarm of an approaching enemy he turned to meet them. He had given orders that on landing every man was to carry provisions in his knapsack; but no care had been taken to see that the orders were obeyed, no instructions had been issued as to where the provisions were to come from, and the pursers of the ships had refused to supply them without proper warrant; and thus, though some few companies may have had their day's provisions with them, by far the greater part of the force, consisting of raw soldiers and ignorant officers, was absolutely destitute.

As the English advanced, the Spaniards fell back along the narrow causeway which connected Cadiz with the village of San Fernando and the bridge beyond. The English followed nearly as far as the village, a distance of six or seven miles. And here it was apparently that the superior officers first discovered that the men had no provisions. Cecil was informed of it, and answered angrily that this was no time to be thinking of provisions with the enemy in their front. But the men were utterly exhausted: many of them, who had been landed with Sir John Burgh the day before, had been upwards of twenty-four hours without anything to eat, and the march under the noonday sun had completely knocked them up. Some wine was found in the village, and Cecil ordered a measure to be served out all round. But no examination was made, and it was not found out that the place was the great store for the use of the West India fleet until the soldiers were all mad drunk. Then, indeed, an attempt was made to stave the casks, but amid riot and confusion indescribable. Fortunately the enemy remained ignorant of the condition of the army, and the next morning the men, still without food, were for the most part sufficiently sober to stagger back to Puntales.

The Spanish ships had meantime warped into a creek at the head of the harbour, and sunk a merchantman at the entrance. They as well as the town seemed now unassailable; the troops were therefore re-embarked, and on the 29th the fleet took its departure. Two days later the Spanish treasure-ships, keeping well to the southward, got safely into Cadiz, while Cecil with the English fleet was watching for them broad off Cape St. Vincent. And he continued to watch till 16 Nov., when, his ships being foul and leaky, the rigging and sails rotten, and the provisions putrid, he gave the order to return to England. But before it could be carried into effect want had produced sickness, which assumed the proportions of a pestilence. Many of the ships, thus left without men sufficient to work them, were either lost or exposed to the greatest danger. The Anne Royal, having buried 130 men, with 160 sick, and leaking like a sieve, got into Kinsale on 11 Dec. Having partly refitted, sent the sick on shore, and received the crews of some of the ships which had been cast away, she put to sea on 28 Jan. 1625–6. A gale of wind drove her to the westward, and she got with some difficulty into Berehaven, where she lay till 19 Feb., and did not arrive in the Downs till the 28th.

The failure of this costly expedition gave rise to much popular indignation, the weight of which fell, not undeservedly, on Buckingham. But no censure of Buckingham can absolve Cecil from the blame which must attach to the gross incapacity which he displayed under circumstances of no peculiar difficulty. To his incompetence the Spaniards owed it that every ship in the harbour