But he felt that he was not without enemies behind him, for the strong influence brought to bear against the bold policy which Walsingham favoured, was no secret to Drake.  “If we deserve ill,” said he, “let us be punished.  If we discharge our duty, in doing our best, it is a hard measure to be reported ill by those who will either keep their fingers out of the fire; or who too well affect that alteration in our government which I hope in God they shall never live to see.”  In latitude 40 deg. he spoke two Zeeland ships, homeward bound, and obtained information of great warlike stores accumulating in Cadiz and Lisbon.  His mind was instantly made up.  Fortunately, the pinnace which the Queen despatched with orders to stay his hand in the very act of smiting her great adversary, did not sail fast enough to overtake the swift corsair and his fleet.  Sir Francis had too promptly obeyed the wind, when it “commanded him away,” to receive the royal countermand.  On the 19th April, the English ships entered the harbour of Cadiz, and destroyed ten thousand tons of shipping, with their contents, in the very face of a dozen great galleys, which the nimble English vessels soon drove under their forts for shelter.  Two nights and a day, Sir Francis, that “hater of idleness,” was steadily doing his work; unloading, rifling, scuttling, sinking, and burning those transportships which contained a portion of the preparations painfully made by Philip for his great enterprise.  Pipe-staves and spikes, horse-shoes and saddles, timber and cutlasses, wine, oil, figs, raisins, biscuits, and flour, a miscellaneous mass of ingredients long brewing for the trouble of England, were emptied into the harbour, and before the second night, the blaze of a hundred and fifty burning vessels played merrily upon the grim walls of Philip’s fortresses.  Some of these ships were of the largest size then known.  There was one belonging to Marquis Santa Cruz of 1500 tons, there was a Biscayan of 1200, there were several others of 1000, 800, and of nearly equal dimensions.

Thence sailing for Lisbon, Sir Francis, captured and destroyed a hundred vessels more, appropriating what was portable of the cargoes, and annihilating the rest.  At Lisbon, Marquis Santa Cruz, lord high admiral of Spain and generalissimo of the invasion, looked on, mortified and amazed, but offering no combat, while the Plymouth privateersman swept the harbour of the great monarch of the world.  After thoroughly accomplishing his work, Drake sent a message to Santa Cruz, proposing to exchange his prisoners for such Englishmen as might then be confined in Spain.  But the marquis denied all prisoners.  Thereupon Sir Francis decided to sell his captives to the Moors, and to appropriate the proceeds of the sale towards the purchase of English slaves put of the same bondage.  Such was the fortune of war in the sixteenth century.