He had sent messengers, day after day, to Farnese, begging for assistance of various kinds, but, above all, imploring his instant presence on the field of action.

It was the time and, place for Alexander to assume the chief command.

The Armada was ready to make front against the English fleet on the left, while on the right, the Duke, thus protected, might proceed across the channel and take possession of England.
And the impatience of the soldiers and sailors on board the fleet was equal to that of their commanders.

There was London almost before their eyes--a huge mass of treasure, richer and more accessible than those mines beyond the Atlantic which had so often rewarded Spanish chivalry with fabulous wealth.

And there were men in those galleons who remembered the sack of Antwerp, eleven years before--men who could tell, from personal experience, how helpless was a great commercial city, when once in the clutch of disciplined brigands--men who, in that dread 'fury of Antwerp,' had enriched themselves in an hour with the accumulations of a merchant's life-time, and who had slain fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brides and bridegrooms, before each others' eyes, until the number of inhabitants butchered in the blazing streets rose to many thousands; and the plunder from palaces and warehouses was counted by millions; before the sun had set on the 'great fury.' Those Spaniards, and Italians, and Walloons, were now thirsting for more gold, for more blood; and as the capital of England was even more wealthy and far more defenceless than the commercial metropolis of the Netherlands had been, so it was resolved that the London 'fury' should be more thorough and more productive than the 'fury' of Antwerp, at the memory--of which the world still shuddered.