notable personages; among them eighteen
ecclesiastical dignitaries, were carried off as hostages for its payment.
The city was now set on fire by command of Essex in four different
quarters. Especially the cathedral and other churches, the convents and
the hospitals, were burned. It was perhaps not unnatural: that both
Englishmen and Hollanders should be disposed to wreak a barbarous
vengeance on everything representative of the Church which they abhorred,
and from which such endless misery had issued to the uttermost corners
of their own countries. But it is at any rate refreshing to record amid
these acts of pillage and destruction, in which, as must ever be the
case, the innocent and the lowly were made to suffer for the crimes of
crowned and mitred culprits, that not many special acts of cruelty were
committed upon individuals:

No man was murdered in cold blood, no woman was outraged. The beautiful
city was left a desolate and blackened ruin, and a general levy of spoil
was made for the benefit of the victors, but there was no infringement of
the theory and practice of the laws of war as understood in that day or
in later ages. It is even recorded that Essex ordered one of his
soldiers, who was found stealing a woman's gown, to be hanged on the
spot, but that, wearied by the intercession of an ecclesiastic of Cadiz,
the canon Quesada, he consented at last to pardon the marauder.

It was the earnest desire of Essex to hold Cadiz instead of destroying
it. With three thousand men, and with temporary supplies from the fleet,
the place could be maintained against all comers; Holland and England
together commanding the seas. Admiral Warmond and all the Netherlanders
seconded the scheme, and offered at once to put ashore from their vessels
food and munitions enough to serve two thousand men for two months. If
the English admiral would do as much, the place might be afterwards
supplied without limit and held till doomsday, a perpetual thorn in
Philip's side. Sir Francis Vere was likewise warmly in favour of the
project, but he stood alone. All the other Englishmen opposed it as
hazardous, extravagant, and in direct contravention of the minute
instructions of the queen. With a sigh or a curse for what he considered
the superfluous caution of his royal mistress, and the exaggerated
docility of Lord High Admiral Howard, Essex was fain to content himself
with the sack and the conflagration, and the allied fleet sailed away
fr