68 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 41. But the intimation created little alarm. For three more weeks the English Court remained sanguine, and talked not only of keeping Havre, but of carrying the war deeper into Normandy. ' I was yesterday with the Queen/ wrote de Quadra on the 2nd of July. ' She said she was about to send six thousand additional troops across the Channel, and the French should perhaps find the war brought to their own doors. Cecil and the Admiral said the same to me. They have fourteen ships well armed and manned besides their transports, and every day they grow more eager and exasperated/ 1 But on that day news was on the way which abridged these large expectations. ' The strange disease ' was the plague ; and in the close and narrow streets where seven thousand men were packed together amidst foul air and filth and summer heat, it settled down to its feast of death. On the yth of June it was first noticed ; on the 27th the men were dying at the rate of sixty a day ;
- those who fell ill rarely recovered ; the fresh water
was cut off, and the tanks had failed from drought. There was nothing to drink but wine and cider ; there was no fresh meat, and there were no fresh vegetables. The windmills were outside the walls and in the hands of the enemy ; and though there was corn in plenty the garrison could not grind it. By the 29th of June the deaths had been five hundred. The corpses lay unburied or floated rotting in the harbour. The officers had chiefly escaped ; the common men, worse fed and worse 1 09 Quadra to the Duchess of Parma. July 2 : MS. Simancas.
