THE SPANISH ARMADA
G'day folks,
In May 1588, King Philip II dispatched the 130-ship Spanish
Armada on a mission to guide an invasion force to the coast of England and
topple the regime of Queen Elizabeth I. This “Great and Most Fortunate Navy”
was one of the mightiest fleets ever assembled, but a combination of poor
tactics, robust English resistance and dismal weather ultimately doomed it to
failure. By the time Philip’s “Invincible Armada” finally limped back to Spain
later that autumn, at least a third of its ships were lost and some 15,000
sailors had been killed. Below, explore eight surprising facts about one of the
most ambitious—and disastrous—campaigns in military history.
Before attacking Elizabeth I, Philip II tried to marry her.
The
Armada was the culmination of years of hostility between King Philip II of
Spain and Elizabeth I, but the two weren’t always sworn enemies. Philip had
once been married to Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary I, and he later threw his
support behind Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne. Shortly after Mary’s death
in 1558, he even sent an ambassador to Elizabeth with a proposal of marriage,
only to be humiliated when she declined. Relations between Spain and England
deteriorated in the decades that followed. Much of the friction centered on
religion. Philip was a devout Roman Catholic, and he considered Elizabeth a
Protestant heretic. The Spanish were also enraged by English pirate raids on
their treasure fleets, but the breaking point came in 1585, when Elizabeth
pledged military support to Protestant rebels in the Spanish Netherlands.
Convinced the agreement was an act of war, Philip began planning an “Enterprise
of England” to remove her from the throne.
The English raided the Armada before it left Spain.
The
preparations for the Spanish Armada were one of the worst kept secrets in
Europe. Elizabeth’s spies easily gleaned intelligence about the fleet being
assembled in Spain, and by the spring of 1587, the English were convinced that
an invasion was imminent. To slow the Armada’s progress, the Queen allowed the
salty privateer and navigator Sir Francis Drake to make a surprise strike
against the Spanish port of Cadiz. After briefly capturing the city’s harbor,
Drake and his men torched some 30 Spanish vessels and seized or destroyed
several tons of food and supplies intended for the Armada. The Spanish managed
to replace most of their losses, but Drake’s “singeing of the king of Spain’s
beard” may have delayed the Armada’s launch by as much as a year, allowing the
English crucial time to ready themselves for an invasion.
The Armada was not the main Spanish invasion force.
The
Armada was one of the largest fleets ever assembled for a single mission, but
it was not intended to attack England on its own. The Spanish plan instead called
for the Armada, sailing under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, to
travel to the Flemish coast and rendezvous with a 30,000-strong land army under
the Duke of Parma. It would then act as a defensive escort and supply convoy as
Parma’s troops crossed the English Channel on small barges and moved on London.
With this auxiliary role in mind, only around 35 or 40 of the Armada’s vessels
were purpose-built warships. The rest were mostly armed merchantmen and cargo
ships crammed with food and military supplies to support the land invasion.
A system of coastal beacons helped warn the English of the Armada’s approach.
Along
with fortifying their southern beaches and marshaling militiamen, the English
prepared for the Armada’s arrival by overhauling a centuries-old system of
signal beacons. This primitive early warning system consisted of around 1,000
outposts spaced several miles apart along the coastline. Each was manned around
the clock by teams of watchmen and equipped with a raised iron basket filled
with tar and pitch. When the Spanish fleet was finally sighted off Cornwall on
July 30, the spotters lit their signal fires in succession and quickly spread a
call to arms around the country. That same night, a 100-ship fleet under Lord
High Admiral Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake gathered outside Plymouth
harbor and gave chase to the Armada.
The English used fireships to break the Armada’s formation.
The
English fleet harassed the Armada for several days during its charge toward the
English Channel, but their ships struggled to penetrate its crescent-shaped
defensive formation. The situation grew more urgent on August 6, when Medina
Sidonia dropped anchor near Calais, France to rendezvous with the Duke of
Parma, who was desperately trying to gather his army in nearby Dunkirk. Knowing
they couldn’t allow the Spanish to unite their forces, Drake and Lord Howard
devised a scheme to scatter the enemy ships.
On the night of August 8, they
packed eight empty vessels with timber and pitch, set them ablaze and sent them
drifting into the center of the Armada’s formation. Upon sighting the
fireships, the Spanish captains fled to the open sea in panic. Most even cut
their ships’ anchors in their race to avoid the floating bonfires. While the
Armada escaped from Calais without serious damage, the fireship strike
succeeded in breaking its defensive line. The next morning, the English engaged
the now disorganized Spanish fleet at the Battle of Gravelines, where Howard
and Drake used their superior long-range cannons to score a decisive victory.
Sea storms were the main cause of the Armada’s defeat.
While the
English prevailed at Gravelines, they only succeeded in destroying or capturing
a handful of the Armada’s ships. The true knockout blow would come courtesy of
Mother Nature. In mid-August, the battered Spanish fleet was pushed into the
North Sea by strong winds, ending its hopes of rendezvousing with Parma’s army.
Running low on food and water, Medina Sidonia resolved to return home by
rounding the tip of Scotland and sailing south along the western coast of
Ireland. The voyage was accompanied by unseasonably violent storms and gales,
and dozens of the Armada’s ships eventually sank at sea or were dashed against
the Irish coastline, killing some 6,000 sailors. Estimates vary, but most
historians believe that only around 75 or 80 of the original 130 ships managed
to return to Spain. Upon learning of the state of his once glorious Armada, Philip
II supposedly exclaimed, “I sent my fleet against men, not against the wind and
the waves.”
England launched a counter Armada the following year—with equally disastrous results.
Almost as
soon as the humiliated Armada vanished over the horizon, Elizabeth began
planning a counterattack to destroy the last of Philip II’s navy and bring the
Spanish Empire to its knees. By April 1589, she had outfitted Sir Francis Drake
and Sir John Norris with over 120 ships and dispatched them on a mission to
invade Spain. It was a bold plan, but unfortunately for Elizabeth, her “English
Armada” fared no better than the Spanish one. Rather than attacking the
shipyards at Santander—where the remnants of the Spanish Armada were licking
their wounds—Drake and Norris spent several weeks searching for plunder and
unsuccessfully besieging the cities of Corunna and Lisbon. Their forces were
soon riddled with disease, and Drake’s ship nearly sank after being ravaged by
storms during an abortive attempt to raid the Azores. The English fleet later
limped home in disgrace in the summer of 1589, having lost a staggering 11,000
men while achieving none of its military goals.
The Armada’s defeat didn’t permanently cripple the Spanish navy.
Contrary
to popular belief, the defeat of the Spanish Armada wasn’t the end of Spain’s
reign as a world naval power. Phillip II successfully rebuilt his fleet after
the 1588 debacle and continued operations against England for several more
years. He even launched two more armadas in 1596 and 1597, both of which were
scattered by storms. It was not until 1604 that Elizabeth and Philip’s
successors finally signed a treaty ending the 19-year Anglo-Spanish War as a
stalemate. Spain’s navy continued to dominate the sea-lanes, however, and
didn’t go into decline until the mid-17th century during the Thirty Years’ War.
Clancy's comment: What can I say? All wars are disastrous.
I'm ...
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