The Spanish Armada
Ingenuity, good planning, and victory
It was July 29, 1588, when the Spanish Armada was sighted off the English coast. Less than two weeks later, by 12 August, it had been roundly defeated.
The Armada wasn't the first unsuccessful attempt to invade England, nor would it be the last, nor the one that came closest to succeeding. Actually, even if it hadn't been defeated at sea, the Spanish plans were poor enough that it never would've truly succeeded. But, ever since, the defeat of the Armada has loomed high in the English imagination as a battle where English ingenuity preserved English liberty - and that was quite correct.
If any ruler of England since Alfred should be given the title "The Great," Queen Elizabeth I is a strong contender.
In one way, the Spanish Armada was the failure of Elizabeth's diplomacy. In another way, the Armada coming thirty years into Elizabeth's reign demonstrates the great success of her diplomacy: despite numerous privateers picking at Spanish shipping and "singeing the King of Spain's beard" in Drake's famous phrasing, and despite Elizabeth openly funding the (Protestant) Dutch rebels against (Catholic) Spain, she still held off open war for those long thirty years. This slow fighting won significant victories, and raised English pride.
The Spanish Empire was much larger than England; Spain had gold from the New World pouring through its inept financial system. Elizabeth knew all this, and England knew all this - for generations after, there was the (quite accurate) sense that Protestantism in England was under siege. The goal of Elizabeth's diplomacy was to put off the confrontation as long as possible, in hopes that by some change or some stroke of luck, England could win it.
But in 1588, after Elizabeth executed the (Catholic) Mary Queen of Scots, in exile in England, on (quite genuine) charges of conspiring against Elizabeth, King Philip of Spain finally lost patience. He sent forth a fleet to invade England.
The Armada was not well-planned.
141 ships left Spain, commanded by the Duke of Medina-Sidonia. Medina-Sidonia knew he had no idea how to manage a fleet at sea, and tried to refuse the appointment. But, King Philip - without explaining why, and we still don't know why - insisted he take command. After bad weather and repeated repairs, 122 ships entered the Channel.
But even aside from these details of execution, the main plan was simply unworkable. Medina-Sidonia's orders were to sail the ships into harbor in the Spanish Netherlands, and use them to ferry the Duke of Parma's Spanish army across the Channel to the English coast. In essence, the entire fleet was sent to be ferryboats. What was more, they would have to rendezvous with Parma's army under the guns of the English fleet, when neither the fleet nor army could talk with each other or know when the other would be ready save by messenger-boat. The Armada had been delayed, so Parma had to wait by the coast rather than use his army in the war in the Netherlands. And then, even when they eventually met, the crossing would have been very complicated.
Writer Steve White, in his historical science-fantasy novel St. Antony's Fire where aliens help the Spanish Armada conquer England, keeps having his characters reference how the Armada could never have worked without the aliens. I agree with him: the Armada had essentially no chance of working. Yes, the ships could have defeated the English navy. But, there was almost as little chance of Parma's army landing in England as there would be centuries later of Hitler's, because neither of them had planned a good method to cross the Channel ready to fight.
But even if Parma's army had landed in England, their trials wouldn't have been over. Yes, they could have easily won battles. Quite possibly, they could've sacked London. But they simply didn't have enough men to occupy all of England. Even King Philip seemed to know this; his goals weren't for them to overthrow Elizabeth but to pressure her into a favorable treaty: to reduce persecution of English Catholics and to get her to stop funding the Dutch.
Would this treaty have benefitted Spain in the long run? To some extent - but it's debatable how much. The Dutch easily might not have submitted even without English funding, or they could've found other funding elsewhere. France, even though Catholic, had recently been funding the Protestant cause in the Thirty Years' War to fight Austria; I can easily see them stepping up to fund the Dutch.
But Spanish policy was not marked by good sense. King Philip was convinced that God would ensure the Armada's success. I can only say, it would have taken a miracle of God to give it success.
And, evidently, King Philip had gravely misunderstood what God would do for the Armada.
Elizabeth gathered all her privateers together in a navy to meet the Armada. They had more ships, but smaller ships. On the one hand, that meant the Spanish ships had more guns. On the other, that meant the English ships were more maneuverable. If the two fleets lined up in formal lines of battle, the Spanish would therefore have an advantage... and therefore, the English didn't give them that opportunity.
On 29th July, the Armada was sighted off Cornwall. Parma, in the Spanish Netherlands, was not ready. Elizabeth's captains were ready.
In a drawn-out running battle up the English coast, they avoided any formal lines of battle and prevented the Armada from seizing any anchorage where it could wait for Parma to be ready. So, it was forced to make all the way for Calais.
And there, as it anchored off Calais and Dunkirk, Parma heard of its arrival that same day. He still was not ready. The Dutch (who had been communicating with the English) were ready, and blockaded the Armada in port.
And then, on the night of 7 August, the English commanders - Drake and Hawkins - decided to take action. They lit seven of their own ships on fire and sent them in among the Armada. In an age of wooden ships, fire was always a dreadful danger; and in a densely-packed Armada surrounded by foes, there was little way to escape. The fireships were devastating.
Meanwhile Elizabeth gathered her troops just in case the Armada did land. In that day, with communications taking so long, Elizabeth needed to prepare well in advance. Harold Godwinson might've marched from Stamford Bridge down to Hastings in about seven days - but that was exceptional. And unlike William the Conqueror, a Spanish landing could fortify their position much better in a week and be much harder to dislodge.
So, Elizabeth - without a professional army save the small force already helping the Dutch - mustered the militia. The muster turned out to be unneeded, but at the time nobody knew that. Her inspirational speech is well remembered, where she declared herself “resolved, in the midst and heat of battle, to live or die amongst you all”.
And in the end, no Spanish soldier even set foot on England. Thanks to English planning, the "midst and heat of battle" was all at sea.
There was another more traditional battle off Gravesend after the fireships, which the English won through better planning and better seamanship. The Spanish took too long to regather their ships, and planned to close in and board the English ships and fight on the decks. But, the English didn't let them get that close - they fired their guns, and kept firing, at a range where they could pierce through the Armada's hulls. By the time the English ran out of ammunition, five of the twenty-four large ships were sunk, and more were sinking.
And that finally frustrated the Spanish plan.
The Armada would retreat. But, due to prevailing winds and the English presence in the Channel, it couldn't return to Spain through the Channel. There was no other option than to sail north around Scotland, through harsh weather. Only 66 of the 122 ships (of all sizes) returned to Spain.
The Armada raises the question: If Spanish plans were so ill-designed, how come they conquered so much of the world? How come they were such a threat, with so ill-conceived plans?
There're at least three answers here.
First, Spanish success was funded by gold and silver from the New World. With so much money pouring into Spanish coffers every year, Spain could afford losses like the Armada. If England had lost so many ships, they would've been in dire straits. But, Spain could buy more ships and hire more foreign seamen. It was a significant loss, but not an insurmountable one. They could even afford to fund a war in the Netherlands long-distance via the "Spanish Road" north from Milan, which would tax any other European state at the time.
Much of that gold and silver was wasted. When the Spanish Hapsburgs went extinct in 1700 and the new Bourbon King of Spain brought in French accountants, they were stunned by how badly Spain had wasted the money - they barely even kept track of their payments. But, Spain was so rich that they could in a sense afford that waste.
Second, Spain didn't actually win many lasting triumphs in Europe. They held their possessions in Italy but didn't make many significant lasting gains there, and they lost half the Netherlands. Their funding made them a significant threat, but they didn't leverage that to be any more than a threat - nowhere near as well as other European powers were leveraging their abilities.
Finally, third, the Armada was unusual in how directly King Philip planned it. The wars in Italy and the Netherlands were usually left largely up to local commanders (like Parma in the Netherlands). The sheer distance, and the delay in communications, meant Philip couldn't run them any other way. But, the Armada was sailing from Spain itself, so Philip could dictate its planning... and he did, to dire effect.
Of course, I can say this looking back from centuries later. To the Dutch who'd been fighting Spain for their freedom, or the English who saw themselves menaced by the Armada, these flaws in Spanish grand strategy didn't appear so reassuring. Spanish power was very real at the time. Fortunately for them, that power wasn't anywhere near as great as it could've been, because also very real was Spanish mismanagement.
The Armada can be thought of as a capstone to Elizabeth's reign. It wasn't chronologically - she would continue reigning fifteen more years until her death in 1603 - but it demonstrates the success of her policies both in delaying the war and in getting the right people and talents together to fight it when it did happen. It shows also how much better-equipped England was than Spain: England, and the Queen of England, made realistic plans and gathered the right people to carry them out. Spain did not.
But more than that, the Armada has gone into English folklore as a demonstration of English valor standing up against the great powers of Europe. That's well-deserved, but that's not all it represents. Valor demands a wise plan for success, and England had that plan that day.
Rattling good history. A lot of the ships ran aground on the west coast of Ireland. There are still many Irish on the west coast who look quite Spanish. There also songs about this. The Album from Steeleye span covers the wreck of Spanish ships off the west coast and describes the looting and murder of surviving Spanish sailors.
Very interesting and well-written