Spanish Armada
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| Destruction of the Spanish Armada | |||||||||||||||||
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| Conflict | Eighty Years' War | ||||||||||||||||
| Date | June 29, 1588, pursuit lasted until August 12 | ||||||||||||||||
| Place | The English Channel off Gravelines, France | ||||||||||||||||
| Result | Decisive English victory | ||||||||||||||||
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| Table of contents |
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2 The plan 3 The execution 4 The results 5 Related topics 6 Further reading 7 Other meanings |
This was the first of several invasion attempts over the next decade, and one of the most famous episodes in English history. While Philip's motives were both religious and political, the reasons given for this attack were principally religious, since the Protestant Elizabeth I of England had antagonised the Catholics by making attendance at Church of England services compulsory and instituting imprisonment for the saying or attending of Catholic Mass.
Economic competition between the two countries in general had sparked tensions since Sir John Hawkins initiated English participation in the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1562, soon gaining royal support. The Spanish regarded Hawkins' actions as illegal smuggling to their colonies in the West Indies, leading them to surprise and sink several ships in a slaving expedition led by Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake at San Juan de Ulua, near Veracruz, Mexico, in 1568. San Juan de Ulua served as the diplomatic incident that soured the Anglo-Spanish relations, which had hitherto been amicable, embittering Drake and Hawkins so much that they and other English sailors took up privateering as a way to break a perceived Spanish stranglehold on Atlantic trade. The activities of English privateers on the Spanish Main in the years leading up to the Armada had severely dented the Spanish treasury, and in April 1587 Drake had burned 37 Spanish ships in harbour at Cádiz.
Furthermore, England had joined the Eighty Years' War on the side of the Dutch Protestant United Provinces, led in revolt by William I of Orange, and against Spain. On 29 July 1587, Philip obtained Papal authority to overthrow Elizabeth, who had been excommunicated by Pope Pius V, and place whomever he chose on the throne of England.
Philip's invasion plan was a simple fourchette: the Duke of Parma, who was commanding Spain's army in the Spanish-controlled Netherlands, was to assemble an invading force on the North Sea coast. Parma's only means of transporting troops across the English Channel was a fleet of vulnerable barges. Therefore, the Armada was to travel North from Spanish-controlled Lisbon and meet Parma's army in order to protect its passage. Command of the Armada was given to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, a soldier with no naval experience. His instructions from Philip were detailed and strict, in contrast to Queen Elizabeth I's policy that her naval commanders be responsible for military decisions.
The Armada invasion plan was flawed from the start in the unworkably precise timing and communication that it demanded between Medina Sidonia and Parma, as well as in the near-absence of deep-water ports accessible to Philip on the northwestern European coastline for a fleet of the Armada's size and composition. However, a rendezvous with Parma was feasible if the Armada could maintain position in the English Channel near Parma's scattered barges long enough for him to assemble his soldiers for battle.
On May 28, 1588 the Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, began to set sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel. At this time the English fleet was prepared and waiting in Plymouth for news of Spanish movements. It took until May 30 for all ships to leave port, and on the same day Elizabeth's ambassador Dr Valentine Dale met Parma's representatives to begin peace negotiations. It was not until July 17 that the peace negotiations were wholly abandoned.
The Armada, having been delayed by bad weather, was not sighted until July 19. This occurred off The Lizard, Cornwall, but a sequence of beacons had been constructed the length of the south coast of England, so that the news was known in London within two days. The Armada followed the coast as far as Plymouth, where the 150 ships of the English fleet had set sail on the night of the 19th. The English were under the command of Lord Howard of Effingham (later Earl of Nottingham), but he had acknowledged Sir Francis Drake, technically his subordinate, as the more experienced naval commander and given him effective control.
Over the next week there followed two inconclusive engagements, at Eddystone and Portland, Dorset, as well as two Spanish wrecks off the Isle of Wight. At the same time, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester was assembling a force of 4,000 soldiers at Tilbury Fort, Essex, to defend the estuary of the River Thames in the event of a Spanish landing.
On July 27, the Spanish anchored off Calais, not far from Parma's waiting army of 16,000 in Dunkirk, in a crescent-shaped, tightly-packed defensive formation. They were compelled to do this by the lack of a deep-water port in France or the Low Countries where the Armada could seek shelter - a major oversight on Philip's part, although most European ports were not designed to accommodate a fleet like the Armada in the first place. At midnight of July 28, the English set eight pitch and gunpowder-filled ships alight and sent them downwind into the closely-anchored Spanish vessels. Panic ensued, damaging morale but more importantly scattering the Spanish ships as they cut anchor. The lighter English vessels could now engage them on more even terms.
Medina-Sidonia tried to reform his fleet off Gravelines, France, but the English attacked on July 29. 11 Spanish ships were lost or damaged (though the most seaworthy Atlantic-class vessels escaped largely unscathed), and the Spaniards suffered nearly 2,000 casualties from the battle as well as illness and exposure, before both sides ran out of ammunition and hostilities ceased. English casualties were much lighter, initially in the low hundreds from the battle itself, but a raging typhus epidemic soon swept throughout the defensive fleet, killing thousands of English sailors. Although the Gravelines engagement itself was largely an indecisive stalemate, the English defenders were availed of some breathing room as Medina Sidonia, unaware of the scarcity of English ammunition, soon directed the Armada east and north of the rendezvous zone for Parma in the English Channel.
In 2002 Dr Colin Martin of St Andrews University claimed that many Spanish ships carried cannon shot that was the wrong size for their cannons.
The day after Gravelines, the wind changed, enabling Medina Sidonia to move the Armada northward (away from the French coast). The English pursued and harried the Spanish fleet, preventing it from properly reforming and returning to escort Parma, but again ammunition proved the limiting factor and the English were compelled to disengage. On 12 August, Howard called a halt to the chase at the Firth of Forth.
Meanwhile, the threat of invasion from the Netherlands had not been discounted. On August 8, Elizabeth went to Tilbury to encourage her forces, and the next day gave to them what is probably her most famous speech:
The Armada was forced to return to Spain by sailing around the northern coasts of Scotland and Ireland - a dangerous voyage during which the Armada was buffeted by severe September storms that caused enormous damage. Only 67 ships and around 10,000 men survived. English losses were less than half those of the Spaniards and no ships were sunken, but the English sailors were themselves decimated by the deadly typhus epidemic, as well as a possibly concurrent outbreak of dysentery, which killed an estimated 6,000-8,000 soldiers according to varying estimates. English sailors also suffered from exposure and a demoralising financial dispute after England's persistent fiscal shortfalls left many of the Armada defenders unpaid for months.
The victory was still regarded by the English as their greatest since Agincourt. The effects on national pride lasted for years, and those on Elizabeth's legend persisted well after her death. Dignitaries around Europe had to acknowledge England as a military power in its own right, accorded a respect not seen since English triumphs in the Hundred Years' War with France. The Armada engagement also revolutionised naval warfare and provided valuable seafaring experience for English oceanic mariners. Furthermore, the Armada's defeat enabled the English to persist in their high seas buccaneering against the Spanish and continue sending troops to assist Philip II's enemies in the Netherlands and France.
However, the defeat of the Spanish Armada was not a decisive battle. An English Armada under the command of Drake and Sir John Norris was dispatched in 1589 to torch the Spanish Atlantic navy - which had largely survived the Armada encounter and was moored in Santander and San Sebastian in northern Spain - as well as to capture the incoming treasure fleet and expel the Spanish from Portugal, which Philip had ruled since 1580. Like its Spanish predecessor, the English Armada failed in all its objectives and the invading force was repelled with heavy casualties and severe financial losses for the Elizabethan treasury.
The Spanish Navy was then able to refit and retool (partly along English lines), and the new navy was far more effective than the pre-1588 fleet. The Anglo-Spanish War continued until 1604 and, although the English were again able to sack Cádiz in 1596, the Spanish prevailed in most naval and land encounters after 1588.
A sophisticated convoy system and improved intelligence networks frustrated English privateering on the Spanish treasure fleet during the 1590s. This was most exemplified in the failures of buccaneering expeditions by Sir Martin Frobisher and John Hawkins in the early part of the decade, as well as in the repulse of an ambushing squadron led by Effingham in 1591 near the Azores, which featured the surrender and capture by the Spanish of the English ship The Revenge after a courageous last stand by its captain, Sir Richard Grenville. The convoy escorts enabled the Spaniards to ship three times as much gold and silver in the 1590s than in any decade before it.
Both Drake and Hawkins were killed in a disastrous raiding expedition against Puerto Rico, Panama, and other targets in the Spanish Main in 1595-1596, a severe naval setback in which the English suffered unusually heavy losses in soldiers and ships. Also in 1595, a Spanish force under Don Carlos de Amesquita landed troops in Cornwall, western England. Amesquita's soldiers raided and burned Penzance and surrounding villages, seized supplies, held Mass, and reembarked before they could be confronted.
The English suffered another naval failure in the Islands Voyage against the Azores in 1597, and became embroiled in a guerrilla war in Ireland that lasted nearly a decade when Ulster lords Hugh ONeill and Red Hugh ODonnell rose up against English rule in 1594, with Spanish support.
The continuing and (for the English) increasingly unsuccessful war with Spain after the Armada thus delayed English North American settlement until the early Stuart period, and Spain remained Europe's great power into the 17th century until defeats against France in the Thirty Years War and the rise of Dutch naval supremacy in the late 1600s. While the Armada defeat therefore did not enable England to supplant Spain as a preeminent naval power, or initiate American colonisation, it was a valuable inspiration for later English mariners, particularly in the Anglo-French naval clashes of the 1700s when England finally emerged as Europe's leading sea power and colonising nation.
Today, the term Spanish Armada (Armada Española) can also describe the modern navy of Spain, part of the Spanish armed forces. The Spanish navy has participated in a number of military engagements, including the dispute over the Isla Perejil. This is not a reference to the Armada above - "armada" simply means "navy" in Spanish.
In Tennis slang, Spanish Armada is used to refer to the group of highly ranked Spanish players, like Felix Mantilla, Albert Portas, Juan Carlos Ferrero, Carlos Moyá, etc.
Causes
The plan
The execution
In fact, Parma did not cross the English Channel, and the troops at Tilbury were disbanded later that month.The results
Related topics
Further reading
Other meanings