Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History (33 page)

The Spanish Armada

The execution of Mary Queen of Scots removed one immediate danger to Elizabeth’s rule, but it precipitated another, for it gave the final impetus for Philip II to unleash the Armada. The fleet which sailed in the spring of 1588 consisted of about 130 ships manned by 7,000 sailors, carrying 17,000 soldiers dispatched from Spain. A further 17,000 troops were to be picked up in the Netherlands and ferried across the Channel. But, despite its awesome size, there were problems with
El
Invencible
(the Invincible). Those problems began at the top with its commander, Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, duke of Medina-Sidonia (1550–1615). Medina- Sidonia’s selection had more to do with his distinguished pedigree, upstanding character, and courtly manners than with any merit or experience as a naval commander – for Medina-Sidonia had almost no experience at sea. Still, he worked hard to round up and supply his fleet.

The second problem facing the Armada was the composition of the fleet itself. This force was less a battle fleet than a convoy, sailing in a great crescent formation, the naval vessels on the outside to protect the transports (converted merchant ships) on the inside (see
plate 8
). Therefore, if the fleet wanted to stay together, it could sail only as fast as the slowest merchant vessel – a tortuously slow 8 knots (about 9 miles per hour). Moreover, the warships themselves were ill-fitted for protecting a convoy. They carried few of the heaviest cannon, capable of sinking English ships at long range (less than one-fifth the number their English counterparts had). Rather, the Spanish planned to sail up to the English fleet, grapple, board, and capture their opponents’ vessels. The only problem with this plan was that it required the cooperation of the Royal Navy: because the English ships were generally faster, it was up to them whether they sailed close to the Spanish or stood off at a distance and pounded the Armada with cannon-fire.

Medina-Sidonia tried to bring these problems to the Spanish king’s attention. But Philip was confident that they would not matter. A devout Catholic, the king was certain that God would favor the Armada as a means to punish the English for their Protestant heresy and restore them and the Dutch to what was, in Philip’s eyes, the One True Faith. After all, he had secured from Pope Sixtus V (1521–90; reigned 1585–90) a papal blessing. Admittedly, this was given somewhat reluctantly: Sixtus privately admired Elizabeth and had grave doubts about invasion as a means to reconvert the English. Nevertheless, as the fleet departed, its greatest ships named for saints and members of the Holy Family
(Santa Ana, San
Martín
de Portugal,
Nuestra Señora del Rosario),
Philip and his Spanish subjects could not conceive that this crusade could fail. The English were naturally just as certain of God’s support. But, while the queen, her advisers, and naval commanders certainly prayed for and expected divine assistance, they had not neglected more practical remedies, forging a small but battleworthy Royal Navy. Even the names of their ships bespoke confidence, self-reliance, and tenacity:
Victory
,
Triumph
,
Revenge, Ark Royal.

Plate 8
First Encounter Between the English and Spanish Fleets, from J. Pine,
The Tapestry Hangings of the House of Lords Representing the Several Engagements Between the English and Spanish Fleets, 1739.
The British Library.

On land, the English were far less well prepared. Elizabeth had no real standing army. The forces she sent to the Netherlands, and, later, France and Ireland, were ad hoc affairs. For home defense, there was only her palace guard and the militia. The latter consisted of a nucleus of about 26,000 men called the trained bands, whose members received equipment and military instruction 10 days a year. They were supported by a wider corps of about 200,000 largely untrained civilians, armed with their own muskets and pikes. The whole levy was organized by county, each county’s contingent under the command of its lord lieutenant, an office made permanent in 1585. If the Armada landed, this rag-tag assemblage of yokels would be England’s last defense against the greatest, most battle-hardened army in Europe. Nevertheless, they were apparently ready to serve and Elizabeth, in a brilliant act of queenly solidarity with her people, went down to join them at their assembly point at Tilbury, Essex, in July. Here, she gave a speech which famously illustrates her courage, her common touch, her ability to play off her own gender and the memory of her father, and her care to identify herself, in her subjects’ eyes, with England:

My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery. … Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects. … I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonor shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.
¹

Still, England’s best hope lay with the Royal Navy.

The English sighted the Armada off the southern coast on July 19, 1588 (see
map 9
). Immediately, they lit coastal bonfires to raise the alarm. The fleets met two days later. As expected, the English ships were faster and more maneuverable than their Spanish opponents. This meant that they could stand off from the Spanish fleet and pound it with gunfire at long range (about 300 yards). The Spaniards were too slow to close with and board the English vessels, leaving their onboard troops useless. Still, the Armada suffered little serious damage and the crescent held until they made port on the 27th.

Philip planned for the Spanish fleet to pull into the Dutch port of Flushing, where Parma’s army would embark. But the Dutch rebels had done their part by taking Flushing, which forced the Armada to pull into Calais. On the night of the 28th the English floated fireships (old vessels filled with combustibles and set on fire) into Calais. Given a favorable wind, the result was devastating: only a few Spanish ships actually ignited, but the rest cut their cables and made for sea. There, out of formation, they ran into the guns of the Royal Navy in what came to be known as the Battle of Gravelines. Superior English firepower took its toll, as the English pummeled the Armada at long range, sinking Spanish ships one by one.
El Invencible
was now a spent force.

Medina-Sidonia knew that the invasion attempt was over. His only thought was to shepherd as many of his ships as possible safely home to Spain. Unfortunately, the Channel was now firmly in English control. So the unlucky duke ordered his fleet to sail in the opposite direction, around northern Scotland, then down Ireland’s western coast, into the Atlantic, and home to Spain (
map 9
). Along the route, violent gales, which the English later dubbed “the Protestant wind,” battered the remnants of his fleet. Provisions ran low and many Spanish ships foundered on the Irish coast when they tried to put in for supplies. In the end, between 5,000 and 15,000 men perished; as for their ships, about half of the 130 vessels which had made up the Armada limped back to Spain. Spanish might was not broken; the empire was too immense for that. But the Tudor State had faced its greatest crisis and survived.

Map 9
War in Europe, 1585–1604.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada boosted English confidence and morale. It was, in English eyes, yet another example of God’s providential deliverance, as in 1558. More specifically, it fueled an increasingly popular, Foxeian view that England was a chosen nation, fighting a Biblical struggle against the anti-christ, represented by international Catholicism. According to this view, the English people might suffer great trials, but their triumph was assured, for God was, in his sympathies, Protestant and English. Thus, the commemorative medal struck by Elizabeth’s government bore the inscription
“Afflavit Deus et dissipati sunt”
(God blew and they were scattered).

The War at Sea and on the Continent

In fact, 1588 marks only an early stage in a very long struggle. The Anglo-Spanish War would rage beyond the deaths of Philip or Burghley or even Elizabeth herself, coming to an end only in 1604. The loss of the Armada only increased Spanish resolve and the war would expand to new fronts. The conflict might even be said to be the first world war, in that it was fought on three continents (Europe and the Americas) and two oceans (the Atlantic and, just barely, the Pacific). Far more than Henry VIII’s summer military junkets (or those of the Hundred Years’ War), the war with Spain would strain England’s administrative and financial infrastructure to the limit. Vast armies would have to be raised, equipped, ferried to overseas destinations, and supplied. The Royal Navy would have to be expanded, maintained, crewed, and supplied sufficiently to enable it to perform complex operations at sometimes thousands of miles’ distance. The Elizabethan state showed the strain, the Elizabethan taxpayer complained; and the end result was, often, far less glorious than the Armada win.

Perhaps one reason for these ambiguous results is that neither Elizabeth nor her Privy Council ever resolved on a master plan for winning the war. One group of councilors and administrators, led by Burghley and his son, Sir Robert Cecil (1563–1612), argued for a limited defensive war against Philip’s armies in the Netherlands and, later, France and Ireland. The other group, comprising mostly soldiers and courtiers led by Leicester’s stepson and political heir, Robert Devereaux, earl of Essex, wanted to take the war to Spain and its empire by pouring England’s resources into a vigorous offensive war on land and sea. This would have the twin virtues of starving Philip of the silver fleets which paid his armies while enriching the very privateers, soldiers, and courtiers promoting this strategy. Characteristically, Elizabeth decided not to decide. That is, she pursued both strategies at once – supporting neither adequately. Rather, the queen, ever miserly with precious royal resources, ever reluctant to call Parliament, tried to fight the war on the cheap. Instead of raising taxes to mount overseas expeditions, she often had them financed by groups of courtier-adventurers who naturally treated these undertakings as financial opportunities. Since the investors often demanded the right to command the expeditions which they had paid for, they ended up fighting their own private war, not the queen’s.

For example, as early as 1589 Sir Francis Drake persuaded Elizabeth to take the war to Philip II by mounting a massive (140 ships, 23,000 men) search-and-destroy mission aimed at surviving Armada remnants. When these had been sunk, the Royal Navy, supported by marines, was to foment rebellion in Portugal, then take an Atlantic base such as the Azores, from which Spanish shipping from the New World could be attacked. Once at sea, however, Drake and his fellow investors had a change of heart. They seem to have engaged no Spanish warships; instead, they landed at the Spanish port of Corunna and ransacked it, their troops getting thoroughly drunk in the process. From here they sailed to Lisbon, where an amphibious assault with naval support from Drake was botched and the siege abandoned. By the time this flotilla landed in the Azores, they had lost so many troops to disease that they could not even maintain this small Atlantic foothold. This fiasco cost £100,000 and the lives of 11,000 soldiers and sailors. Similar such adventures, with similar results, were mounted in 1595, 1596, and 1597. Hawkins and Drake died on such an expedition, a characteristically bold, but ultimately foolhardy, attempt to capture Panama in 1595–6. The naval war did see some dashing successes by individual independent contractors (privateers). But none of these hampered Philip’s ability to wage war.