Spanish fleet battling the English Armada off Lisbon. The English defeat prolonged the global conflict between London and Madrid into the next century.
“If God wants to punish you, he’ll answer your prayers.”
–Stromkern, Perfect Sunrise
“The English Armada was larger than the Spanish, and from many points of view it was an even greater disaster. This fact, however, is completely overlooked. It is never mentioned in the history courses taught in British schools and a majority of British history teachers have never even heard of it.”
–David Keys, English archaeologist, ABC 6 August 2001
The attempted invasion of England by the Spanish Armada is one of the most popular legends of the British Navy. There is commemorative naval medal with the inscription in Latin that reads, “Flavit Jehovah et Dissipati Sunt” (“Jehovah Blew and They were Scattered”) referring to what they called the “Protestant Wind” and one of the most renowned British patriotic songs “The Spanish Armada.” After all, mother nature blowing most of the Spanish ships of course at the most crucial moment coupled with military blunders by the Spaniards such as failing to invade when the win was on their side, is what sealed England’s victory over the Spanish king Felipe II. Though the British still credit divine intervention from God Almighty. But what is not celebrated with songs and medals in Great Britain today is the fate of the English Armada, a war flotilla that was sent against Spain in June 1589 by order of Queen Elizabeth I that resulted in an even greater disaster than the Spanish Armada the previous year by what the Spaniards then christened the “Catholic Wind.” Last year marked the 435th anniversary of the Spanish Armada. This spring marked the 435th anniversary of the English Armada.
Whereas Pontiac’s rebellion, the American Revolution, and the fiasco in Afghanistan are largely pushed to the margins in British history, the English Armada remains all but unknown in Great Britain today. If you go on YouTube and search for the Spanish Armada, you will find numerous documentaries from the History Channel and the BBC to YouTube accounts where they range from a full detailed hour to as little as ten minutes. When I searched for the English Armada, I found at most half a dozen videos on YouTube…all of them made by English history enthusiasts. More so in movies and miniseries about Elizabeth I the makers are careful to include the Spanish Armada, but completely omit the English Armada. Examples include the 2007 movie Elizabeth: The Golden Age starring Cate Blanchett in her second performance as Elizabeth I, and the 2005 two-part miniseries Elizabeth I starring Helen Mirren. And for that matter just about every performance featuring the Protestant queen. British historiography has all but erased the period of English history between 1588 and 1604 when peace was restored between London and Madrid. From what was one of the worst naval disasters in British history was followed by further blunders.
There were numerous similarities between the Spanish and English armadas such as massive war flotillas sent to subjugate the other and then suffering a combination of poor planning, tactical blunders, and an intervention from mother nature sealing the defeat of both armadas. Both were interpreted by the winning side to have been the good fortune granted by the will of God against the ungodly aggressor. But there were also major differences, notably in the objectives, political structure and status of both England and Spain. In the 16th century, most of Europe made up a single feudal political system whose authority was the Roman Catholic Church that was not much different from NATO, the European Union, and the United Nations today. As a result of Protestant Reformation that concluded with the rise of Elizabeth I after the death of Bloody Mary from cancer reversing her re-establishment of Catholic rule, England chastised by the Vatican and all the Catholic kingdoms of mainland Europe becoming what we today call a rogue nation alongside Orthodox Russia, and the Muslims of Turkey and Morocco. Spain was for the Vatican what the USA is for NATO, the global superpower serving as its chief enforcer.
The Spanish Armada of 1588 was meant to result in the invasion of England, depose Elizabeth I, and restore Catholic rule to the Church of England, thereby bringing the country back under the Pope. This was an objective that we today call a regime change operation. In itself, the defeat of the Spanish Armada was progressive. It was a blow to the European feudal order by which in the words of Friedrich Engels, “the great international centre of feudalism was the Roman Catholic Church” [Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 1892], and brought about a developing process of the bourgeoisie that would eventually smash the feudal order in the English Revolution 1640. In contrast, the English Armada carried no such purpose. By attacking and then invading Spain, Elizabeth I was out to force Felipe II into a peace treaty after four years of undeclared war, and force terms on the Spaniards that were favorable to the English. Such as granting England unrestricted access to the seas and establishing colonies in the Americas and Asia as opposed to having to resort to piracy to get their share of the booty. The only landing in England resulted from Spanish ships running aground in their retreat where those who landed were ambushed, killed or taken prisoners by English troops and armed citizens. Whereas the English managed to land in Spain and Portugal the following year but ending in disaster.
Following England’s victory over the Spanish Armada, Elizabeth I was convinced (incorrectly as it turned out) that the balance of power was now tipped against Spain. The English queen meant to exploit it and deal a decisive blow to Spain’s ability to rule the waters unchallenged. The Spanish fleet was reeling from its failure in the English Channel and Felipe II in Madrid renowned for his extravagant expenditures plus his military adventures in securing shipping lanes from English pirates and intervening in the Netherlands against the Protestant rebellion was practically bankrupt. The opportunity seemed perfect. Elizabeth I and her advisors after the defeat of the Spanish Armada began formulating a plan to attack and finish off the Madrid’s fleet. It was then agreed that the English would amass a larger fleet to obliterate the surviving Spanish warships docked northern Spain undergoing repairs, land in Lisbon and trigger and anti-Spanish revolt, restoring Portugal as an independent kingdom as a protectorate of England, and then takeover the Azores archipelago establishing a permanent naval base to seize the riches stolen from the Americas onboard the Spanish king’s conquistador ships. Thereby, depriving Spain of its wealth and forcing Madrid to accept a peace treaty on London’s terms.
Now, Elizabeth I like her Spanish nemesis wasn’t faring too well financially either. The royal treasury was in bad need of funds* and was in no position to fund such an ambitious naval venture. That discrepancy was solved by Baron William Cecil of Burghley, the lord high treasurer, along with the queen’s hand-picked officers to lead the flotilla Adm. Sir Francis Drake, her leading pirate, and Gen. Sir John Norris raised funds through investments by the nobility into a joint stock company founded by the three. Drake had established himself as a professional and formidable pirate bringing in hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of gold and jewelry taken from raids on Spanish ships and American (as well as Asian) ports that had initially been stolen from the Native Americans. He became infamous in April 1587 when Drake led a daring surprise raid on the Cádiz harbor in southern Spain where Felipe II’s flotilla was being constructed that was to embark on his holy crusade against England. Destroying several dozens of ships, Drake delayed the Spanish Armada by one year.
*Thousands of English sailors were lost from being left out on their ships in the Channel under the pretext of preventing a counterattack from the Spaniards, dying from hunger, thirst, and disease. They were deliberately left out there so the government would not have to pay their wages. The sailors’ families were also denied their wages.
So, for the English nobility was the perfect ploy for multiplying their fortunes without having to do anything by making an investment. The scheme managed to acquire more than £80,000 (a value of £25,670,388 million today according to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator) to build battleships, manufacture firearms and cannons, and other necessities. Elizabeth I managed to raise a force of about 28,000 troops and sailors to attack Spain, almost double the number that the Felipe II sent in his failed English venture the previous year, and more than 200 ships (including armed flyboats and pinnaces supplied by the Dutch Protestant rebels). And with Drake leading the flotilla after all of his accomplished raids as a pirate, such an operation against Spain had the certainty of a successful outcome as far as the English nobility was concerned. But the one critical element Elizabeth I, her advisors and the investors overlooked is that Sir Drake was a pirate by profession. Seizing valuables on the high seas and personal profit stood way above any deed “For Queen and Country” for the career maritime brigand leading the Queen’s flotilla.
Right: María Pita slaying English officer during the defense of the city.
On 28 April 1589, the English Armada totaling over 200 ships and 28,000 sailors and troops set off to Spain to unleash their fury. The order was to obliterate the Spanish fleet docked in the northern ports of Santander, San Sebastián, and a few in A Coruña undergoing repairs from its 1588 fiasco where they were most vulnerable. Instead, Drake defied these orders and took the flotilla to Coruña, the port on the very tip of northwest Spain where a large quantity of treasure was being kept and was on the way to Lisbon. The approach was a disaster. On 3 May, English troops did manage to land in Coruña after destroying the few ships in harbor and then managed to take the city’s low town. But the Coruña’s defenders, soldiers and armed civilians alike, put up a stiff resistance for two weeks for two weeks from the high town that they fortified inflicting heavy casualties on the English. The city’s most legendary defender was María Pita who organized the resistance with her husband who fell in battle. She famously snatched a spear with the English flag and impaled the officer carrying it that was rumored to be Drake’s brother. From the nearby fortress island of San Antón, cannons sunk two English ships forcing the rest to retreat. The English withdrew on 18 May from Coruña without any booty.
Drake and Norris then proceeded with phase two of their mission. Not eastward to Santander to eradicate the Spanish fleet but south down the Iberian coast to their next target: Lisbon. In 1580, Portugal had entered into a dynastic union with Spain following a succession crisis in the former brought by the death of the young king Sebastian Aviz in Morocco that brought three noble houses to claim the Portuguese throne: Dom António of Aviz – the Prior of Crato, Princess Catarina of Braganza, and Felipe II of the Habsburgs and king of Spain – the grandchildren of the Portuguese king Manuel I. A cabal of high-ranking governors supported Felipe II declared him the king of Portugal completing the Iberian Union in 1581 effectively taking over the foreign affairs of the Portuguese Empire much to the dismay of the other two houses. Opponents of the union with Spain declared Prince António as the legitimate king of Portugal who was promptly booted following the Spanish king’s takeover and ending up in England where Elizabeth I saw the Prior of Crato as an asset against Spain despite him being a Roman Catholic. The rebellious Portuguese noble would accompany the English Armada in an attempt to claim the throne.
On 26 May, English troops under the command of Norris and Dom António landed in Peniche, Portugal, while Drake took the rest of the Armada to Lisbon. The plan was for English soldiers to march south to Lisbon and attack the city by land while Drake fired on the city from the coast. Dom António convinced his English sponsors that he would recruit a sizable number of loyalists to aid them in the fight against Spain and restore Portuguese independence. After the English defeated and drove off the local Spanish forces, they crowned Dom António King of Portugal in Peniche. But as it turned out, the Portuguese people being Roman Catholic were not enchanted by a noble being supported by Protestant invaders from England and did not join his forces. Instead, Spanish troops and Portuguese militias waged a guerilla campaign harassing English troops on their march as locals emptied all supply stores in the wake of the approaching invaders denying them necessities. After four days, the English were starving and exhausted. Troops under Don Juan de Torres managed to infiltrate English lines by posing as Portuguese defectors and then wreaking havoc killing some 200 Englishmen before eventually being forced to retreat. On 1 June, approached Lisbon entrenching themselves in the nearby suburb of Saldania.
Drake’s ships arrived in Cascais on 30 May blockading the mouth of the River Tagus to seize supplies going into Lisbon from the sea. Unfortunately for the English, the Spaniards had war-ready battleships protecting Lisbon, and the narrow strip of waterway leading to the city would have made advancing English ships sitting ducks. On 3 June, from the land Sir Norris commenced his attack on Lisbon in an effort to breach the city’s walls. Lacking effective artillery combined with the decaying condition of the English army, the Iberian forces drove back assault after assault using marksmen and artillery. The was followed by a simultaneous Spanish attack on the English trenches from the front and the rear backed by cannon fire from the São Jorge Castle inflicting hundreds of casualties and only taking 25 KIA. Though the English did stop the advancing Iberian troops in which they were forced to retreat back to Lisbon. By the following day, low on food, water, ammunition, and other supplies the English decided to abandon their assaults, and on the dawn of June 6th, they retreated to Cascais. In that retreat, the Iberians attacked the fleeing English through ambushes and long-range cannons killing hundreds.
As the English made their way to Cascais to rejoin Drake’s flotilla occupying the city’s port. The Drake’s forces managed to drive off the Spanish troops from the city effectively fortifying it. Norris’ men on land were protected by a series of trenches well within the range of Drake’s guns preventing the Spaniards under Count Pedro de Fuentes from engaging in any frontal assault while Spanish ships under Adm. Alonso de Bazán positioned themselves behind Drake’s fleet beginning a two-week standoff. Fuentes made the first move by ordering the destruction of the windmills along the coast the Drake was using to produce flour, rendering the wheat inedible, thusly cutting off their food supply. By 15 June, the situation grew dire for the English as they realized they would not get a second chance in taking Lisbon and installing the renegade noble as king. Especially, when the Spaniards were joined by a large contingent of Portuguese cavalrymen under Duke Teodósio Braganza II. On 18 June, supply ships from England arrived in the Cascais harbor which included an angry letter to Drake from Elizabeth I scorning both he and Norris for failing to destroy the remnants of the Spanish Armada in Santander, particularly when winds were favorable. The Protestant queen also demanded the return of Robert Devereaux, the Earl of Essex, who participated in both of the disastrous land campaigns despite Elizabeth I ordering him not to join her war flotilla.
Realizing that a fight was futile, Norris evacuated his forces from Cascais embarking on the ships in port and headed out to sea with Drake. In the process, Spanish ships harassed the retreating English, sinking nine of their ships until they left the Iberian Coast. Short on supplies plus an exhausted army, Norris’ ships broke off from the Armada and headed home to England. After his two failures, and still determined to seize large quantities of Spanish loot from the Americas for himself and his investors, the pirate Drake proceeded on to the Azores to claim at least one win for his beloved queen that he fatefully defied. As the English Armada left the Portuguese coast, they were pursued by the Spaniards led by Adm. Martín de Padilla sinking nine of the Armada’s ships. Before the next objective, up north in Peniche still held by Norris’ armies, the Iberian forces retook the city including the artillery which pounded the English ships killing hundreds and forcing the Armada to flee before it finally split in two with Norris’ ships heading home while the rest continued west to the Azores.
It was then that mother nature made her intervention with the so-called “Catholic Wind”. Powerful gales and rough seas pushed the English Armada back east towards Portugal in which hundreds of soldiers and sailors died from diseases and lack of provisions. The dead were dumped into the sea. Drake was beat but not yet beaten. Still determined to claim his winnings by taking the Azores islands, the career pirate decided to make another raid in the Spanish city of Vigo. But to Drake’s dismay, the city had been left empty by its residents leaving nothing for the English to loot. This was followed by an unhinged orgy of destruction in the town by the English. But the following day, over 500 Spanish troops arrived in Vigo taking the English by surprise driving them out of the city and back on to their ships after inflicting hundreds of casualties. It was in Vigo that the failure of the English Armada was sealed. Drake now had no choice but to sail the remaining ships back to England as he was pursued by Spanish warships from Santander. The queen’s pirate made it back to England in mid-July.
The English Armada suffered over 18,000 killed (over two-thirds of the number of men sent out), dozens of ships sunk, and the loot they returned home with amounted to a mere £30,000. Immediately, Elizabeth I and her advisors launched a disinformation campaign to shield the public eyes from the reality of Her Majesty’s Spanish venture. Public announcements were made by Elizabeth I am triumphing the “happy success” of the Armada against Spain. In order to keep the investors from becoming angry and spreading the truth about the abysmal failure of the Elizabethan flotilla, the royal treasury compensated them for their losses. How did Her Majesty accomplish this? Just as she had the previous year following the Spanish Armada’s defeat: refusing to pay the veterans who took part in this expedition or the families of the fallen. In order to cover the financial deficit, Elizabeth I raised taxes, acquired loans, and relied on loot from pirates. If today the truth of the English Armada is barely known in England today, back then it was virtually unknown by anyone outside of the Queen’s cabinet and the nobility.
As pointed out in the videos I have seen, neither the Spanish Armada nor the English Armada were a victory for either side. The undeclared world war between Spain and England would continue past the turn of the century becoming a major burden on the royal coffers in both London and Madrid. England continued its support for the Dutch rebels against the Spanish Netherlands along with supporting the Protestant insurrection against the Catholic monarchy in France backed by Spain. The religious civil wars in France came to an end in 1598 resulting in a Catholic victory and alleviating the strain a bit on both the Spanish and English treasuries. In 1594, a nationwide rebellion erupted in Ireland against English rule mirroring that of the Dutch uprising against Spanish rule. The Spaniards attempted an intervention on behalf of their fellow Irish Catholics with two failed armadas in 1596 and the following year. Both suffered the same fate as the infamous one from 1588 by interventions from mother nature. A final Spanish Armada did successfully land in Ireland in 1601 despite a battering by gales and storms but was quickly defeating by English troops sealing the fate of the Irish rebellion.
Following the death of Felipe II and the succession of his son Felipe III to the Spanish throne, the new king in Madrid began to look for settlements to end what has been a costly quagmire without benefits attained despite ordering the 1601 armada. Peace proposals went nowhere until after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 when she was succeeded by her nephew James I (James VI of Scotland, son of her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots whom Elizabeth I had beheaded in 1587 for treason). The new English king was also determined to see the burdensome conflict with Spain come to an end. On 28 August 1604, the Spanish delegation met with the English delegation in London to sign the Treaty of London effectively ending hostilities between London and Madrid. England was required to cease attacking and looting Spanish ships and ports in the Americas with their pirates (who then became the infamous outlaws) and end its support for the Dutch rebels. In return, Spain pledged to recognize the England’s Protestant monarchy and to discontinue its endeavor to topple the English monarchy and assisting anyone trying to do so. England could now send their ships to distant lands in the Americas as Asia to claim for themselves in what was the foundation of the British Empire.
In the course of the next century, Spain’s status as the dominant global power declined and England’s grew with the existence and continued growth of the bourgeoise that eventually led to the existence of a dual power. The clash came in 1640 resulting in the English Revolution that overthrew the feudal order in the country, giving the bourgeoisie power with the founding of the English Republic under Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, unseating the feudalists. After the counter-revolutionary Stuart Restoration in 1660 that brought back the monarchy to England. But the bourgeoisie whose acceptance of monarchial rule allowed them to grow and expand their commercial and mercantilist system from their overseas trading posts that by the early 18th century England proclaimed itself the Kingdom of Great Britain forming the British Empire, one of the most oppressive empires in history.
Red October Goth 