As the page's title implies, the average reader will surely know what we are talking about if we mention this was the war of the Spanish Armada, that one time where Philip II of Spain gathered a giant fleet to invade the England of Elizabeth I, only to be wrecked by the brave English and a timely storm. This is basically the only thing in the entire war that transcended into popular culture, mainly due to a heavy dose of historical romanticization, decontextualization and, why not to say it, propaganda, a field in which Spain would be a perennial loser. Consequently, the reader might be surprised to find out that the Armada was not some sort of arc-ending final defeat for the Spanish Empire, but just a chapter more of a long war of attrition that featured multiple wins and losses in both sides, and whose immediate result actually leaned to the Spanish at the time.
The war was mainly naval, as it was effectively fought between an island country and a nation whose domains at the time spread literally all around the world. The English, who entered the conflict to assist the Dutch Republic during its struggle against Spanish rule, deployed reinforcements in Europe and engaged in fearless sea attacks of varied intensity, to which Spain responded by maxing up their defenses and playing to counter while attempting a series of unsuccessful large-scale invasions against English mainland (an Awesome, but Impractical strategy Philip II was oddly obsessed with, possibly because he had previously lived therenote ). At the end, with both sides having thrown everything but the kitchen sink and outlived the very monarchs that started the war, they ultimately signed a peace treaty that removed English presence from the Dutch conflict and restored the status quo.
The result of the war was complicated. On one hand, the English effort was flat-out overturned — they had entered the war to help the Dutch, yet they failed to achieve anything truly decisive and found themselves forced to accept an infamous peace that only made them a mild asset for the Spanish Empire against the Dutch. On the other hand, although much relieved by the outcome, Spain lost tons of resources and several precious chances to conquer England, which went to stunt their highest ambitions. Their own failure in England not only prevented a possible victory in the Netherlands, but also affected their posterior plans to assimilate France and took down an insane project to start the conquest of China. Aggrandized by revisionism or not, it is not said in vain that the defeat of Spanish Armada changed the course of History, even if at very long term.
Peace would not last long, being finally broken again by a second Anglo-Spanish war in 1625.
Background
In the 1580s, Philip II, from the House of Habsburg had just become the monarch of the modernly called Iberian Union, a coalescence of the Spanish and Portuguese empires accomplished by inheriting both thrones, whose tentacles extended to almost every corner of the globe. As its natural, such a large empire was engaged in constant conflict, the main of them being in the Netherlands, where the United Provinces fought against his authority due to a a long list of causes. The rebels were also Protestant elites, while the Iberian Union was a Catholic state, which translated into an additional conflict of religious consciences. In a related point, Philip had been married to a Catholic Queen of England, Mary Tudor, but she had died in 1558 without giving an heir to help the Papal cause, leading to her half-sister, the Protestant Elizabeth, to reach the throne and reinstate Protestantism in England.With the reestablishment of Protestantism in England, English merchants in Spain were now vulnerable to be arrested by the Holy Office, better known as The Spanish Inquisition. Despite English protests, Philip II refused to grant them immunity, and so English pirates/privateers like Sir Francis Drake now had a justification to prey on the rich target that was Philip's empire. They preyed on the Spanish treasure fleets and rich ports along the coast of the Indies, and also intruded successfully in the Atlantic slave trade, previously crammed by Portugal, with Drake's cousin Sir John Hawkins developing in 1562 a royally sponsored service. Although most of those attacks were ultimately more annoying than decisive, they vexed the Spanish greatly. In 1568, the Spanish navy saw the chance to strike a blow to Drake and Hawkins in San Juan de Ulúa, killing Drake's brother and giving him a reason for a personal vendetta against Spain.
In 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth and called his subjects to dispose of her and restore Catholicism in the British islands. Philip was attracted to a plan to replace Elizabeth with the Catholic Queen of Scotland, Mary Stuart, but the English discovered the plot and retaliated by funding new privateering attacks and helping their Protestant colleagues in the Netherlands. Drake was eager to capitalize, and initiated a 1577-1581 expedition around the world that hit ports of the Iberian Union that had seemed unreachable up to that point. In 1584, however, Philip allied with the French Catholic League and followed by scoring several victories in the Netherlands. Elizabeth feared that, in case of a Hispanic victory over there, England would be the next on the list, so she signed a treaty of alliance with the Dutch rebels. Finally tired of English interference, Philip declared war in 1585.
The Invincible Armadas
Drake was sent in a pre-emptive strike to the Spanish Americas, where he captured shockingly the ports of Santo Domingo and Cartagena de Indias, forcing the Spaniards to pay a ransom. Meanwhile, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was sent to the Netherlands to help the rebellion, but this time their offensive was defeated by Philip's general Alexander Farnese, prince of Parma (not to mistake with that Farnese). At this point, Elizabeth had the imprisoned Mary executed, which angered the Catholics and moved Pope Sixtus V to call for total action, especially given that her death meant Philip had inherited the claim to the British throne. Philip and his most eminent admiral, Álvaro de Bazán, Marquis of Santa Cruz, were eager for a plan to invade England, and after too many discussions by letter with Farnese, they decided to assemble a great fleet to escort him and his fearsome Tercios de Flandes to the isles.note Their plans were delayed, however, by several logistic troubles, a typhus epidemic, a destructive attack by Drake on their port of Cádiz in 1587, and Bazán's fateful death in the epidemic.In 1588, the 29,000 men in 130-150 ships that would be known as the Spanish Armada would finally sail away. However, the man that Philip had chosen to replace Bazán was Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, Duke of Medina Sidonia, a bureaucrat with almost zero military experience and even less talent.note Under his (mis)command, the armada soon met a chain of incidents mix of bad luck and just plain incompetence: they were delayed again by a storm in La Coruña, then met another storm in the Gulf of Biscay, then Medina Sidonia opted out of an attack on the British fleet in Plymouth that would have made the entire armada unnecessary, lost two important ships to a resultant British attack, and found out Farnese was late to the rendezvous due to miscommunication. The fleet was thrown into chaos with fire ships by Drake and Hawkins, losing five other vessels in skirmishes due to their disorganization, and Medina Sidonia ultimately gave in and ordered to return home. Easier said than done, bad weather hit them again, forcing them to take the long way back around Scotland and Ireland and wrecking further the fleet. 35 vessels and many thousands of men never returned to Spain.
Although Philip stoically facepalmed upon hearing the news, enough for him to call off an unrelated campaign against China at the other side of the world that would have been surely too much to chew at the time,note luck favored him next, as a series of outbreaks of dysentery and typhus ravaged the British fleet (which put together actually matched the Armada in size) and gave them a bit of a kickback too. Still, Elizabeth desired to exploit the timely Spanish weakness with a counterattack, hoping to sink the enemy fleet, devastate the Peninsula and invade Portugal with the help of a local pretender to the throne, so she ordered to assemble a comparable English Armada of 27,000 men during the lapse. However, in a bout of irony, their preparation of the fleet would be just as bad as their Iberian homologues, as they either neglected or lacked necessary elements like experienced troops, cavalry and siege equipment, even although the fleet would be composed of a resounding 170-200 lighter vessels and commanded by veritable men of sea like Drake, Hawkins, Walter Raleigh and John Norreys.
The English Armada met its own bad beginning in 1589 when around 20 ships deserted even before reaching Spain, but Drake, undaunted, choose La Coruña as their first target. The British initially overcame the city's meager defenses, but the local militias eventually turned the tide back, with even children and women joining the fight under the example of the famous María Pita, after which the arrival of timely reinforcements forced the British to withdraw. The armada then abandoned this goal and moved to Portugal, where the pretender, the Prior of Crato, awaited to give them passage. However, their travel to Lisbon was harassed by Iberian forces and diseases, and when they finally arrived, they found a city prepared for the battle under Alonso de Bazán (brother to Álvaro) and Matias de Albuquerque (a relative to Afonso de Albuquerque, conqueror of the Indian Ocean). The English Armada was defeated and chased away, and after vestigial attempts to attack the Azores and Galicia, a storm forced the British, by this point utterly decimated, to return home.
Fleeting fortunes
The disaster of the English Armada gave back the naval supremacy to the Iberian Union, which utilized convoy systems and improved intelligence networks to frustrate further attacks, bringing much needed silver from America and beating the British in naval battles like the Berlengas, Almería, Flores and Blaye. The English did not yield, though, and both sides exchanged abundant privateer acts, pitting the English Sea Dogs against their imperial counterparts, the infamous Dunkirkers. Also in the 1590s, the war spread to France, as Philip II started assisting the local Catholic League against the Protestant king Henry IV, harboring the hope to install his daughter Isabella in the throne and assimilate the entire country.note Fighting was waged in the Brittany, where Philip also intended to build strength to assist Catholic rebels in Ireland and threaten England again. In this conflict, however, the renowned Farnese died in action, taking with him Spain's hope to end anything anytime soon.In 1596, a Hispanic fleet under Juan del Águila shockingly raided Cornwall, marking the first instance in a long time that the Spaniards had got their hands in the English country. Afterwards, Drake and Hawkins made an attempt to retaliate against the Spanish with an expedition to their overseas properties, but this time the local defenses sent them pinballing from one to another, and eventually both of the legendary English admirals died of tropical dysentery without achieving much. The Protestants managed to break the Spanish streak with a crushing victory in Cádiz under Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, after which Philip II declared bankruptcy, but in an almost oddly quick recovery, helped by his American riches and some "loans" from European bankers, Philip ordered the construction of a second, 120-ship Spanish Armada to assist Irish rebels against the English crown. Nothing came from this, though, as another storm (by this point almost a Running Gag) forced the fleet's commander Martín de Padilla to abort.
Next year, Queen Elizabeth send Devereaux and Raleigh in a massive expedition to intercept the Spanish treasure fleet, meeting an equally hard failure. Philip answered launching the third Spanish Armada under Juan del Águila to invade England once for all, but although this time they managed to actually disembark and take positions, yet another storm forced them to retreat with some losses. Seemingly, large scale naval operations were simply not meant to work out for any side in this war.
Not helped by those depressing facts, Philip II finally accepted to respect Henry IV and break up with the French League, after which he fell ill and died in 1598, being succeeded by Philip III. The Iberian Union, overextended by its war with the Dutch, the British and the French (as well as the Ottomans in the Mediterranean), started losing the momentum it had caught, although it would turn out that its Herculean effort had also left its opponents weary and in need of peace. Negotiations were tried in 1601, close to a spirited but failed Spanish effort to assist the Irish rebels against the English crown. One year later, however, Elizabeth I died, being succeeded by James I.
End of the war
New Spanish movements against England came by the hand of their Genoese captain Federico Spinola, brother to Ambrogio Spinola, causing a brief period known as the "Invisible Armada" where people wondered what would the Spaniards come up with. The result, however, was (guess what?) a new disaster. Federico's outlandish plan involved deploying experimentally Mediterranean galleys in the Atlantic Ocean, and this went about as well as you can imagine, with Federico eventually dying in the sea against Dutch vice-admiral Joos de Moor. The last operations of the war saw another up and coming captain, Antonio de Oquendo, repealing some English privateering off Portugal, mere days after which, the war between England and the Hispanic Monarchy ended with the 1604 Treaty of London.The treaty's reception and strategic value was markedly different: the English were content that it protected their Protestant reform, but the resultant peace was unpopular and was seen as a capitulation and an abandonment of their continental colleagues; for the Spaniards, once the first pains of negotiating with heretics were dispelled, it was acknowledged as a huge advance, as the empire had effectively eliminated the threat of England from the Eighty Years War and now they could focus entirely on the Netherlands, with the addition that Iberian ships could now use English ports as naval bases (and vice versa if needed) to attack Dutch shipping. Even so, English privateers would come out from the war quite rich, which later allowed them to expand their colonization efforts, while the Spaniards, with a string of dead aspirations lying behind them due to the costs of the war, would not lack time to lament not to have gained control of the British Isles when they had the chance.
