The final showdown between England and Spain was now at hand; Philip II simply had no longer any other choice. Though his Spanish empire now controlled the riches of half the world, the country was beginning to feel a severe shortage of money through the continuous harassment by English seapower. From his palace in Madrid, Philip II now ordered a total mobilization of the Great Armada. This was to be the greatest fleet ever assembled; it was to sail up to the English Channel as far as the Netherlands, where the Spanish governor of that country would be ready and waiting with an immense army. A combined naval and land attack would then be launched on England. Philip II personally supervised all the details of this major assault which was to put an end to the heretic island kingdom. There was only one flaw in this entire operation; occupied with all the details of planning, Philip never seems to have considered the English navy at all.
At the very last moment the enterprise ran into problems when Admiral Santa Cruz suddenly died, and the command of the Armada was forced on the most unwilling Duke of Medina-Sidonia. The Spanish sea captains were as unwilling to serve under the duke, who had never even been to sea, as the duke was unwilling to command them. The volunteers became fewer and fewer, until the Spanish government was forced to fill the vacant posts by compulsion. Not until June 1588 was the Great Armada finally prepared enough to get under way. 130 naval vessels carried 8,000 sailors and 20,000 infantry men, who were to be used to repel any English attempts at boarding the Spanish ships during a naval battle. Later they would be joined by the forces from the Netherlands in the conquest of England. Spain was essentially a land power, and she looked on her fleet as an army at sea; the soldiers aboard the ships, however, proved of little use, for during the subsequent battle no boarding whatever took place.
Against this Great Armada, the English had gathered 197 ships; only 34 of them, however, were royal naval vessels, the rest were supplied by private enterprise. The English admiral was Lord Howard of Effingham; Sir Francis Drake was his chief of staff, and among the many capable captains was also Martin Frobisher. All in all, the English command proved to be far superior to that of the Spanish Armada.
On July 19, the first ships of the Armada were sighted off the English coast, and all through that night the Sea Dog crews eased out of Plymouth harbor. The next morning the entire fleet stood silent and baremasted in the fog and drizzle which enveloped the English Channel. Within a few hours the English outposts saw a dim blur through the mist; the Spanish Armada announced its presence with a full show of sails.
All day long on the fateful July 20, the Armada lay about five miles west of the English fleet. Commander Sidonia had called a council of war; unaware of the enemy’s close presence, it was proposed to attack Plymouth first and crush the English fleet before it was able to leave the sound. But Philip had issued strict orders, forbidding any attack on England until the army from the Netherlands had joined up with the Armada. There was nothing to do but wait, and the captains returned to their vessels.
The battle began the next morning. The Spaniards were caught completely by surprise as the main body of the English fleet came in a running attack, hammering the Spanish galleons in swift, sharp raids. The English avoided the traditional close-ranging and grappling action that the Spaniards had expected; instead they bore down, just out of range of the Spanish artillery, and poured in a shattering broadside, stood off to reload, and fired again with the advantage of longer range. Against such tactics, the heavy, lumbering Spanish galleons stood little chance; by July 27, six of the Spanish ships had sunk, many were disabled, and more than 4,000 sailors and soldiers had been killed. On that day a heavy gale rose in the Channel, and the Armada was forced to decide between getting pounded to death on the Flemish coast or retreat through the North Sea. North it was, around northern Scotland and down the Irish coast, while all along the way the crippled and leaky ships were wrecked along these inhospitable shores. Only about 50 battered ships and 10,000 men finally struggled back into Spanish ports.
With this defeat of the Armada began a noticeable decline in Spanish power throughout the world. All over Europe, Protestants lifted their heads and took courage; the mighty Catholic champion had been humbled. The victory over the Armada, however, had accomplished considerably more; English pride and patriotism now reached new heights, and with it began the aggressive enterprise of later years. It was England that became pre-eminent in worldwide trade and commerce; it was England that began the settlement of North America and changed the course of history in the New World; and it was the English navy which literally ruled the world’s Seven Seas. A new wind had begun to blow across England during those last years of Elizabeth’s reign; Englishmen, it seemed, were a chosen people. Perhaps God really was an Englishman – a Protestant Englishman, of course.
But the war with Spain did not end with the defeat of the Armada. Early in 1589, England took the offensive with a combined land and naval attack on Lisbon and other seaports, but this enterprise was a total disaster. Francis Drake, who commanded the fleet, committed an unpardonable sin when he failed to make an expedition pay off, and he soon lost much of his reputation and previous popularity.
In 1595, Drake set out once more across the Atlantic, hoping to regain some of his former prestige. But this time New Spain was prepared, taught be the repeated surprises of the past. Town after town fought the English off until finally the fleet was forced to anchor off Veragua, the deadliest part of that fever-ridden coast. Many of the English sailors got sick and died, and the commander himself was stricken. When supplies were beginning to run low, the fleet turned toward Puerto Bello, and it was there, on the night of January 27, 1596, that Sir Francis Drake died.
John Hawkins, too, led one more raiding expedition to the West Indies in that same year, and that aging Sea Dog, too, lost his life in the Caribbean. The following year, Lord Howard Effingham, Sir Walter Raleigh, and the Earl of Essex led an expedition against the coast of Spain and burned a large part of Cadiz. Philip sent another fleet against England, but this one never made it at all; it was destroyed by storms in the North Atlantic. English privateers meanwhile continued to attack Spanish ships at every opportunity, inflicting such heavy damage that when Philip II died in 1598, he left behind a nearly bankrupt and crumbling Spanish empire.