Anglo–Spanish War (1585)

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Anglo-Spanish War

Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588-08-08 by Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg, painted 1796, depicts the battle of Gravelines.

Date	1585 – 1604
Location	Atlantic Ocean, English Channel, Low Countries, Spain, Spanish Main
Result	Treaty of London

Combatants

Spain

England

Dutch Republic

Commanders

Philip II,
Marquis of Santa Cruz,
Duke of Medina Sidonia,
Duke of Parma

Elizabeth I,
Francis Drake,
John Hawkins

Anglo-Spanish War
San Juan de Ulúa – Gravelines – Corunna – Lisbon – Spanish Main – Azores

The Anglo–Spanish War (1585–1604) was an intermittent conflict, punctuated by large, widely separated battles between the kingdoms of Spain and England.

The friction began when Mary I of England, the wife of the Philip II of Spain, a member of the Habsburg family, failed to produce an heir to the English throne. The subsequent queen of England, Elizabeth I, was less amenable to Philip's will than Mary had been.

The shooting started after the English sent a military expedition to the Netherlands in support of the Estates General in the latter's resistance to Habsburg rule. The English then enjoyed victories at Cádiz in 1587 and over the Spanish Armada in 1588, but thereafter steadily lost the initiative. The war was ended with a peace treaty, which was negotiated between Spain's Philip III and the new, Scottish king of England James I and signed in 1604.

1 Causes
2 Outbreak
3 Invasion
4 Effects
5 References

[edit] Causes

In the 1560s, Philip II of Spain sought to frustrate English crown policy for both religious and commercial reasons. The Protestant Elizabeth I of England had antagonised Roman Catholics by making attendance at Church of England services compulsory and punishing the saying of or attendance at mass with imprisonment. The English also tended to support the protestant cause in the Netherlands, which was increasingly hostile to Spanish government.

The activities of English privateers (considered pirates by the Spanish) on the Spanish Main and in the Atlantic were a severe drain on the Spanish treasury. The English trans-Atlantic slave trade - started by Sir John Hawkins in 1562 - gained royal support, even though the Spanish government complained that Hawkins' trade with their colonies in the West Indies was a smuggling racket.

In September 1568, a slaving expedition led by Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake was surprised by the Spanish, and several ships were sunk, at San Juan de Ulúa, near Veracruz, Mexico. This engagement soured Anglo-Spanish relations, and in the following year the English detained several treasure ships sent by the Spanish to supply their army in the Netherlands. Drake and Hawkins, amongst others, intensified their privateering as a way to break the Spanish monopoly on Atlantic trade.

[edit] Outbreak

The defense of Cadiz against Sir Francis Drake by Francisco de Zurbarán.

War broke out in 1585. Drake sailed for the West Indies and sacked Santo Domingo, Cartagena de Indias, and San Agustín in Florida. England joined the Eighty Years' War on the side of the Dutch Protestant United Provinces, led in revolt by William the Silent, and against Spain. Philip II planned an invasion of England, but in April 1587 his preparations suffered a setback when Drake burned 37 Spanish ships in harbour at Cádiz. In the same year, the execution of Mary I of Scotland on 28 February outraged Catholics in Europe, and her claim on the English throne passed (by her own deed of will) to Philip. On 29 July, he obtained Papal authority to overthrow Elizabeth, who had been excommunicated by Pope Pius V, and place whomever he chose on the throne of England.

[edit] Invasion

Main articles: Spanish Armada, Spanish Armada in Ireland

The Armada engagement revolutionised naval warfare and provided valuable seafaring experience for English oceanic mariners. Furthermore, the Armada's defeat enabled the English to persist in their privateering against the Spanish and continue sending troops to assist Philip II's enemies in the Netherlands and France.

Main article: English Armada.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada was not a decisive battle, and the "Protestant storm" did not finish the war. An "English Armada" under the command of Drake and Sir John Norreys was dispatched in 1589 to torch the Spanish Atlantic navy, which had largely survived the Armada encounter and was refitting in Santander, A Coruña and San Sebastian in northern Spain. It was also intended to capture the incoming Spanish treasure fleet and expel the Spanish from Portugal - ruled by Philip since 1580 - in favor of the Prior of Crato. Had the expedition succeeded in its objectives, Spain may have been compelled to sue for peace, but owing to poor organisation and excessive caution the invading force was repelled with heavy casualties on both sides and failed to take Lisbon. Sickness then struck the expedition, and finally a portion of the fleet led by Drake towards the Azores was scattered in a storm. In the end, Elizabeth sustained a severe loss to her treasury, for she had been compelled into a joint venture in order to finance the expedition, and was first among the stockholders.

The Invincible Armada, National Maritime Museum, London.

In this period of respite, the Spanish were able to refit and retool their navy, partly along English lines. The pride of the fleet were the Twelve Apostles - a dozen enormous new galleons - and the navy proved itself far more effective than it had been before 1588. A sophisticated convoy system and improved intelligence networks frustrated English privateering on the Spanish treasure fleet during the 1590s. This was best demonstrated in the failures of expeditions by Sir Martin Frobisher, John Hawkins and the Earl of Cumberland in the early part of the decade, as well as in the repulse of a squadron led by Effingham in 1591 near the Azores. It was in this battle that the Spanish captured the English flagship, the Revenge, after a courageous last stand by its captain, Sir Richard Grenville (although the Spanish did lose many vessels in a hurricane days afterward). Throughout the 1590s, the convoy escorts enabled the Spanish to ship three times as much gold and silver than in the previous decade.

Both Drake and Hawkins died in a 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, which had been patrolling the channel, landed troops in Cornwall, western England. Amesquita's force seized supplies, raided and burned Penzance and surrounding villages, held a mass, and sailed away before it could be confronted.

In 1596, an Anglo-Dutch expedition managed to sack Cádiz, causing significant loss to the Spanish fleet, and leaving the city in ruins. But the Spanish commander had been allowed the opportunity to torch the treasure ships in port, and 12 million ducats went to the bottom - where most of it could be recovered later while denying the Protestant foes who also incurred massive financial losses. The Spanish landed a considerable force of tercios in Brittany, expelling the English forces (though Anglo-French forces managed to retain Brest). Normandy added a new front in the war, and the threat of another invasion attempt across the channel. Elizabeth sent a further 2,000 troops to France after the Spanish took Calais. Further battles continued until 1598, when France and Spain finally made peace with the French king having converted to Catholicism. The English suffered failure in the Islands Voyage against the Azores in 1597, and provoked the Nine Years War in Ireland in 1595, when Ulster lords Hugh O'Neill and Red Hugh O'Donnell rose up against English rule with fitful Spanish support, mirroring the English support of the Dutch rebellion.

While England struggled to contain the rebels in Ireland, the Spanish attempted two further Armadas, in 1596 and 1597: the first was destroyed in a storm off northern Spain, and the second was frustrated by adverse weather as it approached the English coast undetected. King Philip II died in 1598, and his successor, Philip III, continued the war, but in a much less determined manner.

At the end of 1601, a final armada was sent north, this time a limited expedition intended to land troops in southern Ireland to assist the rebels. The Spanish entered the town of Kinsale with 3,000 troops and were immediately besieged by the English. In time, their Irish allies arrived to surround the besieging force, but poor coordination with the rebels led to its defeat at the Battle of Kinsale. Rather than attempt to hold Kinsale as a base to harry English shipping, the Spanish accepted terms of surrender and returned home, while the Irish rebels hung on, only to surrender in 1603, just after the death of Elizabeth. When James I came to the English throne, his first order of business was to negotiate a peace with Philip III of Spain, which was concluded in the Treaty of London, 1604.

[edit] Effects

For the English, the continuing, increasingly unsuccessful war with Spain delayed English settlement in North America until the early Stuart period. This enabled Spain to consolidate its still vulnerable New World empire which was to last another two centuries. Spain had been able to effectively deny the Atlantic sea lanes to English colonial efforts until England had agreed to most Spanish conditions. However England remained true to the Protestant revolution.

Spain remained Europe's dominant power well into the 17th century, when its decline began decades later with defeats on land against France in the Thirty Years' War and at sea with the rise of Dutch naval power. While the Armada defeat did not enable England to supplant Spain as the pre-eminent naval power, nor to engage in substantial American colonization, it served as an inspiration to later generations, particularly during the Anglo-French naval clashes of the 18th century, when Britain emerged as one of Europe's leading sea powers and colonizing nation after the Seven Years' War (1756-1763).