Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604)
The Anglo-Spanish War of 1585–1604 was a conflict between the kingdoms of England under Elizabeth I and Spain under Philip II. The war opened with victory for the English at Cádiz in 1587 and over the Spanish Armada in 1588, but the Elizabethans were unable to follow up their victories and the war was largely inconclusive. For many historians, the war marks the beginning of the decline of the Spanish Empire and the start of the rise of English sea power.
Causes
While Philip's motives were both religious and political, the reasons given for this attack were principally religious, since the Protestant Elizabeth I of England had antagonised the Catholics by making attendance at Church of England services compulsory and instituting imprisonment for the saying or attending of Catholic Mass.
Economic competition between the two countries in general had sparked tensions since Sir John Hawkins initiated English participation in the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1562, soon gaining royal support. The Spanish regarded Hawkins' actions as illegal smuggling to their colonies in the West Indies, leading them to surprise and sink several ships in a slaving expedition led by Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake at San Juan de Ulúa, near Veracruz, Mexico, in 1568. San Juan de Ulua served as the diplomatic incident that soured the Anglo-Spanish relations, which had hitherto been amicable, embittering Drake and Hawkins so much that they and other English sailors took up privateering as a way to break a the Spanish monopoly on Atlantic trade. The activities of English privateers on the Spanish Main in the years leading up to the war had severely dented the Spanish treasury.
Outbreak
War broke out in 1585. Drake sailed for the West Indies and sacked Santa Domingo, Cartegena, Colombia and San Agustín in Florida. Angered by these attacks, Philip II ordered planning to begin for an invasion of England.
In April 1587 Drake burned 37 Spanish ships in harbour at Cádiz.
England joined the Eighty Years' War on the side of the Dutch Protestant United Provinces, led in revolt by William I of Orange, and against Spain.
The execution of Mary I of Scotland on 28 February 1587 outraged Catholics in Europe. On 29 July 1587, Philip obtained Papal authority to overthrow Elizabeth, who had been excommunicated by Pope Pius V, and place whoever he chose on the throne of England.
Invasion
- Main article: Spanish Armada
After the Armada
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 high seas buccaneering against the Spanish and continue sending troops to assist Philip II's enemies in the Netherlands and France.
However, the defeat of the Spanish Armada was not a decisive battle. An English Armada under the command of Drake and Sir John Norris was dispatched in 1589 to torch the Spanish Atlantic navy, which had largely survived the Armada encounter and was moored in Santander and San Sebastian in northern Spain, as well as to capture the incoming Spanish treasure fleet and expel the Spanish from Portugal, which Philip had ruled since 1580. Like its Spanish predecessor, the English Armada failed in all its objectives and the invading force was repelled with heavy casualties and severe financial losses for the Elizabethan treasury.
The Spanish Navy was then able to refit and retool (partly along English lines), and the new navy was far more effective than the pre-1588 fleet. The English were again able to sack Cádiz in 1596, but the Spanish prevailed in most naval and land encounters between 1588 and the mid-17th century.
A sophisticated convoy system and improved intelligence networks frustrated English privateering on the Spanish treasure fleet during the 1590s. This was most exemplified in the failures of buccaneering expeditions by Sir Martin Frobisher and John Hawkins in the early part of the decade, as well as in the repulse of an ambushing squadron led by Effingham in 1591 near the Azores, which featured the surrender and capture by the Spanish of the English ship Revenge after a courageous last stand by its captain, Sir Richard Grenville. The convoy escorts enabled the Spaniards to ship three times as much gold and silver in the 1590s than in any decade before it.
Both Drake and Hawkins were killed in a disastrous 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 landed troops in Cornwall, western England. Amesquita's soldiers raided and burned Penzance and surrounding villages, seized supplies, held Mass, and reembarked before they could be confronted.
The English suffered another naval failure in the Islands Voyage against the Azores in 1597, and became embroiled in a guerrilla war in Ireland that lasted nearly a decade when Ulster lords Hugh O'Neill and Red Hugh ODonnell rose up against English rule in 1594, with Spanish support.
The continuing and (for the English) increasingly unsuccessful war with Spain after the Armada thus delayed English North American settlement until the early Stuart period, and Spain remained Europe's great power into the 17th century until defeats against France in the Thirty Years' War and the rise of Dutch naval supremacy in the mid 17th century. While the Armada defeat therefore did not enable England to supplant Spain as a pre-eminent naval power, or initiate American colonisation, it was a valuable inspiration for later English mariners, particularly in the Anglo-French naval clashes of the 18th century when England finally emerged as Europe's leading sea power and colonising nation.