English Defeat of Spanish Armada

England defeated the Spanish Armada near the end of the 16th century. Spain was the largest international ruler of the world. It ruled, colonized or tried to over much of the world. Spanish power has at it’s height at this time. Also at this time King Phillip II pledge to conquer the heretics in England and convert them to the Church of Rome. He also had other reasons for conquering England. He disliked Queen Elizabeth I and vowed to kill her.

To accomplish the conquest of England, King Phillip planned a part attach. He would send his Invincible Armada of 125 ships into the English Channel where it would link up with the Duke of Parma in the Spanish Netherlands at Calais. The Armada would then take the Duke of Parma’s soldiers across the straight of Dover and then the troops would march on London, seize the Queen, and proceed to conquer the rest of the country.

The Spanish Armada, under the command of the Duke of Medina Sedonia, sailed from Portugal in late May of 1588 heading for the British Isles.

It reached the South West coast of England on July 19 and was then challenged by the English fleet commanded by Lord Howard and Francis Drake. The English vessels, avoiding close combat, they stayed in the English Channel as long as possible. The English vessels bothered and harassed doing a lot of damage until the Armada anchored at Calais. Here the Duke of Parma failed to show up and as a result the English saw an opportunity to attack the Spanish fleet.

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On July 28, 1688 the English used fire-ships to scatter the Spanish ships. On July 29 at the Battle of Gravelines, an 8 hour struggle, ended with many Spanish ships damaged or sunk.

The Spanish commander, the Duke of Medina Sedonia, found himself in danger of complete defeat and made a skillful decision to forget the invasion and return to Spain through the North of Scotland and Ireland. For three days the English fleet perused the Spanish into the North Sea then returned to England when they ran out of ammunition. The Spanish failed disastrously rounding the coast of Scotland. Many Armada ships were wrecked due to storms. Surviving Spanish ships barely made it back to Spain completely defeated and shamed. The defeat of the Spanish Armada marked the turning point between the rule of Spanish across the world. Now the main international ruler was England with plenty of power.

Since there were no newspapers at this time, the news was carried by newsbooks published weeks or months after the event. One of the first ones was in a 24-page newsbook printed in 1588 in Cologne by Michael Entzinger who lived in Germany. The front page featured a picture the Spanish Armada sailing off the coast of England. The newsbook is in German and the front page says A true account of the Spanish Armada or Armaments translated from the original Spanish edition into the high German including the story of how on the 29th and 30th of May the Armada under the command of the Duke of Medina Sedonia, departed from Portugal and how it then, at great risk, arrived in England and struggled in a strait on the 8th, 9th, and 10th of August and also how the Armada again encountered the Englishmen on the open sea after that, on the 22nd of the same month of August. This was quite a headline and was only the introduction to a complete early account of the defeat of the Spanish. This newsbook represents one of the earliest first reports of a significant historical event in printed news. These newsbooks prove that England defeated the Spanish Armada.