Spanish Armada
Naval and military force assembled and dispatched by Philip II of Spain in an unsuccessful attempt to invade England in 1588. The defeat of the Armada was one of the great achievements of Elizabethan England, and helped bring about the subsequent military decline of the Spanish Empire.

The mission of the Armada combined political and religious aims. Philip, leader of Roman Catholic Spain, could not suppress a revolt of his Protestant subjects in the Netherlands that began the Dutch Wars of Independence. This revolt, which began in 1566, was aided by Protestant England. By 1586 Philip had decided that he would be unable to defeat the Dutch without first mastering England. At the same time, he hoped to resolve the long-standing religious rivalry between England and Spain by dethroning Elizabeth I and reconverting England to Roman Catholicism. He therefore evolved a plan to conquer the English.

The scheme called for coordinating a fleet sailing from Spain with an army led by Alessandro Farnese in the Netherlands to be dispatched across the English Channel for a simultaneous invasion of England. Philip appointed the inexperienced Alonzo Pérez de Guzmán, Duke of Medina-Sidonia, to lead the force of 130 ships. The English, aware of the plan, tried to prevent the Armada from sailing by sending Sir Francis Drake to attack it at Cádiz in Spain in 1587. By destroying the Armada's ships in Cádiz Harbour, Drake succeeded in delaying it for nearly a year.

By July 1588, however, the Armada had set sail. It was first sighted off the English coast on July 29, and a larger English fleet, commanded by Lord Charles Howard (later 1st Earl of Nottingham) with Drake and Sir John Hawkins as subsidiary commanders, intercepted it near Plymouth. For the next week, Howard, with his faster, smaller, and more manoeuvrable ships, attacked the Spanish in battles off Plymouth, Portland Bill, and the Isle of Wight. Unable to break the Armada's formation, however, the English waited for a chance to strike a decisive blow.

The opportunity came when the Armada anchored near Calais in France, hoping to join the troops scheduled to sail from the Netherlands. Howard ordered fireships (small ships turned into floating firebombs) to be sent against the Armada, producing panic that broke the Spanish formation. In the ensuing Battle of Gravelines on August 8, the English defeated the Armada. Strong winds prevented the remaining vessels from sailing home through the English Channel, and they were forced to make their way back to Spain round the north of Scotland and the west of Ireland, with many lost to storms and shipwreck. Only 67 of the original 130 ships returned to port in Spain, and most of these were in poor condition.

The failure of the Armada did not end the war between England and Spain, which lasted until 1604; Spain launched similar attempts in 1596 and 1597, both of which were driven back by storms. It did, however, stimulate English nationalism, secure Protestantism as England's state religion, and create the trust in the English navy that for centuries remained the first line of the nation's defence. For Spain, by contrast, it was a demoralizing defeat that nearly bankrupted its treasury.

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