The Spanish economy was suffering and Elizabeth turned a blind eye to this, infuriating the Spanish King. The English privateers, sailors without the permission of the Queen, were attacking Spanish trading ships returning from the Americas with goods worth a fortune. Her execution in 1587 merely hastened the decision to attack, as he would have invaded anyway. He saw Elizabeth as a heretic and Mary, Queen of Scotland, possible heir to the English throne, and another Catholic, as the choice for queen. Philip, a devout Catholic, saw it as his duty to rid England of the protestant rule of Elizabeth I and return the country to the arms of the Pope and Roman Catholicism. They feared being subsumed into the vast empire of Philip. In effect he had been co-monarch in what had been an unpopular marriage among the people of England. Philip II, King of Spain, had been married to Mary I of England until her death in 1553.
The reasons for the invasion were many and varied. Its failure was rooted in its planning and execution and although the success of the English has gone down in legend alongside Agincourt, the World Wars, Trafalgar and Waterloo, the positive spin put on it by Tudor politicians, which would have made Alastair Campbell proud, hides a darker secret about the treatment of English soldiers and sailors.
130 large ships sailed for these shores packed with soldiers and sailors ready to invade and pull England into the Spanish Empire. 28 th May 1588 - One of the most famous episodes in our history, taught to schoolchildren up and down the country, the Spanish Armada was a campaign to end the reign of Elizabeth I and Protestantism in England.
0 kommentar(er)
