Defeat of the Spanish Armada
- Date
- 1588
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- English Channel and the North Atlantic (England, Spain)
- Era
- Early Modern
- Significance
In 1588 King Philip II of Spain dispatched a great fleet, the Armada, to escort an invasion army from Flanders and overthrow the Protestant Elizabeth I of England, whose support for the Dutch rebels and Protestant cause had inflamed tensions with Catholic Spain.
Sailing from Lisbon on 30 May, the Armada of roughly 130 ships was harried up the English Channel and, after English fireships scattered it off Calais, was mauled at the Battle of Gravelines on 8 August. Unable to rendezvous with the army in the Netherlands, the surviving ships were driven north and forced to flee home around Scotland and Ireland, where storms wrecked many vessels. Spain lost perhaps 60 ships and some 15,000 men. The defeat did not end the long Anglo-Spanish war, which dragged on until 1604, nor did it immediately break Spanish naval power, which recovered. Yet it was a decisive moral and strategic check to the foremost Catholic monarchy, secured England's Protestant settlement and independence, and emboldened the Dutch Revolt. It became a foundational episode in English national memory and a marker of the shifting balance of maritime power in Atlantic Europe.
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Empires active in 1588
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE – 1922 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Songhai Empire1464 CE – 1591 CE
- Ming Dynasty1368 CE – 1644 CE
- Mughal Empire1526 CE – 1857 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
Related military & conflict events
- Defenestration of Prague and the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War23 May 1618
- Fall of Beijing and the Ming–Qing transition1644
- Battle of Tondibi and the fall of the Songhai Empire13 March 1591
- The Imjin War: Japan's invasions of Korea1592–1598
- Battle of Lepanto7 October 1571
- Battle of Talikota and the fall of Vijayanagara23 January 1565
Further reading
The wider story
Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire
Fast-paced narrative of Portugal's seaborne empire.
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