The Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604)

In Western Europe, the Spanish Empire ruled by the king Philip II gained an enormous power. The Spanish saw England as a competitor in trade and expansion in the ‘New World’ of the Americas.

Relations between Spain and Britain had been deteriorating steadily since Henry VIII officially broke with Rome and declared England a Protestant nation in the 1530s.

Unauthorized trading and privateering in the Spanish territories of the West Indies by men such as Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake further eroded ties between Queen Elizabeth I of Britain and King Philip of Spain.

The Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) was an intermittent conflict between the kingdoms of Spain and England that was never formally declared. The war included much English privateering against Spanish ships, and several widely separated battles.

It began with England's military expedition in 1585 to what was then the Spanish Netherlands under the command of the Earl of Leicester, in support of the Dutch rebellion against Spanish Habsburg rule. After Philip retaliated by outlawing British trade with Spain and by seizing hundreds of English ships in Iberian ports, the two nations found themselves at war.

In 1588, Philip II intended to sail with his navy and army, a total of around 30,000 men, up the English Channel to link up with the f orces led by the Duke of Parma in the Spanish Netherlands.

On May 19, the Invincible Armada set sail from Lisbon on a mission to secure control of the English Channel and transport a Spanish army to the British isle from Flanders. The fleet was under the command of the Duke of Medina-Sidonia and consisted of 130 ships carrying 2,500 guns, 8,000 seamen, and almost 20,000 soldiers.

The Armada was difficult to attack because it sailed in a ‘crescent’ shape. While the Armada tried to get in touch with the Spanish army, the English ships attacked fiercely. However, an important reason why the English were able to defeat the Armada was that the wind blew the Spanish ships northwards.
The Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604)

Eighty Years War (1566-1648)

The rebellion of the Dutch provinces against their Spanish overlords broke out in 1568. It was initially, on the whole, a military disaster, with the Dutch unable to stand in the field against the veteran Spanish tercios.

At that time the rebellious regions had a population of only 75,000; by the turn of the century, the seven provinces that formed the Dutch public had a round one million people.

The Spanish monarchy, by contrast control a population of around 16 million and could draw in resources from a vast empire.

In 1576 the Spanish soldiers, who had not received pay for a considerable of time, started looting and terrorizing village and towns in Brabant and Flanders. The violence was so intense that in July the Council of State in Brussels branded the mutinous Spanish as enemies.

As the result, the war descended into a series of sieges of the many fortified town and cities in the Low Countries.

On 25th September 1576, the States General commissioner several commanding officers who were ordered to assemble an army, was given the task of chasing away the Spanish troops.

This was the longest rebellion in modern European history, the Eighty Years’ War, also known as the Dutch Revolt, freed the seven Protestant United Provinces of the northern Low Countries from Spain rule and led to the formation of the modern Netherlands.

It is the biggest, bloodiest and most implacable of all the wars which have been waged since the beginning of the world.

The Dutch navy, which did not exist in 1568, had achieved the reputation of being the best in the Atlantic world by a series of victories culminating in destruction of a Spanish armada in The Downs.

In June 1648, The Dutch signed a peace treaty at Munster between Dutch and King Philip IV of Spain. For Dutch Republic, the Treaty of Munster was the prize for nearly a century of struggle.

By 1648, Spain’s position as a major power was tenuous: by 1659 she was definitely in decline, a process acetated over the rest of the seventeenth century by a series of costly and destructive wars with France.
Eighty Years War (1566-1648)

Spain is The Great Power in The 16th Century

Spain is The Great Power in The 16th Century
By middle of the sixteenth century Spain was the greatest power in Europe. The dominions of Philip II (1556 – 98) of Spain stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific: his continental territories included the Netherlands in the North and Milan and Naples in Italy.

In 1580 Philip II became king of Portugal, uniting all the states of the Iberian Peninsula. With the addition of Portugal’s Atlantic ports and its sizeable fleet, Spanish maritime power now was unsurpassed. Spain was also a great cultural and intellectual center. The fashions and tastes of its golden age dominated all the courts of Europe. The expansion of Spanish domination and the increase of Spain’s wealth and prestige was reflected in a self conscious spirit of national pride that could be seen in the story of Don Quixote, the knight who tilted at windmills in search of greatness in the novel published by Miguel de Cervantes between 1605 and 1615.

In Mediterranean Spain alone stood out against the expansion of Ottoman power. The sultan’s navy continually threatened to turn the Mediterranean into a Turkish lake, while his armies attempted to capture and hold Italian soil. All Europe shuddered at the news each Ottoman advance. Pope called for holy wars against the Turks but only Philip heeded the cry. From nearly moment that he inherited the Spanish crown he took up the challenge of defending European Christianity.

For over a decade Philip maintained costly coastal garrison in North Africa and Italy and assembled large fleets and larger army to discourage or repel Turkish invasions. This sparring could not go on indefinitely, and in 1571 both sides prepared for a decisive battle. A combined Spanish and Italian force of over three hundred ships and eighty thousand men meet an even larger ottoman flotilla off the coasts of Greece. The Spanish naval victory of Lepanto was considered one of the great events of the sixteenth century, celebrated in story and songs for the next three hundred years, though the Turks continued to menace the Mediterranean islands, Lepanto marked the end of Ottoman advanced.
Spain is The Great Power in The 16th Century