The Battle of Hastings
In 1066, William Duke of Normandy (c. 1028-87) defeated Harold Godwinson (c. 1022-66), the last Anglo-Saxon king of England. England had fallen into the Norman orbit earlier, with Edward the Confessor spending his youth in exile at the Norman court while Cnut ruled England. William claimed that Edward promised him the English crown, but when Edward died, in 1066, Harold was elected king. He marched north to defeat a Norse invasion, before dashing south to Hastings to face William, where he was killed and his army shattered. William the Conqueror quickly took southeast England, then the southwest, and suppressed a great uprising in the north in 1069. In 1066, the England that we know today was born.
The Wars of the Roses & Bosworth
In 1483, the Wars of the Roses flared up again. Fought between Lancastrians and the Yorkists – rival Plantagenet claimants to the English throne – it had appeared to have been settled for good in 1471. In 1470, the Yorkist Edward IV, who had seized the throne from the hapless Lancastrian Henry VI in 1461, had been forced from it by a group of vengeful magnates. In 1471, with Burgundian support from Charles the Bold, Edward retook the throne. Henry was murdered, probably on Edward’s orders.
Edward, now grossly corpulent, died in 1483. Instantly, the conflict reignited, albeit in a different form. The problem was that the new king, Edward VI, was only 12 and that his mother’s family, the Woodvilles, saw the boy-king as an obvious opportunity to proclaim themselves regents – in effect, to seize the throne themselves, undoing Edward IV’s legacy. This at least was the view of the dead king’s most consistent champion, his brother the Duke of Gloucester, who was competent, intelligent and loyal. Gloucester characteristically pre-empted the Woodvilles by seizing the throne himself, as Richard III, executing the leading Woodvilles and imprisoning Edward V with his younger brother in the Tower of London where both were then murdered. If no definitive proof has ever been offered that Richard III was responsible for the deaths of his nephews, the overwhelming probability is that he ordered their killings; his hold on the throne was too shaky to permit any rivals to survive in he could eliminate them. Richard III was vilified in later Tudor propaganda. But given the turbulent treachery of late-medieval England, Richard’s actions seem fairly rational. Sooner or later the Woodvilles would have sought an excuse for his death.
But there was a further Lancastrian claimant, Henry Tudor. His right to the throne was a tenuous at best, but critically he had the support of the French king, Charles VIII. In August 1485, Henry led an invasion from France. By the end of the month, Richard was dead, killed at the Battle of Bosworth, his superiority in numbers undone by the ineptitude of many of his commanders. Henry Tudor, in turn, crowned on the field of the battle, had become Henry VII. The Tudor monarch’s seizure of the throne might easily have provoked yet another round in this destabilizing infighting. But Henry VII would prove among the most pragmatic, capable and far-sighted of kings. Under the Tudors, England was significantly strengthened, its magnates tamed and its government comprehensively overhauled.
Battle of Gravelines 1588 (Spanish Armada)
The small port of Gravelines was then part of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands, close to the border with France and the closest Spanish territory to England. Medina Sidonia tried to re-form his fleet there and was reluctant to sail further east knowing the danger from the shoals off Flanders, from which his Dutch enemies had removed the sea marks.
The English had learned more of the Armada’s strengths and weaknesses during the skirmishes in the English Channel and had concluded it was necessary to close within 100 yards to penetrate the oak hulls of the Spanish ships. They had spent most of their gunpowder in the first engagements, and had after the Isle of Wight been forced to conserve their heavy shot and powder for a final attack near Gravelines. During all the engagements, the Spanish heavy guns could not easily be run in for reloading because of their close spacing and the quantities of supplies stowed between decks, as Francis Drake had discovered on capturing the damaged Rosario in the Channel. Instead the gunners fired once and then jumped to the rigging to attend to their main task as marines ready to board enemy ships, as had been the practice in naval warfare at the time. In fact, evidence from Armada wrecks in Ireland shows that much of the fleet’s ammunition was never spent. Their determination to fight by boarding, rather than cannon fire at a distance, proved a weakness for the Spanish; it had been effective on occasions such as the battles of Lepanto and Ponta Delgada (1582), but the English were aware of this strength and sought to avoid it by keeping their distance.
With its superior maneuverability, the English fleet provoked Spanish fire while staying out of range. The English then closed, firing repeated and damaging broadsides into the enemy ships. This also enabled them to maintain a position to windward so that the heeling Armada hulls were exposed to damage below the water line. Many of the gunners were killed or wounded, and the task of manning the cannon often fell to the regular foot soldiers on board, who did not know how to operate the guns. The ships were close enough for sailors on the upper decks of the English and Spanish ships to exchange musket fire. After eight hours, the English ships began to run out of ammunition, and some gunners began loading objects such as chains into cannons. Around 4:00 pm, the English fired their last shots and were forced to pull back.
Five Spanish ships were lost. The galleass San Lorenzo ran aground at Calais and was taken by Howard after murderous fighting between the crew, the galley slaves, the English, and the French, who ultimately took possession of the wreck. The galleons San Mateo and San Felipe drifted away in a sinking condition, ran aground on the island of Walcheren the next day, and were taken by the Dutch. One carrack ran aground near Blankenberge; another foundered. Many other Spanish ships were severely damaged, especially the Spanish and Portuguese Atlantic-class galleons which had to bear the brunt of the fighting during the early hours of the battle in desperate individual actions against groups of English ships. The Spanish plan to join with Parma’s army had been defeated and the English had gained some breathing space, but the Armada’s presence in northern waters still posed a great threat to England.
Queen Elizabeth I’s Speech to the Troops at Tilbury 1588
My loving people,
We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and we do assure you in the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the meantime, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.
In September 1588 the Armada sailed around Scotland and Ireland into the North Atlantic. The ships were beginning to show wear from the long voyage, and some were kept together by having their hulls bundled up with cables. Supplies of food and water ran short, and the cavalry horses were cast overboard into the sea. The intention would have been to keep well to the west of the coast of Scotland and Ireland, in the relative safety of the open sea. However, there being at that time no way of accurately measuring longitude, the Spanish were not aware that the Gulf Stream was carrying them north and east as they tried to move west, and they eventually turned south much further to the east than planned, a devastating navigational error. Off the coasts of Scotland and Ireland the fleet ran into a series of powerful westerly winds, which drove many of the damaged ships further towards the lee shore. Because so many anchors had been abandoned during the escape from the English fireships off Calais, many of the ships were incapable of securing shelter as they reached the coast of Ireland and were driven onto the rocks. The late 16th century, and especially 1588, was marked by unusually strong North Atlantic storms, perhaps associated with a high accumulation of polar ice off the coast of Greenland, a characteristic phenomenon of the “Little Ice Age.” As a result, more ships and sailors were lost to cold and stormy weather than in direct combat.
Following the gales it is reckoned that 5,000 men died, by drowning, starvation and slaughter at the hands of English forces after they were driven ashore in Ireland; only half of the Spanish Armada fleet returned home to Spain. Reports of the passage around Ireland abound with strange accounts of brutality and survival. Some survivors were concealed by Irish people, but few shipwrecked Spaniards survived to be taken into Irish service, fewer still to return home.
In the end, 67 ships and less than 10,000 men survived. Many of the men were near death from disease, as the conditions were very cramped and most of the ships ran out of food and water. Many more died in Spain, or on hospital ships in Spanish harbours, from diseases contracted during the voyage. It was reported that, when Philip II learned of the result of the expedition, he declared, “I sent the Armada against men, not God’s winds and waves”.
English losses stood at 50–100 dead and 400 wounded, and none of their ships had been sunk. But after the victory, typhus, dysentery and hunger killed a number of sailors and troops as they were discharged without pay: a demoralising dispute occasioned by the government’s fiscal shortfalls left many of the English defenders unpaid for months, which was in contrast to the assistance given by the Spanish government to its few surviving men.
The English fleet was still cautious of the remaining Armada after the Battle of Gravelines, requiring it to remain on duty even as some of its sailors died. The following year Elizabeth I launched the Counter Armada, under Sir Francis Drake, but it was unsuccessful in its goals, resulting in Phillip II retaining some naval superiority.
