There are 2
things Spanish have a very different view on from the British:-
1. Francis Drake (Draké) and 2. The 'defeat' of the Spanish Armada
in 1588. They are related, of course. In Spain, Drake is seen as
nothing better than a licensed pirate and his depredations of the
Spanish coast - as well as his thieving down in the Caribbean - are
well remembered. In Pontevedra, he's famous for destroying a church on
an offshore island and chucking a statue of the Virgin into the sea.
(Whence it miraculously rose and replaced itself on the altar). But
anyway . . . Controversy will inevitably arise again when a new
docudrama - called Armada - goes out on BBC TV - even though it'll be more faithful to the Spanish version of events than to the British. Here's
a article on this from a British newspaper:
Britain's other
finest hour: For the first time, the real story of Francis
Drake's victory over the Spanish Armada is told in a gripping new
docudrama
Ask most people in the
country what the Spanish Armada was, and they would probably be able
to tell you just three things.
First, the Armada
consisted of a lot of ships from Spain that wanted to invade England.
Secondly, we beat them. And thirdly, we only beat them after Sir
Francis Drake finished a game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe.
Now, thanks to a
landmark BBC docudrama series, we’ll no longer have any excuses for
such ignorance. And furthermore, neither should we still believe that
hoary old story about Drake’s game of bowls.
Armada tells the tale
of those 12 fateful days in 1588 when the future of the Britain hung
in the balance.
Presented by historian
and keen sailor Dan Snow, Armada tells the tale of those 12 fateful
days in the summer of 1588 when the future of the British Isles hung
in a very precarious balance.
At the end of the 16th
century, England was by no means the powerful nation she would
become. Instead she was the equivalent of somewhere like Poland today
– small, proud, but certainly not mighty. Spain, meanwhile, was
truly a global superpower, with an empire that stretched from South
America to Asia.
Its ruler was Philip
II, a stickler for detail who at the time of the Armada was 61 years
old. Philip’s béte noire was undoubtedly the English, and in
particular the monarch Queen Elizabeth I.
For Philip, Elizabeth
ruled over a kingdom that encouraged the likes of Drake to seize
Spanish ships and their cargoes of treasure as they headed back from
South America. But Philip’s other gripe was that the English had
rejected Roman Catholicism. An intensely devout man, he was concerned
for the safety of his fellow Catholics under Elizabeth, and was
determined to help them.
As well as providing
analysis by historians, the series recreates the events in the courts
of the two monarchs. The star of the show is Anita Dobson, who plays
an ageing Elizabeth I. She brilliantly captures the vulnerability of
the 54-year-old queen, who is worried not only about assassination
attempts by Catholic agents, but that her kingdom might be overrun by
the mighty fleet Philip had dispatched from Spain.
However, as the show
makes clear, the Armada’s aim was not to invade Britain. With 125
ships and 30,000 men, the force was far too small to conquer an
entire country. Instead, its purpose was to support an invasion army
assembled in northern France by the Duke of Parma.
Philip’s plan was for
his Armada to link up with Parma in Calais, help the army cross the
Channel and seize landing grounds around Margate, before sailing up
the Thames providing cover for Parma as the Spanish army marched on
London.
What the series
portrays so well are the tensions among the senior figures in the
Armada. Until now, much of this Hispanic squabbling has not been
fully appreciated, but thanks to the work of Professor Geoffrey
Parker, one of the experts interviewed, we are now able to understand
what the Spaniards were thinking.
A few years ago in an
archive in Madrid, Professor Parker stumbled upon some old documents
marked ‘Curious papers’, which contained letters between the
leader of the Armada, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and his deputy,
Juan Martinez de Recalde. ‘What we can now show is that Recalde,
who was a tough sea dog and a far more experienced sailor than the
Duke, wanted to attack England straight away, at Plymouth where the
British fleet was berthed,’ says Snow.
However, Medina Sidonia
was determined to follow orders and press on up the Channel to
rendezvous with the Duke of Parma in France. ‘Had the Duke listened
to Recalde, and the Armada had successfully attacked Plymouth,
history would have been very different,’ says Snow.
Medina Sidonia’s lack
of adaptability proved fateful. As the Armada sailed up the Channel
on 21 July, the British commander, Lord Howard of Effingham, and his
deputy, Drake, were able to send ships from their fleet in behind the
Spanish and ‘pick off’ a few ships at a time with devastating
artillery fire from their cannons.
It’s at this point
that the myth of the game of bowls can finally be put to rest. There
is no evidence to support the notion that Drake was so calm that he
would rather play a game than go into battle. If Drake did wait to go
into action, then it was for a very good reason – the tide was
against him. As the show reveals, the bowls story was invented
decades later by historians to add patriotic spin.
For the Spanish,
Drake’s unconventional methods were immensely frustrating, as they
preferred their enemies to draw near so their soldiers could board
their ships and fight hand-to-hand. But Drake decided to keep his
distance. For the next week, the British harried the Spanish fleet up
the Channel.
On 27 July the battered
Armada eventually made it to Calais, but Parma’s army was not ready
to embark. The Armada was vulnerable now, so Howard and Drake sent
eight blazing fireships into the middle of it, causing it to
disperse. Then Drake pounced, and for eight hours the British
launched a fierce artillery assault, destroying five galleons.
Medina Sidonia now took
the only option open to him – escape. For two months the
once-mighty Armada had to circumnavigate the British Isles in order
to get back home. As a result of unseasonal violent storms, almost 40
ships were run aground, and as many as 5,000 Spaniards drowned or, if
they made it ashore, were butchered by locals.
The English victory
cemented Elizabeth’s grip on power, and Spain would not attack
Britain again until after the death of Philip in 1598. ‘We’ll be
focusing on all these exciting events in tons of detail,’ says
Snow. ‘There’s never been a televised account of the Armada as
rich and as complete as this.’
'Armada' will be shown
later this spring on BBC1.
THE SPANISH ARMADA BY
NUMBERS
- 125 Ships made up the Spanish fleet – then the largest ever seen in Europe
- 200 English and Irish exiles were among the Armada’s 30,000 sailors and troops
- 11m lbs of biscuits and 14,000 barrels of wine were just some of the provisions
- 2,431 Guns were aboard, plus 123,790 rounds of ammunition
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