What if the Spanish Armada had landed in England?
In 1588 fireships, Gravelines and the weather scattered the Armada before it could fetch Parma's army. What if the tercios had crossed?
What actually happened
By the 1580s Philip II of Spain was at war with England, which was aiding the Dutch rebels and raiding Spanish shipping. After the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1587 he launched the Enterprise of England. A fleet of about 130 ships under the Duke of Medina Sidonia would sail up the Channel and escort an army of veterans under the Duke of Parma from Flanders across to Kent.
The Armada left Lisbon in May 1588, was driven into A Coruña by storms, and entered the Channel in late July. The English fleet harassed it but could not break its crescent formation. On 6 August it anchored off Calais, but Parma's troops and barges were not ready, and Dutch flyboats blockaded the shallow coast. On the night of 7–8 August the English sent in fireships; the Spanish cut their cables in panic, and at Gravelines the next day the scattered fleet was badly mauled.
A south-westerly wind drove the Armada into the North Sea. Unable to return, it sailed around Scotland and Ireland, where storms wrecked many ships. Perhaps a third of the fleet and many thousands of men were lost. Elizabeth's government struck a medal proclaiming that God had blown and they were scattered.
The turning point
The plan's weak point was the junction with Parma. The Armada had no deep-water port in Flanders, Parma's barges could not sail without an escort, and the Dutch controlled the shallows. Garrett Mattingly's classic account and later work by Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker show how hard that coordination was.
The popular image of a Protestant wind does weather too much credit for the battle: Gravelines and the fireships broke the formation, and the storms did most of their damage on the voyage home. But Parker and Martin also argue that if Parma had landed, his veterans would probably have beaten the poorly trained English militia gathered at Tilbury. The landing, not the sea fight, is the great unknown.
The world that might have been
In Crown & Plough the alternative reads: the wind changed; the fireships went astray, and while the fleet stood guard the Duke of Parma's tercios crossed the Channel in barges; the Kentish militia did not last a week; Elizabeth fled north and the Latin Mass was said again in London; and having lost England, the revolt in Holland did not last long either.
Beyond the game, a Spanish conquest of England is the most dramatic but not the only possibility. Many historians think Philip might have settled for a negotiated peace: toleration for English Catholics, the end of English aid to the Dutch and the return of captured towns. Even that would have isolated the Dutch Republic at a critical moment.
A Catholic, Spanish-aligned England would have changed the whole later story of English sea power, North America and Protestant Europe. Occupation would have been costly, though, and Philip's resources were already stretched by war in France and the Netherlands.
Ripples through time
The Armada is shaped by the first siege of Vienna: if the Ottomans took Vienna in 1529, the Habsburgs are more distracted and a successful invasion is less likely.
Carried into the Age of the Sun King (1680), England and Ireland are Catholic, Spain holds Holland and Guelders, and the scripted Glorious Revolution never happens, so the events of 1688 unfold in a very different Britain.
- Shaped by What if Suleiman the Magnificent had taken Vienna in 1529?
- Carries into the next era Age of the Sun King and the Baroque
Play this turning point
Start in the Renaissance era. The Currents of History story The Dutch Revolt and the Armada runs from the 1560s; fight for the King of Spain to push for the alternative, or with the Sea Beggars or the English side to keep history. There is no dedicated scenario.
History is weighted strongly toward the Armada's defeat, so a long career on the Spanish side, ideally as a lord or ruler, is needed to make a real difference.
Questions and answers
Did the weather defeat the Spanish Armada?
Partly. The fireships and the Battle of Gravelines broke the fleet's formation and ended any chance of meeting Parma's army; storms then destroyed many ships on the long voyage home around Scotland and Ireland.
Could Parma's army have conquered England?
Many historians think his veterans would have defeated the English militia if they had landed, but getting them across without a deep-water port and past the Dutch blockade was the unsolved problem.
How many ships did the Armada lose?
Estimates vary; roughly a third to a half of about 130 ships failed to return, most lost on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland.
Sources and further reading
State papers and the reports of Medina Sidonia and the English commanders. Modern accounts: Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada; Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker, The Spanish Armada; Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II.
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