Spain’s proudly invincible Armada left Lisbon, May 20, 1588 with one hundred and forty ships and thirty thousand four hundred and ninety-seven men; fifty-three shattered vessels, and ten thousand men, vincible and humbled, returned to port Santander, Sept. 13, 1588. This disaster led to the decadence of Spain as a maritime power, and indirectly to the decline of Spanish dominance both in the old and in the new world.

The effects of any great event are not immediately discernible nor are its causes ever fully revealed. When Philip II. of Spain received with courteous equanimity his defeated admiral, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and to his words,

“And you see here, great King,

All that remains of the Armada’s might

And of the flower of Spain.”

made answer,

“God rules above us!

I sent you to contend with men and not

With rocks and storms. You’re welcome to Madrid.”—Schiller.

did the great King see then either the causes or the consequences of the vincibility of his Invincible Armada!

The character of Philip II. is portrayed upon the historic page in colors of sharp contrast. To the Spaniards he was their Solomon, their “prudent king”; to Motley and the Netherlands he was “the demon of the South.”

Philip II. was the finished product of his age and nation. Pride, intolerance, absolutism combined with excellent administrative[104] ability, deep tho’ narrow religious convictions, and rigorous sincerity, characterized both the man and the monarch. To a victim of an Auto da Fe he said with stern truthfulness, “If my own son were guilty like you I should lead him with my own hands to the stake.”

As to Philip’s really having delivered his son, Don Carlos, into the hands of the Grand Inquisitor as tragically told in Schiller’s “Don Carlos”, well that is drama, not history. But when a noted name and its suggested personality—for good or for evil and unfortunately less frequently for good than for evil—are once fascinatingly fixed in drama or story or song, not all the tomes of contradictory evidence, not all the living archives of dead centuries, not Truth itself, can shatter the crystal charm or make it cease shining. Alexander the Great, world conqueror; Socrates, the Wise; Plato, poet-philosopher; Aristotle, master of them that know; Julius C?sar, deplored of all nations; Mark Anthony, Cleopatra’s lover; Nero, monster; Caligula-Commodus-Heliogabalus, crowned madmen; Marcus Aurelius, Emperor-philosopher; Charlemagne, the Good; Louis IX., the Saint; Louis XI., hypocrite; John of England, child murderer; Richard III., deformed devil; Henry VIII., wife-killer; Machiavelli, serpent-sophist; Louis XIV., despot, Arbiter Elegantiarum; Elizabeth, Good Queen Bess; Mary, Queen of Scots, the lovely unfortunate; Philip II. of Spain, bigot: thus are they fixed in the charmed circle of literature and thus shall they glitter forever.

Is history itself any more reliable than drama? As to facts, Yes; as to motives, intentions, cumulative causes, results, all round truth, No. “Histories are as perfect as the historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul,” says the astute Carlyle; and every honest author feels at deepest heart the truth of these words. The soft art of omission is known to every artist of the pen. And condemnation euphemistically[105] balanced by excusing comment may, in one artistic sentence, satisfy at once a writer’s conscience, his subjectivity, and the claims of his peculiar environment. Can any one doubt that it was thus Macaulay wrote his brilliant history of England? And even granted almost the impossible—that an historian be ruggedly truthful and fearlessly sincere; he is not thereby rendered wise, nor is he necessarily gifted with an eye and a soul.

So in colors of sharp contrast upon the historic page will Philip II. ever be portrayed; but both can’t be right. Perhaps tho’ they may be as sundered extremes of a prismatic ray which, when complementary coloring shall have been added, will become white light.
Storms.

Truly it was against storms and rocks as well as against such rough sea-dogs as Drake and Hawkins and Raleigh and Frobisher and Howard that the Invincible Armada contended. In the beginning of the northward cruise as the Armada was rounding the corner of Spain, off Corunna, a violent tempest arose. The frail caravels, and galleons and galleasses of 1588 were not so independent of wave and wind as are the Dreadnoughts of 1914. Yet ocean is still master of man; and man’s most titan-like Titanic is but a puny plaything in old Neptune’s hand.

Several vessels were lost in the storm, and the fleet was so badly damaged that in consequence the Spanish Admiral was obliged to stop off at Corunna for repairs. July 12th, after so inauspicious a beginning, the fleet was again on its way northward.

Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, captain general of all the Spanish armies, was at Dunkirk with a flotilla of large flat-bottomed barges awaiting the Armada to convoy him and his[106] army across the channel. His plan was to invade England by way of the Thames and land his veteran forces in London.

“Alexander Farnese, prince of Parma, captain general of the Spanish armies, and governor of the Spanish possessions in the Netherlands, was beyond all comparison the greatest military genius of his age. He was also highly distinguished for political wisdom and sagacity, and for his great administrative talents. He was idolized by his troops, whose affection he knew how to win without relaxing their discipline or diminishing his own authority. Pre-eminently cool and circumspect in his plans, but swift and energetic when the moment arrived for striking a decisive blow, neglecting no risk that caution could provide against, conciliating even the populations of the districts which he attacked by his scrupulous good faith; his moderation, and his address; Farnese was one of the most formidable generals that ever could be placed at the head of an army designed not only to win battles, but to effect conquests. Happy it is for England and the world that this island was saved from becoming an arena for the exhibition of his powers.” Creasy.

As in 1588 Alexander Farnese with a chosen army awaited at Dunkirk the assistance of the Armada both to clear the seas of Dutch and English war ships and to convoy in safety his flotilla to the coast of England: so, too, in 1805 Napoleon Bonaparte awaited at Boulogne for Villeneuve to do him a like service; and in both cases the English fleet took the offensive and destroyed at one blow both the protective war boats of the enemy and the hopeful plans of the man who waited. The sea fights at Calais Roads and at Trafalgar are perhaps negatively momentous in history but not the less momentous.

The Spanish fleet after some disastrous fighting with the English cruisers off the coast of Plymouth succeeded in reaching Calais Roads (July 27). Here they were quickly semi-circled by the combined Dutch and English fleet under Lord[107] Charles Howard, high admiral of England. The Spanish ships were far greater in bulk than those of the opposing force and in the harbor of Calais they were huddled together “like strong castles fearing no assault, the lesser placed in the middle ward.” The lighter English ships, no longer able to use their two best assets, nimbleness and advantage of the wind, clung doggedly around these ocean leviathans awaiting the hour of opportunity. At length early on the morning of the 29th the English Admiral succeeded in thrusting eight Greek fire-ships in among the compact wooden war vessels. The effect was electrical. The Spanish ships cut their cables and were dispersed and the fight ship to ship was soon in full progress. All day long from early dawn till dark this battle raged. The Spaniards were driven out from Calais Roads and past the Flemish ports and far out beyond Dunkirk where the Prince of Parma waited. The English then ceased pursuit. Lord Henry Seymour with an able squadron was left to maintain the blockade of the Flemish port and to render ineffectual the activities of the Prince of Parma.

Northward sped the vincible Armada farther and farther from sunny Spain. She had many wounded men on board ships, her provisions were failing, the channel filled with victorious Dutch and English war boats offered no hope of a way of return, and at last in desperation the Spanish admiral directed the course of his ships around the northern coast of Scotland and Ireland. What a long and cruel way home for wounded soldiers, starving sailors, and disheartened generals! But even here ill luck pursued them. A storm arose as they were passing thro’ the Orkneys; their vessels were dispersed, many were lost. About thirty ships were afterwards wrecked on the west coast of Ireland, and those of the crews who succeeded in reaching the shore were immediately put to death. It is estimated that fourteen thousand thus perished.

And in September of that memorable year there came straggling[108] ship by ship into the port Santander all that were left of the gallant fleet that had sailed away five months ago to subdue England and so win all Europe for Spain.

Nor was that plan at all chimerical, nor its realization improbable. Spain was at that time in possession of Portugal, Naples, Sicily, Milan, Franche-Compte, and the Netherlands; in Africa she controlled Tunis, Oran, the Cape Verde and the Canary islands; in Asia, the Philippine and Sunda Islands and part of the Moluccas; in the New World, the empire of Peru, and of Mexico, New Spain, Chili, Hispaniola and Cuba. Only England held out against the power of Spain and stood adamantine to all her threats, cajolery, caresses. Only England stood between Philip II. of Spain and Spanish dominance in the old and in the New World. English buccaneers seized upon his galleons on their retu............