WHEN Philip the Second, son of the great emperor Charles V, came to the throne of Spain, that country had become the greatest cosmopolitan empire in the world. The throne of Castile, at one time or another during Philip's reign, was the throne not only of Spain and Portugal, but of the Netherlands and Burgundy, the Sicilies, Sardinia, Milan, Cuba, Hispaniola, Florida, Mexico, California, nearly all of South America, and the Philippine Islands. The Spanish monarch was the eldest son of the church; and Philip, strong, ambitious, bigoted and insolent, expected, as he laid the foundations of his glorious palace, the Escorial, the eighth wonder of the world, to become master of France and Britain, and to bequeath to his son the vastest empire that the sun had ever shone upon.
By his marriage with Queen Mary he acquired the nominal title of king of England, though he was never crowned. But his grudge rose against England after Mary's death and Elizabeth's accession. The country proved itself a thorn in his side, helping the Dutch rebels and undoing at home the persecuting work of his late spouse. Philip formed a great project for the invasion of the country.
Spain was supreme then on the sea. The English navy had greatly declined. In 1575 it had but twenty-four vessels of all classes on the water. Philip knew the cleverness of the English with their ships, however, and in planning this invasion he proposed to be invincible. Invincible he sought to make the Armada, or fleet, that he sent against the country, and invincible not only he, but all Europe, believed it to be, when, in January of the year 1588, the great flotilla was ready to sail.
It consisted of about one hundred and thirty ships, of which sixty-two were over three hundred tons burden. It was commanded by a brave and skillful sea fighter, Santa Cruz. The English had bettered their conditions of seven years before very greatly, but they were at this moment absolutely unprepared to meet a foreign fleet. Their ships were scattered far and wide, and many were unequipped. If the Armada had sailed at that moment it would have found no force ready to meet it. And it would have escaped the storms that later befell.
But mañana is the curse of all Spain's projects. The Armada lingered. Santa Cruz, its chief, sickened in port and died. Very likely if he had sailed no such fate would have overtaken him. This was the first of the big fleet's misfortunes. Philip looked about for another commander. By a fatuous favoritism his choice fell upon the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who was utterly incompetent.
The months flew past. Meantime the English, fully apprised of the king's intentions, were getting a fleet together. In those days it was not necessary to wait five years for a battleship to be constructed. Almost any big ship could be turned into a fighting craft. In particular, the English were well off in guns, and the delay of the Armada gave them a chance to get their artillery on board.
When—nombre de Dios!—does the reader suppose that this invincible fleet, ready in January, really set sail from Coruña? On the 12th day of July! It had already been scattered and weakened by a storm off Lisbon. On the 21st of July Medina Sidonia sailed into Drake's and Hawkins's "line ahead" formation in the English channel as Rojestvensky sailed into Togo's lair off Tsu-Shima in 1905, and the result to him somewhat resembled the subsequent fate of the Russian fleet in the Sea of Japan. It was not, however, so bad. If Medina Sidonia had gone, with his surviving ships, after the first onset, to Denmark, and refitted, he might yet have embarrassed the British. But he sought to make the passage around the north of Scotland, and a succession of storms wrecked his whole remaining fleet.
All authorities agree that in January, 1588, no English force existed which could have hoped to check Santa Cruz as things then stood. What if he had come on and landed an army of trained veterans upon England's undefended shores? He must have won. Queen Elizabeth must have been overthrown. Ireland would have gladly joined Philip. England was almost half Catholic, and the people of that faith might eventually have become reconciled to the foreigner. Philip might have made himself another Norman William. The Spanish culture would have been imposed upon the English nation. But unlike William of Normandy, who transferred his power to Britain, Philip would have remained a Spanish sovereign, and London would have been ruled from Madrid.
Philip would never have temporized with English Protestantism. The chances are that he would have stamped it out utterly and at the start, as he sought, too late, to do in the Netherlands. If he might have worked his will, he would also have suppressed English learning and literature. William Shakespeare, who had just come up to London, had never produced a play when the Armada sailed, and probably he never would have produced one if it had conquered. The glorious Elizabethan culture would have been nipped in the bud.
All Britain's possessions in the new world, already existent or to be, would have fallen to Spain or France if Philip had overthrown Elizabeth—doubtless to Spain, for Philip's ambition to seize the French throne would have been furthered by his conquest of England. Spanish viceroys would have borne sway for centuries over all North America. A hybrid Indian-Latin race would have arisen here, as in Mexico and Peru. Lacking the inspiration of North American freedom, all Spanish America to the southward would have remained to this day under the dons.
Castilian speech, Castilian cultivation, Castilian manners, the Castilian faith, might have reigned supreme over a dusky race from the St. Lawrence to the Straits of Magellan.