Today is the anniversary of the defeat of one of the major attempts by a Continental power to invade the British Isles, for it was on July 19, 1588, that the Great Armada of Phillip LI of Spain, standing off Calais awaiting the troops of the Duc de Parma, was dispersed by fire ships never to regain order. Eight days before the great Spanish fleet had been sighted off the Lizard. When it saited past Plymouth it was followed by the British fleet, which maintained a running action with it as it slowly beat on up the Channel. For six days the action continued until on July 17 Medina Sidonia, the Spanish naval commander of no experience and little ability, anchored off Calais. Parma was unable to leave the land with the army destined to invade Britain, because a Netherlands' squadron under Justinus of Nassau was blockading the Flemish paris, and when the British sent in their fire ships on the night of July 19, there was nothing for it but to disperse.
The wind was westerly, the English were in the Channel and for the Spaniards the safest way home was the longest namely round the British Isles, Sailing northwards they were followed by the English as far as the Firth of Forth where they broke off the pursuit, owing to lack of adequate knowledge of the seas north of that point. The Spanish Armada sailed on, buffetted by the phenomena al storms of that summer, to have many of its vessels wrecked on the western coasts of the British Isles. The storms did more damage to the Armada than- the English guns had done; a fact which Elizabeth recognized: in the motto on the medal commemorating the defeat which she caused to be struck;—Afflavit Dens et dissipantur. Had it been an ordinary summer the probabilities are that the Spanish fleet would have reached home without very much more damage than that inflicted during the running fight in the Channel and the North Sea, and that was not big. But the unprecedented gales overtaxed the damaged and weakened Ships which were woefully undermanned and the final defeat m effort establish the supremacy e Habsburg dynasty and of the Church of Rome, which he considered as being in a peculiar sense his charge in Europe, was the result.
Tt is not difficult in these days to understand the anxiety of the British as from peak to peak the beacons told of the advent of the enemy:
Till Skiddaw saw the fire that burned on Gaunt's embattled pile And the red glare on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle, made. Napoleon, it is true tempt was never with the idea, but wu of the seas, until he put the out of action the chances of his be considered small. of the Armai ya As a milli ition the English defeat querable supporter of that part of Europe which had thrown off the authority of the Pope. From the Roman Catholic point of view the Armada had much of the character of a crusade. Philip undoubtedly had political reasons for his hostility to Elizabeth, but they were so closely bound up with the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation that the secular and religious elements of the conflict cannot be separated from one another. The struggle was not one between armed forces in national rivalry alone. It was à trial of strength between two widely different conceptions of life and the state. There is the parallel between the struggle in Elizabeth's time and the one which is now proceeding in Europe—a fight between the civilization of today and the contemplated: restoration of the tyrannies of the dark ages, and it is the determination of the same people who defeated Philip that civilization shall win.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.