Spain's original plan to invade England needed 556 ships and 94,222 men
Philip II's first blueprint for conquering England was so vast, with over 94,000 men and a cost beyond even Spain's treasury, that it was abandoned. The scaled-down Armada of 1588 reached Calais largely intact, only to be scattered by English fire ships at night while waiting for an army that never embarked.
England and Spain had been allies for decades, bound by fear of France and a string of royal marriages. The relationship soured over religion. Henry VIII broke with Rome to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon; his Catholic daughter Mary married Philip II in 1554 and was drawn into a war that cost England Calais in 1558, its last foothold in France after more than 200 years. When the Protestant Elizabeth I followed, Philip regarded her as an illegitimate heretic and backed plots to replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots.
Friction mounted through smuggling, English privateers raiding Spanish ships and colonies, and Spanish support for rebels in Ireland. Open war began in 1585 when England sent troops to help the Dutch revolt against Spain. Elizabeth's execution of Mary in February 1587 prompted Philip to act. The Marquis of Santa Cruz's 1586 plan called for an army sailing directly from Spain, but at more than 1.5 billion maravedis it was unaffordable. Instead a fleet would sail up the Channel to collect the Duke of Parma's army in Flanders. Pope Sixtus V treated the venture as a crusade, and Philip's instructions even set fallback peace terms, including freedom of worship for English Catholics. Francis Drake's raid on Cádiz in April 1587 destroyed about 30 ships and delayed everything by a year.
The fleet finally left Lisbon in late May 1588 under the Duke of Medina Sidonia, an aristocrat rather than a seasoned admiral. Faster, nimbler English ships from Plymouth harried the larger galleons up the Channel. Some of his officers urged him to attack the English in harbour or seize the Isle of Wight, but he stuck to his orders. Anchored off Calais awaiting word from Parma, the fleet was broken up by fire ships and suffered further losses at the Battle of Gravelines.
Neither side landed a decisive follow-up. England's own counter-armada of 1589 failed, and Spanish fleets sent in 1596, 1597 and 1601 also came to nothing. The word armada simply means an armed force, sharing its Latin root with the English word army.
Source: Spanish Armada
