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Article: Spanish Armada crushed 400 years ago // Its defeat was one of the decisive events in Western history
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- July 15, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright (null) Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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On July 19, the beacons will once again blaze across the English
countryside. It will be 400 years to the day (assuming, of course,
that, like Elizabethan England, you remain attached to the old Julian
calendar) since the torch was set to bonfires that carried from
hilltop to hilltop the long-expected news. The Spanish invasion
fleet, Philip II's great armada, had been sighted off the Cornish
coast.
Philip II of Spain was the most powerful monarch in the Europe
of the later 16th century, and the fleet that had assembled in
Lisbon, then under Philip's rule, in the spring of 1588 fittingly
expressed his power and his wealth. This was a great international
force of 130 ships, drawn from ...