Book Description

Excerpt from The Quarterly Review, Vol. 182: July October, 1895 Philip may not have meant war if he could avoid it, but when the menace of the Armada failed to extort from Elizabeth such terms as he could accept, he was left with no alternative. Either Elizabeth must accept his terms or her pride must be humbled by defeat. When in May the negotiations had pro duced no result, Philip resolved to wait no longer, and the Armada set forth from Lisbon. Its first proceedings were an augury of the fate which awaited it. Baffled at first by contrary winds and afterwards scattered by a storm, Sidonia's clumsy and unwieldy squadrons remained at sea long enough to discover their own nautical deficiencies and the unwholesome quality of their victuals, and then returned to Corunna. Sidonia was for abandoning the enterprise, but Philip was now resolved. Ships were repaired, provisions renewed and crews recruited, and before the middle of July the Armada was again at sea. This time the wind was favourable, the Bay of Biscay was crossed, and the mouth of the Channel was at last reached. Elizabeth's hesitation and her parsimony, whether politic or culpable, had made it impossible for her captains to dispute its passage or to attack it, as they themselves desired, on its own coasts and even in its own ports. The fate of England and of Europe was now to be decided in the narrow waters of the Channel. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.