Читать книгу The Handy Military History Answer Book - Samuel Willard Crompton - Страница 13
ОглавлениеWhen did the Reformation begin?
This is one of the few times when we can date something with great precision. The Protestant Reformation began on October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther (1483–1546)—a German monk and priest—tacked up a series of statements for debate on the door of the church at Wittenberg.
Luther did not, originally, wish to destroy or divide the Roman Catholic Church. His entire life had been devoted to the church, and he loved it with great intensity. Luther’s goal was to reform the Roman Catholic Church by putting an end to the selling of indulgences. These documents, either handwritten or struck off a printing press, explained to the purchaser that his deceased relative was released from a certain number of years in Purgatory. To Luther, and many others, this amounted to spiritual fraud and encouraged materialism within the Church. He, therefore, posed his Ninety-Five statements—or Theses—for debate.
How many religious reformers were there?
The big three were Martin Luther (1483–1546), John Calvin (1509–1564), and Stefan Zwingli (1484–1531). What they had in common was the belief that one must read the Bible, preferably in one’s native tongue rather than Latin. From that point, their beliefs diverged, but in sum, they brought about the Protestant revolution, guided by the idea that a Protestant is “one who protests.”
Could the Roman Catholic Church have reformed, and would that have ended the protests?
Yes and yes. Luther was the foremost among many critics of the Church, but the great majority of them would have backed off if Pope Leo X (ruled 1513–1521) had withdrawn the sale of indulgences. The Pope was concerned with raising funds for the building of the new St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, however, and he was not greatly concerned by the stipulations laid down by a German monk.
Pope Leo misjudged both the character of his critic and the sharp focus that would soon shine on the corruption and abuses within the Church. Luther was the first great reformer, but he was followed by many others.
How did Emperor Charles V become involved in the religious controversy?
Charles V was king of Spain from 1516 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1519. With the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella on one side, he was the grandson of Emperor Maximilian I on the other, and overall he possessed a dynastic grandeur unsurpassed since the time of Charlemagne. Emperor Charles V was involved in many conflicts and struggles, but the religious one would be the defining aspect of his career.
In April 1521, Martin Luther appeared before Charles V at the Diet (or Council) of Worms. Charles’ lawyers made numerous efforts to persuade Luther to recant his heretical beliefs, most notably that the Pope was merely a high churchman, not the vicar of God. After many hours of wrangling, Luther had the question put to him one last time. He replied, “I can do none other than to obey Scripture. Here I stand. I can do no other.” Charles V, therefore, outlawed Luther, making it a crime for the people of the Holy Roman Empire to aid or comfort him. Not everyone accepted this, however, and Luther was hidden by a high German nobleman.
Who was Hernán Cortés, and how did he get his grand idea of Mexican conquest?
Cortés (1485–1547) was a member of the minor Spanish nobility. He emigrated to Cuba by 1512, and in 1519 he led roughly 600 Spaniards to the coast of Mexico. Cortés, at that time, knew little of the Aztecs or their empire: he knew only that stories of silver and gold often originated from Mexico. While on the coast, Cortés won over some of the native peoples, who were not fond of the Aztecs.
Did any of the Indians actually think Cortés was a God?
Yes. Roughly 400 years earlier, a folk legend had developed about Quetzalcoatl, an Aztec leader who departed in the direction of the rising sun, saying that he would one day return. Over time, Quetzalcoatl developed from a folk hero into a god, and when Cortés and his men appeared from the east—the direction of the rising sun—carrying weapons that performed previously unheard-of wonders, many Indians concluded that Cortés was Quetzalcoatl.
Cortés would not have known all about this, or been able to take such advantage of it, were it not for Malinali. She was a sixteen-year-old Mayan girl who, along with nineteen others, was handed to Cortés as a gift soon upon his arrival on the coast. Malinali, whose Indian name meant “sharp blade of grass,” was very skillful with languages: she knew both the coastal Indian languages and the Aztec tongue. Learning Spanish quite rapidly, she became Cortés’ go-between, his chief interpreter. She also became his lover, and they had a son.
Spanish nobleman Hernán Cortés knew nothing about the Aztecs when he stumbled upon their empire and, eventually, decimated their civilization.
Which impressed the Indians more: guns, cannon, or horses?
All three were impressive, actually downright frightening. But the horses, very likely, had the biggest impact. Cortés came with fewer than twenty horses, but to people who had never beheld a horse of any kind, the massive war horses—bred in Andalusia, Spain—were a terrifying sight. In battle, the horses provided the Spaniards with their winning card on many occasions.
The Spaniards had no muskets or even matchlocks: their guns were clumsy harquebuses which had to be set upon a tripod just to control them. But the barking sound of these guns, plus the occasional roar of a cannon, was enough to persuade the Indians that these were no ordinary newcomers. Over time, the Indians realized that neither Cortés nor his men were gods (this realization may have occurred when they first witnessed a Spaniard bleeding), but they continued to fear the newcomers, who had powerful magic, to say the very least.
When did Cortés and Montezuma first meet?
On November 8, 1519, Cortés and 600 Spaniards, joined by perhaps 10,000 Indian allies, descended from the mountains into the Valley of Mexico. Approaching the magnificent city built on two islands on the Lake of Mexico, Cortés met Montezuma at the gateway to Tenochtitlan. All records concur that this first meeting was peaceful, with Malinali serving as the interpreter, but a mere two weeks later Cortés seized Montezuma and held him as a hostage. This was the beginning of the conquest of Mexico.
At nearly every stage of the conquest, Cortés proved bolder than Montezuma and those who followed him. Realizing that some of the Indians thought him a god, Cortés used it to its fullest potential. When the governor of Cuba sent 900 men to stop and arrest him, Cortés defeated these men and then turned them into his followers. On every occasion, he gained Indian allies among those who disliked Aztec rule. Very few people of our time admire or like Cortés—he is in some ways the archetypical Western conqueror of native peoples—but his audacity and skill were, at times, simply breathtaking.
Is it true that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice?
Yes. The Spaniards may have exaggerated the numbers, but there is no doubt that the Aztec priests regularly killed hostages—young people especially—on the steps of the magnificent temple in the center of Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs believed that the world was on a fifty-two-year calendar (not fifty-two weeks) and that these sacrifices were necessary to persuade the gods and goddesses “to “renew” the world at the end of each of these cycles.
What was the “Night of Sorrows”?
In June 1520, the Aztecs rose in fury against the Spaniards and their allies. Montezuma was dead by this time: whether by the hand of the Spaniards or by his own people remains uncertain. Cortés led his army out of Tenochtitlan on the evening of June 30, 1520, fighting the Aztecs all along the causeway that bridged the two islands. The fighting was fierce, and much of the treasure he had obtained fell into the water. Beyond this, however, Cortés suffered more than 1,000 men killed and wounded during the Night of Sorrows.
If the Aztecs believed that this was it, they were sadly mistaken. Recruiting still more Indian allies, Cortés spent the next nine months in the mountains on the east side of the Lake of Mexico, and when he returned in the spring of 1521, he had small ships. Mounted on rollers, these ships slid down the mountains and into the lake. What followed was an intense, extremely bloody fight for the city itself.
How many people died during the Siege of Tenochtitlan?
The seventy-five-day siege lasted through much of the summer of 1521, and when it was over both the city and the Aztec nation lay in ruins. Cortés did not attempt an accurate account of the killed and wounded, but we suspect it was close to 100,000. Spanish steel was so superior to the obsidian in Aztec knives that a well-armed Spaniard could, indeed, kill up to ten of his enemies without taking a serious wound himself.
Montezuma II was the leader of the Aztecs at the time of Cortés’ arrival. He died of uncertain causes before the Siege of Tenochtitlan.
How much treasure did Cortés and his friends find?
Much to their surprise, the Spaniards found that the Aztec valued gold less than they valued turquoise, the most prized of all their possessions. Over time, Cortés and those who followed him discovered that Mexico possessed vast quantities of silver. Indian laborers dug in the earth and brought out the raw silver, which Spaniards refined and then sent across the ocean.
One hundred thousand people killed and wounded meant that the cream of the Aztec nation was gone. Cortés soon established a new Spanish colony, which he called New Spain. His cause was assisted by the fact that Roman Catholicism—especially the veneration of the Virgin Mary—was both liked and applauded by many Native Americans. Within a generation or two, the conquest was complete. Mexico had become part of Spain.
What happened to Cortés and Malinali?
She bore him a son, and they seemed like a good couple. Whenever native people condoled Malinali on the change in her circumstances, she resolutely told them that it was all God’s will, that it was a great blessing to have converted to Roman Catholicism. Whether she and Cortés would have stayed together is unknown because she contracted smallpox and died at the age of twenty-four or twenty-five. Their son moved to Spain, where he lived the life of a nobleman.
Who was the first person to go completely around the globe?
Magellan (c. 1480–1521) usually gets the credit because he conceived the idea and led the expedition until his death in 1521. The Spaniard Juan Sebastián Elcano (1476–1526) actually completed the voyage, however, arriving in Spain in September 1522.
What type of frustrations and delays did Magellan experience?
The list is very long. Not only did many of the Spanish sailors distrust him because he was Portuguese, but several of the ship captains wanted to overthrow him and return to Spain. Magellan put down not one but two mutinies even before he located the famous strait that now bears his name. Emerging from that strait, he crossed the Pacific, landing in Guam during the spring of 1521. To this point, Magellan had done nearly everything “right,” but he overreached himself by joining one Philippine tribe to fight another. In the battle that ensued, Magellan died on a lonely beach, with many of his men fleeing to the ships.
Magellan had started the voyage with five ships, but these were reduced to two by the time of his death. Juan Sebastian Elcano was elected the new leader of the expedition. He brought the two remaining ships to the Spice Islands, where the Spaniards crammed them with cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger, the spices that had been the motivation for the voyage in the first place. Elcano then led two ships from the Spice Islands, but one was captured by the Portuguese. Elcano and seventeen other ragged survivors arrived in Spain in September 1522. They were the first people to go completely around the world and to prove, beyond a doubt, that Columbus had been correct. The way to reach the spices of the East was to sail west, but it took much longer than Columbus—or anyone else—had anticipated.
What was the great monarchical rivalry of the early sixteenth century?
One can point to several intense rivalries, including that between the king of England and the king of Scotland, but the largest and greatest of them was the rivalry between Emperor Charles V of Spain and King Francis I of France.
Charles V was Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain. Thanks to Cortés’ efforts, he was now ruler, as well, of Spanish Mexico. The present was bright, and the future looked even brighter. Charles V had one great foe, however. King Francis I of France (ruled 1515–1547) was raised, from his earliest days, to look on Charles V as a deadly foe, and the two kings spent many years fighting one another, sometimes clandestinely and sometimes in the open. Both monarchs made occasional use of the king of England—who had his own reasons and motivations—as an ally.
Why do we usually think of King Henry VIII as a buffoon?
Because during the course of his long reign, he became one. Early in his reign, however, Henry VIII was athletic, skillful, and passably good looking (this changed over the years, thanks to his enormous appetite).
Although Magellan did not complete his voyage around the globe (he was killed by native people in the Philippines in 1521), he is credited with the first circumnavigation of the globe.
In watching the rivalry between Emperor Charles V and King Francis I, Henry VIII usually sided with the emperor, who was the nephew of his first wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536). Henry was eager to play a larger role in Continental politics, and in the spring of 1520, he planned to meet Francis I at a special extravaganza in what is now Belgium, the Field of Cloth of Gold. Before he could do so, however, Henry learned that the Emperor Charles also wished to meet with him. The “summit” meetings between these three men, therefore, became the talk of Europe in 1520.
Who met at Canterbury in June 1520?
Henry VIII waited anxiously along the coast, while Charles V’s ships made their way from Spain. When Charles came ashore, he and Henry rode together on the short but memorable way to Canterbury Cathedral, where they celebrated Pentecost Sunday (known in England as Whitsun Sunday). Henry and Charles kept these conversations to marital and familial matters, but both were well aware that Henry was soon to meet Francis.
Just how much money was spent on the festivities at Dover and Canterbury is hard to say, but we know that nearly 1,000 knights and lords gathered that spring. Henry VIII never spared any expense where celebration was concerned; he was also quite anxious to ensure that Charles would remain his good friend.
What was the Field of Cloth of Gold?
Cloth of gold was a relatively new way to embroider one’s garments, and the knights and retainers of England and France both spent small fortunes to make sure they were properly decorated when they met in Belgium. The actual field was about six miles from Calais, on neutral ground. This is where Henry VIII and Francis I met in June 1520.
The meeting had been planned for years, and both sides emptied their treasuries, seeking to outdo the other. Roughly 6,000 men and women met for the festivities, which included tournaments, hawking, and endless feasting. Henry and Francis engaged in a good-natured wrestling match, while their courtiers and knights attempted pleasant conversation. England and France had long been enemies, but it seemed, just for a few weeks, as if they might now become friends.
It seems as if peace was breaking out everywhere.What happened to spoil the general mood?
England and France managed to remain at peace another two years. France and Spain remained wary, suspecting foes. But the really bad news came not from Western Europe but from the East.
Selim the Grim (which translates better as Selim the Awesome) died in 1520, leaving leadership of the Ottoman Empire to his son Suleiman, who was soon known as Suleiman the Magnificent. Each newcomer to the Ottoman throne had to demonstrate military prowess, and it was no surprise that Suleiman chose the Christian West—also known as Christendom—as his foe of choice. In 1521, Suleiman brought a large army from Constantinople to capture Belgrade. This was the first of many times he would threaten the West.
Given that there was now a threat from the East, did the European monarchs come closer together?
On the contrary, they split even further apart. Henry and Francis went to war in 1522, and Francis and Charles V declared war against each other in 1523. Even though Henry and Charles were both fighting Francis, they both maintained secret feelings about each other. The really big upshot, however, was that Francis was captured by Charles’ Spanish soldiers in 1525.
The Battle of Pavia, in northern Italy, was typical of the battles of that time. Mounted knights jostled with mercenary infantry. What was unusual was the number of harquebuses, and most of them were held by the Spaniards. At a critical moment in the battle, Francis I galloped into the action, and before long he was surrounded by dozens of Spaniards. He wielded his magnificent sword as long as he could before being captured and led off into captivity. Many monarchs knew the taste of defeat, but rather few experienced captivity as Francis did for the next year.
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ruled over Italy, Germany, and the Spanish Empire, among other lands, at the time when the Spanish were first colonizing the New World.
How did Francis ever persuade Charles V to release him?
It was a rare thing for one Christian monarch to hold another captive. It was even stranger when we realize that the Ottoman Turks were practically knocking on the doors of Eastern Europe. Charles V held Francis I in captivity until the latter promised to be his good friend and ally, to pay for past transgressions, and to provide two of his sons as hostages. In a truly moving, even heartbreaking, event, Francis was released on the south bank of the river dividing France and Spain, while his two eldest sons were placed in captivity on the north bank. The two boats passed each other in midstream, and Francis was allowed a few minutes with his sons. The moment he reached French soil, he leaped on a horse, shouting, “Now I am king again!” For the rest of his life, Francis maintained that the oaths he had sworn had been taken under duress. He and Charles were soon at war again.
How frightening were the Ottoman Turks, so far as Christian Europeans were concerned?
The Ottoman Turks played a role quite similar to the Russian Communists of the 1950s and 1960s; almost any time that someone needed a scapegoat, or to assign some blame, one said that “the terrible Turk” had done this or that.
Suleiman the Magnificent (ruled 1520–1566) was indeed a frightening character. Unlike his European counterparts, Suleiman was owner, as well as ruler, of all that he surveyed. The culture, law code, and language of the Turks was very different from anything known to the Europeans. If the Ottomans did conquer Europe, it would become yet another province of the domains of the Muslim faith, and Allah, rather than Jesus Christ, would be glorified.
What was the closest that Suleiman, and the Turks, came to taking Europe?
In the autumn of 1529, Suleiman brought roughly 80,000 men from Constantinople as well as a fleet that came up the Danube. Upon arriving outside Vienna, he demanded to know where “King Charles” (as opposed to Charles the Emperor) was because he perceived that Charles V was his greatest foe. On learning that a mere duke had been assigned the defense of Vienna, Suleiman settled down for what might have been a routine siege. His men were masters of siege craft, and they had by far the superior artillery.
In Emperor Charles V’s absence, the Vienna garrison was capably led by Wilhelm von Roggendorf (1481–1541), the Hoffmeister of Austria. His men dumped endless barrels of water to flood the Ottoman Turks’ siege lines, and he sent out sorties at just the right time. On one occasion, nearly 2,000 Turks were killed under Suleiman’s eyes. By mid-October, the Turkish sultan had had enough. He headed back to Constantinople to announce what he called a major victory, but which almost everyone realized was his first real defeat. Suleiman had by no means given up, but he was blocked for the time being from invading the heart of Europe.
When did the religious wars of the sixteenth century begin?
Martin Luther and John Calvin laid down the doctrinal differences, and beliefs, between Catholic and Protestant, but the major battles and wars began in the 1540s. By that time, Emperor Charles V was the defender of Roman Catholic orthodoxy, while King Francis I was the heretic, who allowed Protestant reformers at his court and who even flirted with an alliance with Suleiman the Magnificent.
Though Charles V and Francis I were the great foes, the biggest battles and the longest campaigns were fought within the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire. The Catholics won the larger number of battles, and after his victory at Muhlberg in 1547, Charles V seemed destined to rule over all. Charles knew how fragile his victory was, however. Spain was being bled dry of its best men, and his finances were in terrible shape. Even though he received enormous amounts of silver and gold from the New World, these were not sufficient to pay all his debts.
Why is it so hard for men of great power to step away from it?
Human psychology suggests that we become accustomed to whatever is presented, and he or she who possesses great political and military power often has difficult relinquishing it. We do have a handful of remarkable examples, however, the foremost of which is the abdication of Emperor Charles V. In 1556, he renounced his title as Holy Roman Emperor, as king of Spain, and as lord of the Dutch Netherlands. Charles stepped down in favor of his son King Philip II, who gained Spain and the Netherlands, and his younger brother Ferdinand, who became Holy Roman Emperor and leader of Austria. This established the difference between the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs.
Charles V retired to Yuste, a Roman Catholic monastery in the Spanish countryside. He was weary of politics, of war, and of government, he said, and wished to live like a simple monk. No doubt, he enjoyed greater privilege and prestige than the average monk, but he did take that station and was there at the time of his death in 1558.
Fortune seemed to smile on Charles V when both of his great enemies died in the same year. Henry VIII died in January 1547 and Francis I followed in March, leaving Charles very much the master of the European scene. He declined to exult in his victories, and a few years later he took the unprecedented step of abdicating his major titles.
Might the Habsburgs have been wiser to keep all the leadership in one house and dynasty?
It certainly seems so, from our modern perspective. But Emperor Charles V had attempted that very thing and found it too much. Given that some of his descendants were less conscientious about duty than him, it seems that he made the right choice.
Is there a difference between “Russia” and “Muscovy”?
The latter term was used for decades, even centuries before the first, but they both refer to the same political block: the region that straddles European Russia, all the way to the Ural Mountains. Much of this area had once been ruled by the Mongol leaders of the Golden Horde, but by about 1500, the princes of Moscow had exerted their influence and pushed out the Mongols.
The leaders of Moscow did not yet call themselves “Czar,” but that term came into usage soon after the fall of the Byzantine Empire. Numerous Muscovites referred to their city as the “third Rome,” in succession after Rome itself and then Constantinople. Over time, the Muscovites also adopted the idea that they were an imperial people, bound or fated to carry on the mission of Rome and Constantinople.
Was there something different about Muscovy, or Russia, right from the beginning?
There was. Russia received a triple inheritance, which made it spiritually rich but materially confused. First and foremost was the Greek Orthodox Church, which came north and east at about the same time that the Roman Catholic Church went north and west. Second, Russia was overrun by the Mongols and held captive, so to speak, for nearly two centuries. Russia, therefore, missed both the Renaissance and the Reformation. Third, perhaps most important, was the Byzantine inheritance, which persuaded the Russian czars that they were on an equal level with the emperors of ancient Rome.
Much of this was good, excellent even. The triple inheritance made it difficult for the rulers of Muscovy to understand the Christian West, however, and the feeling was reciprocated in full measure. The first real trade contacts between Russia and the West did not occur until the 1550s, and for a full century after that, many Western Christians continued to think of Russia as a strange, far-off place that could never be understood. In the ultimate expression of this belief, Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared, centuries later, that Russia was “a riddle wrapped in an enigma.”
When was the Kremlin built?
The Kremlin, which is one of the world’s true wonders, is a series of buildings and palaces built around an inner core that was established during the time of Czar Ivan III. Each successive czar saw it as his responsibility to glorify and beautify the Kremlin, giving it a greater significance, than, say, the White House in the United States. When Russians, therefore, speak of the Kremlin, they do so in terms that are both secular and spiritual: they see it as a fusion of the two.
Was there anything especially different about the Russian military?
It followed much the same lines as those of the Christian West, but it lagged two centuries behind. As a result, during the reign of Czar Ivan the Terrible, the monarch acted very much like a feudal king from the time of the Crusades, and even during the reign of Peter the Great, the czar still acted as if his subjects’ bodies—their very persons—”belonged” to him in a sense that had disappeared in the West.
Then, too, Muscovy, or Russia, was thoroughly landlocked. Muscovy was a large state with immense potential, but its merchants, or potential ones, had little access to the goods of other nations. As a result, Russians discovered the use of gunpowder much later than the French, Italians, or other Western Europeans, and their wars against the Ottoman Turks were much closer than would otherwise have been the case.
Was Czar “Ivan the Terrible” really as bad as he sounds?
Like many other men in similar positions—one thinks of King Henry VIII, for example—Czar Ivan (ruled 1547–1584) was a much better leader in youth and early adulthood than in later life. He started his reign reasonably well and showed himself a person of shrewd strategic insight, but with each passing decade he became stranger, even outlandish. Like Henry VIII, Ivan the Terrible had many wives. We believe that he had a total of eight, of whom at least four were poisoned. Who poisoned them remains a mystery. Like Henry VIII, Ivan the Terrible grew much worse in later years, and by the time of his death in 1582, he was far gone in superstitions and paranoia.
A seventeenth-century illustration of Ivan the Terrible.
Where was Russia toward the end of the sixteenth century?
Russia was experiencing one of her lowest periods in modern times. Known as the “Time of Troubles,” the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were a period of revolving czars, pretenders to the throne, and peasant revolts. On numerous occasions, the entire state of Muscovy stood on the brink of collapse, but in 1613 a new dynasty—the Romanov—was proclaimed, and Russia entered a time of greater stability. This does not mean its ties to the Christian West were any firmer, however; on the contrary, the Russians had a great dislike and fear of the Poles, against whom they fought during the Time of Troubles. Another eighty years would pass before Russia made firm contact with the Western powers.
Why did it take so long for England to become a player in the religious wars?
The great thing—so far as England was concerned—is that it did not have to. Protected by its island status, England could, usually, afford to watch the Continental powers waste their money and soldiery while England conserved them. But the rise of Philip II to the throne of Spain changed the situation somewhat.
Philip II (reigned 1558–1598) struggled throughout life to be a dutiful son and faithful follower of his father, who had been such an overwhelming presence. Unlike Charles V, Philip II was a religious bigot, who wished to crush the Protestants rather than win them back to the Roman Catholic Church. Philip’s first concern was with the Dutch Netherlands, but few people doubted that he also intended to bring England and Scotland back into the fold.
How did Elizabeth, the middle child of King Henry VIII, become queen of England?
Even in death, Henry VIII attempted to control everything. His long and complicated will provided that Edward—his youngest child and only son—would inherit the throne, but that if Edward were to die without issue, the throne would pass to Mary, his eldest child. By off circumstance this happened, and when Mary died without issue, the throne passed to Elizabeth.
Queen Elizabeth I (reigned 1558–1603) was the shrewdest, most calculating mon arch of the century. She listened to her advisers at length, pondered all the options, and then made her own choice. Perhaps for show, she sometimes attempted to go back on her original decision(s). That she was the most intelligent ruler of the time cannot be doubted. The Pope wrote that she was an amazing woman and that if she were on the side of Roman Catholicism, that faith would surely prevail.
Who did Elizabeth help first?
When the Dutch rose against Philip II in 1567, England was inclined to help. The Dutch were Protestants, and they were fighting against Spain, the great Continental power of the day. Elizabeth never aided the Dutch openly; she funneled money to them and sent English adventurers to fight in their long war for political independence. This infuriated Philip II, and he gradually became Elizabeth’s sworn enemy.
A daughter of Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth I proved to be one of England’s finest rulers, bringing about a period of prosperity and growth unprecedented in her nation’s history.
Complicating the situation even more was the issue of Mary, Queen of Scots. Born in France, she came to the Scottish throne in her twenties and did her best to bring her subjects back to Roman Catholicism. They threw her out, and she crossed the border to England and asked Elizabeth, who was her first cousin once removed, for help. Not only did Elizabeth deny her assistance, but she had Mary locked up in a castle and kept her away from all observers, friendly and otherwise. Elizabeth was correct in that Mary represented a political danger, but her treatment was cruel.
When did Elizabeth, and England, first become involved in the Caribbean?
England had watched with open envy as Portugal and Spain established maritime empires in the early sixteenth century. According to a papal decree, the eastern hemisphere belonged to Portugal and the western to Spain. England, France, and Holland disagreed, and all three nations wanted their part of the colonization game. England did not race to enter the business of actual colonization; she, rather, sought to despoil Spain.
In the 1560s, Elizabeth licensed a handful of privateers with authority to prey on Spanish commerce. John Hawkins and Francis Drake, cousins, led the way. They found it much easier to attack the Spanish overseas possessions than to establish new ones of their own. Philip II was outraged by these attacks, but Elizabeth was a master at giving calm, misleading answers to the Spanish ambassador.
How close did Philip II come to conquering the Dutch Netherlands?
The southern part of the Netherlands—that which we now call Belgium—was under Spanish control by 1570, and Philip continued to press to win back the northern Netherlands. His armies, led by the Duke of Parma, were the best organized of the time, and the Spaniards slowly conquered one Dutch fortress and town after another. The closer they came to success, however, the more that the Dutch resisted, and when William the Silent was assassinated in 1578, it only fueled the flames of Dutch anger.
When did Elizabeth send Francis Drake on his most famous voyage?
Drake, who was the most ambitious and ruthless of the queen’s privateers, asked permission to attack Spain’s South American settlements, which were rumored to be extremely wealthy. Elizabeth took her time, hemmed and hawed, but she finally gave Drake his commission, and he sailed—with five ships—in 1577.
Drake told almost no one all of his plans, but his captains thought him too ambitious just the same. He faced a minor revolt in Patagonia—the same place where Magellan had faced one—and he sentenced one of his captains to death. Moving further south, Drake found his way through the Strait of Magellan: he was the first non-Spaniard or Portuguese to do so. Coming out into the Pacific, Drake moved his way up the coast of Chile and Peru, attacking Spanish settlements and ships. Virtually every Spanish place was caught unawares because no hostile ships had ever sailed these waters.
What was Drake’s biggest coup?
He found and captured an enormous Spanish treasure galleon that sailed from Manila in the Philippines to Acapulco every year. The loot from that one ship more than equaled everything else Drake acquired on his epic voyage. Drake put in on the North American coast, likely just north of modern-day San Francisco. After some encounters with the local population, he sailed again, this time right across the Pacific.
After obtaining much spice in the Malaccan Islands, Drake sailed for home. He was more fortunate than Ferdinand Magellan, who had died along the way. On his arrival in Plymouth, England, Drake found himself the toast of the town and then the nation. In 1581, Queen Elizabeth visited his flagship—which he had renamed the Golden Hind—and knighted him on the quarterdeck. This public approval suggested that Elizabeth was ready to duel with Philip II. He, however, had already stolen a march on her.
Sir Francis Drake was a privateer whom Queen Elizabeth I employed to lead attacks against Spanish ships, looting their cargos and sending the money back to England.
How did Spain come to possess Portugal?
In 1578, King Sebastian I of Portugal (ruled 1557–1578) was killed while leading his army against the Moors in North Africa. Philip II had a blood relationship to the Portuguese monarchy, and he pressed his claim, first in legal documents and then by sending his army across the border. The Spaniards conquered mainland Portugal rather easily, but the Portuguese islands, the Azores especially, held out for two or three years. During that time, Philip II increased the size of the Spanish navy, both by adding the Portuguese ships to his fleet and by employing new methods of bombardment.
Philip II felt ready to attempt what he called the Enterprise of England. Elizabeth I and her subjects felt ready to contest any landing. What was needed was a spark to ignite the contest, which came in the form of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Why was Philip II so preoccupied with the Mediterranean Sea?
Philip was so occupied as to feel beleaguered. He faced the Dutch Revolt to his northeast, the English freebooters to the west, and he faced the Ottoman Turks to the east. His father, Emperor Charles V, had been the great standard bearer against the Turks, and that task now fell to Philip.
