This award-winning story of the defeat of the Spanish Armada has been hailed as a historical masterpiece. The book covers Queen Elizabeth's reign over a turbulent nation, while the Duke of Parma plans the invasion of England from the Netherlands. The crucial period from February 1587 to December 1588 is presented in a series of detailed, dramatic scenes. The second part of the book is devoted to the naval battle from the first sight of the Armada off the Scilly Isles to the return of its broken remnants to the ports of Spain.
The Spanish Armada (Spanish: Grande y Felicísima Armada, "Great and Most Fortunate Navy") was the Spanish fleet that sailed against England under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1588, with the intention of overthrowing Elizabeth I of England.
Philip II of Spain had been co-monarch of England until the death of his wife Mary I in 1558. A devout Roman Catholic, he considered his Protestant half sister-in-law Elizabeth a heretic and illegitimate ruler of England. He had supported plots to have her overthrown in favour of her Catholic cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, but Elizabeth had Mary imprisoned, and she was finally executed in 1587. In addition, Elizabeth, who sought to advance the cause of Protestantism where possible, supported the Dutch Revolt against Spain. In retaliation, Philip planned an expedition to invade and conquer England, thereby suppressing support for the United Provinces— that part of the Low Countries that had successfully seceded from Spanish rule — and cutting off attacks by the English against Spanish possessions in the New World and against the Atlantic treasure fleets. The king was supported by Pope Sixtus V, who treated the invasion as a crusade, with the promise of a further subsidy should the Armada make land.
Garrett Mattingly (May 6, 1900 – December 18, 1962) was a professor of European history at Columbia University who specialized in early modern diplomatic history and won a Pulitzer Prize for a bestseller about the Spanish Armada.
Mattingly's most successful book was The Armada (1959). As one biographer has written, the book was "written in purple prose but a royal purple, which read like historical fiction." Hailed enthusiastically by critics, the book was a bestseller as both Book-of-the-Month Club and History Book Club selections; and Mattingly also won a Pulitzer Prize (special citation) for the work.
This copy was published by Houghton Mifflin Company with copyright date of 1959. The book is printed on paper of good quality in a binding that has the durability of cloth (it has a cloth like feel) but the compactness of paper.
5x8 inches; 443 pages with alphabetical index
- Cover intact; book cover with only very minor shelf wear along cover borders and corners
- Spine intact/tight/no creasing
- Inside covers intact
- Pages crisp/clean with no writing/tears/missing pages
- Very faint age yellowing on a few page borders
- Picture with listing is the actual book
Overall book grade: VERY GOOD: A book showing some signs of wear.
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