Hello, and welcome to today's History lesson.

My name's Mr. Merrett, and I'll be guiding you through today's lesson.

Today's lesson is Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada, and it is part of our wider unit on why has Elizabeth been represented so differently? Let's get started.

So by the end of today's lesson, we're gonna be able to recall the reasons for the Spanish Armada and explain how it was defeated.

And in order to do that, we're gonna need to be using some key terms. Our first key term is alliance, and an alliance is a connection or friendship between different countries.

Our next key term is privateer, and a privateer is a person or armed ship which is allowed by a government to attack and steal from other ships at sea.

Our next key term is fleet, and a fleet is a group of ships sailing together.

Our fourth key term is navy, and the navy is the branch of the armed forces which operates at sea.

And our final key term is Spanish Armada, and the Spanish Armada was a large group of warships.

Today's lesson is gonna be split into two main learning cycles, and our very first learning cycle is why did Spain want to invade England? Let's get going.

First of all, I want you to take a little look at the image on the screen in front of you.

This is a very famous portrait of Elizabeth I known as the Armada Portraits.

What I want you to think about is why do you think Elizabeth had this portrait painted? Look at some of the imagery in the portrait.

Look at the ships in the background.

Look at the crown just to the side of her, her hand on the globe.

Look at the ship's figurehead down to the side of her there.

What do you think all of this means? I'm not gonna answer that question for you, but by the end of this lesson, you should be able to refer back to this image and start to think about why Elizabeth had this portrait painted and why some of those things in the background are there.

So why did Spain want to invade England? Well, in 1580, Spain was the dominant power in Europe.

It controlled Spain, Portugal, Southern Italy, modern-day Belgium and parts of the Netherlands, and its ever-growing empire in the New World of the Americas also brought glory and riches.

Spain's king, who was Philip II, was eager to continue expanding his country's power and influence.

It's seen there was little that could stand in the way of Spain.

Many people must have wondered then why Elizabeth seemed to be doing everything in her power to try and provoke a war with Spain.

When Elizabeth first came to the throne in 1558, England's relationship with Spain was good.

Philip II had been married to the English queen, Mary I, which had made England and Spain allies.

Philip wished to continue this alliance by marrying Elizabeth, his deceased wife's sister and the new queen of England.

Elizabeth, however, had different ideas.

The transformation of England into a Protestant country was a huge blow to the devout Catholic Philip, and the rejection of marriage from Elizabeth confirmed that the relationship between England and Spain would now be more strained.

Things went further downhill in 1570 when Pope Pius V issued a papal bull excommunicating Elizabeth and calling on all Catholics to do everything in their power to disobey Elizabeth's orders and remove her from power.

To a strong Catholic like Philip, this must have been a difficult order for him to ignore.

So, first check for understanding.

True or false? Philip II wanted to marry Elizabeth because he was in love with her.

Decide whether that's true or false now.

All right then, if you chose false, then congratulations, that is correct.

But let's justify this answer now.

Why was it false? Is it because, A, marrying Elizabeth would keep the alliance between England and Spain, or is it because of B, marrying Elizabeth would automatically make England a Catholic country? So decide now.

If you chose A, then congratulations.

That is correct.

Philip was very keen to keep the alliance between England and Spain.

Being rejected for marriage must have hurt Philip's pride, but to add further insult, English privateers, or pirates from a Spanish point of view, began attacking Spanish ships bringing treasure back from the New World, and it was seemingly with Elizabeth's knowledge and approval.

The man on the screen in front of you, Sir John Hawkins, was a very famous English privateer.

However, the worst of these from a Spanish perspective was Francis Drake, or El Draque, The Dragon, as they called him in Spanish.

Drake had a personal hatred of the Spanish and went out of his way to attack Spanish ships and Spanish settlements in the Americas.

Philip asked Elizabeth to arrest Drake for his crimes.

In response, Elizabeth knighted Drake aboard his ship, making him Sir Francis Drake.

Drake was not the only privateer, or sea dog as Elizabeth referred to these men, who were attacking Spanish treasure ships.

But he was the most successful, and from the Spanish point of view, he was the most feared and the most hated.

So, another quick check for understanding now.

What nickname was given to the English privateers who acted as pirates against the Spanish? Were they sea beggars, sea dogs, or sea horses? Choose now.

All right, if you chose B, sea dogs, then very well done.

That was the nickname that Elizabeth gave these men.

So one reason for Elizabeth's support for her privateers was the money they stole for her was being used to finance support for the Dutch rebellion in the Spanish Netherlands.

And that was being led by the man on the screen in front of you there, William of Orange, also known as William the Silent.

As a strong trading partner and fellow Protestant nation, England was a natural ally of the rebels.

The rebels were being assaulted by Spanish troops led by the Duke of Parma, who's also on the screen in front of you there.

And he was arguably Europe's greatest general at this point in time.

England provided a 100,000 pound loan, which was a huge amount of money in those days, and financed a company of mercenaries to aid the Dutch.

She also provided safe harbour for Dutch ships, and these ships were known as sea beggars.

The situation escalated, though, in 1585 when Elizabeth allowed the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, to take a force of 7,000 Englishmen to fight in the Netherlands.

They were fighting against the Duke of Parma.

So although no formal declaration had been made, England and Spain were now effectively at war.

Right, let's do another check for understanding to make sure that we've understood everything we've heard so far.

So I want to choose two reasons from the options on the screen in front of you there for why Spain wanted to invade England.

Was it because they wanted to force Elizabeth to marry Philip II? Did they want to get revenge for England invading Spain? Did they want to make England a Catholic country again? Or did they want to stop England from supporting the Dutch rebels? So choose two of those options now.

Okay, if you chose C and D, then congratulations.

That is correct.

Those are two of the reasons why Spain wanted to invade England.

Right, our first big task for today then.

So what I'd like you to do is, looking at the table that's on the screen in front of you, I want you to use that table to explain why each of the events listed below made Philip want to go to war against Elizabeth.

So there are four events, and I just want you to explain why those are a reason for Philip to declare war on Elizabeth.

Pause the video now, complete the table, and I'll see you when you're finished.

Okay, welcome back.

Let's go through these answers and see what we've got then.

So our first event, Elizabeth made England a Protestant country.

So you could have said that this is a reason for war because Philip was a devout Catholic and wanted to make everyone Catholic.

Our next event, privateers, or sea dogs as Elizabeth called them, attacked Spanish ships.

This could be seen as a reason for war because it made Spain weaker and poorer, and naturally, they're gonna wanna do something about that.

Our third event, Drake was knighted for his attacks.

This could be a reason for war because it was clearly designed as an insult to Spain.

And our final event, an army of 7,000 Englishmen was sent to the Spanish Netherlands.

This was a reason for war because it was an obvious act of war without an actual formal declaration of war.

You don't send 7,000 men to go and fight someone else unless you're at war with them.

Hopefully you've got some of the answers that I've got on the board there or, if not, something very similar and equally as good.

Let's move on now, though, to our next learning cycle.

How was the Spanish Armada defeated? Philip spent the next two years preparing a force to invade England.

His attack was delayed when, in 1587, Sir Francis Drake led a raid on the Spanish port of Cadiz, burning ships and supplies in an event known as the Singeing of the King of Spain's Beard.

The stress caused by this attack contributed to the death of Spain's most gifted admiral, a man called Santa Cruz.

He was replaced by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who was the highest ranking noble at courts at that point in time.

Unfortunately, though, he didn't actually have any experience of leading a fleet.

He suffered from violent seasickness, and reportedly he begged Philip not to be allowed to go in charge.

He sent a letter to Philip, but we don't know whether Philip either ignored his letter or Philip's secretaries just refused to pass the letter on to him.

Regardless, the Duke of Medina Sidonia's begging to not be put in charge of the Spanish Armada was ignored.

It was an unpromising start to the invasion, but unfortunately for the Spanish, things were about to get worse.

In May of 1588, the Invincible Armada, which is what the Spanish called their huge fleet of warships, was ready to set sail to England.

They were immediately forced back by storms in the Bay of Biscay, which is in the west coast of France.

They had to go back to Northern Spain with the ports there and had to wait out the storms. They had to wait for another month, and the whole time they were doing that, they were eating and drinking all the provisions that they had packed for their invasion.

In July, they successfully set sail again and made it into the English Channel where they were spotted off of the coast of Plymouth.

A large portion of the English Navy was waiting for them.

They were waiting in port in Plymouth.

But unfortunately, the time of day when they saw the Spanish, they were stuck in port.

The tide was coming in, and they weren't able to sail against the tide.

So a massive portion of the English fleet were effectively sitting ducks.

They were easy targets for the Spanish, but the inexperienced Medina Sidonia refused to take the initiative.

He refused to change the plan that Philip II had set out for him, and therefore he let the opportunity to attack and destroy the English fleet just pass him by.

A few hours passed, the tide changed, and the English fleet was able to make it out of port, and they now began to chase the Spanish up the English Channel.

The Spanish kept a tight defensive formation which prevented the English from being able to sail between their ships and attack them in the traditional manner that battles at sea usually went.

However, this was not a problem for the English Navy.

Under the leadership of the privateer Sir John Hawkins, who was one of the men that we saw earlier on the screen, the English Navy had undergone a major transformation.

Sir John Hawkins had completely redesigned the ships for the English Navy.

The ships were now slimmer and faster than the Spanish ships.

The English sailors were better paid and they were more professional, and their tactics were new and inventive.

English tactics were completely dependent on fighting the Spanish ships.

This is why English ships had been redesigned.

It was specifically to fight the Spanish.

The Spanish relied on their huge warships sailing close enough to another ship for their soldiers to board and attack hand to hand.

Huge numbers of soldiers were always on board Spanish warships.

The English used their fast and manoeuvrable ships to fire their cannons repeatedly from a distance, which didn't let the Spanish get close enough to become a threat.

In this way, the English harassed the Spanish all the way from Plymouth in the west to Dover in the east.

The Spanish were unable to respond because in many of their ships, they had packed the wrong size cannonballs, meaning that they couldn't return fire.

And although the English were performing better than the Spanish invaders, the whole time they were sailing up the Channel, the English Navy didn't actually manage to cause a huge amount of damage to the Spanish Armada.

The Spanish stopped at the French port of Calais, and they sent word to their army in the Spanish Netherlands that they were ready to transport their army across the water.

This was the plan.

A huge armada would transport a dangerous army into England.

That way, by water and by land, England would be defeated.

That was the plan anyway.

This was a dangerous moment when the Spanish stopped at Calais as the Spanish army was led by arguably the greatest general in Europe, as you saw him earlier, it's the Duke of Parma.

However, Parma was unable to meet up with the Armada as Dutch sea beggars prevented him from advancing.

The Duke of Parma needed to put his men into barges to get across the waterlogged region all around Calais to get up to those Spanish ships.

Unfortunately, the sea beggars prevented that from happening.

There's confusion.

The fact that Medina Sidonia had to wait around to try and hear from Parma, it was the perfect opportunity for the English to strike.

And on the night of 7th of August in 1588, the English launched eight old ships which had been set on fire and pushed them towards the Spanish Armada.

Fire ships, as they were known, were very dangerous.

If they banged into enemy ships, the blaze from the fire ship could catch on to the enemy ship, and that could spread throughout the whole fleet.

So fire ships had been used for centuries.

They were dangerous.

But the danger was well known.

There was easy ways to counteract them.

However, the Spanish thought that they weren't fire ships being launched towards them, but hell blazers, which is a special English invention.

Hell blazers were fire ships that were packed with gunpowder on a timed explosion, and they set off huge explosions.

The Spanish had been caught out by hell blazers before, and they were terrified that this was now happening again.

In a blind panic, the Spanish ships cut their anchor cables.

They didn't waste time trying to pull the anchors back up.

They just cut the cables to get out of there as soon as they possibly could in a frantic attempt to flee to safety.

The upside of this from an English perspective was that the Spanish defensive formation had now been broken.

The English took advantage of the scattered Spanish ships at dawn the next day at the Battle of Gravelines.

Although the English only managed to capture or sink a few of the Spanish ships, they defeated the Spanish and forced them to sail to Spain via the long way, which was north around Scotland and Ireland, as you can see on the map there.

The English were blocking their entrance back through the English Channel.

The Spanish had no choice but to retreat all the way around the British Isles in order to get home again.

Unfortunately for the Spanish, these were unfamiliar waters for them, and their maps for the area were not accurate.

Coupled with that, on their way home, horrendous storms, which Elizabeth called the Protestant Wind, wrecked nearly half of the Spanish fleets.

Without their anchors, they were unable to wait out the storms, and with their inaccurate maps, many ships sailed too close to the coast and were wrecked on the rocks.

Those that did survive suffered starvation, dehydration, and disease due to the lack of provisions.

The fact that they'd been eating and drinking those provisions before they managed to get out of Spanish waters meant that when they got around to English waters, there wasn't enough left.

Of the 130 ships and roughly 27,000 men of the Invincible Armada that set sail in May, only around 70 badly damaged ships and just 1/4 of the men returned in October.

England and the Protestant Wind had defeated the greatest invasion fleet that Europe had ever seen.

So let's now make sure we fully understand what it is we've just been listening to.

So, check for understanding here.

True or false? Most of the Spanish fleet was lost at the Battle of Gravelines.

Decide whether that's true or false now.

Okay, if you said false, then congratulations.

That is correct.

But let's now justify our answer.

Is that false because most of the Spanish fleet was wrecked in storms off of the coasts of Scotland and Ireland? Or was most of the Spanish fleet lost in storms off of the coasts of Denmark and Norway? Choose now.

Okay, if you chose A, then congratulations.

The Spanish fleet was wrecked off of the coasts of Scotland and Ireland.

There are three main factors that all of the reasons why the Spanish Armada was defeated can be grouped into.

And the first was Spanish mistakes.

Philip II was very controlling.

He didn't allow the Duke of Medina Sidonia to make his own plans based on the situation as he saw it.

He had to stick to Philip's plan.

As a result, Medina Sidonia didn't feel confident enough to change the plan and attack the English fleets in Plymouth.

It also meant that he had to wait around for Parma and his army to try and get to him when they're in great danger of doing so.

So those are some of the reasons why Spanish mistakes led to defeat of the Armada.

Let's do a quick check for understanding.

So I want to choose two mistakes the Spanish made during their invasion.

Did they, A, choose an admiral with no experience who suffered from seasickness? Did they, B, attack and raid French ports on their way to England? Did they, C, get lost on the way to England because their maps weren't accurate? Or did they, D, they were not prepared for a battle as their ships and tactics were not as good as the English fleets? Choose two of those now.

Alright, if you chose A and D, then congratulations.

Those are two other reasons why Spanish mistakes led to defeat of the Spanish Armada.

Another factor why the English were able to defeat the Spanish Armada was down to English skill.

And as we can see, that man on the screen there, Sir John Hawkins, was the man who.

Well, the privateer, who redesigned the English Navy to specifically attack Spanish ships.

Francis Drake's attack on Cadiz in the year before the Armada set sail was also very important because it resulted in the death from stress, effectively, of Spain's greatest admiral, Santa Cruz.

So, quick check for understanding here.

Who redesigned the English Navy to make it better able to fight the Spanish? Was it Sir John Hawkins, Sir Francis Drake, or William of Orange? Choose now.

Okay, if you chose A, then congratulations.

It was indeed Sir John Hawkins.

The final factor that led to defeat of the Spanish Armada was luck.

It could be strongly argued that if there wasn't these horrific storms over the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, the Spanish Armada could have got back to Spain quite safely, re-provisioned, and then launched another armada as soon as they were able to.

But because of those storms, that just wasn't the case.

It was also quite unlucky that Spain lost their greatest admiral just as they're about to launch their giant invasion.

So again, another quick check for understanding.

Why did Elizabeth refer to the storms that wrecked the Spanish Armada as the Protestant Wind? Is it because it was a propaganda and it was made to seem as though God supported the English and their religion? Is it because it was a statement of fact, storms around Ireland and Scotland are called Protestant Winds? Or was it because Philip II, who called it that, and Elizabeth was just repeating what he had called it? Choose now.

Okay, if you chose A, then congratulations.

It was indeed propaganda by Elizabeth to make it seem as though God supported the English and their religion.

Right, let's look at our next task now then.

So, I want you to give an example for each of the three factors that enabled England to defeat the Spanish Armada.

So you've heard quite a few specific examples of these three factors.

So if you've got lots of ideas for each of the factors, I want you to choose the one that you think was the most important.

So what's the most important Spanish mistake, the most important example of English skill, and the most important example of luck? Pause the video whilst you're doing this, and I'll see you once you're finished.

Okay, welcome back.

So hopefully you got on fine with that task.

Some examples of things which you could have written.

An example of Spanish mistake was Medina Sidonia was not a good choice of admiral.

He might have been the highest ranking noble.

That doesn't make him the best admiral, though.

An example of English skill could be England's ships were faster and they used better tactics.

For instance, they had those fire ships that the Spanish incorrectly identified as hell blazers.

An example of luck would be the storms that destroyed most of the Spanish Armada.

Hopefully you got some of those answers or other equally good answers in your table as well.

So, let's move on now to our final task.

I want you to explain which factor you think was the most important in the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

Was it Spanish mistakes? Was it English skill? Or was it luck? I want you to give at least one example of your chosen factor and also go on to explain how it helped to defeat the Spanish Armada.

There's no right or wrong answer here.

You can genuinely choose any one of those three.

The key part of this task is your ability to explain your point of view.

So give a really strong argument for why you think you're right.

Pause the video now, and I'll see you once you're finished.

Okay, welcome back.

So hopefully you got on fine with that task.

I've got an example up on the board here of how your answer could look.

Doesn't need to be the same as I've chosen.

You could have chosen a different factor to me, but hopefully your paragraph resembles something like this.

So I think English skill was the main factor in the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

The plan to send fire ships caused the Spanish to break their formation, which made them easier to defeat at the Battle of Gravelines.

Although Spanish mistakes didn't help, such as putting the wrong man in charge, and luck had a big part to play, for instance, when the storms off of Scotland and Ireland sunk much of the Spanish navy, without the skill of the English sailors, the Spanish would have still been able to successfully land troops in England and launch their invasion.

So in this paragraph, you can see that I've explained what factor I thought was the most important.

I've given an example of that factor, and I've explained how that example helped to cause the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

I've actually gone one step further, though, as well, and I've identified that I understand the other two factors are important, but I've then gone on further to explain why I don't think they're as important as my chosen factor.

Hopefully that makes sense to you.

So to conclude, Spain was angered by English privateers, the help that England gave to Dutch rebels, and England's new Protestant religion.

And in response, Spain launched a huge armada to invade England alongside a large Spanish army.

The English Navy, though, managed to defeat the Spanish Armada and forced the Spanish to retreat.

Many Spanish ships were sunk on their way back home by storms, and Elizabeth used the victory over the Spanish Armada as a form of propaganda.

Thank you very much for being with me during this lesson.

I hope you've learned a lot.

I hope you enjoyed yourself as well.

And I'll see you for the next one.

Bye-Bye.