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The Armada | 
 enlarge | Author: Garrett Mattingly
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 56425
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0618565914
Dewey Decimal Number: 942.055
EAN: 9780618565917
ASIN: 0618565914
Publication Date: August 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Chronicling one of the most spectacular events of the sixteenth century, The Armada is the definitive story of the English fleet's infamous defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The esteemed and critically acclaimed historian Garrett Mattingly explores all dimensions of the naval campaign, which captured the attention of the European world and played a deciding role in the settlement of the New World. "So skillfully constructed it reads like a novel" (New York Times), The Armada is sure to appeal to the scholar and amateur historian alike.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Was it really this exciting...YES November 28, 2008
A truly unique style that we all should strive to emulate
The story this author tells is truly an amazing one not necessarily an untold story but he tells it in such a way that it seems fresh and new even though the book was written in the early 1960s. The end result is a story not of brave little England fending off Spain but is more the saga of a 16th century World War with a very confusing set of alliances with nations first allied with and then fighting one another . By presenting this wider picture Mattingly informs us all from beyond the grave. I was completely unaware of many of the facts he revealed. There is never a dull moment.
Overall-A great resource for anyone interested in this period in history.
 A Classic of Narrative History - It Makes Elizabethan History Almost As Exciting As It Really Was April 10, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"The Armada" by Garrett Mattingly is a classic of narrative history. It tells the entire story of the Spanish naval attack on Elizabethan England from the beginning of the many disagreements between the two countries, to the inception of the plan for the armada and its final defeat. The background history and the struggles between the Catholics and Protestants in France and Holland are fitted nicely into the big picture Mattingly portrays. This book was primarily written for the layman with no former knowledge of the subject, and does a wonderful job of communicating the nuances of Anglo-Protestant/Spanish-Catholic hostility.
At times Mattingly stretched what we know people thought, as opposed to what we think they must have thought. For example, he wrote of Sir Francis Drake's preemptive strike against the Spanish fleet assembling at Cadiz, saying, "Drake felt that he knew how to hinder those preparations by such sudden thrusts as his campaigns in the Caribbean had taught him" (p. 85). Mattingly was basing this on Drake's previous and future actions. But when he wrote of the army preparations at London, and how all foreigners regardless of religion were suspected of being spies, commenting "everyone about the queen" (p. 344) hoped "that English patriotism, firmly based on xenophobia, would prove stronger than any religious bond" (p. 345), Mattingly was on very thin ground. He did not know what everyone was thinking.
Interestingly enough, he only allotted only seven of his 34 chapters to the actual battle. Mattingly evidently saw the battle as a kind of third or fifth act climax to events that had been transpiring since Elizabeth came to the English throne. He created a huge amount of suspense in the early chapters, especially from the instant word reached Europe that the English had executed the Catholic Queen of Scots, Mary. In fact, this book can be likened to a Hitchcock movie in this manner. So all-absorbing are the details before the Armada sails, that the actual battle is somewhat of a letdown. Our expectations outweigh the outcome. While I applaud Mattingly for this, as his book is thereby made more engaging to laymen, his principal audience (and because the literary device of suspense is one of the most effective means of holding any audience to the very end), I was a wee bit disappointed.
According to Mattingly, this battle marked the beginning and not the end of real Spanish sea power, and also foretold the failure of the Counter-Reformation to reimpose Catholicism on all Protestants (pp. 397, 401). The book says in closing that the legend of the few Englishmen, in few ships, winning the battle against the many Spaniards, in countless ships, "became as important as the actual event - perhaps even more important" (p. 402). For Mattingly, it was a reminder of the events of his own lifetime, when frail England once again held off the frightful host of Nazis during the Battle of Britain. And in this sense it will always inspire the hopeless underdogs who fight for freedom against oppression. I highly recommend Garrett Mattingly's "The Armada" as a classic of narrative history. Just be careful how much you read into what the characters are supposedly thinking at any given time, since no one knows for sure.
The Armada December 14, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
A classic since it first hit print, and deservedly so. Garrett Mattingly's The Armada will put you at Sir Francis Drake's elbow on board the Elizabeth Bonaventure when he sails into Cadiz to singe the beard of Philip of Spain. A marvelous you-are-there book, beginning with the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots and ending with Elizabeth the First's butt sitting more firmly on the throne of England than ever before in her reign.
The Armada October 5, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Wonderfully put together piece of writing. Not as boring as textbook, but not quite a novel...Mattingly's piece is extremely readable and easier to relate to than a more didactic compliation of the same historic events.
A classic worthy of the title January 29, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Not all "classics" of history age as well as Garrett Mattingly's "The Armada," which was first published in 1959 to coincide with the quadricentennial of Philip II's failed attempt at the so-called "Enterprise of England." His scholarship may be subject to legitimate contemporary scrutiny and reassessment, but his writing is timeless.
The naval commander of the Spanish Armada, the duke of Medina Sidonia, emerges as the unlikely hero in Mattingly's narrative of the epic events in the fateful year of 1588. Medina Sidonia has for centuries been the primary scapegoat for the failure of the Armada, a fate that the duke himself perpetuated by taking blame for the disaster and frequently admitting that he was not up to the challenge. Mattingly's rejoinder is "hogwash" - Medina Sidonia did an admirable job in leading the Armada to within a whisker of success despite the tremendous odds stacked against it for a variety of reasons. The author suggests that Horatio Nelson himself could have done no better than the much-maligned duke. As far as finger pointing goes, Mattingly condemns the duke of Parma, the Spanish land commander in the Netherlands and generally considered the greatest general of the age, for his failures to be adequately prepared to meet the Armada and sail on to the invasion of England. (Modern scholars such as Geoffrey Parker have vigorously defended Parma's performance recently.)
Mattingly focuses on several aspects of the naval engagement itself that are worthy of note and rather counter to conventional wisdom. To begin with, he rightfully stresses the unprecedented nature of the sea battles that ensued when the Armada met the English fleet off the southern coast of England in the first week of August 1588. Never before had fleets of such size met in running combat. A change so dramatic in naval warfare would not happen again, Mattingly writes, until 1942 when the US and Japanese fleets engaged in a contest of aircraft carriers fighting each other over the horizon. Thus, all major naval battles from 1588 to 1942 differ only in ship design and tactics, not in any other fundamental way. And Mattingly notes that the four naval engagements that occurred along the south English coast from the Eddystone to the Isle of Wight were each far larger in terms of ships engaged and shots fired than all other sea battles before them.
Perhaps most surprising is Mattingly's generally positive assessment of Spanish seamanship, discipline and tactics, and his argument that the "revolutionary" English strategy of long-range heavy bombardment from more mobile "race built" ship designs was largely a failure (for some reason the author makes no mention of the four-wheel artillery carriage design that did so much to add firepower and rate of fire to English ships). Indeed, Mattingly asserts that Sir Francis Drake's destruction of a depot of barrel staves at St. Francis Cape in 1587 that were destined for the Armada did as much, if not more, than anything else to cripple the Spanish fleet because they were forced to sail with green wood barrels that caused much of their water and food to putrefy. And the greatest English advantage in the entire campaign, according to Mattingly, was that the battles occurred close to home ports so they could quickly and easily resupply critical items like powder, ammunition, and victuals, all of which the English ships ran out of on several occasions during the week. If the English fleet had met the Armada off the coast of Portugal, as many had argued for, they would have been forced to break off the engagement after just one or two battles of the ferocity and intensity that occurred off the English coast.
Much has been made of the English advantage in leadership and crew experience and the outdated Spanish "crescent" arrangement, which was the common deployment of gallies in the Mediterranean but totally unsuited, many have argued, for naval warfare in the open ocean against huge warships. But Mattingly writes that the crescent was the perfect formation for the Armada's essentially defensive task - secure passage through the Channel, rendezvous with the Parma's army, and escort the convoy across. Time and again, the author lauds Medina Sidonia and the Spanish sailors for keeping in formation and sliding past the tactically superior English fleet on their way through the Channel. Meanwhile, the English were frustrated by the inability of their advantage in long-range gunnery and superior maneuverability to destroy the Spanish warships located at the horns of the crescent. It was only the famed fireships that ultimately caused the Armada's formation to lose cohesion and thus vulnerable to English decimation.
So, was the defeat of the Armada really all that decisive? Militarily speaking, Mattingly says "no." The Spanish were able to recover, defeat the Drake-led invasion of Portugal the next year, and continued to fight Elizabeth and import bullion across the Atlantic for decades. Politically speaking, the author says "yes," the failure of the Armada to link with Parma and invade England permanently undermined Spanish prestige and influence in Europe, ushering in the ultimate defeat of the Counter-Reformation that Philip II championed and led in many ways.
All in all, a great book that is both fun to read and informative.
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