ABSTRACT
At the end of the sixteenth century European politics were dominated by the hostility between two great nations and two great rulers, Catholic Spain under Philip II and schismatic England under Elizabeth. Both laid claim to rule the world, and because the same ambition consumed them conflict was inevitable. Each side found every conceivable justification for the conflict. Each saw the other in unqualified terms of black and white, in the mystical absolutes of villain and hero. To the English, Spain, Philip II, and the Pope were fiends, risen straight from hell. To the Spanish, England was an infernal many-headed monster and Elizabeth the Great Prostitute of the Apocalypse. England proscribed Catholicism, not merely as abominable superstition, but as treason against the security of the State. Spain proscribed Protestantism for the same reasons. In such a climate of tension, if the time comes when a hero believes himself strong enough to destroy a villain, he feels justified in seizing the opportunity. This is called “preventive war,” and it is the story of the “Invincible Armada.” Spain, like its national hero Don Quixote, expended all its strength and treasure in battling the winds.
