![]() ![]() In those days, Philip avoided trying to overthrow Elizabeth “lest it prove a Pyrrhic victory, restoring England to the true faith only by placing a French queen upon the throne.” Readers without a keen sense of early-modern royal intrigues and alliances may be lost in the early pages of Hanson’s sprawling history, but in time things become clearer: with the French-hating (and, Hanson notes, memorably foul-breathed) Elizabeth safely on the throne, Philip was free to set his navy against hers in an effort not just to gain supremacy of the seas, but to launch Catholic revolts against the crown in Ireland and Scotland. ![]() That possibility, writes British journalist Hanson ( The Custom of the Sea, 2000, etc.), was real enough when Mary, Queen of Scots, was alive. Among other things, Spain’s Philip II, a Habsburg ruler, had to keep England and France from allying. ![]() Spain and England were relatively recent rivals in the late 16th century, but their competition was fierce-pirate raid here, sea skirmish there, blood spilled wherever Spanish and English ships met. Designs turn to accidents, and great ships to splinters, in this rousing tale of the Elizabethan navy’s finest hour. ![]()
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