The term Invincible Armada, referring to the fleet that Felipe II sent in 1588 to Flanders and then England, is usually attributed to a letter from William Cecil (1520-1598), Baron de Burghley, adviser and right hand of Elizabeth I, who used it to mock the company that the Spanish nicknamed, according to him, as ‘invincible’, but which turned out to be very beatable. Not because the armada was defeated, but because with hardly any engagement with the British he had to return up the rugged Irish coast with dire consequences…
Not in vain, Pedro Luis Chinchilla in his recommendable work ‘The prisoners of the Invincible Armada’ (Editions B) he clarifies that the letter that is usually cited from Burghley is a copy made by the Tuscan Petruccio Ubaldini, a calligrapher at the service of Isabel Iwhich incorporated phrases and sentences of its own making that did not appear in the original English, emphasizing the nickname of ‘invincible’ with sarcasm.
term salad
The controversial origin of the term means that at a popular level in Spain there is a recurring request to replace it with a more traditional one. What few tend to realize is that calling the Spanish Armada ‘Invincible’ in the Anglo-Saxon world is not even common, being the term ‘Spanish Armada’ the most widely used, while in Spain, by dint of repeating tag lines such as ‘the misnamed Invincible Armada’ or asking that it not be used, it has ended up becoming a generalized term. It can even be said that, more than the copied letter, the one who contributed the most to popularize the concept of invincible were Spanish sources. Father Pedro de Ribadeneira in his ‘Treatise on Tribulation’ of 1589 wrote about popular sentiment:
«A great and powerful army, and that seemed invincible, ready to return for the cause of God and his holy Catholic faith, and accompanied by so many prayers and prayers and penances of his faithful and servants, has been undone and lost in such a way. strange that it cannot be denied, but is a scourge and severe punishment from the hand of the Most High».
It does not help to look for more historiographical and less propagandistic alternatives that terms like ‘Great Army’, ‘Happy Armada’ or ‘Grande y Felicísima Armada’ are not actually documented as belonging to the period. As Chinchilla also explains in his work and on his website Armada Invencible.org, these names do not appear in any original document from the period to specifically designate this fleet. «According to the original documents, the Spanish Armada of 1588 is called ‘the army’ (almost always in the masculine). In all the correspondence and documents referring to the Spanish Armada written both by Felipe II, the Duke of Medina SidoniaRecalde, Leyva and all the Spanish participants in the war, the name used is ‘the army’”, explains this author on his website.
Defeat of the invincible armada, painting by Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg (1796)
Chinchilla mentions that of all the reports of the people embarking on this fleet in one dated in Lisbon on May 9, 1588, it was called ‘Felicísima Armada’, a name that disappeared in the reissue of that document in Madrid and which they had already received before other Spanish fleets of the period. The same occurs with another document dated September 5, 1588 in which he is called ‘happy Armada in which the Duke of Medina is general, in the conquest of England’. Two isolated mentions that do not allow us to defend that the fleet was generally known by that name or that it was a distinctive adjective.
Felipe II spoke in his writings of “a large army” or “a great army” appealing exclusively to its size
The same happens with the name ‘Great Army’, which is not exclusive to this particular army either. Felipe II spoke in his writings of ‘a thick army’ or ‘a great army’, appealing exclusively to its size and never together with the happy term. Also the English in some engravings made reference to ‘The great Spanish Armada’ (the enormous Spanish Armada), despite the fact that they had more ships and almost the same tonnage as the Spanish, contrary to the propagated myth of a David against Goliath.
Finally, the concept ‘the company of England’ or ‘Jornada de Inglaterra’ can be used for all kinds of actions and maneuvers of what was a recurring rivalry between Spain and England, but it cannot be limited to the campaign of 1588 alone. .
«As a solution, I encourage all those who find the term ‘Invincible Armada’ squeaky to use simply the ‘Armada of 1588’ or, even better, ‘Her Majesty’s Royal Navy and Armies of 1588’a name used by the Duke of Medina Sidonia and which, moreover, does not forget the third parties on board, the other great protagonists of this story”, concludes Chinchilla.