Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604)

The Anglo-Spanish War of 1585 to 1604 was an undeclared, drawn-out conflict between Elizabethan England and Habsburg Spain, driven by English support for Dutch rebels against Spanish rule, English privateering against Spanish treasure shipping, and religious rivalry between Protestant England and Catholic Spain. Its best known episode is the Spanish Armada of 1588, a large invasion fleet sent against England that was scattered by English naval action in the Channel and then wrecked by storms while returning around Scotland and Ireland, a defeat that became a defining moment of Elizabeth I's reign. England mounted its own large but less successful counter-attack the following year, the English Armada of 1589, aimed at Spanish ports and the Azores, while both sides continued a long war of naval raids, privateering and colonial skirmishing across the Atlantic and Caribbean for the next decade and a half. The war ended inconclusively, without a decisive victor, when England's new king James I concluded the Treaty of London in 1604 with Spain.