[Prospero]

That cannon looks almost too intact for four centuries.

I just read a scholarly work on that period, Garrett Mattingly's The Armada, Cambridge (1959), and it was fascinating; even if a bit dry, t'was worth it. The popular accounts were, and still are, well-known but the incredible logistics, the delays, the situation in the Low Lands and in France, on the continent, as well as on the Thames and within the walls of the Escorial, were breathtaking.

The details of how the fleet was constucted and how it evaporated are a monument to so many things.

I may have to re-read it, following some further investigations into the Wars of Religion from the prespective of France.

SunkenCiv is knocking them out of the ballpark this morning!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Prospero!

The size of the planned ground invasion force seems too small to have prevailed, but it would have been the largest since the days of the Roman Empire, which were actually the largest ever made. :’)