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On this date in the year 1588 the Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon for the English Channel with the express purpose of conquering England.  The plan was that the ships would link up with the Duke of Parma's army, which would be waiting on the Flanders coast, and escort the army across the Channel so that they could invade southeast England and eventually storm London and topple Queen Elizabeth I and replace her with a sound Catholic.  King Philip II of Spain was so confident that his armada was invincible that he discarded a part of the plan that would have sent a diversionary fleet to Ireland to draw off the English navy, and thus allow his fleet to sail through the English Channel unmolested.  Having scrapped that part of the plan may very well have been the determining factor which led this enterprise to disaster.  The English ships, though outnumbered, proved more than a match for the Spanish fleet and eventually drove the armada away from their rendezvous point with Parma and into its storm plagued path around the British Isles, where over half of the ships wound up destroyed and more than half of the crew lost.Read more about the Spanish Armada and its failed attempt to conquer England HERE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Armada)Â
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