Elizabeth I: The Warrior Queen is a documentary film which premiered on British television (BBC) in 2020.
Here is some basic information about this film:
** Hosted and presented by Lucy Worsley
** Language: English
** Subtitles: English
** Run time: 54 minutes
Elizabeth was born in 1533. She is the daughter of King Henry VIII and Queen Anne Boleyn who was Henry’s second wife.
Elizabeth became Queen of England in 1558. She ruled for more than forty years until her death in 1603.
This film about her life and career focuses on two important cases, on two naval campaigns:
** The Spanish Armada (1588)
** The English Counter-Armada (1589)
The history of the Spanish Armada is well-known.
The Spanish King Filip II sent an invincible armada of warships to attack England, because he wanted to defeat the Protestant Queen Elizabeth and to restore the Catholic faith as the only religion in England.
The English fleet managed to stop the Spanish Armada. And not only that. The English fleet defeated the Spanish Armada.
Some Spanish ships were destroyed, while the rest were scattered all over the place. The ships which were not destroyed had to return to Spain.
This event was a defining moment for Elizabeth. Her rule of England was confirmed. Some people had claimed that this country should be ruled by a king.
Some people had claimed a woman should not try to rule. But Elizabeth showed that she was a warrior queen and now she enjoyed the respect of her people.
In the following year (1589), she organized a Counter-Armada whose purpose was to make sure that Spain would never attack England again.
The English had to punish the Spanish for what they had done or rather what they had tried to do the previous year. The English had to teach the Spanish a lesson they would never forget.
What happens when Lucy Worsley investigates the naval campaigns of 1588 and 1589?
She discovers that the traditional and well-known account of the Spanish Armada is not true at all. The truth is buried under a layer of propaganda.
King Filip II did order his fleet to attack England. He did hope to restore the Catholic faith in England. But he did not describe his fleet as an “invincible Armada.”
This description was invested by the British. Why? The reason is obvious. If you defeat an invincible armada, your victory is more impressive.
The Spanish fleet did not achieve its goal. But this was not so much because the English fleet was powerful. It was more because the Spanish side suffered a series of misfortunes.
The commander of the Spanish fleet had no experience with naval warfare. He was an expert on military warfare on land.
The weather was bad for the Spanish.
The wind was against them.
A Spanish army of 10,000 troops was waiting at the northern coast of the continent. The Spanish ships were supposed to meet this army, take the troops on board, transport them across the English Channel and then drop them on the southern coast of England.
But because of bad weather, because the wind was against them, the Spanish fleet never managed to rendezvous with the army.
The wind was against the Spanish. According to the English interpretation, this fact was a clear sign that God was on the side of the English.
The commander of the English fleet managed to create confusion and disorder in the Spanish fleet when he set some ships on fire and let them drift slowly towards the Spanish ships.
Elizabeth gave a speech to English troops assembled at Tilbury in which she promised to fight for England.
This famous speech was actually given eleven days after the Spanish fleet had been defeated and when the Spanish survivors were already on their way back to Spain.
The propaganda version was not true, but it was effective. According to the propaganda version, the British had defeated an invincible armada of ships and the credit for this belonged to Elizabeth – the warrior queen!
Lucy’s investigation shows that there is a huge gap between fact and fiction when we are talking about the Spanish Armada of 1588.
What about the second case? What about the English Counter-Armada of 1589? Lucy’s investigation has a surprising conclusion:
The Counter-Armada of 1589 has virtually disappeared from the historical record and from public memory in the UK! Almost as if it never happened!
Why?
What happened during this campaign?
The answer is that the English Counter-Armada was a failure. It was a naval disaster.
The English tried to attack and defeat Spain, but they could not do this. They did send some ships to Spain, but they could not achieve what they were hoping to do.
The English also tried to enter via Portugal, which was at the time under Spanish control. They hoped the Portuguese were going to rise up and support the British attack on Spain. But the plan did not work.
In short: the English Counter-Armada failed. The failure was so huge that no propaganda could transform it into a victory. The best option was to forget about it. The solution was to pretend it never happened.
Lucy’s investigation shows that the English and the British have virtually erased this case from their history and from their memory.
In Spain, the situation is different. In Spain, this moment is still remembered, probably because many nations like to focus on victories and to forget about defeats.
In the film, Lucy interviews a Spanish historian who has written a book about this case and they talk about what happened and what people know.
Historian Luis Gorrochategui Santos explains that the loss of the English armada in 1589 was actually worse than the loss of the Spanish armada in 1588.
But today the English defeat is more or less forgotten, because the propaganda of Elizabeth I was better than the propaganda of Filip II.
As the Spanish historian says:
“Your propaganda was better than ours!”
This film offers an interesting look at the life and career of Elizabeth I. It is does not cover her whole life, but it focuses on two major moments in her life.
This study of fact and fiction – of reality and propaganda – during the reign of Elizabeth I explains why her time as queen is regarded as an important chapter in the history of England.
REFERENCES
# 1. Royal Myths and Secrets
A series hosted and presented by Lucy Worsley
Episode 1
Elizabeth I: The Warrior Queen
(2020)
Episode 2
Queen Anne: The Mother of Great Britain
(2020)
Episode 3
Marie Antoinette: The Doomed Queen
(2020)
Episode 4
Henry VIII’s Reformation
(2021)
Episode 5
Kings George III & IV and the Napoleonic War
(2021)
Episode 6
The Romanovs and the Russian Revolution
(2021)
# 2. Books about 1588 and 1589
The Armada
By Garrett Mattingly
(2005)
The Spanish Armada: A History
By Robert Hutchinson
(2014)
The English Armada:
The Greatest Naval Disaster in English History
By Luis Gorrochategui Santos
(2018)
*****
Elizabeth I
(1533-1603)
Queen of England 1558-1603
The Tilbury Speech (1588)
The Birth of the Warrior Queen
In the upper left corner:
The naval battle in the English Channel
In the lower left corner:
The queen's hand is resting on the globe
This detail shows she has ambitions:
She wants England to be a global power
*****
Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada 1588
The Apothecaries painting
Sometimes attributed to the English painter
Nicholas Hilliard
(1547-1619)
*****
The English Armada:
The Greatest Naval Disaster in English History
by Luis Gorrochategui Santos
(2018)
*****
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