The Last Armada
Queen Elizabeth, Juan del Águila, and Hugh O'Neill: The Story of the 100-Day Spanish Invasion
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The story of the last great naval battle between England and Spain, evoking a number of colorful and dangerous personalities who fought in the climactic conclusion to these two countries’ great rivalry on the sea.
Ireland: Christmas Eve, 1601.
As thunder crashes and lightning rakes the sky, three very different commanders line up for a battle that will decide the fate of a nation. General Juan del Águila has been sprung from a prison cell to command the last great Spanish armada. His mission: to seize a bridgehead in Queen Elizabeth's England and hold it.
Facing him is Charles Blount, a brilliant English strategist whose career is also under a cloud. His affair with a married woman edged him into a treasonous conspiracy—and brought him to within a hair’s breadth of the gallows.
Meanwhile, Irish insurgent Hugh O’Neill knows that this is his final chance to drive the English out of Ireland. For each man, this is the last throw of the dice. Tomorrow they will be either heroes or failures.
These colorful commanders come alive in this true story of courage and endurance, of bitterness and betrayal, and of drama and intrigue at the highest levels in the courts of England and Spain.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1601, 13 years after the failure of the Great Armada's attempt to invade the British Isles, the Spanish tried again, this time through Ireland. Irish journalist Ekin (The Stolen Village) effectively brings to life this fateful but largely forgotten second effort to claim England for Catholicism and the Spanish Hapsburgs. It's a detailed narrative filled with heroism, treachery, dynastic politics, and adultery the makings of a soap opera, except that all of it actually happened. Ekin wrings nearly everything he can from various archives; when details threaten to overwhelm the narrative, the voices of the participants whether monarchs or lowly soldiers revive the reader from fatigue. Where the archives are silent, Ekin offers prudent judgments about what might have occurred while reporting fairly on earlier participants' and historians' differing conclusions. And if Ekin sometimes goes a bit far, arguing, for example, that the 1601 siege of Kinsale "altered the balance of world power and changed history," he's no doubt correct that it deeply and permanently divided Ireland in ways that still endure. Ekin's work is a nice contribution to the historical literature, and one very well told. Illus.
