The Brittany campaign, or the campaign of Brittany, was a military occupation of Brittany, France, by Spain. It began in summer 1590 when Philippe-Emmanuel de Lorraine, Duke of Mercœur, the governor of Brittany, offered the port of Blavet to King Philip II of Spain so that he could harbour his fleet. The occupation formally ended on May 2, 1598, with the Peace of Vervins.
The Spanish used it as a base of operations to protect the treasure fleets, frustrate English naval operations, make incursions along the English coast and aid the Catholic League, all with the ultimate goal being the invasion of England.
Background
On September 22, 1588, the surviving ships of the Grand Armada began to enter various Spanish ports with their battered ships, exhausted crews and a considerable number of sick men on board.
There is no doubt that the failure of the enterprise of England represented a serious setback to Philip II's strategic thinking, although its repercussions were felt much more on a psychological level than a material one, since Casado Soto had accurately documented that of the 123 ships that sailed from La Coruña, "only" 31 were lost, of which only 3 were galleons, the rest being the urcas and other smaller vessels.
On the other hand, the invasion project was not abandoned and during the last years of the reign of Philip II there were several attempts to carry it out, within the increasingly generalized confrontation to which the two monarchies were forced in different maritime and ground based scenarios, among which the Brittany campaign stands out.
Armada after the return of the expedition
The need to guarantee the safety of Spain's coasts while facing the very real fear of a potential English attack determined the adoption of a series of measures aimed at recovering the combat capacity of Spain's Navy, while at the same time replacing the human losses.
On the one hand, most of the ships that survived the expedition were concentrated in Santander, where the necessary repairs were carried out using all available resources. Only the galleons "San Bernardo" and "San Juan" from the Portuguese squadron, the "San Bartolomé" from Don Pedro de Valdés' squadron, together with the galleys "Diana" and "Princesa" and some smaller boats remained in La Coruña.
In November, 1588, Philip II ordered the construction of 21 new galleons, all of them large. 12 of them were built in Cantabrian ports and stood out due to their number and the names they received; they were known as "The twelve apostles". In addition, 6 were made in Portugal, 2 in Gibraltar and 1 in Vinaroz; all of them entered service in a very short space of time.
On the other hand, shortly after the return of the Armada, a general mobilization of troops had been ordered in all the coastal provinces with which to face the expected response from the English, although the arrival of winter temporarily distanced the fear of an immediate counterattack thus restoring confidence.
The resultant decrease in tension allowed the infantry units that returned with the Armada to be sent to winter in the interior, thus alleviating Santander of the burden of billeting the large number of attack forces that were concentrated there.
During the first months of 1589, all these units were restructured, grouping them into two tercios that remained under the command of Don Agustín de Mexía and Don Francisco de Toledo. They were joined by the tercio of Don Juan del Águila which had not taken part in the enterprise of England but which was attached to the Armada.
English attack on La Coruña and Lisbon
The situation described continued to be the same when the Spanish coasts were surprised by England's response, eager to take advantage of circumstances that they considered very favorable.
With the arrival of spring, 180 ships with 27,667 men sailed from Plymouth under the command of Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norris with the objectives of destroying the remnants of the Spanish Armada ships in Santander, then seizing Lisbon and the Azores in the name of Don António, Prior of Crato who kept alive his hopes of accessing the Portuguese throne.
As this formidable fleet approached the Galician coast, it received notice that the Armada was anchored in La Coruña, whereupon Drake decided to revise the initial plans and attack that port to surprise and destroy the Armada ships that he assumed were gathered there.
The information was false because the Armada stayed in Santander, completely oblivious to what was coming, while in the port of A Coruña only the aforementioned ships were found. Drake soon realized his mistake but, for reasons that have never been sufficiently explained, decided to continue the attack and after overcoming the initial weak resistance, managed to land the bulk of his forces on the beach of Santa Lucía on May 4.
The Viceroy of Galicia, Juan Pacheco de Toledo, 2nd Marquis of Cerralbo, could only oppose them with 1,500 hastily mobilized soldiers in and around the city. Despite which, all of Drake's attempts to seize La Coruña failed in the face of the tenacious resistance offered by these forces and the population itself, so on May 18 he was forced to re-embark his troops, leaving the port the following day. Their losses were estimated at between 1,000 and 1,500 men, while on the Spanish side, three galleons were set on fire by their own crews to prevent them from falling into enemy hands, although the galleys that fled to the Betanzos estuary were saved.
From Galicia, the English ships went along the Portuguese coast during the first days of June where they attempted to capture Lisbon. After intense fighting, they failed and ultimately retreated. These bloody actions represented a serious setback for Drake who had to return to England after losing half of his troops, some 10,000 men between dead and wounded, to which the loss of nine ships had to be added, seven of them off Lisbon, all without being able to obtain any immediate benefit. In the end, the expedition was an abject failure with only 102 ships and 3,722 men returning to claim their pay.
Change of strategy
The English attack on La Coruña caused a great commotion by revealing, once again, the enemy's ability to operate on the peninsular coasts and although the action had failed, the reality of a landing of English infantry on Spanish soil and the evidence that several cities had felt seriously threatened during the days of the siege could not be denied.
It was therefore necessary to decide what urgent measures to take so as to deal with the possibility of new English attacks on the Spanish coasts while adequately protecting the arrival of the fleets from the Indies.
The decision was made to transfer the entire navy to the port of Ferrol, which, due to its geographical location, was best suited for carrying out these missions. Ferrol and Lisbon would be, from then on, the bases from which naval operations would be carried out which, due to its numbers and characteristics, was of great importance, as evidenced by the fact that at the beginning of 1590, the following ships were anchored in Ferrol:
The impact caused by the English actions was so great that Philip II's Court even considered projects as chimerical as the one presented by the pilot Juan de Escalante to set English ships ablaze in their own ports.
This method of attack by means of fire ships had manifested itself in all its effectiveness during the 1584-1585 siege of Antwerp by Alexander Farnese and on the night of August 7, 1588, when used by the English against the Grand Armada anchored in Dunkirk.
The memory of these events and Escalante's prestige provided him with the necessary means to carry out his plan. To this end, "three Benaquero ships" called "Santa María", "San Julián" and "San Pedro" were seized, valued at 500, 450 and 350 ducats and owned by Juan Pérez de Larreta, Sebastián del Aya and Miguel de Cordillos, respectively.
The three ships left, in mid-August, accompanied by a flyboat in which Juan de Escalante was travelling, ready to carry out his feat. But...
when they were about to enter the channel, on August twenty-seventh, they encountered some English naval ships, which began to follow them so intently that they provoked Escalante to order the crews of his other ships to go over to his flyboat and to scuttle them, which they did, without saving anything else...
The sad end of this episode is known from the numerous claims that the owners of the requisitioned vessels and their relatives filed in court to try to obtain financial compensation for the loss of what constituted their only means of livelihood.
The hope of finishing off the enemy Armada through a successful coup de main was also present in the minds of the English. Statements obtained from a prisoner of the enterprise of England, the hospital official Francisco de Ledesma, reveal that, during his captivity, he was able to learn that twelve Englishmen had embarked on a French urca anchored in the port of "Artamua", "who know how to speak French and Spanish and other languages, and among them an engineer ... who brought orders to set fire to the Armada wherever it was moored, after it was refurbished."
But aside from these utopian projects, the fact is that during these first months, the Spanish strategy had an eminently defensive character, since its fundamental objective was to protect the arrival of the fleets from the Indies, and as would later happen in Brittany, the need for new types of ships capable of adapting to the needs of this type of confrontation began to be considered.
In this sense, the opinion of Don Juan Maldonado is very illustrative, who, in October 1589, already explained to the King the
need that there is in this Navy for some vessels that, being long-range sailboats, are capable of carrying artillery and some men to spot and attack the corsair ships that they find, for having seen some that they have sailed in in recent days, they cannot be pursued with the big ships, nor are the pataches suitable, for they are small, thus the need for medium vessels of 150 to 200 tons; their draught is of great consideration, since being light is what is intended.
Operations in Brittany
These defensive plans were still in force when, after the winter of 1589–1590, Philip II addressed the Council of War requesting their opinion on what could be done during that year with the Navy concentrated in Ferrol. By the summer of 1590, some 100 vessels were ready for service.
At its meeting on May 18, 1590, the council's response could not have been more expressive, since it considered that "time being so far advanced and how few soldiers and mariners they have to be able to undertake any important enterprise", a most intriguing one would be for
15 or 20 large ships to be chosen and adding to those another 12 or 15 flyboats, putting in them elite soldiers who could be chosen from the Tercios that are dedicated to them... patrol the coasts of these kingdoms and purge and secure these seas of corsairs and await and escort the fleets from the Indies and that the other ships may be discharged and the remaining infantry go into garrisons and in this way Your Majesty will save a lot of costs and be able to entertain yourself and wait for a better time and situation to carry out the main enterprise.
This position by those who considered that the "main business" continued to be the invasion of England, had been adopted with the conviction that they did not have all the necessary elements to issue a well-founded opinion, and they declared as much to the King, indicating that "in order to realize what Your Majesty commands, being a business of such consideration, it was necessary for the Council to be more prudent and informed of the things that are being discussed"
A few weeks later, on July 6, 1590, the War Council learned of a letter that Diego Maldonado had sent from Nantes in which he relayed an offer from Philippe-Emmanuel de Lorraine, Duke of Mercœur of the "port of Blavet (today called Port-Louis, Morbihan), wherein to assemble his Navy, and everything in Brittany that is in his charge and government", expressing the hope with which he awaited "the help and protection of Your Majesty to free him from the violence and power of the heretics".