The Great Enterprise: The History of the Spanish Armada (The Folio Society)

192 pp. The great enterprise that Philip II set in motion in 1586 led, two years later, to the first major battle in a long struggle. There had been hostilities on both sides of the Atlantic before this, but the Armada fight marked the beginning of a new kind of conflict, the first world war, in fact, since Philip ruled an empire on which the sun never set, and both sides employed a new weapon, the ocean-going galleon, armed with guns firing broadside." - Introduction