The 33 Strategies of War

by Robert Greene

The defeat of the Spanish Armada has to be considered one of the most cost-effective in military history: a second-rate power that barely maintained a standing army was able to face down the greatest empire of its time. What made the victory possible was the application of a basic military axiom: attack their weaknesses with your strengths. England’s strengths were its small, mobile navy and its elaborate intelligence network; its weaknesses were its limited resources in men, weaponry, and money. Spain’s strengths were its vast wealth and its huge army and fleet; its weaknesses were the precarious structure of its finances, despite their magnitude, and the lumbering size and slowness of its ships. Elizabeth refused to fight on Spain’s terms, keeping her army out of the fray. Instead she attacked Spain’s weaknesses with her strengths: plaguing the Spanish galleons with her smaller ships, wreaking havoc on the country’s finances, using special ops to grind its war machine to a halt. She was able to control the situation by keeping England’s costs down while making the war effort more and more expensive for Spain. Eventually a time came when Philip could only fail: if the Armada sank, he would be ruined for years to come, and even if the Armada triumphed, victory would come so dear that he would ruin himself trying to exploit it on English soil.