There is a direct connection between armies with plenty of resources and predictability. The reason is that because they rely on their equipment rather than on strategy and knowledge, they grow mentally lazy.
Rather than thinking innovatively, they answer all their problems by amassing more of what they have (think of the Vietnam War). However, it’s not what you have that brings victory, but how you use it.
When you have less you immediately become more inventive: the old adage, ‘desperation is the mother of creativity’ rings true here. By utilizing creativity, you become more adaptable than an enemy that is overly dependent on technology, and thus you can outfox them.
Since you have so little, you use it well. You learn to be efficient and make time your ally.
Elizabeth I Outsmarts the King
When the throne of England was ascended by Queen Elizabeth I in 1558, she found a country that had been torn apart by religious strife and had its finances in the pits.
Despite this, the queen hoped to forge a state with a strong foundation, a long period of peace, and a prosperous economy: after all, a wealthy state was a state with choices.
She understood that she could not compete with a large continental power such as Spain and France in war and that England’s only avenue to strength was peace, trade, and economic stability.
For twenty years she worked to achieve just this, and indeed the situation improved. Then suddenly in the late 1570s, she was threatened with war by King Philip II of Spain.
Philip was a devout Catholic whose dream was to stem the tide of Protestantism which was sweeping through Europe. He had already gone to war with the Low Countries (now Belgium and the Netherlands) but was meeting trouble in his attempts to crush the rebels.
Despite this, he had kept his cherished dream of restoring Catholicism in England. At first, he tried intrigue: he plotted to have Elizabeth replaced with her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots.
When this failed, he began to assemble a gigantic armada to invade and crush England. Unfortunately, he was unable to keep his intentions well hidden, which allowed the English to plan for this eventuality.
Elizabeth’s ministers thought of war as inevitable, and so pressured the queen to send a large force to the Low Countries which would force Philip to divert even more attention and resources there and away from England. This was by no means a bad plan.
Yet Elizabeth balked at this prospect. She was more than happy to send small forces along with some resources, but nothing more. Maintaining a large army with all its hidden and unforeseen costs would simply be too expensive and threaten to reverse the progress that had been made thus far.
No; Elizabeth was prepared only to fight on her own terms – by employing a strategy which would both cripple Spain financially and leave England both safe and unburdened with the huge cost of war.
For the time being, the queen worked to extend the peace with Spain for as long as possible in order to buy time for her preparations. Meanwhile, she worked secretly to undermine the Spanish economy which was a glaring weak point.
Spain depended almost entirely for its wealth on its American colonies. Precious metals and other resources would be taken from the colonies which were then boarded on ships and taken to Spain.
This shipping, consisting of an enormous fleet, was in turn paid for with tremendous loans taken from Italian bankers. These loans, however, could only be paid for using the gold on these ships. The Spanish economy, in other words, rested on an extremely weak foundation.
And so, the queen unleashed the famous Sir Francis Drake upon these Spanish treasure ships. He was to act as a pirate, seemingly attacking the ships for his own private benefit.
Every ship Drake caught sent the bankers into panic mode which meant they increased the interest rate higher and higher to cover their losses. Philip, who had been hoping to invade by 1582, was forced to delay. Elizabeth had bought herself more time.
Meanwhile, in direct contravention to the advice of his ministers to scale back his plans, Philip refused to be deterred by what he saw as mere matters of finance in the face of a religious issue. In any case, he could always borrow more.
In the meantime Elizabeth, while working to ruin his finances further, spent a good chunk of her small resources on building up a spy network. This would prove to be a masterstroke as she would soon have the ability to be well-informed of Philip’s movements thus allowing her to postpone calling up her army until the very last moment in order to save much-needed government money.
Finally, by the summer of 1588, it was ready. The vast Spanish Armada consisted of 128 ships, including two huge galleons and large numbers of men. It had cost the Spanish a fortune.
The moment Elizabeth got news of its departure from her spies, she immediately sent a fleet of smaller, more mobile English ships to harass the Spaniards as they slowly moved their way up the French coast. They caused trouble wherever they got the chance by sinking supply ships and making life harder for their enemy.
The commander of the English fleet would even be quoted as saying “Their force is wonderful great and strong, and yet we pluck their feathers little by little.”
Eventually, the armada anchored in Calais where they were due to meet up with the reinforcements from the Low Countries. Determined not to let this take place, the English gathered eight large ships and sailed them directly into the Spanish fleet which was anchored in tight formation.
The result was havoc with dozens of Spanish ships in flames, and as they attempted to get to safe waters, the ships collided with each other causing all order to break down.
With this loss of lives, ships, and supplies, discipline, and morale plummeted; the invasion was called off. In their desperation to prevent further attacks, the Spanish decided not to retreat south the way they had come, but to go north and sail around Scotland and Ireland then back to Spain.
The English did not even bother to pursue it – they knew the rough waters in those areas would do the job for them. They were right – of the huge armada that had initially set sail, only 44 ships returned while most of the men perished at sea.
The English, meanwhile, lost only those eight ‘fireships’ they had used earlier, and barely a hundred men. It was a huge win; Elizabeth, though, wasted no time in decommissioning the navy to save money and refused all requests by her advisors to add to her victory by attacking the Spanish in the Low Countries.
Her goals were modest: the only aims in her strategy were to ruin Spain’s finances and to force Philip to drop his dreams of reinstituting Catholic domination. Unfortunately for Spain, they never recovered financially from this loss and soon embarked on a steady decline from their position of pre-eminence.
Analysis
England’s defeat of the mighty Spanish Armada is perhaps among the most economical in history. Despite being a second-rate power with barely even a standing army, they managed to defeat the most powerful empire of the day.
This was all done by following what seems like a rule everyone should know but in reality, do not: attack the weaknesses of the enemy with your strengths. Elizabeth understood that her strengths were in the mobile vessels and the extensive intelligence network.
Spain’s strengths were its enormous resources and its large army. Its weaknesses lay in the weak foundations upon which her wealth lay, and the slow, lumbering ships.
England attacked Spain’s weaknesses by keeping its weak army out of the fray and instead using smaller, more maneuverable ships to sow chaos. Meanwhile, this was supplemented by special operations aimed at making the war as costly as possible for Spain.
On Philip’s part, the war had long ago become a lose-lose situation: if he lost, then he would be crippled for years to come; if he won it would be a Pyrrhic victory as it would certainly cost too much trying to exploit his victory on English soil.
You see, the thing is that no one is either entirely weak or strong. The strongest will have a weak point that can be exploited, and even the weakest has something to build upon. The aim of war is not to simply to amass weaponry and fight fire with fire.
That is just wasteful and indicative of a lack of strategic thinking.
Rather, you should attempt to assess the weak points. Are there internal political issues, low morale, corruption, weak finances, or an incapable yet arrogant leader? By keeping your own weaknesses hidden from the enemy whilst constantly targeting his Achilles’ heel, you will pry open and exploit their weaknesses.
By doing so, even you might be able to take down a Goliath.
Footnotes & Further Reading
Greene, Robert. The 33 Strategies of War. Millionaire, 2006
