Throughout the 16th Century, the Spanish had an aura of invincibility. They controlled a vast colonial empire that stretched across the Americas and the Pacific, and held considerable territories in Europe, centering on the so-called ...

The tiny new state of the United Provinces of the Netherlands won its independence from the mighty Spanish empire by fighting and winning the Eighty Years' War, from 1568 and 1648. In this long conflict, warfare on water played a much...