Philip II had now tried and failed in every expedient but one,--the employment of sheer force. Even this he attempted in order to avenge the death of Mary Stuart and to bring England, politically, religiously, and commercially, into harmony with his Spanish policies. The story of the preparation and the fate of the Invincible Armada is almost too well known to require repetition. It was in 1588 that there issued from the mouth of the Tagus River the most formidable fleet which up to that time Christendom had ever beheld--130 ships, 8000 seamen, 19,000 soldiers, the flower of the Spanish chivalry. In the Netherlands it was to be joined by Alexander Farnese with 33,000 veteran troops. But in one important respect Philip had underestimated his enemy: he had counted upon a divided country. Now the attack upon England was primarily national, rather than religious, and Catholics vied with Protestants in offering aid to the queen: it was a united rather than a divided nation which Philip faced. The English fleet, composed of comparatively small and easily maneuvered vessels, worked great havoc upon the ponderous and slow-moving Spanish galleons, and the wreck of the Armada was completed by a furious gale which tossed ship after ship upon the rocks of northern Scotland. Less than a third of the original expedition ever returned to Spain. Philip II had thus failed in his herculean effort against England. He continued in small ways to annoy and to irritate Elizabeth. He tried-- without result--to incite the Catholics of Ireland against the queen. He exhausted his arsenals and his treasures in despairing attempts to equip a second and even a third Armada. But he was doomed to bitterest disappointment, for two years before his death an English fleet sacked his own great port of Cadiz. The war with England ruined the navy and the commerce of Spain. The defeat of the Armada was England's first title to commercial supremacy. [Sidenote: Economic Benefits of the Period for England]