The Rest Is History - 695. Elizabeth I vs The Catholics: The Shadow War (Part 5)

Episode Date: August 9, 2026

Who was the charismatic Sir Philip Sidney, a beloved but also suspect courtier to Elizabeth I? Why, in 1585, was England in such danger from a Spanish invasion? And, would Sydney, with his friend Sir Francis Drake, help to save their beloved queen? Join Tom and Dominic as they plunge into the high point of the Tudor Cold War: with Philip II brooding on war in Spain, Holland ablaze, and religious tension gripping Europe, what would Elizabeth I do?  *The Rest Is History LIVE: The Ultimate Victorian Adventure* The maddest expedition in history and it’s NEVER been heard before on the show: join Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook LIVE at the Southbank as they tell the bonkers story of Queen Victoria ordering one of history’s most daring assignments ever. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Tickets available for Friday 4th September⁠⁠⁠⁠, the Saturday show is SOLD OUT. Summer sale is here: get an annual membership for an extra 20% off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over. https://therestishistory.com/club?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=summersale26&utm_term=listeners&utm_content=epdescriptionsummer To read our new newsletter, sign up at: ⁠therestishistory.com/newsletters⁠ Advertise with us: ⁠[e-mail] _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton   Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude  Senior Producer: Callum Hill    Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello everyone and before today's show, I have incredibly exciting news for you about a live show. On Friday the 4th of September, Dominic and I will be at the South Bank to do something that we have not done before. So you will be the first people to hear it. We are telling the story of what is the ultimate Victorian adventure. The date is 1868, the location. is Abyssinia and the Emperor of Abyssinia has been writing letters to Queen Victoria who rather rudely has not replied to them. So the Emperor of Abyssinia, annoyed about this, has kidnapped a number of British subjects. In response, Britain sends an expedition to rescue the captives and it is no exaggeration to say it is massive. On this expedition, 13,000 soldiers, 40,000 animals, including 44 elephants, and the British even put down a railway line to transport everything. It's an incredible story full of jaw-dropping events, ludicrous characters, lots of moustaches,

lots of general Victorian shenanigans. And as I say, it is the first time that we have ever done it on The Restless History. I don't want to blow our trumpet, but I think it's going to be. an absolute Rest is History classic. So if you want to get a ticket for the ultimate Victorian adventure at the South Bank in London on Friday the 4th of September, you know where to go. The rest is history.com. Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance guided so well that I obtained the prize both by the judgment of the English eyes and of some sent from that sweet enemy France, Horseman, my skill in horsemanship advance. Town folks, my strength. A daintier judge applies his

praise to skill which from good use doth rise. Some lucky wits impute it but to chance. Others, because of both sides I do take my blood from them who did excel in this, think nature me a man of arms did make. How far they shot awry. The true causes, Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face sent forth the beams which made so fair my race. So that is a lovely sonnet. It was written in May 1581 by Philip Sidney, who was the golden boy of the court of Queen Elizabeth I. Now, in 1581, the skies are dark. Beyond the limits of England, blood is flowing. The civil war in France. There are cities on fire in the low countries in modern day Belgium and Holland. There are bodies drifting down the Dutch canals.

And in Spain, the sinister figure of Philip II is brooding on the exploits, the piratical exploits, he would call them, of Francis Drake and he's plotting his revenge on England. But in Whitehall, that day in May 1581, the court of Elizabeth I first has never glittered more brightly because they're holding a tournament. Elizabeth is there, the great nobles are there, MSs from France are there, and the big star of the show is this guy, Philip Sidney, the man who wrote those words.

He has won the prize. He has cut a dash and captured the hearts and minds of the watching spectators. The match report of the tournament then proceeded Master Philip Sidney in very sumptuous manner, with armor part blue and the rest gilt and engraven, with four spare horses having comparisons

and furniture very rich and costly. So Tom Phillips, Sydney, he's a tremendous man, isn't he? Yeah, he's the embodiment, I think, of everything that a Renaissance courtier dreams of being. And that's why he's such a superstar. So he is insanely well connected. He's the nephew in the air of the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, Elizabeth I, great favourite. And he is the brother-in-law of the Earl of Pembroke, who builds this tremendous house outside Wilton in Wiltshire and the Salisbury area. Love it to have Wilshire in the Salisbury area back on the show. It has these beautiful Tudor Gardens in Blackadder.

When Blackadder falls in love with Bob and they go walking into the tune of Green Sleeves, it's the gardens of Wilton House that you see. So that's very much Sydney's kind of house in the country. He has a European reputation as well as an English one. He's famous across the continent for his intellect, for his eloquence, for his courtesy. He's kind of the model of spretzatura, this kind of Italian ideal of nonchalant style. And he is one of the great geniuses of this golden age of English literature that flourishes in the reign of Elizabeth I. So that sonnet that you read is part of a sequence that, in the opinion of most critics rank second only to the sonnet sequence written by Shakespeare himself. The sonnet sequence is called Astrophil and Stella. And Stella is a star, and Astrophil is star lover. But of course, Phil is a play on Philip Sidney's own name.

What can I say? The Elizabethans love these kind of puns and word plays. He's also the author of a very famous defense of poetry, which again has a kind of Europe-wide reputation. And he's written a poem called Arcadia, which is a pastoral romance. He wrote it at Wilton House and he dedicated it to his sister, the countess of Pembroke. And the most famous line from that poem, they are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts, very stirring and inspiring. And Sydney can get away with writing this kind of stuff because everyone takes for granted that this is exactly what he is about. He is, I think,

for kind of Tudor-Cortier fanboys. I mean, he's the embodiment of that. He is the quintessence of Elizabethan nobility. And yet there is a sense of ambitions unfulfilled, isn't that? Because although he likes winning tournaments and he likes writing sonnets and all of these kinds of things and cutting a dash, his ambitions go much further. What he actually wants to do is to make his imprint on history and indeed on the map of Europe. because we started with that background, the sense of conflict on the continent. And that's a really, really important part of understanding what happens to Philip Sidney.

Yes, he wants to go to a real war. He doesn't want to just kind of prance around in tournaments. And I think that this is partly he has a great devotion to the old medieval ideals of chivalry. They often feature in his poetry. But I think it also reflects something new. and that is the kind of the militant fusion of Protestantism and English patriotism, of which Sir Francis Drake has become, by this point, the absolute exemplar. And Sydney is about 15 years younger than Drake, so he was born in 1554,

and that means that he can't really remember a time when Elizabeth hadn't been on the throne and therefore when Protestant England had not been locked in a kind of desperate struggle. for survival. But the problem for Sydney, or the frustration, is that his ambition to fight for the Queen and Country and the cause of true religion has constantly been frustrated, because of course, although England is locked in a cold war, it isn't a war that offers much opportunity for a would-be knight-errant to win glory for himself. And this is because Elizabeth hates war. She's very cautious. He's very skeptical. She's very pragmatic. And she has no wish whatsoever to get locked into an open fight with Spain, which is the absolute, not just the European, but the global superpower.

But I think there's an additional more personal reason why Sydney's ambition up until this point to win glory on the battlefield has been frustrated is because actually, although Sydney is cast as the ultimate courtier at the court of Elizabeth I, Elizabeth doesn't really trust him. Right. I think that she finds him maybe too well connected, kind of too independent-minded, too kind of aggressively, virally, friarily, Protestant. And it may be that she just thinks he's a little bit too much. He's a little bit over the top, which to a degree he is, I think. Well, he has behaved in not exactly insolent, but a very forward way, hasn't he?

Because when she wanted to marry that bloke, the Duke of Anjou, we talked about him in the last episode. So he had bandy legs. She called him her frog. He was the brother, wasn't he, of the third? Is he the brother of the King of France? Have I got that right? Yeah, of Henry III.

Yeah. And Philip Sidney had actually written her a letter and said, like, this is a very bad idea. I don't think you should do this, all of this kind of thing. I mean, that's great. That takes a lot of guts, but it might be seen as insubordinate. Well, I think it's definitely seen as insubordinate by Elizabeth. I mean, she is absolutely furious. And there's a sense in which his presence at that tournament in 1581 had been

forced on Sydney by the Queen as a kind of humiliation because the French emissaries that he mentions in the in the sonnet, you know, from that sweet enemy France, had actually, these are emissaries who'd been sent by enjou. So in a sense, the fact that Sydney is having to entertain them with his knightly prowess, you know, this is Elizabeth rubbing his nose in the fact that she's going to marry enjou if she wants and there's nothing that he can do about it. And there's also have been some tennis bad behavior, hasn't it? Yes. Yeah.

So talk us through this tennis business. So I think what this displays is the lack of a kind of Jimmy Carter figure. Yeah. At the court of Elizabeth I first. Because Jimmy Carter, of course, he would organize the timings on tennis courts. But there's clearly, there's no such figure at the court of Elizabeth because Sydney is playing tennis and the Earl of Oxford turns up and says that he's booked it. And therefore, Sydney has to get off. And there's a massive bust up.

Oxford ends up calling Sydney a puppy, which is tremendous insult. And Elizabeth had ended up personally intervening and scolding Sydney for forgetting the fact that he may be the nephew of the Earl of Leicester, but the Earl of Oxford is an Earl and massively outranks him both in age and status. And he should remember his place. And you can see the kind of the impact that this has on Sydney standing at court from the fact that, He is only knighted when he is 29, so in 1583. So when he is fighting that tournament in 1581, he's not even Sir Philip Sidney. So that's quite an insult, I think. So the question is, is Sydney going to overcome Elizabeth the first suspicion of him?

Is he going to have a chance of a crack at the glory that he has alluded to him all his life, the prize? and big spoiler alert for our listeners. Yes, he is. He's going to get a chance of those things. Yeah, and it's because, as you said, at the start of this episode, by 1585, so four years on from that tournament, the drumbeat of war is indeed sounding.

And England is starting to be drawn against all Elizabeth's desperate attempts to avoid it into open conflict with Spain. It's no longer a Cold War. It is becoming English against Spain. on the field of battle. And this is taking place in the key theatre of the rivalry between Catholic and Protestant powers, which are the low countries. And we've been talking about this throughout this series. It is where a battle-hardened Spanish army under the command of the

greatest general in Europe seems by 1585 to be on the verge of crushing the Dutch Protestant rebels. And if they do that, then they are securing a solid launch pad. foreign invasion of England. And the great general there will have at his back this terrifying battle-hardened army. And this is a key moment, obviously, in the brewing conflict between England and Spain, but also just to kind of widen the camera angle a little bit. The events of 1585 and the years that follow are going to have consequences for the low countries that are with us still today, because the 17 provinces that constituted the Spanish Netherlands had formed a kind of single dynastic unit for most of the 16th century. And both sides

in the Dutch revolt, so the Spanish and the rebels, they're fighting to maintain that unity. The events that we're going to be describing today will confirm that an irrevocable split has opened up between the northern provinces and the southern provinces of what had been the united low countries ruled by the Habsburg Kings. This is a split that gives us two modern-day countries, doesn't it? So talk us through the split and what that means for the map of Europe. Yes, so if you imagine the low countries, which today are the Netherlands and Belgium, they're kind of separated by these great rivers, these four great rivers,

which form a kind of natural barrier. This is effectively the boundary between the northern provinces and the southern provinces in the low countries. And the northern provinces will succeed in holding the Spanish at bay. And in due course, this will become what is known as the Dutch Republic. A great Protestant powerhouse in the 17th century, madly rich, effectively the inventor of modern capitalism, the civilization that will give us Rembrandt and Vermeer and so on. The South, meanwhile, is going to end up reconciled to Spanish rule. It will continue to be ruled by the Habsburgs, ultimately right the way up until the age of the French Revolution.

It will re-embrace Catholicism and it will become in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, so two and a half centuries after the period that we're talking about now, it will become Belgium. So it's Rembrandt versus Rubens, I guess, is one way of thinking about it. Or Amsterdam versus Antwerp. Yeah, so it's a pivotal moment, not just in the, you know, the theme of this series, the Cold War between England and Spain, but for the future. geopolitics of Europe. And there is a sense of this in the 1580s, I think, a sense that the stakes are massively cosmically high, you know, that God himself is gazing down at this tremendous conflict. And it is this conflict, as we will see, that is a huge part of what ends up making Philip Sidney very, very famous indeed.

Europe. So Philip Sidney is the star of today's episode and let's take a closer look at him. So in 1584 he turns 30. So he's born in 1554. But in those first 30 years, he has met almost every major character that we've had so far in this series. He's the Selig of 16th century Europe. Right. And let's start actually with his name. So his name is very unusual, isn't it? It's not an English name. Not really. No. There aren't many Phillips in English history before him. They were called Henry and Robert. Right.

As you say in your notes, it's like an American politician, a fervently anti-communist, American politician from, I don't know, born in Iowa or something being called Fidel. Or Nikita. Right, exactly. Vladimir. Yeah. So is this a tribute to Philip of Spain, his name?

Yes, it is. So Philip Sidney is born in 1554 before Elizabeth has come to the throne. It's when her sister, the Catholic Mary Tudor, is still queen. And people who heard our opening episode may remember, Mary Tudor had married the future Philip the second of Spain. So Philip the second of Spain had briefly been king of England. And so he'd come to England for the nuptials and to spend time with his new bride. And he didn't speak English. So he's quite lonely. But Philip Sidney's father had, he had spoken Spanish. And so Philip of Spain and Philip Sidney's father become great pals.

And so Philip Sidney's father gets Philip the second as he will become to stand as his newborn son's godfather. And so that's why Philip is named after Philip of Spain. So even when he's a little baby, Philip Sidney is meeting very famous people. And Philip the second would have to be the first celebrity that he's met. But absolutely not the last. So just to run through all the celebrities and famous names that Philip Sidney meets over the course of his brief life. So in 1572, by which point Sydney is 17, he goes on a kind of extended gap year to Paris where he stays with Francis Walsingham, who at the time is the English ambassador to the court of France.

And he is there for the St. Baltholomew's Day massacre. And he witnesses the slaughter. And of course, this has an enormous impact on him. It confirms him in the kind of the militant quality of his Protestantism and his closeness to Walsingham. And actually in due course in 1583, Sydney will become Walsingham's son-in-law. So he is very much part of that kind of cold warrior Puritan strain within the Elizabethan establishment. Right. From Paris, Sydney then goes on a European tour. And in the course of this tour, he meets with Henry III, the new king of France. So played by Andrew Scott, I think we agreed. And Henry the third at the time, he's returning from

Poland, where he'd been the king. But becoming king of France is obviously an upgrade. And Sydney hangs out with Henry III in Venice. And Henry makes him a baron of France. So that's a kind of, again, a measure of just how charismatic and appealing Sydney is. He then goes to the last countries, where he meets with William of Orange, The Silent, the great hero of the Dutch revolt, who we talked about in our episode on the Dutch National Anthem. And just to remind people who may not have heard that episode, William the Silent had at one point been a very loyal servant of the Habsburgs of Philip II personally, but has since become his most implacable opponent. And he is the military, the moral, the symbolic leader of the Dutch

revolt and William loves Sydney. And Alan Stewart in his biography of Philip Sidney, a double life, suggests that maybe William wanted Sydney to be his son-in-law. And I think Sydney was quite keen on that. But Elizabeth predictably forbade it, you know, she didn't want Sydney shacking up with maybe the future leader of an independent Dutch kingdom. Yeah, she doesn't want his star to shine too brightly, does she? No, no.

But then he goes off to Prague where he meets Rudolf, the second, the great enthusiast for the occult. And also in Prague, he meets with Edmund Campion, the Jesuit, who we talked about in episode two of this series, who comes to England and ends up being kind of very brutally martyred. On his return from Prague, he is debriefed in person by William Cecil, Lord Burley, effectively Elizabeth's prime minister. He runs short of money. You know, he's a young gentleman at court. That's what young gentlemen at court do. They're always short cash. And so he borrows money from Sir Christopher Hatton, the guy who'd funded Francis Drake's circumnavigation around the world. He is the patron of one of the great Elizabethan poets,

Edmund Spencer, who dedicates a poem to him, hails him as the precedent of all chivalry. So Sydney is very much part of the kind of the literary circles of this Elizabethan golden age. We talked about Giadano Bruno, the Neapolitan friar turned kind of free-thinking skeptic who will end up being burnt in Rome and who may have been a spy at the French embassy in London. Anyway, Sydney met up with him, thought he was great, went to Oxford with Bruno, where Bruno gave a lecture on Copernicus on the idea that the earth moves around the sun. and he has also met John D, the great necromancer again. We did an episode on him and he had accompanied Elizabeth on a barge down the Thames to Mortlake where Dee had his house. So basically anything famous that happens in the 1570s, the 1580s, Sydney pops up. He's there.

He is the man on the scene. And then of course, there is the greatest celebrity of the age, perhaps the most famous man in all of Europe, Sydney's great mates with Sir Francis Drake. Right. So what's Sir Francis Drake? What's he been up to since we last saw him? So he got knighted. He was knighted on the ship, on the golden hind.

The French ambassador very much in attendance, a very prominent figure. It was a sort of sign, wasn't it, to the Spanish, a sort of a little gesture of England's rapprochement. A V sign, one might almost say. Exactly. So what's he been up to? He hasn't been back being a sea dog, has he? He's been on land.

No, he's been having a very quiet time of it. So he's been investing in property. He's bought four houses, all very fancy. Okay. He's been serving as an MP. He's been elected mayor of Plymouth. And he's been legislating to regulate the Pilchard trade, which is obviously very important. But it's not really Drake's vibe regulating the pilchard trade.

Right. And I think this is why he gets on so well with. Sydney because both of them are basically bored and itching for a decent war. They want to have a crack at the dawn. And Drake is a bit like Churchill in the 1930s. You know, he is sure that a great life or death struggle is approaching for England. And again, like Churchill in the 1930s, he is obsessed with the need for England to beef up her defences. And this is how he comes into contact with Sydney because Sydney since 1583 has been the master of ordinance, which means that he is charged with preparing England against attack.

And so both men, I think, are very much singing from the same hymn sheet. I mean, actually probably literally because their form of kind of fiery Protestantism is very similar. And by 1585, definitely, it's becoming clear that both Drake and Sydney are right to be warning that war with Spain is approaching. think by this point, even Elizabeth very reluctantly is having to acknowledge that Philip the second in Spain is indeed preparing for war. Well, now, why is that? Because surely he would be a, anxious about the French, and B, he's too busy fighting the Dutch, or is he? Well, the French

basically have been removed as a factor in his calculations because people who listened to our previous episode may remember there are these three Henri, three Henrys, doing this delicate minuet around each other. But by 1585, all three men are starting to go to war with each other. So you've got the Huguenots under Henry of Navarre, who I think was going to be played by Pedro Pascal in our film of this story. You've got the Catholic League under Henry of Gies. Mads-Michelson. Mads-Lickleson, he's got a great scar across his face, passionate Catholic. And you've got the royalists who are loyal to the king, Henry III, so Andrew Scott, and all these three factions are turning on each other. And the resulting war is going to rage for four years.

And it will come to be known inevitably as the war of the three Henrys. And for as long as it's raging, France effectively is paralyzed. And for as long as France is paralyzed, Philip of Spain has a free hand. He doesn't need to worry about what the French will do. So that's the French. What's about, or what's going on in the low countries? Because that really has been the cockpit of Europe's wars of religion for the last few years. Well, what's happened there is that the most dynamic and significant leader of the Dutch rebels has been eliminated, William of Orange, William the Silent. And he had been assassinated the previous summer on the 10th of July, 1584. He'd been shot on a staircase in his kind of very modest quarters in Delft.

William of Orange had once been one of the richest men in Europe, but he has spent all his money on keeping the Dutch revolt afloat. So he's now basically bankrupt. And the assassin had been inspired to murder the Prince of Orange by two factors. Firstly, his own devout Catholicism, but secondly, by a bounty that Philip had placed on William's head in 1580. And as William dies, his last thoughts are of his fellow rebels. in Holland and the northern provinces. And he cries out, my God, have mercy on me and on my poor people. But has God been listening to this prayer? In the wake of Williams' assassination, it seems not. Because in the months that follow Williams' assassination, the revel provinces in the low countries are brought almost to the point of collapse. And in part, I think this is due to the loss of Williams' leadership, but it is also due to the brilliance of the captain they were facing on the battlefield. Remember, we said, the Spanish in the low countries are led by the greatest general of the age.

And this is a guy called Alexander Farnese, the Prince of Palmer, and he is a completely terrifying adversary. So he's an Italian, isn't he, or Italian-born? He's the son of the Duke of Palmer. but the key thing is that his mother who'd been born in Flanders and she has I mean we love to do these

when we're doing the First World War we like to draw attention to the moustaches of the leading generals and I mean we're not going to be talking about Alexander Farnese the Prince of Palmer's moustache

I mean he has a good moustache he has a good moustache but it's not as striking as his mother's moustache is that fair or is that ungalant it's a bit ungallant but I think fair she is well known for her moustache She is Philip the second's half-sister, and Philip had appointed her to serve as the governor of the low countries in the 1560s. And it's her period running the low countries that had resulted in the revolt breaking out.

So she doesn't have a great track record. But Palmer is, as we've said, an incredibly formidable man. And he's been serving as both the Governor General of the Netherlands and the Captain General of the Army of Flanders since, Since 1578, so he combines both the civil and the military responsibilities in his single person. And he's been doing an amazing job. So just to give the summary of Jeffrey Parker, the great historian of the Dutch revolt and Spain more generally in the 16th century, Parma was able and resourceful, rich and cultivated, subtle and shrewd. He excelled in both diplomacy and war. And the measure of his achievement is that back in 1578, when he'd first been appointed, the Spanish Corps,

in the low countries had seemed on the verge of complete collapse. But by 1584, when William the silent is assassinated, he has pulled things back dramatically from the brink. And he's done that by kind of employing a mix of the carrot and the stick. So he's essentially brought the southern reaches of the low countries, the portion that is in the long run going to become Belgium. He's brought them back under Spanish control. Most of the south, which has had been in a state of rebellion, has submitted to Palmer's armies. Many of their key cities have surrendered, and others, among them Brussels, so the capital of the EU now, and Ghent, a very favourite holiday destination for people going on long weekends from Britain. Incredibly beautiful

city. Both of these are under siege and are clearly on the verge of surrender. And the murder of William the Silent in 1584, essentially everything starts collapsing once the news of his death reaches the rebels in the South. So in September, just two months after William had been assassinated, Ghent finally falls. And I think when you go to Ghent today, its vibe is so Catholic that it's really odd to think that there was a time when it was the cockpit of an incredibly radical Protestant regime, which had seized control there in. 1577, it had instituted a kind of full-blown militant republic, it had broken images, it had persecuted Catholics, it had smashed up rude screens, all that kind of stuff. They have to surrender.

Palmer, as is his custom, offers very merciful terms. So he's applied the stick, now he's dangling the carrot. But it does mean that Catholicism is reinstated as the official religion of the city, and most of the Protestants in Ghent are not prepared to put up with that. Palmer has said, If you don't like this, you know, I'm not going to slaughter you. I'm not going to persecute you. You can just go. You can just leave the city. And probably about 15,000 Protestants, so that's maybe a third of the population, end up leaving Ghent and heading to Holland.

And Holland is the overwhelming Protestant state in the northern Netherlands that by now is the beating heart of the revolt. So remember, it is screened from the south by those great rivers. So it is more readily defensible against the Spanish than the kind of the southern swatheaval. the sweep that's going to become Belgium. If we fast forward to the summer of 1585, I mean, you mentioned the rivers, but things are looking pretty bleak for the Protestant rebels in the north, aren't they? Because Brussels has finally fallen, that becomes the capital of Belgium in the long run. And the focus has moved to, so it's not quite midway between Brussels and Amsterdam, but

it's kind of, let's say, a quarter of the way, and that is Antwerp. So Antwerp, it's the biggest city in the low countries in this period. It is by far the richest. It is the city that has been bankrolling the rebellion. I mean, crucially, it controls this estuary, which is the estuary of the Scheldt, which kind of leads out towards the English Channel and to the North Sea. So the Schelt is the kind of, it's the absolutely vital connection. It's a key artery, really, yeah.

Yeah, between the rich, Flemish cloth town. So that is Ghent and Bruges and these incredibly handsome places that people go to on city breaks today, between them and the sea and trade with England and so on and so forth. And people had thought, hadn't they, that Antwerp was impregnable because it's got these massive fortifications. Yeah. But this bloke Palmer, he likes a challenge. He likes to crack a hard nut, yeah. And he knows that Antwerp is the greatest price of all, because as you said, it's probably the richest city, certainly in Europe.

I mean, maybe in the world. and it is the key Protestant stronghold. This is where Protestantism is strongest. And if he can take Antwerp, then he's probably thinking that is the end of the revolt. So he had embarked on the siege of Antwerp in June 1584, and he constructed an immense network of forts to cut off Antwerp's access to the interior of the southern low countries. But the key requirement is to stop supplies and men.

from the rebel held north reaching the city down the shelf, this kind of great estuary, which leads out into the North Sea. And Palmer achieves this by building a massive pontoon bridge, which his admirers are very proud of saying was twice the length of the bridge built by Julius Caesar over the Rhine. So it's almost half a mile in length. And the rebels are so desperate to destroy it that they send in fire ships, hellburners, they're called loaded with explosives to blow it up. And actually one of these fire ships does blow up.

and it incinerates an entire section of the bridge, killing 800 Spanish soldiers. But Palmer is able to have it repaired before the Dutch rebels can come down and force their way through the gap that they've opened up. And so in late May the rebels try again, but this time their fleet makes a complete hash of things. The tide turns and sweeps them back towards their own lines, which is not a thing you want to see load of fire ships loaded with explosives coming towards you on a tide. And again, Palmer is able to repair.

the attack and to maintain the integrity of the pontoon bridge across the Scheldt. And this means that Antwerp is now completely invested and so starvation starts to grip the city and the rebels grow increasingly desperate. And they are looking around for allies. They need overseas support, but where are they going to get this support from? So in the previous episode, we talked about how the rebels had tried to get French backing in the form of enjou, the Duke who had been hoping to marry Elizabeth. But he had hashed things up. His mercenaries had run amok in Antwerp. He'd left in disgrace, and now he's dead. And so the rebels have tried to get his brother, Henry III of France, to take over the sovereignty of the low countries and come in against Spain. But as we've said,

Henry III is the king of a country that is now collapsing into civil war. So he doesn't have time to intervene in foreign squabbles. And this really leaves the rebels with just the one port of call. And this, of course, is a queen who is, as we've said, instinctively cautious, hate spending money on wars, hates wars full stop, very much disapproves of revolts against anointed monarchs. And this, of course, is Elizabeth of England. And so unsurprisingly, when the Dutch rebels go to London and offer her sovereignty over the low countries, she turns them down. However, she and her government do appreciate that they can't really just leave the rebels to the fate. It is existential for England as well as for the Dutch. And in particular, the impending fall of Antwerp is a nightmare

for English strategists. First of all, it risks. It risks. the collapse of the entire Dutch revolt. And if the Dutch revolt collapses, then as we've said, that means that Palmer and his terrifying army will be free to cross the sea and land in England. More broadly, it's a nightmare for the entire cause of Protestantism in Europe. And for Leicester, for Walsingham, for Sydney, definitely, this is probably the major consideration. You know, this is the future of what God wants for Christendom is at stake as they see it. And what about the economics of it? Because you mentioned how wealthy the Flemish Cloth towns are,

how important that trade link is between the low countries and England in particular. I mean, surely if Antwerp was lost, if the low countries were lost, wouldn't that be disastrous for England's economy? Yeah, a complete disaster. I mean, there have been blockades going on and off throughout this period. But the thought of losing Antwerp, kind of Straits of Hummus, cubed basically for the English. I mean, it's a massive, massive disaster.

They cannot, basically, they cannot afford to have Antwerp under the control of a hostile power. And it is clear to them by now that Philip II is indeed an overtly hostile power who is looking to throttle the entire English economy because back in May 1585, he'd imposed an embargo on English vessels landing in Spanish and Portuguese ports. And this is a patent act of economic warfare. And so the prospect that he might end up in a position to impose a similar embargo on all the ports in the low countries, I mean, that is a complete nightmare. And it's a kind of nightmare that Elizabeth, who is always counting the pennies, that she can actually understand.

You know, she's less interested in glory than she is in making money. And this is enough to make her think, well, probably we should do something about this. And so by early August 1585, it's clear that Antwerp isn't going to hold out much longer. You know, they're thinking in terms of weeks, maybe days before the Spanish enter the city. And that means that Elizabeth, who given the choice, will always delay and prevaricate. It means that she has to arrive at a decision about what to do. And of course, much is going to depend on that decision, the course of the Dutch revolt, the prospects of open war between England and Spain

and the future of Sir Philip Sydney. Oh, that's exciting. Come back after the break to find out what happens next. This episode is brought to you by Amazon. Tom throughout history, change has often been driven by businesses and institutions that end up having a massive impact on society as a whole. And there's probably no better example than the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford and his managers revolutionised production through their pioneering assembly lines.

And they influenced factories and working practices in countries all over the world. Another example of a business driving technological and social change is Amazon, which is increasing the number of its electric vehicles used for deliveries in Europe to over 10,000 by the end of this year, 2026. Now, on top of that, over 50% of Amazon deliveries now come with less packaging or sometimes no added packaging at all. It helps to avoid unnecessary waste and it makes recycling at home that much easier. Find out more at amazon.com.uk slash sustainability. Welcome back to the rest is history. We return with bombshell news from Antenabilly.

work because it's the 17th of August 1585 and after a siege of 13 months. The richest city in this part of Europe, perhaps in all Europe, has finally surrendered to the Prince of Palmer. Actually, the end of the siege is not quite as bloody and gory as you might expect. So the Spanish are very well behaved, aren't they, in victory? And the terms, you said in the first half, Tom, that the terms that Palmer offers his defeated adversaries are often pretty generous, and they are in this case, aren't they? Yes. So Antwerp, which had been the great stronghold of Protestantism in the low countries,

is formally restored to Catholicism. But as with Ghent, so in Antwerp, Protestants are allowed to leave the city if they want, and huge numbers do so. So probably around 60,000 people out of a total population of 100,000, so more than half. And this is actually a disaster for Antwerp because most of the people who are leaving, lots of them are bankers, merchants, the cutting edge of capitalism. And most of them head northwards to Holland, which is still the great nerve centre of the Dutch Revolt. And there they settle lots of them in a kind of new upstart hotspot for business. And this is a city called Amsterdam.

And so the arrival of these exiles from Antwerp is really the making of Amsterdam as the great city of 17th century capitalism. Dutch Dishers will be pleased to be reminded that they basically owe their prominence and prosperity to the Belgians. So Anwerp has fallen and in England great gloom and foreboding, right? Absolutely. I mean, this is terrible, terrible news. And so three days later, after the fall of Antwerp on the 20th of August, a treaty is signed. between Elizabeth I and the Dutch rebels at a palace built by Henry VIII at a place called Non-Such in Surrey. And this is the first ever treaty signed by what will become the Dutch

Republic with a foreign power. And by its terms, Elizabeth agrees to send an expeditionary force to the low countries to support Holland and the other rebel provinces. And this is to consist of 6,350 infantry and 1,000 cavalry. And amazingly, Elizabeth says, I will subsidise the cost of this. I mean, must have caused her agony to do that. And she chooses, as the commander of this expeditionary force, her old favourite, the Earl of Leicester. And because she doesn't entirely trust the Dutch, she obliges them to hand over three key ports to English garrisons to serve the English as what described as cautionary towns. So basically, these towns are kind of hostages. And they are the town of Brill, which commanded the mouth of the Great River Mass or the Mers,

if you're speaking in French, and Flushing and Ramekin, which are ports on an island just beyond the Scheldt estuary. And the reason for choosing these ports is that between them, it enables the English to control what goes in and goes out of the Shelt Estuary. Celt Estuary down towards Antwerp. So in other words, to throttle the ability of the Spanish to move by sea from Antwerp round the northern coast towards the rebel heartlands in Holland and Zeeland. And the guy who's going to be in charge of one of these, Flushing, is the star of today's episode. He's finally got his chance. He's finally got his opportunity to have a crack at the Spanish and write his name into the history books. And that is our friend Sir Philip Sidney. Yeah, so hooray for Sir Philip Sidney. And I think he owes this appointment to various factors. Favoritism, obviously. He's the nephew of Leicester, who has been appointed to the command of this expedition. He's put in a lot of hard work preparing the Treaty of Nonsuch. Basically, he'd spent all summer at the palace, kind of oiling the wheels.

And the Dutch envoys had absolutely loved him. So they had saluted his wisdom, kindness and his other gifts. So it's all looking good for Sydney, but then in classic Elizabeth the first style, she starts to wobble. First of all, she hesitates over whether she actually wants Lester as Governor General. Does she really want him going to the low countries? And then to Sydney's absolute fury, she tells him, I don't want you going to flushing after all. She's changed her mind. And so he has the most massive strop. He storms off, he gets on his horse, and he says,

He gallops off to Plymouth. And the reason he goes to Plymouth is because Sydney knows that the low countries aren't the only place where there might be a chance for him to win glory for himself. There are other opportunities for would-be dashing young adventurers because all summer, when he wasn't negotiating with Dutch diplomats, Sydney had been helping Sir Francis Drake prepare for a massive expedition to the Indies. When I say massive, I mean, it is the largest English fleet. that has been raised for over a century. So some 20 ships, two of them provided by Elizabeth

herself, including Drake's flagship, the Elizabeth Bonaventura. And the plan which has been drawn up by Drake, by the Privy Council, by Elizabeth herself, is for Drake to plunder as much gold and silver from the Spanish as he possibly can, and then use the proceeds to help fund the Dutch. So just as Philip has been targeting the English economy, the plan is that Drake will target the infrastructure that sustains Philip's supply of treasure. Right. And Lord Burley, who previously had been a bit of a Drake skeptic, I mean, he's right behind this. He thinks this is a brilliant plan. So he'd written to Walsingham about Philip, Philip II. Whilst his riches of the Indies continue, he thinketh he will be able with them to weary out all other princes. Those taken away himself will quickly fall.

And I know by good means that he more feareth this action of Sir Francis than he ever did anything that have been attempted against him. So really interesting illustration of the sensitivity of people in the 16th century to the opportunities provided by economic warfare. I think people are kind of becoming more and more alert to this. So Sydney must be terribly excited about this. I mean, this really is a tremendous chance to win the kind of glory that he's been after. And when Drake's fleet sales out of Plymouth on the 14th of September, Drake is on the flagship and Sydney is there with him. I mean, it's potentially one of the great double acts in English history. Yeah, one of the great kind of buddy acts.

But it doesn't happen because just as they're pulling out of Plymouth Sound in the Bonaventura, a rowing boat comes up the side of the boat with a message from the queen and she's changed her mind. And actually she does want Sydney to go to flushing. And so Sydney gets off the boat, gets into the rowing boat and goes back to London and ultimately to flushing. And obviously, Elizabeth is furious with Sydney. I mean, she doesn't like people rushing off without telling her. But she can't come down too hard on him because I think she has realised in his absence that actually, much to her annoyance, she does need him. So Lester, who she has by this point reappointed as Governor General of the low countries, He's busy recruiting troops around England and Wales, and so won't be able to leave for the low countries until December.

Meanwhile, Palmer isn't waiting. He's advancing on all fronts, and the Dutch desperately need English support. And everyone, the Dutch, the English alike, are agreed. There is only the one man for the job. It has to be Sir Philip Sidney. And so Sydney goes to the low countries, which, as you said, Dominic, means that he misses his chance to go on an expedition to the new world. which he had, as you said, been very, very excited about. And so just to give a quick resume of the excitements he misses before we come to

to what Sydney gets up to in the low countries, I mean, Drake heads southwards, and he has the most lovely time. So he turns up in Spain, and he extorts supplies out of a town in Galicia in northern Spain called Vigo, and he stays there for two weeks. And it's seen by Philip, I think quite correctly, as an absolutely massive humiliation that this English pirate has turned up and kind of replenished his supplies from Spanish stocks. Then Drake sweeps across the Atlantic, capturing and plundering Spanish strongholds as he goes. And when Drake captures Santo Domingo in what is now the Dominican Republic, he, you know, he's waiting

for the ransom and to force the Spanish to hurry up, he starts literally disassembling the city, brick by brick, until they've brought the gold. And then, you know, he's got the ransom, and then it's on to Cartagena. in Colombia, which he also captures. Again, he extorts a massive ransom. And this isn't a long expedition. He's back in Plymouth by the 22nd of July 1586. And actually, it's not quite as lucrative as Drake had been hoping. He doesn't manage to capture any treasure ships. But strategically, it is hugely significant because as he'd done before, he's able to highlight the pretty precarious nature of Spain's American Empire. And the result of this, in Europe,

is to undermine Philip's credit with his bankers. And so the Pope and the Dukes of Florence and Savoy all refuse him alone when the news of Drake's expedition reaches them. And the Bank of Seville actually goes bust. And Burley is kind of cackling and rubbing his hands at this and says truly Sir Francis Drake is a fearful man to the king of Spain, which I think he is. So while Drake's been off sacking Cartagena and whatnot, what has Sir Philip Sidney doing? because he's been in the slightly more unglamorous surroundings of flushing on the... Yeah, an island off the Scheldestery. Yeah, so he's arrived there in mid-November, which is never really a great time to turn up to an island in the North Sea.

It's completely miserable. And when he lands, he has to walk three miles through mud before he can reach the port itself. And he wrote to Lester, as dirtier walk as ever poor governor entered his charge with all. Lester himself arrives in flushing three weeks later. and he's greeted there by Sydney, by the two sons of William the Silent, and by bonfires made, and I quote, after the Dutch manor, which is to fix great pitch barrels on the tops of high poles and then to fire them. Wow. So Leicester has a better arrival than Sydney had done, and the pair of them then head off in triumphal manner via Delft to the Hague, where Lester then leaves Sydney to finalise the precise details of his role and status in the low countries. And Sydney is very ambitious for his uncle and he goes well beyond the governor's rebate and he secures a post for Lester which implies that Elizabeth is in fact sovereign over the low countries, which is exactly what Elizabeth had not wanted him to do.

And I think the reason that Sydney does this is that he's aware that Lester needs to seem as prestigious to the Dutch rebels and indeed to the Spanish as possible if he's going to be able to play an effective role in the coming war. Obviously, when Elizabeth gets the news, she is furious. And they have a massive row. And I think for the Dutch, it's a bit like watching Mommy and Daddy have a kind of quarrel. It's very awkward for all concerned. And from this point on, essentially everything goes downhill for Lester. Because it turns out that his qualities, amazingly, he's a very arrogant aristocrat, turn out not to be those of a natural diplomat.

So he's very, very dogmatic about religious matters. He's a hardcore Puritan. This means that he gets on very well with the hardcore Calvinists, Puritans in Holland, but it alienates the mass of the people in the kind of the rebel cause in the low countries who aren't hardcore Calvinists. They're what are called Politique, people who are essentially happy to live and let live to a degree. This isn't what Lester's about at all. Then in June 1586, he executes a Dutch commander who'd surrendered a fortress to the Spanish

and again, this is not the kind of thing that the Dutch do. They think it's a terrible thing for Lester to have done. Right. And even while he's executing Dutch commanders for surrendering fortresses to the Spanish, Lester himself is kind of sitting on his hands, refusing to go on the offensive. And even Sydney

is starting to despair by the summer of 1586. And he writes to Lester saying, The enemy stirs of every side and your side must not be idle. For if it be, it quickly looseth reputation. And of course, in the background, there is Elizabeth who is, you know, she's back to her old penny-pinching ways.

She's refusing to send money to Sydney so that he can pay his garrison in flushing. And again, Sydney is in despair. If the Queen pay not her soldiers, she must lose her garrisons. There is no doubt thereof. And so in short, everyone is incredibly annoyed with everyone else. Elizabeth is quarreling with Leicester, the English are quarreling with the Dutch. Sydney's quarreling with pretty much everyone else. He makes sure that people appreciate none of it is his fault.

So he writes, no man living shall be able to say the fault is in me. I mean, I think you can perhaps see why Elizabeth finds him a bit annoying. Yeah. But the thing is, this is all a surprise to me, because I've always thought of Sir Philip Sidney as this tremendous hero. You know, schools are named after him. Yeah, his name is written into the kind of annals of English patriotic legend. If they're just all squabbling with each other and behaving badly, why is he so admired?

Because I think as with Byron, as with Che Guevara, he's going to die young and he's going to serve as a martyr for his cause. Okay. And that essentially is why Sydney becomes a kind of superstar to Protestant Europe. And so how does this happen? So in September 1586, Lester finally goes on the attack and he besieges and captures a Spanish-held town called Doysburg on the eastern front. on the eastern flank of rebel-held territory. And if you're a fan of Dutch geography, it's in the province of Gelderland,

which is to the southeast of the Zyda Sea. And Sydney rides out with Lester. You know, hooray, brilliant. He's got kind of feathers in his helmet. He's got beautiful armour. He's having a brilliant time. War at last. It seems to be going well.

And Lester is buoyed by the sense that things are going his way. And so he moves on to his next target, which is a town called Zutphen, so the South Fen. And Palmer is very anxious to relieve this town. And so he sends a force of 5,000 men to its rescue on the 22nd of September. There's a big battle. There are lots of kind of heroic cavalry charges. The English acquit themselves very well.

However, they are unable to stop the Spanish from entering Zutphen. And that basically is, that's the end of that. So it's a battle that I think no one would. remember, had Sir Philip Sidney not sustained a very serious wound in the course of it? Now I said that there are these kind of dramatic cavalry charges. Sidney'd written in all of them, there were three in all. So the first time he'd, you know, drawn his sword, charged, hurrah, gone through the Spanish lines and then returned. The second time his horse had been shot from under him. He got another horse again, very gallant,

very heroic. The third time again, he'd ridden through the enemy lines, but then when he's turning to ride back to the English positions, he gets hit above his left knee by a musket ball. And as Lester wrote in appalled tones later, it was a very dangerous wound, the bone being broken pieces. So Lester is very anxious for his nephew and his heir, of course, puts him in a barge, has him carried down the river to Arnhem, 20 miles south of Zupon. And in Arnhem, surgeons operate on the wound. But unfortunately, their attempt to extract the bullet only makes things worse and gangrene sets in and to quote sir philip presently gave this severe doom upon himself that it was inward mortification and a welcome messenger of death and sure enough on the afternoon of the 17th of october 1586 sir philip sidney died at the tender age of 31 and it's a wretched unhappy end rather like byron's end was wretched and unhappy and in his dying hour as Sir Philip Sidney mourned that all things in my former life have been vain, vain, vain.

But this is not how his uncle, the Earl of Lester, sees it. And Lester may have been irascible, incompetent, arrogant. But one thing he does know is how to create a martyr. And so Lester ensures that Sydney's funeral cortege is very slow, very somber, very stately. and it processes from Arnhem to the sea and thence to London. And in London, his coffin is carried to St. Paul's Cathedral by 14 men. He's accompanied by the Lord Mayor, by 300 Londoners in full armour, and by a page riding Sydney's warhorse, trailing a broken lance.

So shades, perhaps, of the funeral of JFK. And the streets were so thronged with people that the mourners had scarce room to pass. in death, Sydney becomes what he had yearned to be all his life, a hero to every English Protestant and indeed to every Protestant in Christendom. And for Elizabeth and her PR team, her propaganda team, this must be a tremendous coup because it happens at precisely the point when it looks as though the storm clouds of war are moving over the English Channel towards our own beloved country. They are about to break.

They are about to break, aren't. they, because, I mean, all of this has been, it's been building and building over the episodes of this series over the last few years. And the storm is, what is it? I mean, is it pouring with, with rain over the dikes of the low countries? Surely there must be some metaphor you can employ here, Tom. Yes, the storm is breaking over the, the dyes of the low countries and the rumbling of thunder can be heard on the south coast of England. I think that's definitely the way to frame it. But of course, even as these war clouds are building, war is brewing as well amid the shadows. And so in our next and final episode, we will be returning to that dimension of shadow,

to a world of secrets and of spies and conspiracies. And in particular, we will be tracking someone who has been absolutely central to this series, but who until now has been a largely off-stage presence. And Dominic, a personal favourite of yours, one of your great heroines, someone who in all kinds of ways actually was the precise opposite of Sir Philip Sidney. So she's a woman, not a man, a Catholic, not a Protestant, and she's an aging prisoner, not a youthful, dashing courtier. And we are talking, of course, about Mary Queen of Scots.

Mary Queen of Scots and her appointment with the executioner all to come in the next episode. Now, if you're a member of the Rest is History Club, if you're a member of our own expeditionary force to bring the gospel of history to the low countries, then you'll be able to hear that episode right now. And if you want to join them, if you want to join us in the dikes and whatever they are, the Polders of the Netherlands. Love a Polder. If you want to join us, then head to the rest is history.com and sign up.

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It's genuinely life-changing. So on that bombshell, we will be back next time with Mary Queen of Scots. Goodbye. Bye-bye.