Hi, friend. Welcome back to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora

podcast network and the original Tudor history podcast telling stories of Tudor England since 2009.

Crazyness. Actually, the podcast turned 16 this year, which means that, you know, if it was a person,

it would be old enough to drive. So that's kind of a fun fact. Anyway, hi, I am your host, Heather,

and I am, as always, delighted that you are here

with me spending this time together to talk about Tudor England. Today, we're going to talk

about something that gets overlooked a lot. People think about Armadas invading England,

and they immediately go to the Spanish one. But there was

actually one in 1545 that was even bigger. And that's the one that we're going to talk about. So let's

get right into it. If you ask anyone to name the biggest naval threat that England faced in

the 16th century, they will most

certainly say the Spanish Armada. But what if I told you that 43 years earlier, another Armada

came larger, more chaotic, and every bit as dangerous? In the summer of 1545, France launched an invasion fleet of more than 200 ships,

carrying 30,000 troops with one clear mission, capture Portsmouth, and topple Henry VIII. It was the

largest force assembled against England in the early modern period, bigger even than the Spanish

Armada that came decades later. This episode is about the French Armada, a dramatic but often

forgotten chapter in Tudor history. There weren't any glowing bonfires of victory,

no Protestant winds miraculously smashing the enemy fleet. No, no, no. This was a grim,

grinding campaign fought in the narrow waters of the Salent, where the English were outnumbered,

scrambling, and very nearly overrun. At the center of it all, a beautiful, deadly warship named

the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's Pride and Joy,

which sank before his very eyes. So we are going to dive into the tangled European politics

...