Strength: 2
Type: Siege Unit
Flavor Text: "A horse, A horse. My kingdom for a horse!"
Flavor Source: William Shakespeare, Richard III
Artwork: Defence of Cadiz against the English by Francisco de Zurbarán (1635)
About the card:
The Cadiz Expedition can best be described as a comedy of errors on the part of the English Navy. Hoping to help the Protestant Dutch Republic in their Eighty Year's War against the Spanish (see also Privateer), the English Parliament voted King Charles I and his Prime Minister, the Duke of Buckingham, money to fight the Spanish at sea. After landing near Cadiz and finding that the city was much better defended than they had expected, the English attackers soon realized that they did not have enough water and began to raid local cellars for wine. The English became thoroughly drunk and when the Spanish defenders arrived, the drunken English soldiers were defeated without firing a shot. The Navy made a few more attempts at trying to capture Spanish merchants, but they had been warned and so this amounted to little. In all the English lost around 7000 men and 62 ships for no perceivable gain.
Despite the Barnum and Bailey show, this battle would have grave consequences, it served to undermine the King's Prime Minister and forced the King to dissolve Parliament. A decade later, the failure of the Anglo-Spanish war and the frequent dissolutions of Parliament by the King would serve as the sparks of the English Civil War, ultimately leading to Buckingham's assassination and King Charles' execution.
