Medina Sidonia’s self-blame entrenched the myth of his incompetence
Evidence
But when his contemporaries laid its failure to the incompetence of its commander, and said that if only Santa Cruz or Recalde or Oquendo or that odd hero, Pedro de Valdés, had been in command everything would have turned out differently, Medina Sidonia agreed with them. Perhaps that is why the judgment has so seldom been questioned since. — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 831
Categorization
- SEED: A striking example of how a defeated leader’s own admission can cement a historical verdict for centuries.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 831
- XREF: connects to: Medina Sidonia’s leadership enabled rapid reassembly of the scattered Armada — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 749; Medina Sidonia’s candid refusal and subsequent obedience reflected genuine fealty, not ambition — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 470; Medina Sidonia’s abandonment of the Rosario marked his first real failure — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 645 (+2 more)
Library Connections
- Medina Sidonia may have made no decisive command error in the campaign
#complicates(0.85) — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 843