page_title: Siege of Coruña
section_title: Siege
hierarchical_section_title: Siege of Coruña / Siege
caption_attribution_description: Español: A Coruña, Murallas el Parrote This is a photo of a historical area indexed in the Spanish heritage register of Bienes de Interés Cultural under the reference RI-53-0000011-00000.
context_page_description: The Siege of Coruña, also known as the defense of Corunna, was a series of military encounters between the English Armada, also known as the Counter Armada or the Drake-Norris Expedition, a revenge English expedition within the Anglo-Spanish war, and the defenders of the fishermen's city of Corunna in Galicia on May 1589. It represented the first interaction between the Drake-Norris Expedition and the Spanish troops and set the tone for the rest of the campaign.
  Drake and Norreys had orders to attack Santander, where most of the surviving galleons from the Spanish Armada were being kept, and destroy the Spanish fleet. Drake chose to ignore them, alleging unfavorable winds and too much risk of becoming embayed by the Spaniards in the Bay of Biscay. He headed in a different direction and attacked Corunna instead. It is not completely clear why he did this, even though the winds seem like a poor excuse. His behavior suggests that his goal in taking the city was either getting a base or loot. He might have been gathering supplies for a long struggle in Santander.
context_section_description: The defenders that had not participated in the fight were behind the city walls and could not assist those outside. Without the ships, the inhabitants of the lower city, outside the medieval walls, could do nothing to prevent 1.500 soldiers from circling the beach and disembarking behind the church of San Xurxo, at the feet of the "upper city", the line of the medieval nucleus of the village, effectively surrounding them. Some opted for looking for refuge in the Castle of San Martín, while others decided to take arms and cut through the English lines towards the high city. The English troops took the poor neighborhoods of the lower city without much difficulty in the evening of the 5th and, on the night of the 5th, they took reprisals for the heavy casualties suffered during the two previous days on the inhabitants of the lower city and looted every patch of the city outside the walls. 400 Spaniards were killed that night, women and children included, adding to the 100 who died fighting during the day. The reaction came the next morning when a group of 1400 voluntary men from neighboring villages, under the orders of the veteran Flandes captain Juan de Varela who had sneaked past the English lines at night, charged towards the English troops camped in the lower city. When word of the events of the 5th spread new volunteers came from Santiago and the nearby mountains until there were 2400 Spanish in the Arras mount, outside the city walls, and harassing Blake's men as they tried to prepare the siege. Not much compared to the more than 23000 English men on the beach, but the guerrilla strategies they used were particularly effective in the foresty hills of Corunna.
  The siege was particularly ineffective for reasons unknown to the foreign army, and there were no signs of shortage in the city. The reason was that the Diana and the Princesa regularly managed to sneak past the English fleet to gather supplies and returned to the city unnoticed. Despite the huge number of the sieging force the Spanish still managed to break the siege often and come in and out. They probably had a better supply system than the English Armada did, since the area is poor in both food and fresh water and not too densely populated. To try to prevent the constant breaking of their siege the captains of the attackers ordered the tightening of the siege, gathering even more people more closely together. Later in the campaign, the troops suffered disease outbreaks that swapped through various ships. It is reasonable to think they originated here.
  Norreys decides to close lines and focus on breaching the walls, while from the inside the defenders keep attacking constantly. It is said that for days the entire city took turns to eat and sleep, while they spent the rest of the time defending the walls and repairing cracks in them. Two attempts at assaulting the walls are repelled by the inhabitants of the city, while the stress caused by the stalk, hit and run strategies carried out by Valera's men really affected the morale of Blake's men. On the 12th a mine is made to explode. The medieval constructions resist the blow.
caption: A Coruña city wall
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