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136 Augustin de Mexia; who had eche of them thirty-two companies under their conduct. Besides the which companies, there were many bands also of Castilians, and Portugals, every one of which had their peculiar governors, captains, officers, colours and weapons."

While this huge armament was making ready in the southern ports of the Spanish dominions, the Duke of Parma, with almost incredible toil and skill, collected a squadron of war-ships at Dunkirk, and a large flotilla of other ships and of flat-bottomed boats for the transport to England of the picked troops, which were designed to be the main instruments in subduing England. The design of the Spaniards was that the Armada should give them, at least for a time, the command of the sea, and that it should join the squadron, that Parma had collected, off Calais. Then, escorted by an overpowering naval force, Parma and his army were to embark in their flotilla, and cross the sea to England, where they were to be landed, together with the troops which the Armada brought from the ports of Spain. The scheme was not dissimilar to one formed against England a little more than two centuries afterwards. As Napoleon, in 1805, waited with his army and flotilla at Boulogne, looking for Villeneuve to