Thank you to Loretta Goldberg, author of The Reversible Mask: An Elizabethan Spy Novel for joining us today and sharing this excellent guest article on the Siege of Antwerp.

During World War II, Sir Winston Churchill said, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” Illusion was a tactic used in 1944 to deceive the Nazis about where the allies would land; many historians believe that the Normandy beachhead held because of the deception. 336 years earlier, in 1588, England faced invasion by Spain with its Armada of 120 ships and 20,000 troops that were meant to be supplemented by comparable forces from Spain’s soldiers and barges in the Netherlands (known as the Army of Flanders.) Illusion then also saved England.