Revolt in the Netherlands by Anton van Der Lem

Author:Anton van Der Lem
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books

54 The capture of Grave by Parma. Note the river closed off at E.

The Crucial ‘Ten Years’: The ‘Garden of Holland’ Closed

Once again, developments abroad were to affect the situation in the Netherlands. The unpredictable French king Henri III, who had been offered sovereignty of the Low Countries, had had Catholic leaders the Duke of Guise and his brother the Cardinal of Guise murdered, on 23 and 24 (Christmas Eve!) December 1588.15 On 1 August 1589, King Henri himself fell victim to an assassin. Philip II felt compelled to order Parma and his armies to Paris to prevent the city and country falling into the hands of the Protestant successor to the throne, Henri of Navarre. A Protestant king in France, after already having had to acknowledge a Protestant queen in England, was too much for Philip. When he became king, Philip had been compared to King Solomon, whose father David had also still been alive when he was succeeded by his son. Philip’s nickname, el Prudente, was therefore first taken to mean ‘the Wise’, by analogy with Solomon, but this was later translated as ‘the Prudent’. Philip was certainly very prudent in the early years of his reign. Later, however, he was determined to be the champion of the Catholic faith at any price, not only in his own domains but also in the international arena. By then, he had thrown all prudence to the wind and devoted all his military and financial resources to defending the faith.16 Although Parma had advised the king first to defeat all the remaining rebellious provinces in the Netherlands now that he was making such good progress, thwarting the danger of a Protestant France was much more important to Philip. On the king’s orders, Parma conducted two successful expeditions against France and on 19 September 1590 entered Paris. That gave the rebels above the major rivers in the Low Countries an opportunity they could not afford to ignore.

In his classic study Tien jaren uit de Tachtigjarige Oorlog (Ten Years from the Eighty Years War), first published in 1857, Robert Fruin gave a proud and still breathtaking account of the history of the young Republic from 1588 to 1598.17 He strongly emphasized the independence and enterprising spirit of the still small Union. But he also stressed that, without Parma being tied up in France, such a success would never have been possible. In 1588, Maurice was stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland, and in the years that followed he also became stadtholder of Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel. His cousin William Louis had already been Orange’s deputy as stadtholder in Friesland and had succeeded him after his death. William Louis preceded Maurice in studying classical warfare, as was customary in Europe at that time. Both continued the reorganization and professionalization of the army of the States, which Orange had initiated. Both also continually favoured an offensive war as the best form of defence. In 1589, William Louis had passionately argued at a meeting of the States

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.