William of Orange and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1572-84

K.W. Swart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351872775
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

The figure of Prince William of Orange (1572-84) dominates the political landscape of the sixteenth century Netherlands, and in many ways personifies the Dutch revolt against Spanish hegemony. Yet despite the European significance of his struggle, there has not been a major English-language study of William since C.V. Wedgwood's biography published in 1944. As such, scholars will welcome this publication of Koen Swart's distinguished and authoritative biography of the first of the hereditary stadholders of the United Provinces. Originally available only in Dutch, this edition provides an English speaking audience for the first time with a detailed account of William's role in the Dutch Revolt that reflects the vast amount of scholarship undertaken in the field of European political and religious history over the last few decades. In the book, Swart explores the means by which William established his rule in Holland and Zeeland in the 1570s, and provides an analysis of William's relations with the provincial states, the States-General and the towns, and the creation of a new system of government and finance. Within this framework of national history, he is always careful to locate the subject in its broad international context, thus adding to our wider understanding of this turbulent period. Moreover, Swart avoids the uncritical glorification of William evident in some previous works, and asks searching and pertinent questions concerning the wisdom of William's decisions, such as that to break up the pre-1572 unity of the Habsburg Netherlands. In so doing, Swart provides a much more balanced view than has hitherto been available, that not only takes Protestant views into account, but also contemplates the Revolt form the perspective of the Catholic population, and shows sympathy for Charles V's and Philip II's predicament. In so doing, this book provides the most important revision of William for a century, and will undoubtedly have repercussions upon many studying the history of Europe in the age of Reformations. Published posthumously, this book also includes introductory material written by leading scholars H.F.K. van Nierop, M.E.H.N. Mout, J. Israel and A.C. Duke.

K.W. SWART

William of Orange and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1572–84

Chapter One
The Defence of Holland and Zeeland, 1572–76

Orange’s finest hour

In the four perilous years when Holland and Zeeland stood alone and defied the enemy, Orange repeatedly praised his troops for their heroism, and assured them that it would win them everlasting fame with posterity.¹

Yet no one did more than Orange himself to ensure the failure of Spain’s attempts to suppress the Revolt in the two maritime provinces. These were the years when he gave his all for the ‘common cause’ and revealed himself for the first time as a statesman of extraordinary stature.

One of his greatest merits was that he remained unswervingly true to his goals. In spite of the numerous reverses he had to suffer in these years, he never contemplated giving up the struggle. Some of his most devoted followers were not so steadfast, and sometimes urged him to accept the enemy’s offers of a negotiated peace. But the Prince flatly refused to lay down his arms until the Spanish armies were withdrawn from the country and the States had been granted a greater say in the government. The dogged tenacity he displayed in this struggle can be compared with the unshakeable determination shown by Winston Churchill after the fall of France in the summer of 1940 as the leader of Britain’s struggle against an equally all-powerful and domineering enemy. The period when Orange bent all his strength to the defence of Holland and Zeeland was his ‘finest hour’.

He also revealed himself as a shrewd politician who went to work with the greatest pragmatism and caution. He showed his mastery in winning the approval of the States for the many drastic measures that had to be taken to resist the enemy. When introducing new taxes or quartering troops he tried above all to spare the feelings of the well-todo citizenry and to win them over to his viewpoint by reasoned argument or by granting special favours. When the nobles of Holland complained to him in October 1574 that the towns were usurping many noble privileges, he asked them to remember that they were living in turbulent times, when all discord had to be shunned, and that they should keep on friendly terms with the town magistrates.² Many of the zealots of the Revolt accused him of half-heartedness because of this accommodating attitude to the well-off middle class, whose patriotism often left a great deal to be desired, but whose political and financial support was vitally necessary to him. Gijsbrecht van Duivenvoorde, one of those who shared in Lumey’s reign of terror, even let slip in March 1573 that he thought the Prince had lost his wits.³

But in many cases Orange got his way by his tact, and avoided driving the more conservative groups in the population into the arms of the enemy. Unlike nearly all revolutions in the past, the Revolt in Holland and Zeeland did not end in failure, a remarkable achievement, which owed much to his moderate policy.

In 1572–76 Orange again held office as stadholder (governor) of Holland and Zeeland, but his task in these years was incomparably more difficult than in 1559–67, when he had held the same post as Philip II’s representative. Now he was the leader of a government that had to take all kinds of decisions for which responsibility in the past had lain with the King or his officials in Brussels. For the first time, he had to pay attention to a variety of political questions: the financing of the war effort, winning foreign support and setting up a new system of government. His function as commander-in-chief of the army made equally heavy demands on his time. He had to call into being an army capable of putting up a fight against the enemy, equip it with the war materiel it needed and decide how it could most effectively be deployed against his much more powerful opponent. ‘Day and night’, he sometimes sighed, ‘I labour for the common cause.’⁴

Orange had very few colleagues who could share the burden of his duties. One of the few was Marnix of St Aldegonde, who rendered him many important services in this, the most critical period of the struggle against Spain. It was Marnix, for example, who represented the Prince at the first ‘free’ meeting of the States of Holland at Dordrecht in July 1572, and who made sure that the money collected there was conveyed to Orange’s army encamped at Roermond. The Prince also entrusted him with several important tasks in the next four years. Early in 1575 he was sent to Heidelberg to ask for the hand of Charlotte de Bourbon, and in 1576 he led the embassy to plead with Queen Elizabeth to take pity on the fate of the Dutch rebels. Marnix was a loyal and selfless servant of Orange, but political steadfastness was never his strong suit. He made this clear during his imprisonment in Spain from November 1573 to October 1574, when he urged Orange to negotiate on the enemy’s highly objectionable peace proposals.

A supporter with greater political skill was Paulus Buys, who was appointed to the important office of Advocate of Holland in late 1572, perhaps at Orange’s prompting. Unlike Marnix, he was a man without fixed religious principles, who did not shrink from using his political influence to line his own pockets. This earned him the hatred of the fervent Protestants. One of these zealots, Johan Fruytiers, had Buys above all in mind in 1574 when he accused many prominent Holland citizens of waiting to see which way the wind blew; when the Spaniards had been dealt with, he threatened, their turn would come.⁵ But Orange valued the Advocate’s services and always kept him under his protection. He showed his great confidence in Buys by appointing him to act as chairman of the newly created ‘Council beside His Excellency’ when he himself was unable to act in that capacity.⁶

As Advocate Buys was not a servant of the Prince but of the States of Holland. Like later holders of the office, however, he managed to exert a great influence on the decisions of the States, and his point of view, unlike that of most members of the States, was not determined in the first place by local civic interests. Orange therefore found him a loyal ally in his struggle against the particularist tendencies of the local magistrates. For example it was partly thanks to Buys that the States gave up their resistance to several of Orange’s unpopular proposals, such as that to flood the countryside of South Holland or to levy forced loans. Orange recognized Buys’s services by bestowing on him the lucrative office of Keeper of the Great Seal of Holland and Zeeland.⁷

But Orange had very few other colleagues who were up to the tasks entrusted to them. Almost all the nobles who served as army commanders or military governors in the towns of Holland and Zeeland were rough characters, who had not mastered the art of keeping their troops on a tight rein, and were constantly embroiled with the civilian population. Some of them were also notoriously tight-fisted, men such as Arend van Dorp, the governor of Zierikzee from 1573 to 1576. He had put Orange under an obligation in the spring of 1572 by lending him 12 000 guilders to finance his campaign, and had been rewarded with several profitable offices and forfeited estates. He was one of the most vilified of Orange’s councillors. In July 1573 the complaints against him grew so bitter that the Prince ordered the imprisonment of all those who had insulted van Dorp. Even after this, however, he was still deeply unpopular among the people for his petty and selfishly ambitious conduct.⁸

The enemy was well aware of Orange’s essential contribution to the defence of Holland and Zeeland. In early 1573, when Alva began to realize that it would not be as easy to suppress the Revolt in the two maritime provinces as he had first imagined, he advised the King to settle the matter by having Orange put out of the way. Philip made no objection to his Regent’s suggestion. Alva was told that the King would be extremely pleased if his Netherlands subjects were rid of the man who had brought their disasters down on them.⁹ Even Granvelle, who as a rule deplored Alva’s merciless policy, judged that ‘Turkish’ tactics were appropriate against such hardened rebels as Orange.¹⁰

During the rule of Alva and his successor, Louis de Requesens, several persons from various backgrounds declared themselves willing to make an attempt on Orange’s life, but none of them actually did so. Some were caught in time, such as the individual arrested at Brill on 12 June 1575, the day of Orange’s marriage to Charlotte de Bourbon. Others, among them some Scots and English soldiers who had been taken prisoners of war by the Spaniards, apparently never meant their proposals seriously. It was certainly not the intention of the Scots captain Sir Henry Balfour, whose life Alva spared after the capture of Haarlem on condition that he should try to murder Orange. Balfour immediately advised the Prince of what had passed between himself and Alva; using the information supplied by Balfour and others Orange soon had a long list of people who had aimed at his life. Cautious by nature and protected by his bodyguard, he managed to escape the snares set by his enemies for many years.¹¹

In the rebel camp too it was realized that the struggle could not be long continued without Orange’s leadership. In these years the Prince repeatedly threatened to resign if the States persisted in opposing the measures he prescribed, but in almost all these cases they immediately gave way. On one such occasion he invited them to take over the leadership of the government themselves, but they rejected this proposal, arguing that it was essential, in their opinion, to have ‘a head and high authority’.¹² And it was made all too clear to them in 1574 that no one but the Prince could serve as head of the government. When it became known in that year that the enemy wanted to remove him, and at the same time he fell so seriously ill that his recovery was despaired of, both the Court of Holland, the chief judicial body of the province, and the States committees began to look for a possible successor, but they could find no one to follow in Orange’s footsteps.¹³

Even though it was thanks largely to the Prince that the Spanish army failed to subdue the Revolt in Holland and Zeeland, he could not have prevented this if several circumstances had not been extraordinarily favourable to the defence of the provinces. In the first place the Spanish offensive was hindered by the geography of the rebellious region: in the rebels’ watery stronghold it was difficult for the Spaniards to cut off all the access routes to the cities they besieged. Furthermore heavy artillery and siege engines could not always be set up in the swampy, occasionally inundated countryside, and the Spanish armies were hampered by their dependence on long and vulnerable supply lines from the southern Netherlands.

The situation of Holland and Zeeland at the mouths of the great rivers had another advantage for the rebels’ cause: it allowed them to blockade the passage of shipping to the commercial cities of Antwerp and Amsterdam, which had remained in Spanish hands, while continuing without interruption their own highly profitable trade to other European countries.

Alva’s repressive policy and the increasingly insolent behaviour of his soldiers played into Orange’s hands by making the enemy more hated than ever at this time. Although the Hollanders and Zeelanders showed themselves less willing to make sacrifices than is often assumed, still a great part of the population was willing to defend itself to the utmost against the Spaniards. After the massacres at Zutphen and Naarden, Orange’s vitriolic anti-Spanish propaganda fell on fertile soil. Alva’s barbarous punishment of the two cities, which had offered virtually no resistance to the Spanish army, had been intended to terrify the citizens of other towns into opening their gates to his armies at once. But his terrorist tactic misfired, for now it was generally assumed that stubborn resistance offered the only chance of coming out alive. Ultimately the enemy’s failure to pay his troops on time cost him even more dearly, for they repeatedly mutinied, sometimes even when total victory seemed to be within their grasp. This was partly because Spain was involved in a great struggle with the Turks in the same years. Alva repeatedly pressed the King to end that war, thus releasing more funds and ships for the suppression of the Revolt in the Netherlands, but Philip declined these requests.

Yet all these favourable circumstances would have been of little benefit to the rebels if they had not found such a gifted leader in William of Orange.

The religious revolution

Religious developments get out of hand

The beginning of the Revolt in Holland and Zeeland was followed by a true revolution in religion: the Catholic Church, for centuries the only one permitted, was stripped of its privileges and possessions, and the members of the Reformed Churches, once mercilessly persecuted, now seized a monopoly of worship. This anti-Catholic revol...