Early modern war narratives and the Revolt in the Low Countries

Raymond Fagel, Leonor Álvarez Francés, Beatriz Santiago Belmonte, Raymond Fagel, Leonor Álvarez Francés, Beatriz Santiago Belmonte

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781526140869
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526140883
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

By the end of the sixteenth century, stories about the Revolt in the Low Countries (c. 1567–1648) had begun to spread throughout Europe. These stories had very different authors with very different intentions. Over time the plethora of sources and interpretations faded away, leaving us with opposing canonical narratives. The Dutch and Spanish national myths were forged on the basis of two visions of the conflict: as a liberation war against cruel Spanish oppressors and as a glorious episode in the history of the Spanish Empire. This volume delves into the early, seemingly anecdotal stories of the war to map the great variety and interconnection of the narratives. It asks such questions as how did the Jesuits write about the Revolt, what can we find in Italian chronicles and how did the war look from the perspective of a local nobleman or a Spanish commander?

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction: early modern war narratives and the Revolt in the Low Countries
• 1 ‘Do not reveal that I wrote this’: diplomatic correspondence, news and narratives in the early years of the civil war in the Low Countries
• 2 The fabrication of Francisco de Valdés: episodic narratives in Spanish and Dutch chronicles on the siege of Leiden (1573–74)
• 3 The year of the Furies: military correspondence around the Sack of Antwerp (1576)
• 4 ‘Lode della nazione italiana’: Italian historians on the Spanish soldiers
• 5 Narrating mutiny in the army of Flanders: Cristóbal Rodríguez Alva’s La inquieta Flandes (1594)
• 6 Orange’s Spanish mulatto and other side-changers: narratives on Spanish defection during the Revolt in the Low Countries
• 7 How a defeat became a victory: the siege of Ostend in contemporary Dutch war coverage and post-war chronicles (1601–15)
• 8 North and south: a comparison of episodic war narratives during the Revolt in the Low Countries
• 9 Chaplains and soldiers: experience and narratives in the Low Countries (1567–1648)
• 10 ‘Was bis daher gepassiert solt vergessen und vergeben sein’: cross-border nobleman Sweder Schele’s (1569–1639) accounts of army commanders during the Revolt in the Low Countries and Thirty Years’ War
• 11 Geoffrey Parker’s Universal Soldier revisited: European military history and human universals
• Bibliography
• Index