Eighty Years' War, 1579–1588

[6] While the nascent polity was struggling to find a new sovereign head of state, including Matthias of Austria, Francis of Anjou, William "the Silent" of Orange and Robert of Leicester,[6] before giving up and deciding to become a republic by passing the Deduction of Vrancken on 12 April 1588,[7] the Duke of Parma continued his successful military and diplomatic offensive, bringing ever more provinces and cities in the southern, eastern and northeastern parts of the Netherlands back into royalist hands.

[6] Parma's reconquests more or less stalled after the Fall of Antwerp (1585),[8] and finally came to an end with the failure of the Spanish Armada (July–August 1588) and Philip II ordered him to intervene in the French Wars of Religion (September 1589) to prevent the Succession of Henry IV and France becoming a Protestant kingdom.

[note 4] Robert Fruin's 1857 classic study on the 1588–1598 period, which he named the "Ten Years",[9] mentioned the Republic's origins in 1588 only in passing (Chapter IV).

[15] To Fruin, the turning point was a military one: the destruction of the Spanish Armada (Chapter II) began the 'adversity which Philip would suffer almost without interruptions from now on, which is to be attributed more to his own mistakes than the cooperation of his enemies.

[note 5] On 6 January 1579, the counties of Hainaut and Artois and the city of Douai signed their own defensive Union of Arras, which sought reconciliation with the Spanish government on its own terms.

Once Parma accepted these conditions, the grievances of the conservative Catholics against Spain were satisfied, and they were ready for a separate peace in the form of the Treaty of Arras on 17 May 1579, in which they renewed their allegiance to Philip.

[18][19] Although Hainaut, Artois and Douai were all French-speaking, prompting many a later Dutch historian to attribute their departure from the general union on linguistic differences, and thus a "Walloon affair", Henri Pirenne stated that language played no role in their decision to pursue a separate peace.

[2] On the other hand, burghers dominated in the neighbouring French-speaking urbanised Tournaisis, which did not join the Union of Arras, and remained loyal to the Revolt until the Siege of Tournai (1581) [nl; fr], when Parma forced them to surrender.

[22] Having withdrawn his Spanish and Italian troops as required by the Union of Arras, Parma had replaced his foreign personnel with German or 'native' (Low Countries) soldiers for a total of 93 infantry companies, 57 of which were necessary for garrisoning strategic points.

[22] At this time, on the initiative of Emperor Rudolph II a final[clarification needed] attempt was made to attain a general peace between Philip and the States-General in the German city of Cologne.

As both sides insisted on mutually exclusive demands, these peace talks only served to make the irreconcilability of both parties obvious; there appeared to be no more room for the people who favoured the middle ground, like Count Rennenberg.

[28][27] William of Orange by now was convinced that the only way to avert total defeat was to regain support of the moderates, alienated by Calvinist radicalism; reassure the still-loyal Catholics in the South; and retain the trust of the German Lutheran princes and the king of France.

The Act also intensified the propaganda war between both sides, as it took the form of a manifest, setting out the principles of the Revolt, just as William's Apologie in answer to Philip's ban of June 1580, outlawing him, had done.

[33] Parma had long been hampered by the provision in the Treaty of Arras which prohibited stationing of Spanish mercenaries (the troops of the best quality) in the provinces that belonged to the Southern union.

Rennenberg had died in the Summer of 1581, but was ably replaced by Francisco Verdugo, who defeated the English mercenaries of Sir John Norris (of Rijmenam fame) opposing him in Friesland at the Battle of Noordhorn.

However he was forced to lift his siege of Lochem, but on his way back north captured the fortress city of Steenwijk, the key to the north-east of the Netherlands, which always had eluded Rennenberg.

[citation needed] Meanwhile, Anjou had become weary of the restraints placed on his authority by the civilians of the States-General and he attempted to seize power in Flanders and Brabant by way of a military coup.

[44] In this desperate situation, William of Orange started to entertain thoughts of finally accepting the title of Count of Holland,[45] which some of his ardent supporters, notably Paulus Buys, had first pressed upon him in 1581.

[2] The proceedings were interrupted when the Duke of Anjou died on 10 June 1584;[46] William and the States-General instead agreed to offer the sovereignty to the king of France instead, and immediately sent a delegation to Paris.

But the situation in France had deteriorated, the religious strife between Huguenots (Protestants) and Catholics increasing, and so Henri did not feel strong enough to defy Philip, prompting him to decline the honour.

[55] Well aware of the counter-productivity of Alba's terror tactics, Parma treated the inhabitants leniently, but most Protestants nevertheless migrated to the northern provinces, swelling the stream of often wealthy merchants and skilled labourers that sought refuge there in this period.

She offered to send an expeditionary force of 6,350-foot and 1,000 horse, the cost to be shared by the States-General, provided her nominee, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, would be put in both military and political charge of the country as governor-general.

As a protector of the Puritans in England, he was seen as a natural ally by the "strict" faction of Calvinists in the Netherlands, who had opposed William of Orange's policy of "religious peace", and now were arrayed against the "lax" Dutch regents who favoured an Erastian Church order, a bone of contention for many years to come.

Those Dutch regents, led by the Land's Advocate of Holland, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, opposed Leicester from the start because they identified him as the focus of the opposition in the Netherlands to the power they had acquired during the course of the Revolt.

Beside the hard-line Calvinists, that opposition consisted of the Dutch nobility, whose power had declined in favour of that of the despised merchant class that the regents represented, and the factions in the other provinces, such as Utrecht and Friesland, that resented Holland's supremacy.

In a show of bad faith the States of Holland and Zeeland had then appointed the second legitimate son of William of Orange, Maurice of Nassau,[note 8] stadtholder in their provinces just before Leicester arrived.

[59] Leicester also clashed with Holland over matters of policy like the representation of the States of Brabant and Flanders, who by now no longer controlled any significant areas in their provinces, in the States-General.

Superficially, this made sense from a strategic point of view, and the embargo proved quite effective after Leicester put it in force in April, causing much hardship in the Spanish-controlled territories in the next Winter.

[60] The political strains between Leicester and Holland intensified when Calvinist hard-liners, in Utrecht, led by Gerard Prouninck, seized power in that province in August.

New regulations were put in force that required every officer in the pay of Holland to accept his commission from the stadtholder, Maurice, who also had to approve all troop movements.