Malcontents (Low Countries)

The Malcontents in the context of the Eighty Years' War or the Dutch Revolt were a faction of Catholic nobles in Hainaut and Artois who openly opposed William the Silent, also known as William of Orange, the leader of the States General of the Netherlands in the Union of Brussels of the Habsburg Netherlands during the period after the adoption of the Pacification of Ghent.

After the provinces of the Habsburg Netherlands in 1576 formed a united front against their overlord, Philip II of Spain, when they concluded the Pacification of Ghent and the Union of Brussels, they soon achieved most of their goals as Philip and his new governor-general Don Juan saw no other option than to accept those treaties and remove the mercenaries of the Spanish Army of Flanders from the country.

[3] From a designation of Montigny's irregulars the word "Malcontents" soon became a kind of "nom de gueux" for partisans of the Catholic cause in general, as opposed to the Calvinist faction, and the moderate "Politiques" around William of Orange.

Montigny and his brother Philip, using Philip's power base in Hainaut, started communications between Parma (after Don Juan died in October 1578) and the States of Hainaut and Artois, and a number of city governments (Lille, Arras, Orchies, and Douai, together forming French Flanders), under the influence of the governor of Lille, Adrien d'Ognies, seigneur de Willerval.

This led to a congress of representatives of those political entities in Arras that on 6 January 1579 subscribed to a declaration in which the "machinations" of the Calvinists and the "weak" religious-peace policies of William were denounced, and the participants swore to uphold the Catholic religion and to support each other in this endeavor.