Ten Years (Eighty Years' War)

Starting with the important fortification of Bergen op Zoom (1588), Maurice and William Louis subsequently took Breda (1590), Zutphen, Deventer, Delfzijl, and Nijmegen (1591), Steenwijk, Coevorden (1592) Geertruidenberg (1593), Groningen (1594), Grol, Enschede, Ootmarsum, and Oldenzaal (1597).,[2] recovering territories lost in 1580 through the treachery of George de Lalaing.

His novel military tactics earned him fame amongst the courts of Europe, and the borders of the present-day Netherlands were largely defined by the campaigns of Maurice of Orange during the Ten Years.

[1][3][4] In the work, he wanted to show how the situation in the Netherlands changed completely between 1588 ("when the cause of the Dutch revolt seemed all but lost"[5]) and 1598 (when "the northern provinces, the glorious Seven, are liberated for good, prosperous on land and sea ...

[6] In these years, Maurice's military achievements, as well as the young Republic's political conflicts and diplomatic missions, enabled the Netherlands to make their decisive step towards independence, and Holland and Zeeland to seize a leading role in global trade.

[4] Praising the enterprising spirit and independence of the small new state, Fruin also emphasised that this breakthrough would have been impossible without the bulk of the Spanish army under Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma being tied up in France.

[4] Gelderblom (2000) conceded that the Hollandic merchants did not gain a foothold in Russia, the Mediterranean and outside Europe until the 1590s, but pointed out that economic developments in the first half of the 16th century already laid an important foundation for later success (which both Fruin and Israel agreed on), and challenged them by arguing that in the 10-year period following the Alteratie (1578–1588), the city of Amsterdam already began flourishing, in part due to the influx of merchants and artisans fleeing from the Southern Netherlands, especially after the 1585 Fall of Antwerp (a point supported by other historians).

[8] Anton van der Lem (2019) concurred with Fruin that the Ten Years were militarily 'crucial',[9] although it had more to do with the absence of Parma than the brilliance of the Republic's war efforts and economics.

[3] The new republic strongly increased its trade and wealth from 1585 onwards, with Amsterdam replacing Antwerp as the main port of north-west Europe (see #Economics and demographic changes in the Netherlands).

[8] After several failed attempts at finding a suitable regent to replace Philip II (Matthias of Austria 1577–1581, Francis of Anjou 1581–1583, William "the Silent" of Orange 1583–1584), the Dutch revolutionaries sought to establish an alliance with England by inviting Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester in December 1585.

The use of these fire-arms required tactical innovations like the counter-march of files of musketeers to enable rapid volley fire by ranks; such complicated manoevres had to be instilled by constant drilling.

The position of Holland was also improved when Adolf of Nieuwenaar died in a gunpowder explosion in October 1589, enabling Oldenbarnevelt to engineer his succession as stadtholder of Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel by Maurice, with whom he worked hand in glove.

These mainly operated in the shallow waters off Zeeland and Flanders that larger warships with a deeper draught, like the Spanish and English galleons, could not safely enter.

[9] On 7 September 1589, Philip II of Spain ordered Parma, the commander of the Army of Flanders, to move all available forces south to prevent Henry's accession.

[3] When Adolf van Nieuwenaar died in a gunpowder explosion in October 1589, Oldenbarnevelt engineered Maurice to be appointed stadtholder of Utrecht, Guelders and Overijssel.

[21] Meanwhile, the Frisian stadtholder William Louis travelled to The Hague twice in 1589, both times in order to plead with the States-General to enlarge the States Army and switch from defensive to offensive warfare.

[22] Parma launched two successful campaigns against France and entered Paris on 19 September 1590, but his absence from the Netherlands provided the Dutch rebels in the north with opportunities for counter-offensives.

Maurice used his much enlarged army, which included reinforcements from England and with newly developed transportation methods using rivercraft, to sweep the IJssel river valley, capturing Zutphen (May) and Deventer (June); then invaded the Ommelanden, but a strike at Groningen city failed.

[25][26][27] The next year Maurice joined his cousin William Louis in taking Steenwijk, pounding that strongly defended fortress with 50 artillery pieces, that fired 29,000 shot.

[29][28] Despite the fact that Spanish control of the northeastern Netherlands now hung by a thread, Holland insisted that first Geertruidenberg would be captured, which happened after a spectacular siege from March–June 1593,[30] which even the great ladies of The Hague treated as a tourist attraction.

[citation needed] Only the next year the stadtholders concentrated their attention on the northeast again, where meanwhile the particularist forces in Friesland, led by Carel Roorda, were trying to extend their hegemony over the other north-eastern provinces.

Nevertheless, ceding the Netherlands made it theoretically easier to pursue a compromise peace, as both the archdukes and the chief minister of the new king, the duke of Lerma, were less inflexible towards the Republic than Philip II had been.

As future campaigns were mostly restricted to the border areas of the current Netherlands, the Republic's demographic, economic and political heartland of Holland remained at peace, beginning the Dutch Golden Age.

There was at first little to fear from the Dutch, and he had taken the added precaution of heavily fortifying a number of the cities in Brabant and the north-eastern Netherlands he had recently acquired, so he could withdraw his main army to the French border with some confidence.

The use of these fire-arms required tactical innovations like the counter-march of files of musketeers to enable rapid volley fire by ranks; such complicated manoevres had to be instilled by constant drilling.

As part of their army reform the stadtholders therefore made extensive use of military manuals, often inspired by classical examples of Roman infantry tactics, such as the ones edited by Justus Lipsius in De Militia Romana of 1595.

Maurice also assembled an impressive train of siege artillery, much larger than armies of the time usually had available, which enabled him to systematically pulverise enemy fortresses.

[44] The latter (and many contemporary foreign observers and later historians) often argued that the confederal government machinery of the Netherlands, in which the delegates to the States and States-General constantly had to refer back to their principals in the cities, could not work without the unifying influence of an "eminent head" (like a Regent or Governor-General, or later a stadtholder).

[citation needed] Internally, aided by the influx of Protestant refugees from the South - which became a flood after the fall of Antwerp in 1585 - a long-term economic boom began, that in its first phase would last until the second decade of the next century.

The economic resources that this boom generated were easily mobilised by the budding "fiscal-military state" in the Netherlands, that had its origin, ironically, in the Habsburg attempts at centralisation earlier in the century.

This started in the desperate days of the early revolt in which the Dutch regents had to resort to harsh taxation and forced loans to finance their war efforts.