Treaty of Arras (1579)

The provinces and towns that had formed the Union of Utrecht (23 January 1579) continued the war.

After Don Juan of Austria, the royal governor-general of the Habsburg Netherlands had broken with the States General of the Netherlands in July 1579 and resumed hostilities the members of the Union of Brussels initially maintained their common front against the government of king Philip II of Spain.

But after the death of Don Juan in October 1578 his successor, the Duke of Parma, approached a Catholic faction, known later as the "Malcontents", led by the stadtholder of Hainaut, Philip de Lalaing, 3rd Count of Lalaing and his half-brother Emanuel Philibert de Lalaing (usually referred to as "Montigny") and convinced them to engineer a breach with the Prince of Orange, the leader of the States General, over the latter's policy of "religious peace".

[1] The representatives of the parties to the Union of Arras already on 8 December 1578 (so before the Declaration of 6 January 1579 was sworn to) agreed on a first draft of the treaty.

But still the negotiations had not ended and Parma succeeded to wrest a number of further concessions from the treaty partners, which resulted in the version of 12 September 1579, which was ratified by king Philip and promulgated in Mons.