EIGHTY YEARS WAR, 1567-1648

Joseph T. Coleman, MA

194 Hammond Street, Denmark, SC 29042

803-837-4039

[email protected]

Eighty Years War, 1567-1648

The Eighty Years War or “Dutch Revolt” is significant to European and Western

military, political, and religious history as well as the rise of the European Nation States.

Interestingly, the chronology of the Eighty Years War corresponds closely with a debate

many eminent historians are engaged in over the chronology of the “Military Revolution”

in Western Europe; most are in agreement of a series of significant advances in military

hardware, tactics to implement hardware, and military strategy changes led to the rise of

the European Nation States. Michael Roberts instigated this “Military Revolution”

debate when he presented his essay “The Military Revolution, 1560-1660” at Queen’s

University of Belfast during the mid-twentieth century. 1

Roberts argued the significant military advances not only vastly changed military

tactics, strategy and administration but also had a far reaching influence on society in

general. Roberts saw this “Military Revolution” as a kind of starting point of modern

1
Clifford Rogers, Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern
Europe, ed. Clifford J. Rogers (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 1-6

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European history and the beginning of the rise of the Nation States.2 Mahinder S. Kingra

wrote “Robert’s thesis is both elegant and persuasive. In the span of a century, the way

which Europeans conducted war changed completely, so much so that seventeenth-

century warfare would be largely incomprehensible to a soldier of the early sixteenth

century.”3 What effect did the “Military Revolution” have, if any, on The Dutch Revolt?

During this period the deeply protestant Northern Netherlands instigated an uprising

against the tyranny of imperial Spain and the predominantly Catholic rulers in the south

over political, religious, and economic freedoms.

In this essay, I will argue the roles of Robert’s “Military Revolution” and Herbert

Rowen’s definition of political revolution on the long struggle that Dutch Society

endured during the period known as the Dutch Revolt or the Eighty Years War. Both had

a major impact on Dutch Society but did not constitute a revolution like the revolutions in

France and Russia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Herbert Rowen wrote:

“A revolution is the seizure of the state by a revolutionary party with the aim of total

transformation, economic, social, cultural, ideological and political.”4 The Dutch would

eventually see the emergence of a republican regime replace the subjugation they

experienced under Spanish rule. Additionally, the Dutch would see the dominance of the

2
Michael Roberts, “The Military Revolution, 1560-1660”, Readings on the
Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, ed. Clifford Rogers (Boulder:
Westview Press, 1995), 13-35
3
Mahinder S. Kingra, “The Trace Italienne and the Military Revolution During
the Eighty Years’ War, 1567-1648, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Jul.,
1993), 432
4
Herbert H. Rowen, “The Dutch Revolt: What Kind of Revolution?,”
Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 43, No.3 (Autumn, 1990), 571

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Catholic Church be replaced by freedom of religion for all denominations without

persecution.

From an economic perspective, which also helped pave the way for the

emergence of a republican regime in the Netherlands, Martin Van Geldern writes “the

revival of the internal market and the gradual shift of the center of the world economy

from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic coasts of north-western Europe were important

stimuli for the trading sector”5 The Dutch economy because of transit trade and

structural improvements in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors experienced

remarkable growth. The problem was that these improvements in the Dutch economy

were not evenly distributed. The Urban elite experienced great benefits but the small

peasants and craftsmen were not as fortunate causing a polarization in Dutch society.6

This essay will anatomize what relationship the concept of revolution or

revolutions had with The Dutch Revolt and subsequently how those events changed

Dutch society.

The major effect the “Military Revolution” had on the Dutch revolt involved a

new type of defensive fortification called the trace italienne. It might be prudent to

consider Geoffrey Parker’s contention that an increase in army size and new tactics alone

did not constitute “The Military Revolution” but it remained the task of a new system of

fortifications to make it actual.7 The first major increase in European army size occurred

5
Martin Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 1555-1590
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 15
6
Ibid, 15
7
Mahinder S. Kingra, “The Trace Italienne and the Military Revolution During
the Eighty Years War, 1557-1648, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 57, No.3 (Jul.,
1993), 433

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 EIGHTY YEARS WAR, 1567-1648

in the 1530s. Parker argued that this major increase in army size was not due to tactics

alone where the new linear formations of infantry were comprised of substantially

smaller units of infantrymen armed with gunpowder weapons. The speed and

maneuverability of these units would revolutionize tactics but require substantially more

drill and training as well as leadership from officers and noncommissioned officers than

ever before. Governments would now be required to devote more resources and develop

the administrative ability to maintain these large professional armies. Secondly, a

revolution in strategy occurred as a result of the afore mentioned tactical changes which

allowed these new highly trained and drilled infantry to campaign in armies that were

capable of simultaneously being directed using complex maneuvers by a central

command against one or more objectives at a time. Thirdly, the scale of warfare in

Europe became far greater. This subsequently led to a massive increase in the size of

armies. Finally, the impact war had on society accentuated a far greater destructiveness

and a greater economic burden. It now became incumbent on the State to develop

logistics and administrative support to maintain and operate these large standing armies.

The emergence of mass armies, strict discipline, control by the State and submergence of

the individual had arrived.8 Parker believed the vast number of soldiers that would be

required to successfully lay siege to a town defended by the new type of fortification

known as the trace italienne represented a shift in the size of armies needed to conduct

offensive operations against these new fixed fortifications. The trace italienne

reestablished and further entrenched the supremacy of defensive structures in European

warfare which gunpowder weapons had temporarily undermined. This new style of
8
Geoffrey Parker, “The ‘Military Revolution, 1560-1660’—A Myth?”, Readings
on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, ed. Clifford Rogers (Boulder:
Westview Press, 1995), 37-54

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 EIGHTY YEARS WAR, 1567-1648

fortification was invented in Italy between 1450 and 1520 as a response to gunpowder

siege weapons which were battering down medieval walls. Charles VIII had

demonstrated during his 1494 invasion of Italy the damage gunpowder weapons could

inflict on medieval walls that were then the primary defense towns possessed. The trace

italienne met the three basic requirements of gunpowder-age fortifications which

included low-lying, spacious ramparts to serve as stable platforms for artillery that could

stand under the bombardment of siege artillery, a ditch and wall strong enough to

withstand escalade, and a ground plan so arranged as to leave no blind spots or dead

ground by which an adversary might reach the rampart undeterred. The angle bastion

which constituted a solid platform far enough out front to provide as wide a field of fire

as possible without compromising the tower’s role of providing flank cover represented

the most important architectural component. 9 Geoffrey Parker quoted Vauban, a

Marshal of France and the foremost military engineer of his age, “A battle lost in the low

Countries normally has few consequences, for pursuit of a defeated army continues for

only two, three or four leagues, because the neighboring fortress of the enemy halt the

victors and provide a refuge for the vanquished saving them from being totally ruined.”10

Geoffrey Parker in his 1976 work pointed out that the trace italienne was “the crucial

influence on the evolution of strategic thinking in the sixteenth century.”11

9
Mahinder S. Kingra, “The Trace Italienne and the Military Revolution During
the Eighty Years War, 1557-1648”, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Jul.,
1993), 434
10
Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567-1659 (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 16
11
Geoffrey Parker, “The ‘Military Revolution, 1560-1660’---A Myth?”, Readings
on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, ed. Clifford Rogers (Boulder:
Westview Press, 1995), 41

5
 EIGHTY YEARS WAR, 1567-1648

I believe a succinct sketch of the Dutch revolt beneficial to an analysis of the

revolutionary aspects of the uprising against Spanish rule in the Netherlands. The

geography was distinctive where the Delta formed the confluence of three rivers, the

Rhine, Maas or Meuse, and the Scheldt. In this location there developed a vibrant

agricultural and trade based economy second to none in Northern Europe. However, the

Burgundian and Hapsburg rulers elected from the late fourteenth century to limit the

political unity of the region and allowed only two central institutions, the States General

and the Collateral Councils. This strategy served to limit the inhabitants to focus only on

their particular interest and the policy of a dynasty that ruled round the world. Charles V

abdicated in 1555 and his son Philip II reigned in the Low Countries, not, however, as

king of Spain but as duke, count, or lord in each of the provinces.12

Militarily and financially the Low Countries played a key role in prosecuting the

long Habsburg war against France which came to a successful close in 1559 but the

people of the Low Countries and the Netherlands believed the fruits of victory were

enjoyed only in Spain and they were left with the burdens the long war produced. It was

not difficult to see in the six years that followed tension increased between the people of

the Netherlands and their ruler in Spain. By this juncture Philip II had returned to Spain

and obtained from the Pope an ecclesiastical reorganization of the Low Countries which

not only took the new bishoprics out of the jurisdiction of French and German

archbishops but placed them under his influence instead of under the high nobility in the

Netherlands. Phillip further alienated his people, in the Low Countries, by demanding

the rigorous rooting out of the heresies which included the Lutheran, Anabaptist, and the

12
Herbert H. Rowen, “The Dutch Revolt: What Kind of Revolution?”,
Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 3, (Autumn, 1990), 571

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 EIGHTY YEARS WAR, 1567-1648

most provocative of the all the Calvinist. For the Dutch nobility who had been brought

up on the teachings of Erasmus of Rotterdam, a Dutch philosopher and Catholic priest,

who tended to lean more to a mildness in matters of faith, these actions by Philip

offended their sensibilities and the Dutch nobility were further offended when Phillip

refused to govern with them and through them as his predecessors had done but instead

elected to rule through his half-sister Margaret of Parma who he appointed his governor-

general in Brussels. Equally unpalatable to the nobility was the appointment of a

foreigner Franc-Comtois Granvelle as Margaret’s chief minister, who made policy for her

without the participation of the magnates in the Council of State. This practice was an

insult and precipitated the refusal of the nobility to participate in the work of State. The

nobility’s positions as stadtholders gave them command of the armed forces and it was

they who had to persuade the ever-reluctant provincial States to grant funds to the king’s

government. For these reasons Philip was forced to amend his position. Philip, in an

effort to appease the magnates, removed Granville but refused to modify his religious

policies or to convene the States General. The removal of Granville was not enough to

appease the nobility and as a result in 1566 the opposition began to take up arms against

the government and the revolt turned violent and now involved the lesser barons and

lords in addition to the highest nobility. Now, under the eye of the greatest of the

magnates, William, count of Nassau and prince of Orange, who in the Low Countries was

the largest stadtholder of the provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht the resistance

took the shape of an armed alliance known as “The Compromise” which was a sworn

league of mutual support. Margaret of Parma was presented a petition during a mass

demonstration demanding that the religious inquisition ordered by Philip II be set aside.

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From the government’s perspective, this mass demonstration amounted to nothing less

than an insurrection. Rowen wrote “Yet the Compromise was something less than a

revolutionary uprising. It did not seek to overthrow the established government and put

itself in its place; it had no program of transformation such as is now implicit in the term

‘revolution.’”13 The intent of the resistance was not the conquest of the power of the

state. The people were attempting to prevent the government, by force if necessary,

from enforcing obnoxious policies.

Margaret had little choice but to accept the demands because she lacked the

military force that would be required to quell the revolt. At the time, she had only the

troops in her personal body guard and a few regiments on the French frontier which

would hardly have been sufficient to bring the angry mobs into line. Additionally, her

financial resources were so weak that recruiting sufficient forces was not possible and the

king in Spain was also short of funds and in no position to do other than accede to

Margaret’s temporizing policy.14

In the summer of 1566 many of the Calvinist and other protestants in the low

Countries began to tire of what was called “hedge preaching” which were services held

out in the countryside, usually on the estate of a friendly nobleman. They felt it their

right to use the churches which were located in the urban areas but these churches were

mostly Catholic churches and full of icons and imagery so beloved by Catholics but

offensive to the eyes of the Reformed. Traveling bands of these Reformers during the

month of August in 1566 in the southwest of the country began breaking stained glass

windows, pulled down statuary and paintings, and destroyed liturgical furnishings. The

13
Rowen, “The Dutch Revolt”, 573
14
Ibid, 573

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 EIGHTY YEARS WAR, 1567-1648

purpose of these Reformers was not to cause physical harm to people but to destroy these

symbols of the Catholic Church. In most cases the municipal authorities just stood by

and watched this “assault upon the Images” or Iconoclasm. The authorities stood by

and watched but made no attempt to call out the civic militia to halt what they saw.

Even though many of these image-breakers came from the ranks of the poor, there was

very little looting or random destruction. Making the dearth of looting even more

unusual was the fact that the effects of the widespread trade crisis had caused these poor

people a great deal of suffering. It was apparent that these “image breakers and

reformers were under the discipline of upper-class leaders. It was not clear who these

leaders were or in what numbers. In many of the towns the local authorities allowed the

Calvinist to take possession of these churches. However, the result of these actions did

not overturn the government or precipitate a regime change.15

Philip II was now convinced that the time had come to crush this political and

religious revolt in the Low Countries. Margaret, in an attempt to stabilize the situation,

reached out to Catholic leaders appalled by the Iconoclasm and even to William of

Orange, who had not indorsed this movement. Margaret with the help of these leaders

was able to put down the Iconoclasm and punish the leaders but by this time Philip had

lost patience with his sister and turned to the duke of Alva a Spanish general who had

recently won campaigns in Italy and gave him authority over military and political

command in the Low Countries.16

The duke of Alba’s campaigns against the Schmalkaldic League in 1546-47 and

the duke of Guise in Italy in 1557 taught him a new strategy for dealing with popular

15
Rowen, “The Dutch Revolt”, 573-574
16
Rowen, “The Dutch Revolt”, 574

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 EIGHTY YEARS WAR, 1567-1648

revolt. It involved an acceptance of the tactical power of the defense, which fell in line

with the defensive strategy of the House of Austria and its potentially superior resources,

could enable it to exhaust its enemies. The duke of Alba’s strategy was to isolate hostile

powers diplomatically and then swamp them with overwhelming force. These hostile

forces would then be forced to give battle at a disadvantage. The Duke of Alva

christened this strategy with dramatic success against the Elector of Saxony and the

Schmalkaldic league prior to the battle of Muhlberg.17

Simon Adams writes “the outbreak of the Dutch Revolt saw Alba employ the

same strategy against William of Orange between 1568 and 1573. The dispatch of most

companies of the Italian tercios to the Netherlands in 1667 was on one level simply the

shifting of the garrison of one part of the Spanish empire to another.”18 Alba’s plan was

to dominate the Netherlands with garrisons and cut off external commerce then the

isolated pockets of rebellion were to be crushed with superior force. Foreign invasion

would be held off by well-manned fortifications. Alba’s successors the duke of Parma

and Ambrosio de Spinola closely followed this strategy evidenced by a memorandum

composed by Parma to Philip II in January 1581 where he repeated Alba’s proposals

almost item by item.19 “The rebel provinces were to be surrounded by garrisons drawn

from an enormous army and then cut off from external trade and support.”20 Using this

strategy, the army would be spared being tied down in unnecessary siege battles allowing

17
Simon Adams, “Tactics or Politics? ‘The Military Revolution’ and Hapsburg
Hegemony, 1525-1648”, Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern
Europe, ed. Clifford Rogers (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 262
18
Ibid, 262
19
Adams, “Tactics and Politics?”, 263
20
Ibid, 263

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 EIGHTY YEARS WAR, 1567-1648

the troops to isolate the urban centers of resistance and starve them into submission. The

problem the Spanish faced was deploying an army of sufficient size to successfully carry

out this strategy with the limited resources available for the purpose.

The Eighty Years War heralded a new type of warfare in Europe, one which
would be quickly adopted by other states within the span of a century. Gustavus
Adolphus’s use of fortresses gradually to occupy northern Germany, which
Michael Roberts viewed as being wholly new to the Thirty Years’ War, may have
been directly influenced by the Spanish School of strategy. The emergence of the
confessional issue, the increasing tendency to establish well-defined political
boundaries, the growing participation of civilians in warfare, and the greater degree
to which armies played a role in crushing dissidents and controlling hostile
populations—all of these central components of modern European conflicts---first
converged during the Dutch War of Independence, requiring novel solutions to
strategic problems they posed.21

The revolutionary content of the Dutch Revolt is missing some key elements.

For example, the flare-up of the afore mentioned Iconoclasm or popular urban

insurrections in these few years was important within the framework of larger events not

for any lasting achievements but for its destructive impact upon the unity of the forces

opposing Phillip II. William of Orange was the personification of any unity in the Low

Countries as he was rare among the Netherlanders in his lack of commitment to a

particular province or locality. It is difficult to gauge the extent of patriotism that existed

in the entire country of the Netherlands, as distinct from hostility to Spain. William

seemed to have a special allegiance and sense of duty to his country ruined by terror.

William realized that the Spanish yoke must be thrown off and the Low Countries must

hold together, province with province, class with class, faith with faith, in mutual

toleration and respect. William of Orange reached his greatest achievement in the

rebellion of the Low Countries against the king of Spain when he used his influence and

21
Mahinder S. Kingra, “The Trace Italienne and the Military Revolution During
the Eighty Years’ War, 1567-1648”, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 57, No.3 (Jul.,
1993), 444, 445

11
 EIGHTY YEARS WAR, 1567-1648

leadership in the North as well as in the South to arrange the political settlement known

as the Pacification of Ghent in November 1576. It brought civil peace in the country at

the cost of acknowledged religious division. Catholicism remained the official and sole

permitted religion in the South. Calvinism in the North was recognized as the official

religion.22

The rebellion against Philip II lasted another sixty years but really became

nothing more than a war for independence. Insofar as it was fought also against the

Spanish Netherlands it was a civil war, North against South, but with a sense of common

nationhood. What, then, was the overall meaning of the revolt of the Low Countries? To

what extent and in what ways did it meet the terms of definition of revolutions as I

defined earlier in the paper?

I believe generally that most historians agree that even though religion had a

significant part in the revolt from a perspective of both cause and participant that in itself

was not revolutionary. For example, Calvinism was not a revolutionary ideology of a

revolutionary party. Additionally, revolutions like the French, Russian, and American

revolutions were all forward looking where the Dutch Revolt was seen as looking back to

a time when the government and prince worked with and through the high nobility not at

odds with the high nobility. In fact the reformers and Dutch people were not really

against innovation even defenders of the existing order. They were at odds as to who

was innovating.23

Additionally, The Dutch Revolt never saw a seizure of power like in the French or

Russian Revolutions on a nationwide scale because of the fragmented society North and

22
Herbert H. Rowen, “The Dutch Revolt: What Kind of Revolution?”, 572-575
23
Rowen, “The Dutch Revolt”, 586

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South which was based a great deal on religious beliefs. There were no really organized

political revolutionary parties like the Bolsheviks in Russia led by a person like Vladimir

Ulyanov (Lenin) who had a violent cast of mind or character. For example, the Prince of

Orange was not a violent revolutionary. Even though in the North a republican state

replaced a Spanish monarchy, it was not a violent regime change. I believe that The

Dutch Revolt was not a revolution in the sense of the American, French or Russian

revolutions. Dutch society did experience change but not revolutionary change.

Bibliography

Rogers, Clifford, ed. Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe.

Boulder: Westview Press, 1995.

Kingra, Mahinder S. “The Trace Italienne and the Military Revolution During the Eighty

Years War, 1567-1648,” The Journal of Military History57 (1993): 431-446

Van Gelderen, Martin. The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 1555-1590. New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1992

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 EIGHTY YEARS WAR, 1567-1648

Rowen, Herbert H. “The Dutch Revolt: What Kind of Revolution?,” Renaissance

Quarterly 43 (1990): 570-590.

Parker, Geoffrey. The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567-1659. New York:

Cambridge University Press, 2004.

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