Dutch Declaration of Independence

Context

The Dutch Declaration of Independence was signed in the midst of a complex set of events that would radically alter the balance of power in Western Europe. In the fifteenth century, the successive dukes of Burgundy held control of what were called the Seventeen Provinces, a collection of counties and fiefdoms roughly corresponding to the Dutch Republic and also including small portions of modern-day France and Germany. Accordingly, the region was often called the Burgundian Netherlands. The Burgundian Netherlands were inherited by Charles, the duke of Burgundy, in 1506. Charles was a descendant of the House of Habsburg, a branch of the Austrian royal succession that ruled a large portion of central Europe, and as such he became King Charles I of Spain in 1516; he was also the grandson of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, famous for backing Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the New World in 1492. Charles was Spanish, but he was born in Ghent (in Flanders, now part of Belgium), so he spoke Dutch and was sympathetic to Dutch concerns. In 1519, upon the death of his grandfather, he became the head of the House of Habsburg and was elected the monarch of the Holy Roman Empire as Charles V (though the pope did not officially crown him until 1530). He thus presided over a large swath of western, central, and southern Europe, including the Netherlands. He asserted his control over the Netherlands in 1549 when he issued the Pragmatic Sanction, which recognized the Seventeen Provinces as a unified political entity to which the Habsburgs were heirs.

During the sixteenth century, three major issues caused friction in Charles V’s Dutch domains. One issue was taxation. Flanders had become a particularly wealthy province, but the other Dutch provinces were affluent as well, largely through trade and industry as spurred by an entrepreneurial ethic. Charles became embroiled in a series of wars, particularly against France as part of the Italian Wars and against the Turks in the Mediterranean. He needed funds to finance these wars, and the affluent Dutch bore more than their fair share of the tax burden, although they opposed the wars because France and the Turkish Ottoman Empire were important trading partners. The second issue that caused friction was the rise of Protestantism, which Catholic Spain regarded as heresy. Protestantism had been tolerated locally throughout the Dutch provinces, but Charles believed that it had to be suppressed and sent troops into the provinces to that end. He enacted harsh measures against Dutch Protestants, creating numerous grievances. His attempts to suppress Dutch Protestantism took place against the backdrop of the notorious Spanish Inquisition, the oftentimes cruel effort to root out heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, sodomy, and other departures from Catholic orthodoxy.

The third source of friction was efforts to centralize the government. The Netherlands had historically consisted of numerous principalities operating more or less autonomously under the control of local nobles. Charles wanted to increase efficiency in his empire, so he attempted to impose more centralized rule over these principalities. Charles replaced local Dutch stadtholders (heads of state) and members of the States-General, the governing body of the Seventeen Provinces, with his own appointments. He also replaced bishops and other religious authorities. Both the nobles and the increasingly influential merchants of the Netherlands resented these encroachments on their traditional prerogatives.

Thus did matters stand when Charles relinquished the throne of Spain to his son, Philip II, in 1556. While the Dutch had grown annoyed with Charles, they grudgingly tolerated his rule, for he spoke Dutch and appeared to be at least somewhat interested in Dutch welfare. Philip II, though, was more Spanish than Dutch and showed little interest in the Netherlands. The issues that had arisen during the first half of the sixteenth century became more pronounced under Philip, who governed the Dutch provinces harshly; he was at loggerheads with the Dutch nobles throughout his first decade of rule. They resisted his efforts to increase taxes. They demanded the withdrawal of Spanish troops. They resented Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, Philip’s appointed head of the States-General, and several prominent nobles resigned from the States-General in protest. Religious protests increased, as Dutch Protestants—and even Dutch Catholics—called for an end to persecution of Protestantism. In 1566 a petition to that end was submitted by some four hundred nobles to Philip’s governor of the Netherlands, Margaret of Parma, who passed it along to Philip—who promptly ignored it.

As if matters were not troubled enough, they turned worse in 1566 when rioting broke out in Flanders and other provinces. These riots were led by Dutch Calvinists and were part of a so-called iconoclastic (“image breaking”) movement. Calvinists in numerous cities looted churches and destroyed religious images of Catholic saints, which Calvinists thought of as idols. In response to the vandalism, in 1567 Philip sent troops to Brussels under the command of Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the third duke of Alba. Given broad license by Philip, the duke of Alba created the Council of Troubles (in Dutch, Raad van Beroerten) to enforce harsh measures against anyone he thought to be disloyal to the king. Numerous nobles were executed, including most prominently Lamoraal, the count of Egmond, and Filips van Montmorency, the count of Hoorn, who were decapitated in Brussels in 1568. Over the next year, a thousand people were executed, prompting Netherlanders to refer to the Council of Troubles as the “Council of Blood.”

Amid this turmoil, William I, the prince of Orange and an influential stadtholder, assumed leadership of the opposition to Philip, though William was politically savvy and did not renounce his allegiance to the king. Initially, he fled to his domains in Germany to avoid the wrath of the duke of Alba. In 1568 he returned in an effort to drive Alba out, invading the Netherlands in concert with armies led by his two brothers and a fourth army led by French Huguenots. On May 23, 1568, his forces defeated a Spanish force at the Battle of Heiligerlee, marking the first Dutch victory of the Dutch Revolt and the Eighty Years’ War. Although William was victorious, the other invading armies were not. William ran out of money, his army fell apart, and the rebellion was effectively quelled until 1572.

The duke of Alba meanwhile retained his position of authority. He provoked the ire of Netherlanders anew when he instituted a tax to fund the Spanish king’s war against the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Turks, for their part, offered direct aid to the Dutch rebels, hoping thereby to counter Habsburg hegemony over Europe. Discontent continued to grow until Dutch rebels seized the town of Brielle on April 1, 1572. This victory, entirely unexpected, emboldened the rebels, who reappointed William of Orange as their leader. William faced a difficult challenge, for he needed to find a way to unite three different factions: Calvinists who wanted to impose Dutch Protestantism, Catholics who yet remained loyal to Philip, and a large group of Catholics and Protestants who were primarily interested in ending Spanish rule over their country and restoring their privileges.

Throughout the 1570s, Philip had problems of his own. His wars were bankrupting Spain; his unpaid soldiers mutinied, and in 1576 they sacked and looted Antwerp in an event called the Spanish Fury. Again the rebels were emboldened. That same year the Seventeen Provinces signed an internal treaty called the Pacification of Ghent, an agreement to join forces against the Spanish and to enforce religious tolerance. The union, however, was still in disarray. In early 1579 the southern provinces, through the Union of Arras, withdrew from the greater union and confirmed their loyalty to the Spanish king, largely because they were uncomfortable with the fundamentalist religious fervor of the Calvinists. In response, the northern provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, and Groningen formed the Union of Utrecht on January 23, 1579, leaving the Seventeen Provinces divided between north and south. Over the next year and a half, Gelder, Overijssel, and Friesland also joined with the northern provinces, which then declared their independence from Spain as the Republic of the Seven United Provinces in the Act of Abjuration on July 26, 1581. (Abjuration denotes a formal renunciation or repudiation, in this case, of Philip II of Spain.) One of the alliance’s first tasks was to find a monarch to rule. The position was offered to Queen Elizabeth I of England, but she turned the Dutch down, unwilling to alienate the Spanish king. Accordingly, the rebel provinces turned to Hercule François, the duke of Anjou, the French king’s younger brother, who agreed on the condition that the provinces renounce all allegiance to Spain.