Eighty Years' War

The long struggle of the Low Countries against Spanish rule, also called the Dutch Revolt, began in the late 1560s and ended only with the Peace of Münster in 1648. Rebellious provinces in the north broke away from King Philip II of Spain and his successors to form the Dutch Republic, while the southern provinces, roughly modern Belgium and Luxembourg, stayed under Spain. Religion, high taxes, royal centralisation and the defence of local privileges all fed the conflict, and historians still disagree about exactly when it began.

The seventeen provinces of the Netherlands had passed to the Habsburgs and been united under the Emperor Charles V, who sought to suppress Protestantism there. His son Philip II continued these policies, provoking opposition among nobles, towns and the growing Calvinist community. In August 1566 Calvinist crowds stripped Catholic images from churches across the country in what became known as the Iconoclastic Fury, and the first fighting between rebels and government forces followed that winter. Philip then sent the Duke of Alba with an army of about 10,000 men. Alba's harsh rule crushed dissent, and an invasion led in 1568 by the exiled William of Orange, known as William the Silent, failed to spark a general rising.

The turning point came on 1 April 1572, when rebel privateers known as the Sea Beggars seized the port of Brielle and several towns in Holland and Zeeland declared for Orange. Spanish forces under Alba's son sacked towns such as Mechelen, Zutphen and Naarden and took Haarlem in July 1573 after a seven-month siege, but failed at Alkmaar and later at Leiden. During Alba's governorship as many as 50,000 people are estimated to have died through executions and massacres. After a Spanish state bankruptcy in 1575, unpaid troops mutinied and sacked Antwerp in 1576. Almost all the provinces then united in the Pacification of Ghent of 8 November 1576.

That union did not last. Under the skilful Duke of Parma, Spain won back the Catholic nobility of the south, and in January 1579 Artois, Hainaut and Douai formed the Union of Arras, while the northern provinces bound themselves together in the Union of Utrecht. On 26 July 1581 the rebels renounced Philip's sovereignty in the Act of Abjuration. William was assassinated in 1584 and Parma recaptured Antwerp in 1585. English help from Elizabeth I, the failure of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and the diversion of Parma's army into the French Wars of Religion gave the north a breathing space. In 1588 the rebel provinces formally became a republic.

Under Maurice of Nassau the Dutch army conquered towns in the north and east in the 1590s, while Dutch ships began attacking Portuguese possessions overseas. Both sides, exhausted, agreed a Twelve Years' Truce on 9 April 1609. When it expired in 1621 the war resumed as a theatre of the wider Thirty Years' War. Spain took Breda in 1625, but the Dutch captured 's-Hertogenbosch in 1629, Maastricht in 1632 and Breda again in 1637.

Peace talks opened in Münster in January 1646 as part of the wider negotiations that produced the Peace of Westphalia. Spain and the Republic agreed terms based on the old truce, and the treaty text was fixed on 30 January 1648, with the oath of peace sworn on 15 May. Spain recognised the Dutch Republic as independent and kept the Southern Netherlands. The Republic emerged as a leading commercial and colonial power.

Our 1600 map shows the Netherlands split between the young Dutch Republic and the Spanish south, and the 1650 map shows the border confirmed in 1648.