Nothing could have been worse than the position of the States at the beginning of 1588. Had Parma had a free hand, in all probability he would have crushed out the revolt and reconquered the northern Netherlands. But the Johan van Oldenbarneveldt. attention of the Spanish king was at this time concentrated upon the success of the Invincible Armada. The army of Parma was held in readiness for the invasion of England, and the United Provinces had a respite. They were fortunately able to avail themselves of it. The commanding abilities of Oldenbarneveldt, now advocate of Holland, gradually gathered into his hands the entire administration of the Republic. He became indispensable and, as his influence grew, more and more did the policy of the provinces acquire unity and consistency of purpose. At the same time Maurice of Maurice of Nassau. Nassau, now grown to man’s estate, began to display those military talents which were to gain for him the fame of being the first general of his time. But Maurice was no politician. He had implicit trust in the advocate, his father’s faithful friend and counsellor, and for many years to come the statesman and the soldier worked in harmony together for the best interests of their country (see [Oldenbarneveldt], and [Maurice], prince of Orange). At the side of Maurice, as a wise adviser, stood his cousin William Louis, stadholder of Friesland, a trained soldier and good commander in the field.
After the destruction of the Armada, Parma had been occupied with campaigns on the southern frontier against the French, and the Netherlanders had been content to stand on guard against attack. The surprise of Breda by a Campaign of 1591. stratagem (8th of March 1590) was the only military event of importance up to 1591. But the two stadholders had not wasted the time. The States’ forces had been reorganized and brought to a high state of military discipline and training. In 1591 the States-General, after considerable hesitation, were persuaded by Maurice to sanction an offensive campaign. It was attended by marvellous success. Zutphen was captured on the 20th of May, Deventer on the 20th of June. Parma, who was besieging the fort of Knodsenburg, was forced to retire with loss. Hulst fell after a three days’ investment, and finally Nymegen was taken on the 21st of October. The fame of Maurice, a consummate general at the early age of twenty-four, was on all men’s lips. The following campaign was signalized Death of Parma.
New province of Stadt en Landen. by the capture of Steenwyk and Koevorden. On the 8th of December 1592 Parma died, and the States were delivered from their most redoubtable adversary. In 1593 the leaguer of Geertruidenburg put the seal on Maurice’s reputation as an invincible besieger. The town fell after an investment of three months. Groningen was the chief fruit of the campaign of 1594. With its dependent district it was formed into a new province under the name of Stadt en Landen. William Louis became the stadholder (see [Groningen]). The soil of the northern Netherlands was at last practically free from the presence of Spanish garrisons.
The growing importance of the new state was signalized by the conclusion, in 1596, of a triple alliance between England, France and the United Provinces. It was of short duration and purchased by hard conditions, but it Triple Alliance of France, England and the United Provinces. implied the recognition by Henry IV. and Elizabeth of the States-General, as a sovereign power, with whom treaties could be concluded. Such a recognition was justified by the brilliant successes of the campaign of 1597. It began with the complete rout of a Spanish force of 4500 men at Turnhout in January, with scarcely any loss to the victors. Then in a succession of sieges Rheinberg, Meurs, Groenlo, Bredevoort, Enschedé, Ootmarsum, Oldenzaal and Lingen fell into the hands of Maurice.
The relations of the Netherlands to Spain were in 1598 completely changed. Philip II. feeling death approaching, resolved to marry his elder daughter, the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia, to her cousin, the Cardinal Archduke Albert of Austria, who Albert and Isabel, Sovereigns of the Netherlands. had been governor-general of the Netherlands since 1596, and to erect the Provinces into an independent sovereignty under their joint rule. The instrument was executed in May; Philip died in September; the marriage took place in November. In case the marriage should have no issue, the sovereignty of the Netherlands was to revert to the king of Spain. The archdukes (such was their official title) did not make their joyeuse entrée into Brussels until the close of 1599. The step was taken too late to effect a reconciliation with the rebel provinces. Peace overtures were made, but the conditions were unacceptable. The States-General never seriously considered the question of giving in their submission to the new sovereigns. The traders of Holland and Zeeland had thriven mightily by the war. Their ships had penetrated to the East and West Indies, and were to be found in every sea. The year 1600 saw the foundation of the Chartered East India Company (see [Dutch East India Company]). The question of freedom of trade with the Indies had become no less vital to the Dutch people than freedom of religious worship. To both these concessions Spanish policy was irreconcilably opposed.
Dunkirk, as a nest of freebooters who preyed upon Dutch commerce, was made the objective of a daring offensive campaign in 1600 by the orders of the States-General under the influence of Oldenbarneveldt in the teeth of the opposition The Battle of Nieuport. of the stadholders Maurice and William Louis. By a bold march across Flanders, Maurice reached Nieuport on the 1st of July, and proceeded to invest it. The archduke Albert, however, followed hard on his steps with an army of seasoned troops, and Maurice, with his communications cut, was forced to fight for his existence. A desperate combat took place on the dunes between forces of equal strength and valour. Only by calling up his last reserves did victory declare for Maurice. The archduke had to fly for his life. Five thousand Spaniards were killed; seven hundred taken, and one hundred and five standards. To have thus worsted the dreaded Spanish infantry in open fight was a great triumph for the States troops and their general, but it was barren of results. Maurice refused to run further risks and led back his army to Holland. For the following three years all the energies alike of the archdukes and Siege of Ostend. the States-General were concentrated on the siege of Ostend (15th of July 1601-20th of Sept. 1604), the solitary possession of the Dutch in Flanders. The heroic obstinacy of the defence was equalled by the perseverance of the attack, and there was a vast expenditure, especially on the side of the Spaniards, of blood and treasure. At last when reduced to a heap of ruins, Ostend fell before the resolution of Ambrosio de Spinola, a Genoese banker, to whom the command of the besiegers had been entrusted (see [Spinola]). A month before the surrender, however, another and more commodious seaport, Sluis, had fallen into the possession of the States army under Maurice, and thus the loss of Ostend was discounted.
Spinola proved himself to be a general of a high order, and the campaigns of 1606 and 1607 resolved themselves into a duel of skill between him and Maurice without much advantage accruing to either side. But the archdukes’ Negotiations for Peace. treasury was now empty, and their credit exhausted; both sides were weary of fighting, and serious negotiations for peace were set on foot. The disposition of the Spaniards to make concessions was further quickened by the destruction of their fleet at Gibraltar by the Dutch admiral Heemskerk, (April 1607). But there were many difficulties in the way. The peace party in the United Provinces headed by Oldenbarneveldt was opposed by the stadholders Maurice and William Louis, the great majority of the military and naval officers, the Calvinist preachers and many leading merchants. The Spaniards on their side were obdurate on the subjects of freedom of trade in the Indies and of freedom of religious worship. At last, after the negotiations had been repeatedly on the point of breaking off, a compromise was effected by the mediation of the envoys of France and England. On the 9th of April 1609 a truce for twelve years was agreed upon. On all points the Dutch demands were granted. The treaty was concluded with The Twelve Years’ Truce. the Provinces, “in the quality of free States over whom the archdukes made no pretentions.” The uti possidetis as regards territorial possession was recognized. Neither the granting of freedom of worship to Roman Catholics nor the word “Indies” was mentioned, but in a secret treaty King Philip undertook to place no hindrance in the way of Dutch trade, wherever carried on.
One of the immediate results of this triumph of his policy was the increase of Oldenbarneveldt’s influence and authority in the government of the Republic. But though Maurice and his other opponents had reluctantly yielded to Theological strife in Holland. the advocate’s skilful diplomacy and persuasive arguments, a soreness remained between the statesman and the stadholder which was destined never to be healed. The country was no sooner relieved from the pressure of external war than it was torn by internal discords. After a brief interference in the affairs of Germany, where the intricate question of the Cleves-Jülich succession was already preparing the way for the Thirty Years’ War, the United Provinces became immersed in a hot and absorbing theological struggle with which were Arminius and Gomarus. mixed up important political issues. The province of Holland was the arena in which it was fought out. Two professors of theology at Leiden, Jacobus Arminius (see [Arminius]) and Franciscus Gomarus, became the leaders of two parties, who differed from one another upon certain tenets of the abstruse doctrine of predestination. Gomarus supported the orthodox Calvinist view; Arminius assailed it. The Arminians appealed to the States of Holland (1610) in a Remonstrance in which their theological position was defined. They were henceforth known as “Remonstrants”; Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants. their opponents were styled “Contra-Remonstrants.” The advocate and the States of Holland took sides with the Remonstrants, Maurice and the majority of the States-General (four provinces out of seven) supported the Contra-Remonstrants. It became a question of the extent of the rights of sovereign princes under the Union. The States-General wished to summon a national synod, the States of Holland refused their assent, and made levies of local militia (waard-gelders) for the maintenance of order. The States-General (9th of July 1618) took up the challenge, and the prince of Orange, as captain-general, was placed at the head of a commission to go in the first place to Utrecht, which supported Oldenbarneveldt, and then to the various cities of Waard-gelders. Holland to insist on the disbanding of the waard-gelders. On the side of Maurice, whom the army obeyed, was the power of the sword. The opposition collapsed; the recalcitrant provincial states were purged; and the leaders of the party of state rights—the advocate himself, Hugo de Groot (see [Grotius]), pensionary of Rotterdam, and Hoogerbeets, pensionary of Leiden, were arrested and thrown into prison. The whole proceedings were illegal, and the illegality was consummated by the prisoners being brought before a Oldenbarneveldt executed. special tribunal of 24 judges, nearly all of whom were personal enemies of the accused. The trial was merely a preliminary to condemnation. The advocate was sentenced to death, and executed (13th of May 1619) in the Binnenhof at the Hague. The sentences of Grotius and Hoogerbeets were commuted to perpetual imprisonment.
Meanwhile the National Synod had been summoned and had met at Dort on the 13th of November 1618. One hundred members, many of them foreign divines, composed Synod of Dort. this great assembly, who after 154 sittings gave their seal to the doctrines of the Netherlands Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism. The Arminians were condemned, their preachers deprived, and the Remonstrant party placed under a ban (6th of May 1619).
In 1621 the Twelve Years’ Truce came to an end, and war broke out once more with Spain. Maurice, after the death of Oldenbarneveldt, was supreme in the land, but he missed sorely the wise counsels of the old statesman whose tragic end Renewal of the war.
Death of Maurice. he had been so largely instrumental in bringing about. He and Spinola found themselves once more at the head of the armies in the field, but the health of the stadholder was undermined, and his military genius was under a cloud. Deeply mortified by his failure to relieve Breda, which was blockaded by Spinola, Maurice fell seriously ill, and died on the 23rd of April 1625. He was succeeded in his dignities by his younger brother Frederick Henry (see [Frederick Henry], prince of Orange), who was appointed stadholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Overyssel and Gelderland, captain and adjutant-general of the Union and head of the Council of State. Frederick Henry was as a general scarcely inferior to Maurice, and a far more able statesman. The moderation of his views and his conciliatory temper did much to heal the wounds left by civil and religious strife, and during his time the power and influence of the stadholderate The period of Frederick Henry. attained their highest point. Such was his popularity and the confidence he inspired that in 1631 his great offices of state were declared hereditary, in favour of his five-year-old son, by the Acte de Survivance. He did much to justify the trust placed in him, for the period of Frederick Henry is the most brilliant in the history of the Dutch Republic. During his time the East India Company, which had founded the town of Batavia in Java as their administrative The East and West India Companies. capital, under a succession of able governor-generals almost monopolized the trade of the entire Orient, made many conquests and established a network of factories and trade posts stretching from the Cape of Good Hope to Japan (see [Dutch East India Company]). The West India Company, erected in 1621, though framed on the same model, aimed rather at waging war on the enemies’ commerce than in developing their own. Their fleets for some years brought vast booty into the company’s coffers. The Mexican treasure ships fell into the hands of Piet Heyn, the boldest of their admirals, in 1628; and they were able to send armies across the ocean, conquer a large part of Brazil, and set up a flourishing Dutch dominion in South America (see Dutch West India Company). The operations of these two great chartered companies occupy a place among memorable events of Frederick Henry’s stadholderate; they are therefore mentioned here, but for further details the special articles must be consulted.
When Frederick Henry stepped into his brother’s place, he found the United Provinces in a position of great danger and of critical importance. The Protestants of Germany were on the point of being crushed by the forces of the Policy of Frederick Henry. Austrian Habsburgs and the Catholic League. It lay with the Netherlands to create a diversion in the favour of their co-religionists by keeping the forces of the Spanish Habsburgs fully occupied. But to do so with their flank exposed to imperialist attack from the east, was a task involving grave risks and possible disaster. In these circumstances, Frederick Henry saw the necessity of securing French aid. It was secured by the skilful diplomacy of Francis van Aarssens (q.v.) but on hard conditions. Richelieu required the assistance of the Dutch fleet to enable him to overcome the resistance of the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle. The far-sighted stadholder, despite popular opposition, by his powerful personal influence induced the States-General to grant the naval aid, and thus obtain the French alliance on which the safety of the republic depended.