105: Alba and Orange: The Failure of the First Dutch Revolt

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The Prince of Orange to the Magistrates and Guilds of Liege
October 1568
“It has pleased the Lord God to grant me at present the means, by this army, with which, under the guidance of His Divine Majesty, I hope to deliver from such execrable (ek suh kruh bul) oppressions not only the said Low Countries, but also to protect and preserve from like tyranny all other neighboring countries, over which the said Duke of Alba intends in time to extend his rage and fury, and to subject them to the same servitude and inquisition as he has done to the said Low Countries.”


It is the night of October 5th, 1568, and an army is moving through the dark.

Between twenty-five and thirty thousand men—mercenaries, volunteers, and refugees—march toward the Meuse River under a full moon. At dawn, they reach a ford at Stockem. The cavalry goes in first, taking position upstream to break the current. Then the infantry wades across, neck-deep, weapons held overhead.

William of Orange leads them, and he has come to take back the Netherlands.

Why now? Because he has no other options. Last July, his brother Louis's army was destroyed at Jemmingen — about seven thousand were killed, many drowning in the Ems — and a Huguenot column was cut to pieces at St. Valery. After that, neither Elizabeth I of England nor the Protestant German princes would support another attempt.

Orange goes anyway. He has pledged everything he and his brothers own, plus a hundred thousand florins of his own — enough to keep this army in the field for a little more than a month.

The Duke of Alba knows. His August letters name the route and say the enemy can't afford to keep such an army for long. So he does the one thing Orange can't answer: he refuses to fight. His secretary put it this way: Orange attacks as a man with nothing to lose; Alba defends as a man with nothing to gain. He will stay at the invader's heels and fight him with hunger.

And nobody rises. Alba has garrisoned the major towns, and not one opens its gates. On the night of October 19th, he catches the rear guard at the Jauche (YOW-kuh) stream, where two to three thousand men die. Orange's army, starving and mutinous, limps toward the French border, with Alba at its tail.

By early 1569, Orange reaches Strasbourg, too ill to ride. His captains storm his lodging, demanding pay. He sells his artillery, pawns his plate and tapestries, and slips down the Rhine in a covered barge, almost alone. Alba writes that Orange may be counted a dead man. Orange writes to his brother John that, with God's help, he will go on.

This wasn't bad luck. Alba's strategy is coherent: refuse battle, outlast the invader's funds, and rely on fortified towns. Orange can't beat it without a base in the Netherlands, which no town will give him. So he looks abroad for strength — and the nearest source is the Huguenots.

First, the man in Brussels.

On December 22nd, 1568, Alba re-enters the capital in triumph — bells, a Te Deum, a Burgundian tournament, a Castilian bullfight, and a sword and hat from the pope. He has done what he was sent to do and expects to go home.

He can't. Philip can't come to relieve him: his heir, Don Carlos, died in custody that July; his queen died in October; and at Christmas, the Moriscos of Granada rose in revolt. Alba is over sixty and sick with gout and fever; he writes that some nights he fears he won't wake.

Historian Geoffrey Parker offers this framing. Alba is like Charles V after Mühlberg: a total victory that tempts the victor into terms too harsh to last, with resistance emerging about four years later. Four years from 1568 is 1572.

The army has to be paid. Alba settles on a standing force — twelve thousand infantry in frontier garrisons, a reserve of four thousand Spaniards and five hundred cavalry near Brussels, and new citadels at Antwerp, Groningen, and Maastricht. By his own figures, that's about one-point-nine million florins a year for defense and two-point-three million for administration.

Spain won't pay. Philip said so in May 1568. Madrid sends more than seven million florins in 1568 and 1569, then tells Alba that the Netherlands must cover its own costs. That same winter, Elizabeth I of England impounds Spanish ships sheltering from a storm in English ports. They are carrying cash intended for Alba's troops. Alba responds by seizing English property in the Netherlands, and trade between England and the Spanish world halts. 

So Alba needs money that doesn't depend on Madrid. In March 1569, he asks the Estates for three taxes. The Hundredth Penny is a one-time, one percent levy on capital. It's collected promptly and raises about three and a half million florins. The other two are permanent: the Twentieth, a five percent tax on sales of land and property, and the Tenth, a ten percent tax on sales, modeled on the Castilian alcabala. Alba estimates the pair at about thirteen and a half million florins a year.

The biographer William Maltby gives Alba's reasoning a fair hearing: no group should be exempt, and a sales tax at least kept the burden off the poor. But the Estates saw what a permanent tax would do. Collected by royal officials independent of them, it would end their leverage over the purse. Historian Jonathan Israel puts it this way: had Philip succeeded, he would have been freed from the constitutional limits on Burgundian and Habsburg rule.

The Estates refuse. Alba leans on them — a regiment is quartered in Leuven that August — and a compromise emerges: a two-year grant of about four million florins, in place of the permanent tax. Alba takes it as consent in principle. The Estates understand it as the price of dropping the tax. Maltby suspects the misunderstanding wasn't entirely innocent on either side. It's the seed of 1571.

Then come the fat years. Maltby's phrase for 1570 and early 1571. The first solvent government in living memory. Alba uses them. And at Antwerp, he builds a citadel — a pentagon with five bastions, four of them named for himself and his titles, with his heraldry over the gate, at about eight hundred thousand guilders, roughly five times the cost of the city's new town hall. Historian Peter Arnade points out that moving the city's weapons from the town hall to the fortress announced that Antwerp's near-republican freedom was a fiction.

It's tempting to say Alba had no tools for conciliation. The record is messier. In 1569, Philip and Granvelle propose a general pardon, but Alba resists. When he proclaims it in July 1570 from a stage in Antwerp's market square, it's rife with exceptions and poorly received. One chronicler called the stage "gilded poison." Alba could suppress. He resisted reconciliation.

In May 1571, the statue arrives: bronze, cast from the cannon taken at Jemmingen, depicting Alba in armor trampling a two-headed monster. One contemporary reading identifies the heads as the people and the nobility. Rebels and Alba's own enemies in Castile alike condemned it as pride and idolatry. It's the image of the man: he can build a fortress and a monument, but not consent.

By 1571, the money is running out. The Hundredth Penny and the two-year grant are spent; army pay is in arrears, and the debt to German mercenaries approaches five million florins. His councilors say the Estates never agreed to extend the tax. Alba says they plainly agreed to a perpetual one. His reported answer to the critics: the king sent him to cut off the heads of the disobedient, and he can just as well break the dikes and flood the country — the king would rather have it drowned than rich and disobedient.

On July 31st, 1571, he imposes the Tenth by decree, narrowing the original proposal. Parker has it on the first and last sale of movable goods; Maltby, only the last sale in a chain. The Estates are informed, not consulted. As Parker explains, every transaction must be recorded in a special register under special assessors — and until that machinery exists, no money can be collected. Brussels tradesmen close their shops rather than submit. The stadholder fines officials who won't appoint collectors — a thousand guilders for each burgomaster of Gouda — and Gouda's militia says it won't enforce the tax even if the king himself demands it.

In September, Philip announces that the Duke of Medinaceli will replace Alba, and many hope that holding out will reverse the policy. In October, the rate is cut to about three and a third percent. Alba gives on the rate, never on the principle.

And the tax is never actually collected. Parker says it amounts to scarcely a penny; others agree it was never really levied. The damage is political. Alba had the force to impose it. He never had the consent to collect it.

Now the other man. 

Orange has traded one weakness for another. In 1568, he had no base in the Netherlands. By 1571, he had found strength abroad — but it isn't his to control. Orange knows the outcome depends on decisions made in Madrid, Paris, and London, and he can't even control his own supporters, who ignore instructions or fail to pay what they promised.

The French connection predates the disaster. Orange had a pact with Louis I, Prince of Condé, and Gaspard de Coligny, leaders of the Huguenots. A Huguenot column was intended to strike Artois. French royal troops cut it to pieces at St. Valery on July 18th, 1568, a dividend of the Franco-Spanish understanding sealed at Bayonne in 1565. In 1569, Orange, his brothers, and about twelve hundred survivors joined the Huguenot army and were beaten again at Jarnac and Moncontour, with Alba's veterans helping the French Catholics.

But the service pays. At the Peace of St. Germain on August 8, 1570, Charles IX recognizes Orange and his brothers as "good relatives and friends" of the French crown. Louis receives a royal pension. Coligny returns to the royal council. The principality of Orange is restored, with Louis as its governor, and the Queen of Navarre purchases the remaining Nassau jewels.

The money, though, is a permanent problem. Parker has Orange spending about half a million florins of his own. By late 1569, estimates run from about one million to over two. Either way, he's selling household goods, piece by piece. Even the altar furnishings of his chapel at Dillenburg are gone.

What he does have is a flag. As sovereign Prince of Orange, he can issue commissions at sea, and Coligny urges him to use the Sea Beggars — privateers now sailing under orange, white, and blue, with the lion of Nassau. Historian C.V. Wedgwood's aside is worth remembering: the Dutch navy of the next century grew from legitimized pirates sailing under the name of a tiny inland principality. Their prize money refills his treasury, which is why he tolerates their disorder. By 1570 or 1571, there are about thirty ships. Orange wants them in reliable hands for an invasion, but the first attempt goes wrong. In December 1570, a detachment seizes the fort of Loevestein. The risings meant to coincide never happen, and the Beggars are driven off with heavy losses.

Why France? 

Dutch historian Pieter Geyl's reading: In January 1570, Paulus Buys of Leiden visits Dillenburg at some risk, and a rising in the northern provinces is planned and funded. It collapses because of mistakes and lack of money. Orange writes bitterly that even the German princes wonder what became of the Netherlanders' famed love of liberty. By 1571, he no longer believes the Netherlanders will rise on their own. Disappointed by meager German help, he concludes that only France has both the means and the wish to oppose Spain.

So: the Grand Alliance. With it, Orange’s cause becomes entangled in the complications of the French court.

 In 1571, Louis of Nassau meets Charles IX at Fontainebleau, and Coligny gains significant influence over the young king. The secret leaks, alarming Alba.

Here's the plan, as Parker lays it out. Elizabeth I will marry a French prince. The queen mother, Catherine de' Medici, first chooses her son Henri, Duke of Anjou. But Anjou, a devout Catholic, refuses to entertain the idea, and in 1572 she turns to her youngest son, Francois, Duke of Alençon. The king's sister, Marguerite, will marry Henry of Navarre. Then the exiles of France and England launch a joint invasion of the Netherlands.

Parker counts five prongs: a small force in the northeast under Orange's brother-in-law; Louis and the Huguenots in the south; a French declaration of war and Coligny's invasion following the Navarre wedding; Orange's own German army entering Brabant from the east, as in 1568; and a fleet from La Rochelle, which the Sea Beggars are expected to join. Alba inadvertently helped build this coalition. He sent troops into France in 1567 and 1569 and started a trade war with England.

The plan is far from unrealistic on paper. But it hinges on a royal wedding in Paris — and the date keeps slipping. As Geyl notes, each postponement risks one participant falling out of step with the others, exactly as in 1568. Alba hears what he can — French arming, Louis assembling an army at La Rochelle — and concentrates his forces along the French border.

And French sponsorship has a price. Geyl reports that the English ambassador in France described a plan to carve up the liberated country: Flanders and Artois to France, Holland and Zeeland to England, and the rest to a German prince — presumably Orange. Geyl doubts Orange knew. In 1571, Orange himself was willing to propose annexing part of the Netherlands to the French crown after liberation. 

Either way, the plan needs a royal marriage, a king who keeps his nerve against Spain, and Coligny's influence to endure. Everything depends on events in Paris going as planned.

Put the two men side by side. 

By early 1572, the Netherlands is quiet. The first revolt, from 1566 to 1568, is suppressed. Orange's invasion is defeated. Alba has won — and his victory is part of what makes the next revolt possible.

Israel adds a caution. Repression alone can't generate a revolt that rejects a society's political and religious foundations; that requires long-term polarization, and the economic circumstances of 1572 are secondary. The grievances were shared across north and south, but the outcomes were not. Hold that thought for later episodes.

Start with the quiet damage. The Tenth Penny was never collected, but it became a rallying point — while a slump in trade, worsened by the Sea Beggars, did the real economic harm. The winter of 1571 to 1572 is unusually bitter. By February, Antwerp's wharves are nearly deserted, insurance rates climb, and exchange rates worsen. Satirical verse openly denounces Alba. Holland's respectable burghers are outraged by Spanish soldiers, officials, and, above all, new taxes — and Orange is courting them.

Then, in March 1572, enforcement resumes. Philip's draft letter from that February reproaches Alba, rather unjustly, for the scant attention he has paid to the Tenth Penny. The king says the Moriscos, the Turks, and the Holy League make it impossible to pay as before. Collect, he orders, whatever the opposition. Amsterdam's magistrates are fined 25,000 florins; Dordrecht refuses outright. In Brussels, Alba moves troops into the premises of shopkeepers who have closed in protest — and scarcely a penny is collected. The estates of four provinces send deputies to Spain to protest; one report has Brabant's stopped on the way.

Wedgwood paints the following: the Antwerp exchange closes, and the shops of Antwerp and Brussels follow suit. The women of Namur loose dogs on the tax collectors. People barter for food in the streets. The looms of Valenciennes and the foundries of Liège fall silent. Alba locks himself in his room, raging but determined. One of Granvelle's correspondents, on March 31st, remarks: one starves in Antwerp even with the shops full of goods, because nobody buys.
  
Alba anticipates he's leaving. In December, he hears that Medinaceli is about to sail and starts packing; in a letter to his son, he jokes about the fiestas at Alba de Tormes. By March, nobody talks about Medinaceli anymore. The same correspondent writes: if he does not come, we are lost.

And now, the sea. 

The Sea Beggars are a motley fleet of privateers, religious refugees, and opportunists, operating under Orange's commissions since 1568. Many are Compromise diehards, lesser noblemen closer to ruffians bent on revenge. They raid coastal towns, and Alba's land army can barely touch them. Their commander, Lumey de la Marck, has sworn not to cut his hair or beard until Egmont's death is avenged.

But their attacks on neutral shipping turn Emden, the Hanseatic merchants, and finally England against them. In November 1571, Emden sends an ambassador begging England and France to stop supporting the pirates. Elizabeth I's Privy Council accepts that Orange, as a sovereign, may issue letters of marque but finds the Beggars have gone too far. On March 1st, 1572, they're expelled at the insistence of the Hanseatic League. They dare not go to La Rochelle, having disobeyed Orange too often. He reluctantly sets them aside in his summer plans. The irony: Elizabeth impounded Alba's pay-ships in 1568; now she closes her ports to Orange's fleet.

The Beggars are at sea, hungry and hunted, with the English ports behind them and the Dutch coast ahead — sailing aimlessly up and down the Channel, a seemingly spent force. Whether what comes next was planned or accidental, historians disagree. That's a question for next time.

One last voice, from March 24th, is that of a Catholic cleric writing to Granvelle: if Orange had kept his army in reserve until now, he would have succeeded.

So where do things stand in the spring of 1572?

Alba governs a repressed but not reconciled Netherlands, with one foot out the door and his forces drawn toward the French border. Philip is far away, absorbed in the Holy League. Loyalists like Viglius warn Madrid, and Viglius doubts the king grasps the situation. Remember Parker's frame: a total victory, with about four years for resistance to appear. We are in the fourth. Orange, at Dillenburg, is inviting the German princes to a meeting in May and hoping for an army by early autumn. His larger plan depends on a marriage and a king in Paris. He has traded the weakness of having no base for the weakness of depending on others, and in the spring of 1572 that dependence is the heart of his plan.

Three models are breaking at once. Alba's fiscal model: the permanent tax is never collected, and the money is gone. His political model: the Estates, the regents, and the militias have turned against him, and his own ministers write over his head. His military model: suppress, and suppress again, at diminishing returns and rising cost, with an army that can't reach the Beggars. And Orange's own strategy depends on the decisions of other men: a French king, an English queen, and a wedding that keeps being postponed.

Both men are failing at once. Alba has built a government that can be obeyed but not trusted. Orange has built an alliance that can be imagined but not controlled. Something will give. It won't give in the council chamber or in the field. It will give on the coast of Holland, at a small port at the mouth of the Meuse, on April 1st, 1572.

The port is called Brill. 

We begin there next time.

 
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