An Alternate History of the Netherlands

By J.L. Avey

An Alternate History of the Netherlands explores the past four hundred years of a world where it was the Dutch, and not the English, who maintained dominance of the world's oceans. After gaining its independence following the conclusion of the Forty Years' War, the Dutch struck out across the world, colonizing far and wide from Brazil to Southern Africa to India. For most of its history, the United Provinces maintained a love-hate relationship with the British Isles, battling them in wars in one generation while becoming allies in another. The centuries have seen the United Provinces transformed from a confederation of mercantile states to the nucleus of the Dutch Commonwealth of Nations, the economic superpower of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.L. Avey
• Release date: Dec 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301688777

Book preview

An Alternate History of the Netherlands

J. L. Avey

Copyright 2020 by J. L. Avey

I) The Forty Years War

(1568-1609)

When the Staaten-General convened in 1576 to negotiate the Pacification of Ghent, their goal was not to establish the foundation for a global empire destined to far surpass their former masters. It was instead intended as little more than an internal treaty between the many Provinces of the Netherlands in order to form a united front against Spanish tyranny. During an era of extensive religious upheaval and turmoil, Netherlander Catholics and Protestants put aside their sectarian difference to wage war again a foe of all Netherlanders.

This inevitably led to the United Provinces lacking an established state church. The existence of a non-denominational Christian state, for make no mistake they were overwhelming of that faith, created a haven for people of all faiths in Europe, and later its colonies, for persecuted minorities. At the time of the 1576 convention, Netherlanders possessed experience in being such a persecuted minority within the Spanish dominion.

In the first years of the Habsburg rule over the Low Countries, Netherlanders barely noticed Spanish overlord ship. Their sovereignty did not become relevant until the King of Spain, Charles V, was born in Ghent. In 1516, he inherited several titles, chief among these the King of Aragon and the King of Castile-Leon, crowns merged under his reign to for the first European world power. In 1530, he achieved even greater heights when he was elected Emperor

of Rome to an entity which was neither a true empire nor was it Roman. Whether or not the Holy Roman Empire was holy or not was always a matter of opinion.

Certainly the Church had its doubts in the 16th Century. By 1560, the Protestant Reformation burned across the face of Northern Europe, taking more territory from the sway of Rome. In the northern Provinces, after an initial backlash, Netherlander Protestants were generally tolerated by local Spanish authorities. Their relative wealth make them influence in the Spanish domain and in a society based on trade and commerce both freedom and tolerance were viewed by the crown as necessary evils to continued prosperity. As for the local officials, they were more interested in wealth, be it taxation or bribes, than in religious conformity.

By 1560, Spanish policies and priorities in the Low Countries began to shift. With little regard for local custom or Netherlander money, Phillip II believed it his sworn duty to battle Protestantism and stamp out the Reformation in all the lands under his suzerainty. After ascending to the throne, Phillip unleashed the Inquisition upon the Netherlands in order to root out heretics and the Spanish Army in to stamp out any possible rebellion against his authority. Though local magistrates were still willing to look the other way when it came to matters of conformity, the king would not. He was not interested in coexistence and would tolerate no challenge to his authority or that of the Church.

The Protestant movement initially emphasized such virtues of modesty, cleanliness, frugality and hard work. Netherlander Protestants compared their simple values on the path to salvation favorably against the luxurious excesses of the ecclesiastical nobility. These values resonated with Catholic Netherlanders as well, far stronger than the indulgences issued for generations by the Church. It was these moral elements of the Reformation that represented a greater challenge to the Spanish Empire than by whose authority bishops and priests were appointed.

The Netherlands were but a small, if wealthy, corner of the Spanish Empire. By the time of Phillip II, Spain stretched its reach across the globe. They poured of the gold and silver plundered from their New World conquest to wage war against the Turks for control of the

Mediterranean, against heretics for the soul of Germany and against the periodic uprising by foreign peoples not enthusiastic about Spanish rule. None of these issues were of much concern to the average Netherlander, yet the crown expected the Provinces to help pay to support these ventures.

Had King Phillip asked the opinion of any of the Provinces he would have learned that not only did the Netherlanders view some of these wars as unnecessary, they view them as unjust. As some of Spain’s wars were waged against trading partners of the Netherlanders, some even went as far as to say war against the heretics was bad for business. Unsurprising, the religious zeal of Spain gave no consideration towards the markets of Amsterdam or Antwerpen when it came to preservation of the faith. Instead, in response to open opposition, and to help fund further campaigns, Spain squeezed the Netherlands in 1571 with a ten percent tax on all land within the Seventeen Provinces. It was becoming increasingly clear that the Netherlands were no longer the Provinces they were beneath the mostly benevolent Burgundian rule. No, Netherlanders began to compare themselves in the eyes of this distant king as no better than the Spanish colonies of the New World.

Most of the native-born administrators in the Netherlands came not from the traditional warrior-aristocracy as with so much of Europe but rather it stemmed from merchant families that constantly competed with each other for power. Under Burgundian rule, the Provinces enjoyed a great deal of autonomy with their own local lords reigning. Thus before Spanish acquisition, the Netherlands developed into a rather loose confederation of highly independently-minded citizens and councils.

Decades of Spanish rule began to change much of these ways. The Kings of Spain set out to  improve their empire by increasing the authority of the central government in concerns of laws and taxation. Any form of centralization was view with suspicion by Netherlander nobles and merchant houses, such as in 1528, when Charles V usurped the power of a council of guild masters in favor of a regent answerable only to himself. Charles’s changes were few and because they did not inconvenience everyone sparked no uprising. The changes of his successors, however, were many.

Under the governorship of Mary of Hungary, traditional powers had for the most part been stripped from the local provincial governments. Nobles and merchants found themselves no longer inconvenienced but rather replaced by jurists from Castile in the running of their own territory. As the years passed, Netherlanders found their status in the natural order gradually deteriorating towards the level of what modern people would call second-class citizenship. In fact, under Spanish rule there were not even considered citizens but rather subjects of a foreign crown.

Phillip II’s rise to the throne saw even more power stripped away from the natives when he began appointing members to the Staaten-General. Among these appointees stood his own confident, Granvelle, appointed head of the assembly and Margaret of Parma as governor for all of the Netherlands. By 1558, the situation decayed to the point where the Provinces began openly contradicting the wishes of Spain. Many native nobles still in the Staaten-General withdrew in protest, natives such as the Count of Egmont, Count of Horne and William of Orange until such a time that Granvelle was recalled.

During the same time religious protests in the northern Provinces increased in spite of greater oppression and harsher penalties levied by the king and the Inquisition. In 1564, four hundred members of the high nobility along with members of the merchant houses petitioned the governor to call a halt to the persecution. For a wonder, Margaret actually accepted the petition and passed it on to Spain for the king’s final verdict. The reaction there was generally not met with favor. Count Berlaymont called the petition and act of guex, outlaws, a name taken up as an honor by the petitioners who are known to history as Geuzen.

The tension in the atmosphere increased following the bad harvest of 1565, a time further exasperated by the religious wars raging in northern Europe. Hunger, hardship and the rebellious preaching of Calvinist leaders brought the situation to a boiling point, allowing the violence in Germany to spill over. In August 1566, a Calvinist mob stormed the church in Hondschoote in Flanders, removing many Catholic icons. This one incident sparked a massive iconoclast movement where Calvinists began to raid other churches and religious centers in order to destroy any statue or image upon which they could lay their hands.

The number of actual vandals was likely small and their precise background subject to debate. What is fact is that the local authorities, despite the consolidation of power made by Spain, remained slow to rein in the enthusiastic Calvinists. Their actions split the Netherlander nobility and elite into two camps. One camp, led by William of Orange, opposed the destruction, siting it would only cause Spain to pull the reins tighter. The other camp, led by Henry of Brederode, openly supported the movement. His was a bold and dangerous move in a world were a word from the Spanish governor could cost a man his head.

News of the vandalism reached the Spanish court before the petition of the Geuzen, leading Phillip II to the conclusion he was starting to lose control in the troublesome Provinces. He saw little recourse save raising an army and marching to suppress the rebellion. Raising an army in the 16th Century took time and misled some Netherlanders in believing they may act without impunity. It encouraged more people to stand behind Brederode.

This all changed on August 22, 1567, when Fernando Alvarez of Toledo, the 3rd Duke of Alba, marched into the city of Brussels at the head of an army numbering more than ten thousand strong. The so-called Iron Duke entered the Netherlands with unlimited power sanctioned by the king and replaced Margaret as governor. Alba took the harshest measures and quickly established a series of courts to personally judge all in opposition to his Most Catholic Majesty.

The tribunals established by Alba earned the name of Blood Courts. During the six years of his governorship, thousands of people both guilty and not were brought forth in these courts, convicted and executed. The exact number of the condemned and what percentage were actually involved in acts against the Spanish crown is not know nor is it ever likely. The Netherlanders claim more than eighteen thousand while the only surviving Spanish documents record numbers only in the hundreds. No matter the true cost in life, the Duke of Alba failed in his mission. Instead of quelling the rebellion, his measures only helped fuel unrest and resentment, making him the unwitting catalyst for a war of independence in the Seventeen Provinces.

His ruthless enforcement of the king’s will extended even beyond the Protestant troublemakers. He had Lamoral, Count of Egmont and Phillip of Monmorency, Count of Hoorn, imprisoned. Both were very popular leaders among the dissatisfied populace and both were staunch Catholics. Nonetheless, Alba condemned both as traitors to the crown without benefit of even a show trial and sentenced them to death. On June 1, 1568, six days before these two met their end, Alba ordered twenty-two leading persons of Brussels beheaded, again without recourse of trial and under the pretense of imposing Spain’s order upon the city. These deaths seemingly casually ordered by an overlord rather than judged in a proper court sparked another outrage among both Protestant and Catholic Netherlanders.

The Duke of Alba entered the Netherlands with the explicit goal of crushing a rebellion before it grew. Instead, his heavy-handedness managed to united against the crown what was elsewhere in Europe a very volatile sectarian mix. He failed to gather the support of a majority of Provinces, his actions only driving even the most loyal of Spain’s subjects into at least a camp of reserved skepticism. Shortly after the massacre in Brussels, the Staaten-General met at Dordrecht, without any Spanish appointees, to openly declare against Alba’s government. Those in attendance marshaled beneath the banner of the Prince of Orange.

Willem van Oranje was born to the House of Orange on April 24, 1533. In his day he was widely known as William the Silent for he always knew when to speak and when to hold his tongue. To most people he is known from the work penned by William Shakespeare of the same name, though William the Silent dealt far more with the exploits of the Earl of Leicester during the Netherlanders Revolution, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, than the struggle of William of Orange against Spain. As with so many works by the playwright, William the Silent cast a most favorable light upon the Tudor regime.

The Prince of Orange came from the castle of Dillenburg in Nassau, located inside modern day Germany. He was the eldest son of the Count of Nassau William of Stolberg-Werningerode. His rise to power began in 1544, when the previous Prince of Orange, his cousin, died without heir. William inherited his cousin’s titles and vast estates across the Netherlands. In one of history’s ironies, King Charles V served as regent for William until he reached the age of majority. Yet obtaining his rightful inheritance was not as simple as aging.

In order for the Lutheran prince to gain his lands from his regent, he had little choice but to study under Mary of Hungary in Brussels and become educated as a Catholic. In Brussels he earned both a military and diplomatic education, both of which by necessity required him to gain fluency in Spanish, French and Flemish. In 1551, he found himself appointed a captain of cavalry as he rapidly grew in favor with Charles V.

Both martial education and war time experience within the Holy Roman Empire would serve him well in his future struggle for Netherlander independence, a future far from certain while Charles remained in power. When Charles finally abdicated, it was on William’s shoulder the former Emperor leaned as he stepped down in favor of his son. It a twist of fate that the new King of Spain watched his father depended upon the support of the man who would become one of Spain’s greatest enemies under Phillip’s rule, even relations between the two men remained positive during the early years of Phillip II. In fact it was Phillip who appointed William the Stadtholder of Holland, an appointment that placed William of Orange in a position to drive for Netherlander independence.

During the Blood Court, William was one of the thousands summoned to stand in judgement before the Iron Duke. He failed to show and was subsequently declared an outlaw with his holdings inside the Netherlands immediately seized. As a popular leader in the Staaten-General, William emerged at the forefront as the man behind which all rebellious Netherlanders could stand. In pamphlets and letters spread across the Provinces, William called attention to the right of subjects to renounce their oath of obedience to any sovereign who refused to respect their rights.

William raised an army amongst the rebels to battle the Duke of Army, one that unfortunately contained mostly German mercenaries. While Netherlanders were willing to speak out in support of William, they were reluctant in the 1570s to take up arms against what they considered the mightiest force in Europe. While many rights were stripped over the decades by Spain, William’s supports still maintained their property and did not wish to lose what they had. Those Netherlanders that did found position as officers in William’s army, chief among them his brothers Louis and Adolf. Together with them, William engaged and defeated a Spanish army of three thousand at Heiligerlle in Groningen. The Battle of Heiligerlle marks the official start of the Forty Years War.

The victory turned out to be a rather hollow one. Instead of pressing the campaign onward, William was forced to let loose the reins. As his funding ran short his army of mercenaries quickly disintegrated. Forces raised by his allies either met with similar ends or were handily defeated by the Duke of Alba and the bulk of Spanish forces. Shortly after this reversal, William went into hiding as the initial fires of rebellion faded. He was the only one of the grandees still able to offer any resistance, albeit minor. With his ancestral lands of Oranje, in Breda, under Spanish occupation, William relocated his headquarters to Delft, in Holland. Delft would remain William’s base of operation until his death as well as home to his descendants.

On March 1, 1572, Queen Elizabeth of England ousted thousands of Netherlander exiles within her own nation. She walked a fine line in regards to Spain and could ill afford to unintentionally provoke Phillip II. Though Spain was more distracted by its wars against the Turks than those in the Netherlands, they were still more than a march for England’s small army. In an attempt to appease Phillip and buy herself more time, he had little option save to expel the Geuzen, forcing the beggars to return home.

Under the command of Lumey, these Geuzen captured the unguarded town of Brielle. While only a small battle– a token defeat of a nearly nonexistent occupying force– Brielle turned out to be  a major morale boost. By grabbing a toehold in the northern Netherlands, the exiles rekindled the hopes of liberty and encouraged more Protestants to take up arms against the hated foreign crown. With an army to once again command, William emerged from his brief rest in hiding.

In July 1572, the Staaten-General assembled in Dordrecht, agreeing to recognize William as the new Governor-General of the Netherlands. It was also agreed upon that William would share his newly bestowed powers with the Provinces. This share of power, an innovation developed by Provinces that did not fully trust each others’ intentions gradually metamorphosed into the institutionalized separation of powers that serves as the foundation of the modern United Provinces. Yet during the Forty Years War it was more of an alliance of convenience than any sort of government. Though they come together in a common cause, each of the Provinces guarded is sovereignty fiercely, especially after Spain robbed them of their ancient rights.

However, by declaring for the Protestants, the Geuzen handed William an assortment of problems. Of the Protestants, the minority of Calvinists were bent on converting every Netherlander to their way of thinking. Of the Catholics, who viewed ramped Calvinism as almost as great a threat as Spain, the general consensus was less about religion and more about simply ejecting the Duke of Parma and his mercenaries. The merchant houses were divided as well. While they wished to be free of the Spanish boot they were not so blind as to fail to realized by making an enemy of Spain and its mighty fleet, trading abroad suddenly grew in difficulty.

It is doubtful that William would have been successful if not for an outside enemy to unite all of the Netherlanders. Even with a vicious foe to contend with, more than once tension between Calvinists and Catholics threatened to tear apart the rebellion. No matter how hard William tried to convince the masses he was fighting for the liberty of his people and the Provinces, the more fanatical Calvinists would quickly open their collective mouths and insert their collective feet by trying to turn the struggle for independence into one for the souls of the people. Since Calvinists fought the Spanish harder and with more determination than any other sect, William could not very well dismiss them from his service.

As with so much of the struggle for independence, it was more often what the Spanish did rather than what the Netherlander leaders said they strengthened unity. Being unable to stamp out the fire of rebellion, the Duke of Alba found himself replaced in 1573, by Luis of Requesnes. Requesnes arrived in the Netherlands with what he considered a policy of moderation. He would continue the remorseless punishment of rebels while ceasing the harassment of those who would swear loyalty to the king. As enlightened as his policies seemed they were so poorly managed that by the time of his death in 1575, his policy encountered the same troublesome for as William had years earlier; he fan out of money.

Amazingly, especially considering the amount of loot imported from the New World, Spain declared a state of bankruptcy the following year. The inability to pay their army, particularly the mercenaries employed in the Netherlands, would have dire consequences for Spanish rule. Mutinies followed the lack of pay and on November 4, 1576, soldiers from the Spanish Tercois entered the wealthy port of Antwerpen. Tired of fighting a determined for without their salaries, the mercenaries decided to pay themselves by looting the city. The out-of-control soldiers indulged in a wave of violence that claimed more than eight thousand lives and untold quantities of lost property. Foe three days the mercenaries pillaged in a fashion reminiscent of the barbarian invasion of Rome.

This one act of a mutinous army managed to turn even the hardest skeptics of the rebellion into its most adherent followers. The most reluctant of Netherlanders began to take up arms and pledge to cast out the Spanish for if it happened to Antwerpen, what would prevent it from repeating itself in any other city? Even those cities and Provinces still nominally loyal to the Spanish crown, quickly alienated by that carnage seen in Antwerpen, joined the rest of the Netherlands in open rebellion. In a single act of disgruntled brutality the modern Netherlander state was born.

Following the Spanish Fury, the Provinces of the Netherlands convened together to negotiate an internal treat, in which the people would put aside any religious and regional difference in order to combat the foreigners ravishing their land. William of Orange was instrumental in forming the alliance and for pushing the religious question out of the public domain. Contrary to some modern interpretations this was by no means the declaration of a secular state. The Netherlands at the time of its independence considered itself a non-denominational nation where every man had the right to seek his own path to God.

To bring about the union, William allied himself with the most powerful of southern aristocrats and one of his biggest protractors, the Duke of Aerschott. Aerschott remained in opposition of the rebellion, driving towards reconciliation with Spain up until the sacking of Antwerpen. As much as he desired to watch the downfall of William, what he wanted even more was the restoration of the old privileges and rights revoked by Phillip II. Behind him rallied southern, Catholic leaders with similar goals.

William’s ultimate ambition, a United Netherlands strong enough to drive out the Spanish appeared to be nearing reality. The Pacification of Ghent, aside from enshrining religious toleration, also called for the expulsion of all Spanish armed forces and the restoration of local and provincial prerogatives. If Phillip II did not take a simple petition well this bold declaration served only to infuriate him. Who were these Netherlander upstarts to make demands of their anointed king? Answer the only way he knew how, with a heavy hand, he sent Alessandro Farnes, the Duke of Parma, to crush these traitors.

Upon arriving in the Netherlands, Parma took up his appointment as Governor-General, the same title held by the Prince of Orange. Aided by a recent shipment of bullion from the New World, the Duke of Parma formed his army and set out to destroy the rebellion, securing the title of Governor-General for himself and Phillip II their king. The Netherlanders sough a different route in the decision of who would be king.

In 16th Century Europe, it was uncommon that a country could be governed by anyone other than high nobility, if not a king. In the 1580s, the Staaten-General sought a suitable replacement for their current self-proclaimed king. Oddly enough, they first courted Elizabeth of England, a proposition she dismissed nearly out of hand. In 1581, she was in no position to displease Phillip. Spain continued to eye England and would leap upon the slightest provocation to invade the island and bring it back under the Church of Rome.

With one rejection on its list, the Staaten-General turned to Elizabeth’s one-time suite the Duke of Anjou. The young brother to the King of France agreed to accept the offer under one circumstance; the Netherlanders must openly renounce any loyalty to Phillip II. The condition required no debate to accept as all of the delegates in the legitimate Staaten-General long since abandoned any faith in the Spanish king.

On July 22, 1581, the Staaten-General issued the Oath of Abjuration, in which the Provinces declared that since the King of Spain failed to uphold his responsibilities to the Netherlander people and thus was no longer accepted as their ruler. Though technically a formality as the Provinces rejected Phillip’s rule years earlier, the oath was in effect the formal declaration of independence.

Anjou did not stay long in the Netherlands. He was, naturally for a French noble, deeply disturbed by the limited influence and power the Staaten-General