Early Modern War Narratives and the Revolt in the Low Countries 9781526140869

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Early modern war narratives and the Revolt in the Low Countries

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STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY This series aims to publish challenging and innovative research in all areas of early modern continental history. The editors are committed to encouraging work that engages with current historiographical debates, adopts an interdisciplinary approach, or makes an original contribution to our understanding of the period. series editors Joseph Bergin, William G. Naphy, Penny Roberts and Paolo Rossi Also available in the series Jews on trial: the papal inquisition in Modena, 1598-1638  Katherine Aron-­Beller Sodomy in early modern Europe  ed. Tom Betteridge College communities abroad: Education, migration and Catholicism in early modern Europe  ed. Liam Chambers and Thomas O’Connor Princely power in the Dutch Republic: patronage and William Frederick of Nassau (1613–64)  Geert H. Janssen, trans. J. C. Grayson Representing the King’s splendour: communication and reception of symbolic forms of power in viceregal Naples  Gabriel Guarino The English Republican tradition and eighteenth-century France: between the ancients and the moderns  Rachel Hammersley Power and reputation at the court of Louis XIII: the career of Charles d’Albert, duc de Luynes (1578–1621)  Sharon Kettering The anxiety of sameness in early modern Spain  Christina H. Lee Absolute monarchy on the frontiers: Louis XIV’s military occupations of Lorraine and Savoy  Phil McCluskey Catholic communities in Protestant states: Britain and the Netherlands c.1570–1720  eds Bob Moore, Henk van Nierop, Benjamin Kaplan and Judith Pollman Daum’s boys: Schools and the Republic of Letters in early modern Germany  Alan S.Ross Mary and Philip: The marriage of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain  Alexander Samson Orangism in the Dutch Republic in word and image, 1650–1675  Jill Stern The great favourite: the Duke of Lerma and the court and government of Philip III of Spain, 1598–1621  Patrick Williams Full details of the series are available at www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

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Early modern war narratives and the Revolt in the Low Countries Edited by RAYMOND FAGEL, LEONOR ÁLVAREZ FRANCÉS and BEATRIZ SANTIAGO BELMONTE

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Manchester University Press 2020 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-­in-­Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 4086 9 hardback First published 2020 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-­party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cover image: Pieter Adriaensz. Cluyt, The siege of Alkmaar in 1573, seen from the south, 1580 (collection Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar)

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Contents

List of figures page vii List of contributors ix Preface xii List of abbreviations xiv

Introduction: early modern war narratives and the Revolt in the Low Countries Raymond Fagel

1

  1 ‘Do not reveal that I wrote this’: diplomatic correspondence, news and narratives in the early years of the civil war in the Low Countries 18 M.J. Rodriguez-Salgado   2 The fabrication of Francisco de Valdés: episodic narratives in Spanish and Dutch chronicles on the siege of Leiden (1573–74) Leonor Álvarez Francés

36

  3 The year of the Furies: military correspondence around the Sack of Antwerp (1576) Beatriz Santiago Belmonte

56

  4 ‘Lode della nazione italiana’: Italian historians on the Spanish soldiers 74 Cees Reijner

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vi CONTENTS

  5 Narrating mutiny in the army of Flanders: Cristóbal Rodríguez Alva’s La inquieta Flandes (1594) Miguel Martínez

89

  6 Orange’s Spanish mulatto and other side-­changers: narratives on Spanish defection during the Revolt in the Low Countries Raymond Fagel

107

  7 How a defeat became a victory: the siege of Ostend in contemporary Dutch war coverage and post-­war chronicles (1601–15) 125 Werner Thomas   8 North and south: a comparison of episodic war narratives during the Revolt in the Low Countries Jasper van der Steen

146

  9 Chaplains and soldiers: experience and narratives in the Low Countries (1567–1648) Vincenzo Lavenia

167

10 ‘Was bis daher gepassiert solt vergessen und vergeben sein’: cross-­ border nobleman Sweder Schele’s (1569–1639) accounts of army commanders during the Revolt in the Low Countries and Thirty Years’ War 183 Raingard Esser and Dániel Moerman 11 Geoffrey Parker’s Universal Soldier revisited: European military history and human universals Gregory Hanlon

201

Bibliography 214 Index 239

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Figures

  1 Simon Opzoomer, Magdalena Moons begs her fiancé Francisco de Valdés to postpone the storming of Leiden another night, 1840–50, oil on panel, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest), public domain. page 37   2 Frans Hogenberg, Murder at Maastricht 1576, 1576–77, etching on paper, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, public domain. 67   3 Jacob Neefs, Portrait of Giovan Luigi Vitelli, 1620–80, etching on paper, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, public domain. 83   4 Cristóbal Rodríguez Alva, La inquieta Flandes (1594), fo. 78v. Biblioteca Nacional de España, MSS/22648, reproduced with permission. 100   5 Figure No. 5 from Van Haestens’s Bloedige ende strenge belegeringhe (p. 110). Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, public domain. 129   6 Figure No. 10 from Van Haestens’s Bloedige ende strenge 141 belegeringhe (p. 117). Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, public domain.   7 The murder of William of Orange, discussed and illustrated in Willem Baudartius, Afbeeldinghe, ende beschrijvinghe van alle de veldslagen, belegeringen, ende and’re notable geschiedenissen, ghevallen in de Nederlanden, geduerende d’oorloghe teghens den coningh van Spaengien also known as De Nassausche oorloghen (Amsterdam: Michiel Colijn, 1616), reproduced with permission from Leiden University Library (CC BY). 148–9   8 Allegory and visualized episodic narrative of the Revolt in Willem Luytsz van Kittensteyn, Spieghel ofte afbeeldinghe der Nederlandtsche Geschiedenissen (1613). Atlas van Stolk, inv. 50442–62, reproduced with permission from Atlas van Stolk. 154

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viii FIGURES

  9 Kittensteyn’s correction of Hogenberg’s inaccurate staging of William of Orange’s murder in a hall. Atlas van Stolk, inv. 50442–258, reproduced with permission from Atlas van Stolk. 10 Nievwe chroniicke oft Verhael van alle de gedenckweerdichste saken die geschiet zijn, t’sedert den iare 1500. tot […] 1624 (Antwerp: Godtgaf Verhulst, 1624), reproduced with permission of Ghent University Library (CC BY SA 4.0). 11 Imago primi saeculi Societatis Iesu a Provincia Flandro-Belgica repraesentata (Antwerp. 1640), p. 941, public domain. 12 Joh. and Corn. Blaeu, Transiselania dominivm vernaculè Over-Yssel (Amsterdam, 1640), Groningen University Library, uklu 01–25–06, public domain, open digital collection.

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159 176 184

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Contributors

Leonor Álvarez Francés completed her bachelor’s degree in History at the University of Barcelona and the Research Master’s in History at the University of Amsterdam. She specializes in the contact between Spain and the Low Countries during the early modern period, with a focus on imagological aspects. For her PhD dissertation, part of the NWO research project ‘Facing the enemy. Spanish army commanders during the first decade of the Dutch Revolt’, she studies how chronicles written in Dutch and Spanish throughout the conflict portrayed loyalist commanders. The comparative study of episodic narratives on these commanders sheds light on early modern chronicles as historical sources, as it reveals aspects of their rhetorical devices and function. Raingard Esser has held the chair of Early Modern History at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen since 2011. Before that she was a senior lecturer and a reader in Early Modern History at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Her areas of expertise are: Cultures of Memory (Low Countries, England), Borders and Regions (Low Countries), and Migration (Low Countries, England). Her current research project focuses on ‘Crisis, Changing Borders and Citizens’ Resilience in the Wars of the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries’, and ‘The “Catholic Eye and the Protestant Ear”? The New Materiality of the Sacred in Early Modern Society’. Raymond Fagel is lecturer in Early Modern History at the History Institute of Leiden University. Both his teaching and research are centred on the Renaissance (c.1480–c.1580), especially on the relations between the Low Countries and Spain during the Early Habsburgs. He is the director of the NWO research project ‘Facing the enemy. Spanish army commanders during the first decade of the Dutch Revolt’.

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x CONTRIBUTORS

Gregory Hanlon is the Munro Professor of European History at Dalhousie University, Halifax. He specializes in the military history of early modern France and Italy, and especially looks at behavioural history from an evolutionary perspective. His book The Hero of Italy: Odoardo Farnese, Duke of Parma, his Soldiers and his Subjects in the Thirty Years War, 1633–1637 (Oxford University Press, 2014) was published in an Italian translation in 2017. Among several others books, he published The Twilight of a Military Tradition: Italian Aristocrats and European Conflicts, 1560–1800 (University College London Press, 1998). Vincenzo Lavenia, former student at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, is associate professor in Early Modern History at the Department of History, Cultures and Civilizations, University of Bologna, Italy. His main research topics are: History of the Roman Inquisition in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; History of witch-­craze and legal medicine in early modern Italy; doctrine and legitimacy of the war; and Auricular confession, moral theology and Catholic casuistry. He recently published Dio in uniforme. Cappellani, catechesi cattolica e soldati in età moderna (2018). Miguel Martínez (PhD, The Graduate Center, CUNY) is assistant professor of Spanish at the University of Chicago. His research and teaching focus on the cultural and literary histories of early modern Iberia and colonial Latin America, and he has published on topics such as war writing, book history, popular culture, epic poetry, and Luso-­Hispanic relations. He is the author of Front Lines. Soldiers’ Writing in the Early Modern Hispanic world (2016). He is currently working on two book projects, on the literature of early colonial Manila, and on popular culture in Renaissance Spain. Dániel Johannes Moerman (1994) studied history at the Universities of Groningen and Leuven. In 2019 he graduated from the Research Master Classical, Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Groningen, where he later worked as a postgraduate lecturer. He is currently working as a PhD student on the NOW-sponsored project ‘Coping with Drought: An Environmental History of Drinking Water and Climate Adaptation in the Netherlands 1550–1850’ at the Free University of Amsterdam. Cees Reijner was a history teacher and studied history and Italian language and literature. Currently he is conducting doctoral research at Leiden University, under supervision of Judith Pollmann, into the Italian historiography of the Dutch Revolt. As a result of his research, he has published articles in various journals such as Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, De Zeventiende Eeuw and Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis. M.J. Rodriguez-Salgado taught Political, Social and Economic History at the universities of St Andrews and Newcastle-­upon-­Tyne before joining the

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CONTRIBUTORS xi

International History Department at the London School of Economics in 1985 where she became Professor of International History and Head of Department. She took early retirement in 2015 to concentrate on research and writing. She is an editor of Cambridge University Press’s New Studies in European History series and several journals, and is in demand as an assessor for research grants worldwide. She has researched and published on the early modern court, and on relations between Christian and Muslim states, as well as on international relations. Beatriz Santiago Belmonte is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History at Leiden University. She completed her bachelor’s degree in History at the Complutense University of Madrid and specialized in early modern Spain during a master’s degree on the History of the Spanish Monarchy (sixteenth– nineteenth centuries). She also completed an internship at the Royal Academy of History of Spain where she contributed to the composition of the Diccionario Biográfico Español (2009–13). Since August 2014 she has been working on her dissertation entitled ‘Spanish Heroes in the Low Countries. The Experience of War during the First Decade of the Dutch Revolt (1567–1577)’, within the NWO research project ‘Facing the enemy. Spanish army commanders during the first decade of the Dutch Revolt’. Jasper van der Steen is a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University. His first monograph Memory Wars in the Low Countries, 1566–1700 (Brill, 2015) examines the political usage of war memories in the partitioned Low Countries after the outbreak of the Revolt in the Low Countries. He is currently working on his second monograph, provisionally titled ‘The Nassaus and the family business of power in Early Modern Europe’. This project is funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. Werner Thomas is Professor of Spanish and Spanish American history and senior researcher of Early Modern History at the University of Leuven. He has published on the repression of Protestantism in Spain (1517–1648), the Habsburg court of Archduke Albert and Isabella Clara Eugenia in Brussels (1598–1621), the Siege of Ostend (1601–4), and the political and cultural relations between the (Southern) Netherlands and the Spanish Empire (1500– 1700). His current research projects include the contribution of Flemish prints and engravings to the construction of the Spanish Empire in America (1520– 1800), the Southern Netherlands as a centre of accumulation and translation within the Spanish monarchy (1520–1700), the role of Hispano-­Flemish elites and mixed identities in the continuation of Flemish loyalty to the House of Habsburg (1659–1708), and the production and consumption of early modern descriptions of the New World’s indigenous languages (c.1500–c.1800).

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Preface

Volumes of collected chapters fortunately remain an important medium within the historicial profession. Especially in Europe, it is essential to keep recalling that the early modern history of its continent was one of continuous conflicts, but also of ongoing contacts between people from different regions. Only by getting together to discuss past events, and putting our differences on the table, is it possible to advance the knowledge of our past and reach a common understanding. Though formulating a synthesis in the end is important, the way to reach that goal remains to be through international collaboration and communication. We hope this volume, edited by researchers from two countries that hold completely different views of the history of the Revolt in the Low Countries, can contribute its ‘granito de arena’, as the Spanish expression goes. We need to keep looking at Europe’s old stories. We thank NWO, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, for supporting the research project ‘Facing the enemy. Spanish army commanders during the first decade of the Dutch Revolt’, of which the editors of this volume are members. Together with Jeroen Duindam, Professor of Early Modern History, we have worked for five years on this project based at the History Department of Leiden University. Among the activities organized within the project was an international conference on ‘Episodic war narratives and the Dutch Revolt’, held between 24 and 26 May 2018. We want to thank all the participants of this conference for their contributions to the debates on early modern war narratives, which have helped shape our ideas, but we would like to specially mention the presence in Leiden of Maurizio Arfaioli, Bertrand Haan, Michael Kaiser, Anton van der Lem, Hugo de Schepper, Gustaaf Janssens, Nicolette Mout, Judith Pollmann, Bernardo García García, Nina Lamal and Silvia Mostaccio.

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PREFACE xiii

At an earlier stage we had the opportunity to discuss our ideas in Belgium, France and Spain with Geoffrey Parker, Gustaaf Janssens, Enrique Martínez Ruiz, Fernando Bouza, Bernardo García García, Alicia Esteban Estríngana and Santiago Martínez Hernández. We also want to thank Máximo García Fernández for helping us out in Valladolid, Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez of Amsterdam University for her comments on earlier drafts, and Kate Delaney for correcting the English of this volume. Of course, there are many others who have helped us during the project, such as the colleagues at the History Department, but also the participants of other scientific meetings where we were generously invited to present our research, including in Mechelen, Brugge, Amsterdam, Leiden, Groningen, Wedde, Utrecht, Florence, Madrid and Santander. Beatriz Santiago Belmonte Leonor Álvarez Francés Raymond Fagel

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Abbreviations

AGS Archivo General de Simancas ARAB Algemeen Rijksarchief, Brussels CODOIN Colección de Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de España, 113 vols (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1842–95) CP Correspondance de Philippe II sur les affaires des Pays-Bas, eds Louis-­ Prosper Gachard and Joseph Lefèvre (eds), 6 vols (Brussels: Mucquardt, Librairie ancienne et moderne, 1848–1936) E. Sección de Estado, Archivo General de Simancas

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Introduction: early modern war narratives and the Revolt in the Low Countries Raymond Fagel

The story of war: episodic narratives The long-­lasting Revolt in the Low Countries that started around 1567 is generally considered to be one of the most influential conflicts in early modern European history. Since its outbreak, it has played a major role in the development of historiography on war and revolt. The Revolt also occupies a prominent place within historical debates on identity formation and on the importance of religion in early modern society.1 It can be seen both as a political clash between a centralist monarchy and the defenders of regional liberties, and as a religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants within the violent religious wars that disrupted life in Europe for about a century. Two currents in modern historiography have dominated research on the Revolt and have mostly functioned as two separate and closed-­off entities. On the one hand, we find studies that focus on the reconstruction of the actual events and circumstances of the war, of which the works by Geoffrey Parker are the most outstanding examples. Parker has studied the logistics of the Spanish army present in the Low Countries, as well as the political decision-­making processes that guided Habsburg policy.2 We can also mention the important contributions by Belgian and Dutch historians like Hugo de Schepper, Gustaaf Janssens and Henk van Nierop.3 De Schepper has shown how the Low Countries were divided between a more integrated centre in the western regions and a less connected periphery both in the south and the east of the Low Countries. He thereby broke away from the traditional and dominant north–south division that was based on the a posteriori creation of Holland and Belgium as separate political entities. De Schepper and Janssens have also amply studied the often complicated middle position of noblemen

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and bureaucrats within the Habsburg government. These groups were unwilling to join the rebellion against their natural overlord, but also reluctant to blindly follow the guidelines from the royal court in Madrid. Van Nierop has in turn broken away from the still often triumphalist Dutch historiography on the Revolt, most notably with his study on the violent civil war taking place in the north of the County of Holland. For historians from this more traditional historical school, archival documents are clearly the main source of information, using the correspondence of those involved in the decision-­making processes and administrative records kept by the different institutions of both Spain and the Low Countries. It is all about what really happened. At the other end of the spectrum, we can acknowledge a more cultural tradition that focuses on the different narratives found during this period. Researchers within this trend use texts written by specific groups, like the Catholics Judith Pollmann has put to the fore, or the self-­conscious citizens of urban centres that protagonize the work of Peter Arnade. There are also studies that focus on how authors in Spain or Italy related the events in the Low Countries.4 Within this second current we find both cultural historians and literary specialists who work mostly with published texts, such as pamphlets and broadsides, literary material like theatre plays and poetry, treatises on the perfect soldier and military theory,5 and autobiographical texts. It is all about what people wrote. A very special category concerns texts belonging to the so-­called Spanish Black Legend, a European narrative tradition starting in the early modern period that describes both Spain and the Spanish people in an extremely derogatory manner. The Revolt in the Low Countries plays a fundamental part in the construction of this specific discourse, as it highlights the harsh policies of King Philip II, the Duke of Alba and the Spanish inquisition, and minutely describes the cruel behaviour of the Spanish military active in the Low Countries.6 The Black Legend in the Low Countries was primarily constructed by Protestant enemies of the Habsburg government. It is the intention of this volume to bring together the more historical outlook on war and the cultural perspective. It tries to do so by also introducing other categories of texts that have often been neglected, such as the descriptive narrative sources that relate the events during the long period of conflict. From the earlier simple chronicles to the more elaborated historical works of the seventeenth century, all narrative sources are full of detailed stories about the long series of events that make up the essential body of the conflict. Many of these particular events have been completely forgotten, as only a small part of the actual stories have survived the canonization of past generations. By returning to what we might call the episodic narratives of the time, we can draw the events and the narratives that describe them as close to each other as possible.7

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INTRODUCTION 3

A second group of texts contributing to crossing this divide concerns the letters by the military participants, which can be used not solely to reconstruct the course of events, but also as informative narratives in themselves. They share with the chronicles and other descriptive texts an emphasis on detailed information. These letters were mostly used to inform the recipient about the actual situation of the military in the field and to influence decision making at a higher level. Many of the letters written by the military have never been published because historians have always given precedence to editing the ­letters of those at the top of the hierarchy, of sovereigns such as King Philip II, or of leading politicians such as the Duke of Alba or Prince William of Orange. Letters by the commanders can undoubtedly be labelled as war narratives and are moreover a direct reflection of their war experience. This understanding is related to the ideas of Leonard Smith in his famous The embattled self on the narratives of the First World War, as he explored the ‘means of transition between ‘what happened’ on the battlefield and ‘experience’ as rendered in published texts’.8 Besides bridging this divide between a more historical and a more cultural approach, this volume also tries to connect researchers and sources from different European cultural traditions. Within the context of the Revolt in the Low Countries, the most striking differences can be found between Spanish and Dutch historiography. During the course of the last centuries, the Dutch have created their myth of a national liberation war against a cruel ‘foreign’ oppressor, while in Spain the myth of an invincible Spanish army came into being. Both myths refer to the same military protagonists that were turned into either war criminals or military heroes. The same events are thus seen from radically contradictory perspectives, and the incidents that eventually entered the historical canons of the two cultures have been selected according to conflicting criteria and have been utilized differently to create meaning. For example, Dutch historiography tends to focus on rebel victories like the Battle of Heiligerlee in 1568 and the failed attempts of the Spanish army to conquer the cities of Leiden and Alkmaar in 1573 and 1574, while in Spain much more attention is given to the royal victory over the rebels at the Battle of Jemmingen, taking place only several weeks after Heiligerlee, and to the succesful siege of the city of Haarlem, preceding those of Alkmaar en Leiden. These national grand narratives were not conceived at the historical moment they took place, as they are the result of a process taking several centuries. In order to deconstruct these national myths it is necessary to return to the simple episodic narratives decribing the actual events, and though, of course, always written down with a sense of purpose, these texts were not yet part of a national dominating view on society or on ‘history’. We can disentangle the construction of these grand narratives by scrutinizing their separate

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building blocks. Within both historiography and literary studies, descriptions with a high episodic (or anecdotal) nature have received little attention,9 as texts that remain too close to the facts and therefore resist theoretical analysis. Within literary studies, episodic narratives function as primitive forerunners of modern literature,10 while historiographers consider these texts as lacking sufficient distance from the events described.11 As Hayden White stated with some disapproval: ‘These narratives do not conclude, they just terminate.’12 This opinion does not do justice to the enormous importance of the episodic genre. A great deal of information was, and still is, transmitted by way of episodes with a high factual character. We might see the anecdotes as the delivery room of historiography, where fact and fiction remain closely intertwined.13 In the end, it is all about how war becomes a story.14 Spain and the Revolt in the Low Countries While in the English language it is better known as the Dutch Revolt, the conflict is more correctly referred to as the Revolt in the Low Countries.15 Omittting the more specific term Dutch and instead using the more generic Low Countries (Lage Landen) as a synonym for the Netherlands (de Nederlanden) reveals more clearly that the history of the Revolt did not involve only the actual Kingdom of the Netherlands, but also territories that are now in Belgium, Germany, France and Luxembourg. In this sense, the Low Countries refer to the conglomerate of dominions of the Habsburgs situated between the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire, possessing some sort of rudimentary common identity and a beginning of central institutions. Though Dutch historians in particular often monopolize the debate on the Revolt as if it concerns only the creation of their national state, the conflict found its beginnings in what is now Belgium and the north of France. At the same time, describing the Revolt as taking place within the Low Countries also makes it clear that not the whole of the country rebelled against their overlord, or against Spain, but that it merely concerned specific groups and individuals within society. Seeing it as a national revolt does not do justice to the current state of historical research on the subject, as we now consider it to have been a violent and chaotic civil war disrupting life in the Low Countries for decades, and by no means a conflict inevitably leading to the creation of a Dutch Republic of Calvinist burghers in the northern parts of the Low Countries. Within rebel propaganda, the enemy was generally considered to be the Spanish king and Spain was seen as an occupying force, though, of course, according to dynastic principles, Philip II was the natural sovereign of these

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INTRODUCTION 5

territories as heir to Charles V. This inaccurate forging of a foreign enemy led to describing all supporters of the king as being ‘Spanish’, branding them as enemies of the nation. This volume does not follow this politicized use of Spain and Spanish, and these terms here refer only to the Iberian possessions of the Habsburgs until 1580 (not including Portugal) and their inhabitants. Though Spain was not a kingdom in any official way, as it consisted of various realms and other seigneurial territories, the use of the term king of Spain is contemporary to the Revolt and can be considered shorthand for the long list of titles of the king of Castile, Aragon, and so on. In that same sense, when referring to the Spanish army in the Low Countries, this relates only to those parts of the army consisting of military that were actually Spanish, while when referring to the whole army of Philip II, terminology like royal, loyal or Habsburg army is used. Generally speaking, the Spanish element in the Habsburg army in the Low Countries was never any larger than some 10,000 men, while the whole army could count up to 60,000 men or more, mostly German and Walloon soldiers, but also people recruited from the British Isles, Italy, Portugal and even from as far as Albania.16 There exists a large body of published war narratives related to the Revolt in the Low Countries, beginning directly with the pamphlets of the period itself.17 Early on, more general narratives were also published, both in the Low Countries and Spain, like those by Emanuel van Meteren, Bernardino de Mendoza and Antonio Trillo.18 Since the nineteenth century, many unpublished war narratives have been recovered from archives and libraries, and there continues still a quiet but ongoing stream of source editions and translations until today.19 The European context of war These early modern war narratives were often created in an international environment. Chroniclers and historians could make use of texts from other geographical areas available in Latin, but most of the early modern intellectuals were capable of also reading vernacular languages other than their own. Dutch historians like P.C. Hooft made use of sources in Spanish and Italian. It seems that, in particular, the Italian chronicles were used both in the Low Countries and Spain as an important source of information on their own conflict. French was also an important channel of transnational communication. The chronicle by Spanish officer Bernardino de Mendoza was published first in French, before appearing in Spanish. Both the elites in Spain and the Low Countries were capable of reading French, and a large part of the nobilty of the early modern Low Countries had French as their first language. This

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included the most important noblemen defending the cause of Philip II, but also Prince William of Orange, born in Germany, who used French from an early age as his primary language. Important Spanish high officers like Cristóbal de Mondragón, Francisco Verdugo and Portuguese-­born Gaspar de Robles were married to women from the French-­speaking nobility. They therefore had a great command of this ‘national’ language of the Low Countries, and the fact they served as colonels of Walloon infantry regiments is proof of it. And although King Philip II maybe did not speak French, he was perfectly able to read it. War narratives unmistakenly travelled across borders and across languages, and this simple fact has not been sufficiently acknowledged in historical research, partly because such a transnational enterprise requires researchers capable of reading several European languages and being knowledgeable about multiple cultural contexts. This multilingualism is not the only aspect that underscores the international character of the Revolt.20 People all over Europe were kept apace about the conflict through pamphlets, chronicles, newsletters or private letters, or even by word of mouth from somebody who had recently visited the Low Countries.21 Furthermore, the conflict did not stop at the frontiers as armies crossed over borders with great ease. The first phase of the Revolt coincided with the French wars of religion,22 while the second part of the conflict, up to 1648, neatly coincided with the Thirty Years’ War that devastated large parts of the Holy Roman Empire, as far as Italy. War was not limited only to these long-­lasting conflicts, since all over Europe dissension reigned, such as the struggles over the Portuguese crown, after 1580 and again around 1640, the wars between Spain and England, conflicts between the Irish and the English, revolts in Granada, Aragon, Catalonia and Naples, and the wars both on land and at sea against the armies and fleets of the Ottoman sultans. Spanish soldiers active during the Revolt in the Low Countries can be found involved in most of these conflicts, even travelling as far as Spanish America. Especially from the end of the sixteenth century, the conflict also spread its wings to America, Africa and Asia. Military developments were also interconnected. The British soldiers fighting on both sides of the conflict learned about new ways of conducting war, the Italians brought with them their knowledge of fortifications, the Germans their experience in the casting of cannons, while the Spanish taught the world how different types of infantry, pikes and fire-­arms could be integrated within one regiment.23 Maybe the Dutch showed best how to organize the financing of war,24 and we should not forget the Albanian cavalry that took part in the Revolt in the Low Countries and many other conflicts. It is essential to realize that the historical context of early modern warfare had very little

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to do with the contained national contexts of the nineteenth century, when scholars focused on the early modern period in search for their national past.25 This point of departure from a national framework has led to different national historiographies on early modern warfare and has left an imprint in the way war is reflected in texts. German historians have dedicated much attention to autobiographical texts or ‘Selbstzeugnisse’, a line of research Gregory Hanlon would like to see followed in a more systematic way, as he states in the conclusion of his contribution to this volume.26 Within the Italian context, a great deal of attention has been given to the idea of the perfect soldier, while recent studies in France have explored the specific aspect of fear in texts from the French religious wars, thereby linking with recent developments in the history of emotions.27 Spanish historians have focused on military treatises and the image of the war in Golden Age Spanish theatre, and recently Miguel Martínez published a monograph on soldiers’ writings where he analyses the works by the Spanish military as a separate category of writing.28 Early modern war narratives and the modern world Though historians tend to present their research as new and innovative, this is almost never the case. Such a reputed historian as the Belgian Léon van der Essen started publishing his works on the Revolt already well before the Second World War. However, it was not until the war had ended that the Spanish army would receive his full scientific attention. Van der Essen himself was a member of the Belgian war crimes committee functioning after the war, and his strong interest in understanding violence during the Revolt was linked to his own experiences, as he was trying to grasp the essence and mechanisms of violence.29 In this sense, the way historians envision and explain wars is directly related to their own life experiences. That has also been the case for Geoffrey Parker, who was greatly influenced by the Vietnam War when working on the logistics of the Spanish army during the Revolt. The same holds for the author of this introduction, of course, in a much humbler way, whose interest in the history of war narratives started with the Iraq War and the subsequent religious conflicts in the Middle East. How are the stories of international wars told on different sides and in different media, and how did the mixture of political and religious interests create an almost inextricable knot? Does the civil war taking place in Syria in the twenty-­first century differ that much from the civil war in the Low Countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? Dominant national narratives have lost at least part of their pre-­eminent role in recent years. As globalization makes it less feasible to continue to

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i­nterpret the world solely from the perspective of modern western nation states, our contemporary world increasingly resembles the early modern period. The international developments since 2011 are not surprising to those who have studied the history of a period that we have come to call the era of the religious wars: wars that always possessed a religious element, but that always involved other explanatory factors as well, including social, economic, or political causes. Indeed, there does not exist a fundamental difference between war narratives from the early modern period and those of the modern, or contemporary, world, if we define the latter as starting somewhere at the end of the eighteenth century.30 At least, no intrinsic differences that would make it impossible to fruitfully compare texts from the two periods, as Mondini and Rospocher have already shown. Although they acknowledge the fact that war narratives can be critical on warfare, they mostly see the ‘discourse of war’ as an ongoing tradition to legitimize war and its protagonists. In the early modern period, such legitimization involved the image of the Christian knight or the genius of the military commander. This tradition continued well into the nineteenth century. According to Mondini and Rospocher, around the First World War authors tried to reconcile this heroic tradition with the harsh realities of warfare in the trenches.31 Of course, texts from the modern period differ in character and scale, but as Judith Pollmann has noted when writing on the history of memory in Europe, the change has been gradual, and old forms continued to coexist side by side with new forms of memory.32 The same holds true for war narratives. There are, of course, social biases that Pollmann and Kuijpers refer to when speaking about early modern memory culture, and the problem of the much less articulated self during this period. These elements also influenced the character of war narratives: In their words: ‘Literacy was limited in early modern Europe and the writing of memoirs not a widespread activity. The social biases in early modern sources are thus certainly more pronounced than in contemporary evidence.’ Most war narratives are, as is the case for memoirs, written by the upper strata of society in general, and of those of the army in particular. Pollmann and Kuijpers also further expand on the matter of the less articulated self: ‘The reflective introspection that characterizes so many modern so-­called ego-­documents is rare in the early modern diaries of non-­literary authors. […] Early modern people were not inclined to think of their “selves” as subjects to change beyond the expected stages of growing and aging’.33 Yuval Harari defended in 2008 a clear difference between early modern and modern battlefield descriptions, mostly based on the military memoirs he had been using for his research.34 According to Harari, military authors from

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the early modern period wrote in order to describe war as an honourable way of life, as an instrument for personal advancement, or as an instrument for achieving collective aims. The modern war experience was, on the other hand, based on the idea of flesh-­witnessing and on the idea that war changed people, what Harari calls battlefield revelations. This change could be for the better (to become a real man; to understand life) or for worse (as a traumatic experience). War experience changed the modern man, while suggesting the early modern man came out of a battle unchanged. Harari decided to concentrate his book on this change, but he is not very occupied with the why, although he does address it briefly: in essence he considers it as a change from a ‘domination of the mind over the body’ during the early modern period to ‘a domination of body over mind’. Fundamental changes in society had changed the way war was ‘lived’. To give an example from his book: ‘Fear and cold “in themselves” were perhaps identical in 1450 and 1865. Yet the attention they received was quite different, and hence the “lived” experience of fear and cold was probably different in 1450 than it was in 1865.’35 This is, of course, true, but it does not necessarily imply a rupture between early modern and modern, as it can also be considered a gradual development over time. When working with texts, we have to be aware of existing textual and rhetorical conventions that greatly influenced the character and purpose of the texts that have come down to us from the early modern period. For example, the letters from late-­sixteenth-­century Leiden merchant Daniël van der Meulen and his family clearly show the difference in letter-­writing culture between men and women. Women almost continuously lament sickness and death, while men seem to mention family matters much more from a distance, as if they hardly have any personal feelings at all. If we did not have the letters by the women of the family at our disposal, we could think early modern Netherlanders did not have feelings for their immediate kin.36 Spanish military commander Julián Romero was not a specialist in hiding his feelings. Still, you have to look very closely at his letters in order to discover the reflection of his personal experiences, for example when he writes about the loss of his son in the war, a son of whom he had great expectations. At that moment, the harsh and experienced commander did change as a person.37 His personal ‘revelation’ did not inspire him to write an emotional poem or a personal novel, but we can clearly appreciate a personal transformation from the few emotional words he permitted himself in his professional letter. Rhetorical writing conventions persist, even if we seem to be less aware of them. When in a sports programme the goal scorer is asked about his performance during the match, he will immediately start by stating his goals were the result of good teamwork, in the form of a ‘captatio benevolentiae’. As soon as the cameras are gone, it is highly probable that he will boast and

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brag about his goals with all his friends. In the case of Julián Romero again, we know he loved to brag about his exploits in personal conversations, as he did in Brussels when he told the story of the heroic victory over the rebels at Jemmingen, or when he went for a walk on the quay of Palermo with a French nobleman. This commander undoubtedly possessed an articulated self. Early modern military were without a doubt aware of the fact that war changed people. A telling example is the ­wonderful – ­and often ­quoted – ­statement by Spanish commander Francisco de Valdés on how the moment a man picked up a pike, he stopped being a Christian. You did not even need a battlefield experience. Just pick up a pike and you became a different person. An analysis of the letters of this commander also demonstrates that the war in the Low Countries actually changed his vision of the conflict. In the beginning he was completely neutral as a professional soldier engaged in doing his job in a faraway country, but gradually we perceive his growing awareness of the civil war going on around him, including a positive outlook on most of the good Catholic inhabitants of the country, sharply contrasted by his growing hatred for the small group of stubborn and incorrigible rebels. However, in the end, his disappointment about the development of the war made him state that it would be better to flood most of the country in order to finally stop the Revolt.38 He shifted from a distant position to an involved one, finally ending up with a feeling of rejection and disappointment. War narratives in practice This volume offers a varied sampling of methodologies for the study of war narratives, though the analysis of episodic narratives is clearly one of the dominating methods. Differences in analysis also occur as a result of the thirteen authors representing seven different nationalities, and using narrative sources in the following seven languages: Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, German and English. The contributions vary between the very detailed analysis of episodic narratives of one particular event, one individual, or one specific source, and the much broader scope of Gregory Hanlon’s contribution, as he searches for universal elements in war narratives through time. In the opening chapter, Mia Rodriguez-­Salgado connects the political world of the Habsburg Empire to the circulation of episodic narratives. She does so by focusing on the way texts on the Revolt in the Low Countries were used throughout the diplomatic network of the king. The narratives were used to inform on, and confirm, news from the Low Countries in various ways, but at the same time there could have been political strategies behind this circulation. Ambassadors, secretaries, and other informers within Philip II’s

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information network, all could adopt their own information policy, deciding what, how and with whom information was shared. Her contribution also shows how the king’s representative in Venice, Diego Guzmán de Silva, formed an essential nodal point in the communication between Philip’s court and the Low Countries. Leonor Álvarez Francés uses the example of Spanish commander Francisco de Valdés, leading the siege of Leiden in 1573–74, as a way to compare war narratives in Spanish and Dutch chronicles. In her contribution she shows how the main characters of the story were fabricated in order to support the underlying perceptions of the chroniclers. The comparison leads to a surprising conclusion. The differences are not so much between Spanish and Dutch narratives, but depend on the overall vision the chroniclers want to offer. Valdés and his men are shown in a negative way by Dutch historians who want to emphasize the positive qualities of the Leiden defenders, while those that do not stress local unity do not show such a negative vision on the Spanish enemy either. The same holds true for Spanish authors. Those who wish to convey a very positive picture of the Spanish let their hero Valdés fight against a negatively described enemy, while a Spanish text more neutral on the enemy can even offer a negative image of the Spanish commander. As in imagology, the image of the other is the reflection of one’s own self: auto-­image and hetero-­image are closely interconnected.39 In ‘The year of the Furies’ Beatriz Santiago Belmonte looks at one of the most chaotic years of the Revolt. In March 1576, the death of Governor-­General Luis de Requesens created a power vacuum that would worsen during the following months, leading up to the infamous Sack of Antwerp on 4 November the same year. Santiago Belmonte suggests opening up the discussion on the Sack of Antwerp by looking at hitherto understudied sources: the letters of the Spanish commanders playing a prominent role in the events. They saw things differently, but they also saw different things. The power vacuum created a growing disunity between the Spanish commanders and the members of the Council of State that had officially received full authority. Political and military affairs became divided for the first time since the outbreak of the Revolt. The case of the almost forgotten previous Sack of Maastricht on 20 October 1576 moreover enables the author to put the events in Antwerp into a broader historical perspective. Cees Reijner’s chapter deals with the early modern Italian historiography on the Revolt, mainly focusing on the reasons Italian authors were interested in the events taking place in the Low Countries. In his contribution to this volume the author centres his attention on the Sack of Antwerp in 1576, one of the central episodes of violence during the first phase of the Revolt in the Low Countries. Though most Italian historians supported Spanish policy,

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several Italians wrote more critically about these events. While it was a way of criticizing Spanish dominance within the Italian peninsula, the Sack of Antwerp could also be used to create a clear-­cut opposition between the behaviour of Spanish and Italian military in the Low Countries. The cruelty of the Spanish soldiers could be contrasted with an image of superior and virtuous Italians fighting in the same war and on the same side. As such, these texts could be used to support an Italian patriotic language that could be found, for example, at the Medici court in Florence. Miguel Martínez is the author of a recent monograph on the writings of Spanish military during the early modern period, conceptualized as a ‘soldiers’ republic of letters’.40 His contribution focuses on a long epic poem written by Cristóbal Rodríguez Alva, who had been active in the military both in Italy and in the Low Countries. He uses this unknown manuscript text, consisting of more than 18,000 verses, to analyse the language of the mutineers, as the author of the poem was an eyewitness and a participant in mutinies in the Low Countries. Rodríguez Alva offers insight into the life of the common soldier and is therefore a rare exception, as most texts from the early modern period reflect the viewpoint of the social elite. It is a different war narrative that shows the realitites of war instead of embellishing it, and where common soldiers rather than high commanders are the heroes. Raymond Fagel has collected narrative fragments on Spanish defectors to the rebel side during the Revolt in the Low Countries. His contribution not only shows the importance of this rather unknown phenomenon, but also addresses the different ways of describing these side-­changers. Especially interesting is the fact that though Spanish chronicler and military man Alonso Vázquez criticizes all defectors, he does find positive words for some of them in his individual biographical descriptions. One of them, a mulatto soldier, decided to change sides after being the victim of racist comments from within his own army unit. The fact that rebel propaganda produced a strong and lasting image of all Spaniards as cruel liars did not prevent the presence of Spaniards within the rebel army. In his contribution, Werner Thomas returns once more to the siege of Ostend and provides a very precise analysis of the siege in successive published sources.41 ‘How a defeat became a victory’ demonstrates how the facts of the siege could be manipulated in printed media in order to change the outcome of the events. Texts were able to convert a defeat into a victory, and in this case it was the translation of a text that changed the meaning of the original narrative. Translations are often taken for granted by historians, but Werner Thomas proves it is worth analysing how the meaning of texts could be changed in the process, and how the translation was presented to the new public.42 This new example can now be placed next to the well-­studied Dutch translations of

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Bartolomé de Las Casas’s Brevíssima relación, where the addition of engravings and descriptions highlighting cruel actions turned the book of the critical Spanish monk into an open attack on all Spaniards.43 Jasper van der Steen analyses the development of episodic war narratives produced in the two different parts of the Low Countries, a loyal Habsburg part in the south, and a rebel state in the north. War narratives in the two parts diverged because of the function war memories had in society. In the Catholic south a consensual Catholic narrative could be constructed, while the religiously divided north preferred a national narrative with the Spaniards as the common enemy. His contribution brings us close to recent research in collective memory during the early modern period, as he participated in Judith Pollmann’s research group on ‘Tales of the Revolt’.44 Van der Steen demonstrates how our modern national canon of historical events that took place in the sixteenth century has been greatly influenced by the memory culture of seventeenth-­century society. Vincenzo Lavenia offers a wide range of narrative sources on warfare produced mostly by Jesuit priests working as chaplains in the army of Flanders. According to the author, ‘it was the Society of Jesus who invented the genre of narratives of war from the chaplain’s point of view’. Besides using catechisms as a narrrative source, as he has done in previous work, the author also delves into another very interesting text genre that had not yet been used to the full. His sources are the enormous number of letters that the Jesuits sent back from all over the world, sometimes even specifically intended for publication. For example, two Jesuits present at the Battle of Nieuwpoort in 1600 stirred the soldiers to fight, while at the same time asking for clemency towards the defeated Calvinists. The reconstruction of this complicated Jesuit vision of early modern warfare seems a promising way of enhancing our knowledge of war narratives from an unusual angle. Raingard Esser and Dániel Moerman study a chronicle produced in the frontier zone between the Low Countries and Germany. Their research is embedded in the modern field of transregional history and the long-­standing tradition of German studies on autobiographical texts of the Revolt.45 In order to deconstruct the different layers within Sweder Schele’s chronicle, however, they specifically make use of the idea of ‘episodic memory’ as defined by Geoffrey Cubitt. As the two parts of Schele’s chronicle have been preserved seperately in archives in both Germany and the Netherlands, the subject of this contribution already demonstates the importance of historical research across borders. Schele wrote the first part of his chronicle while living in the Low Countries and the second part during his time in Germany, which makes him a personal witness and participant of both the Revolt in the Low Countries and the Thirty Years’ War in the Holy Roman Empire.

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In the final contribution, Gregory Hanlon delves into ‘the human behavioural repertory’, connecting it to the history of early modern warfare and thereby revisiting, as the author states, Geoffrey Parker’s concept of the Universal Soldier. When referring to his own area of specialization, warfare in seventeenth-­century Italy, he shows how sociology and anthropology can be used to understand the behaviour of the common soldier46 as ‘the human animal in collective danger’. Hanlon’s contribution is a call to return to the primary sources and see what these texts can teach us about the way soldiers behaved in times of war, and to this end makes use of many recent valuable insights stemming from the social sciences. He hopes that one day researchers will possess a huge database of war narratives that can bring us further in understanding human behaviour surrounding war. Notes

  1 Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (London: Allen Lane, 1977); Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution. Military Innovation and the Rise of the West 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, 1996); Judith Pollmann, Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1520–1635 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Peter Arnade, Beggars, Iconoclasts, and Civic Patriots. The Political Culture of the Dutch Revolt (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).  2 Parker, Dutch Revolt; Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659. The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries’ Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972, 2004); Anton van der Lem, Revolt in the Netherlands. The Eigthy Years War 1568–1648 (London: Reaktion Books, 2018); Liesbeth Geevers, Gevallen vazallen. De integratie van Oranje, Egmont en Horn in de Spaans-Habsburgse monarchie (1559–1567) (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008).  3 Henk van Nierop, Treason in the Northern Quarter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); Henk van Nierop: ‘Alva’s throne. Making sense of the Revolt of the Netherlands’, in Graham Darby (ed.), The Origins and Development of the Dutch Revolt (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), pp.  29–47; Gustaaf Janssens, Brabant in het verweer. Loyale oppositie tegen Spanje’s bewind in de Nederlanden van Alva tot Farnese 1567–1578 (Kortijk and Heule: Standen en Landen, 1989); Hugo de Schepper, ‘Belgium Nostrum’ 1500–1650. Over integratie en desintegratie van het Nederland (Antwerp: De Orde van den Prince, 1987). More recently also: Violet Soen, Vredehandel. Adellijke en Habsburgse verzoeningspogingen tijdens de Nederlandse Opstand 1564–1581 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012).  4 Arnade, Beggars; Pollmann, Catholic Identity; Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez, The Dutch Revolt through Spanish Eyes. Self and Other in Historical and Literary Texts of Golden Age Spain, c.1548–1673 (Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang, 2008); Nina Lamal, ‘Le orecchie si piene de Fiandra. Italian news and histories on the Revolt of the Netherlands’ (PhD thesis, Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, 2014). More recently: Femke Deen, Publiek debat en propaganda in Amsterdam tijdens de Nederlandse Opstand. Amsterdam ‘Moorddam’ 1566–1578 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015); Monica Stensland, Habsburg Communication in the Dutch Revolt (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012); Jasper van der Steen, Memory Wars in the Low Countries 1566–1700 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015).   5 Raffaele Puddu, Il soldato gentiluomo. Autoritratto d’una società guerriera: La Spagna del Cinquecento (Bologna: Il Molino, 1982); Marco Faini and Maria Elena Severini (eds), Books for Captains and Captains in Books. Shaping the Perfect Military Commander in Early Modern Europe (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016); David García Hernán, La cultura de la guerra y el teatro del Siglo de

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INTRODUCTION 15 Oro (Madrid: Silex, 2006); Fernando González de León, ‘Doctors of the military discipline; technical expertise and the paradigm of the Spanish soldier in the Early Modern Period’, Sixteenth Century Journal 27:1 (1996), 61–85; D.J.B. Trim (ed.), The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003).  6 K.W. Swart, ‘The Black Legend during the Eighty Years War’, in J.S. Bromley and E.H.  Kossmann (eds), Britain and the Netherlands V. Some Political Mythologies (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), pp. 36–57; Fernando Martínez Luna, Een ondraaglijk juk. Nederlandse beeldvorming van Spanje en de Spanjaarden ten tijde van de Opstand 1566–1609 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2018); Ricardo García Cárcel, El demonio del sur. La Leyenda Negra de Felipe II (Madrid: Cátedra, 2017); Judith Pollmann, ‘Eine natürliche Feindschaft. Ursprung und Funktion der Schwarzen Legende über Spanien in den Niederlanden, 1560–1581’, in Franz Bosbach (ed.), Feindbilder. Die Darstellung des Gegners in der politischen Publizistik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Cologne and Weimar: Böhlau, 1992), pp. 73–93; Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez, Antonio Sánchez Jiménez and Harm den Boer (eds), España ante sus críticos: las claves de la Leyenda Negra (Madrid and Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana and Vervuert, 2015).  7 An example is Raymond Fagel, Kapitein Julián. De Spaanse held van de Nederlandse Opstand (Hilversum: Verloren, 2011); José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez and Gabriela Vallejo Cervantes, ‘Furia y virtud: la narrativa de masacre en las crónicas de Flandes’, in Antonio Jiménez Estrella et al. (eds), Construyendo historia. Estudios en torno a Juan Luis Castellano (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2013), pp. 667–77; Dennis Francisco Gré Ponce, ‘La moral y la guerra: los cronistas de Flandes: expresión de la cultura política de la Monarquía Hispánica, siglos XVI y XVII’ (PhD thesis, Universidad de Granada, 2015).   8 Leonard V. Smith, The Embattled Self. French Soldiers’ Testimony of the Great War (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007), p. 13.   9 Joel Fineman, ‘The history of the anecdote: fiction and fiction’, in H. Aram Veeser (ed.), The New Historicism (New York and London: Taylor & Francis, 1989), pp. 49–76; Teun van Dijk, ‘Episodes as units of discourse analysis’, in Deborah Tannen (ed.), Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk (Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 1982), pp. 177–95. 10 Monika Fludernik, Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology (London and New York: Routledge, 1996); Monika Fludernik, ‘Letters and chronicles: How narrative are they?’, in Göran Rossholm (ed.), Essays on Fiction and Perspective (Bern and Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 129–53. 11 Ann Rigney, The Rhetoric of Historical Representation. Three Narrative Histories of the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 12 Hayden White, Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), pp. 5–6. 13 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984), I, pp. 157–63. 14 Raymond Fagel, ‘Describir la guerra. Narrativas de la primera década de las guerras de Flandes, 1567–1577’, in Enrique García Hernán and Davide Maffi (eds), Estudios sobre guerra y sociedad en la Monarquía Hispánica. Guerra marítima, estrategia, organización y cultura militar 1500–1700 (Valencia: Albatros Ediciones, 2017), pp. 507–18, 512. 15 Van der Lem, Revolt, has done much to promote this change of terminology, but he prefers to use the term Netherlands. 16 Parker, Army of Flanders, p. 231. 17 P.A.M. Geurts, De Nederlandse Opstand in de pamfletten 1566–1584 (Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1978); Martin van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt 1555–1590 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 18 Emanuel van Meteren, Belgische oft Nederlandsche historie van onsen tilden (Delft: Jacob Cornelisz. Vennecool, 1599); Bernardino de Mendoza, Comentarios de las guerras de los Países Bajos, in Biblioteca de autores españoles XXVIII, Historiadores de sucesos particulares II (Madrid: Real Academia Española, 1948), Bernardino de Mendoza, Comentarios de don Bernardino de Mendoça de lo sucedido en las guerras de los Países Baxos, desde el año de 1567 hasta el de 1577, eds A. Cortijo Ocaña and A. Gómez Moreno (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 2008); Antonio Trillo, Historia

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de la rebelión y guerras de Flandes, ed. M.A. Echevarría Bacigalupe (Vienna and Munich: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik and R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2008). 19 Poppo van Burmania, Enege gedenckwerdege geschiedenissen. Kroniek van de Friese militair Poppo van Burmania uit de Tachtigjarige Oorlog, ed. Wiebe Bergsma (Hilversum: Verloren, 2012); Francisco Verdugo, Voor God en mijn koning. Het verslag van kolonel Francisco Verdugo over zijn jaren als legerleider en gouverneur namens Filips II in Stad en lande van Groningen, Drenthe, Friesland, Overijssel en Lingen (1581–1595), ed. Jan van den Broek (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2009); Barbara Kooij (ed.), Spaanse ooggetuigen over het beleg van Haarlem, 1572–1573 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2018). The most complete overview of source material on the Revolt can be found at: https:// dutchrevolt.leiden.edu/Pages/start.aspx (accessed 14 January 2019). 20 Judith Pollmann, ‘Internationalisering van de Nederlandse Opstand’, BMGN. Low Countries Historical Review 124:4 (2009), 515–35. 21 For example, Lamal, ‘Le orecchie’. 22 Philip Benedict, Guido Marnef, Henk van Nierop and Marc Venard (eds), Reformation, Revolt and Civil War in France and the Netherlands 1555–1585 (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1999). 23 Hugh Dunthorne, Britain and the Dutch Revolt 1560–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 61–103; Parker, Military Revolution. 24 Marjolein ‘t Hart, The Dutch Wars of Independence. Warfare and Commerce in the Netherlands, 1570–1680 (London: Routledge, 2014). 25 Lotte Jensen, De verheerlijking van het verleden. Helden, literatuur en natievorming in de negentiende eeuw (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2008).’ 26 Benigna von Krusenstjern, Selbstzeugnisse der Zeit des Dreissigjährigen Krieges. Beschreibendes Verzeichnis (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997); H. Medick, ‘The Thirty Years’ War as Experience and Memory: Contemporary perceptions of a macro-­historical event’, in L. Tatlock (ed.), Enduring Loss in Early Modern Germany. Cross Disciplinary Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 25–49; A. Rutz (ed.), Krieg und Kriegsführung im Westen des Reiches 1568–1714 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016). 27 Mathilde Bernard, Écrire la peur à l’épôque des guerres de religion. Une étude des historiens et mémorialistes contemporaines des guerres civiles de France, 1562–1598 (Paris: Hermann, 2010). 28 Miguel Martínez, Front Lines. Soldiers’ Writing in the Early Modern Hispanic world (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). 29 Sebastiaan Derks, ‘Reconstrucciones de una Reconquista. Léon van der Essen y el ejército español de los Países Bajos’, in Léon van der Essen, El ejército español en Flandes 1567–1584, ed. Gustaaf Janssens (Cuacos de Yuste: Fundación Academia Europea de Yuste, 2008), pp. 27–44. 30 Judith Pollmann, Memory in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 31 Marco Mondini, ‘Narrated wars. Literary and iconographic stereotypes in historical accounts of armed conflict’, in Marco Mondini and Massimo Rospocher (eds), Narrating War. Early Modern and Contemporary Perspectives (Bologna and Berlin: Il Mulion, and Duncker & Humblot, 2013), pp. 11–28, 11–19. 32 Pollmann, Memory. 33 Judith Pollmann and Erika Kuijpers, ‘Introduction. On the early modernity of modern memory’, in Erika Kuijpers et al. (eds), Memory before Modernity. Practices of Memory in Early Modern Europe (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013), pp. 1–23, 16. 34 Yuval Noah Harari, The Ultimate Experience. Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450–2000 (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2008). See also Yuval Noah Harari, Renaissance Military Memoirs. War, History, and Identity, 1450–1600 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2004). 35 Harari, Ultimate Experience, p. 300. 36 Archives of Daniël van der Meulen and Hester de la Faille, 1550–1648, Erfgoed Leiden en omstreken, inventory 0096. 37 Fagel, Kapitein Julián, p. 78.

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INTRODUCTION 17 38 Raymond Fagel, De Spaanse belegeraar van Leiden. Het eigen verhaal van Francisco de Valdés (Leiden: Primavera Pers, 2017). 39 Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen (eds), The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters. A Critical Survey (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007). 40 Martínez, Front Lines. 41 Werner Thomas, De val van het nieuwe Troje. Het beleg van Oostende 1601–1604 (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2004). 42 Peter Burke and R. Po-­Chia Hsia (eds), Cultural Translation in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 43 Wolfgang Cillessen, ‘Massaker in der niederländischen Erinnerungskultur: Die Bildwerdung der Schwarzen Legende’, in Christine Vogel (ed.), Bilder des Schreckens. Die mediale Inszenierung von Massakern seit dem 16. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus Verlag, 2006), pp. 93–135, 96–8. 44 Erika Kuijpers et al. (eds), Memory before Modernity. 45 S.G Ellis and R.M. Esser (eds), Frontier and Border Regions in Early Modern Europe (Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag, 2013). 46 Gregory Hanlon, Italy 1636: Cemetery of Armies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

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1 ‘Do not reveal that I wrote this’: diplomatic correspondence, news and narratives in the early years of the civil war in the Low Countries M.J. Rodríguez-Salgado ‘Reported in letters from Antwerp that exiles from Flanders have taken the island of Brill in Holland’.1 This laconic résumé could well have been the first information Philip II had of an event that would change the course of the civil war in the Low Countries.2 It was written by a royal secretary on the back of a letter dated 23 April 1572 from the ambassador in Venice, Diego Guzmán de Silva, which had arrived in Madrid on 23 May. The paragraph it referred to was not much more informative: I have not had a letter from the Duke of Alba or anyone else in those provinces, but some private persons wrote on the fourth of this month from Antwerp that the exiled rebels of those provinces who had been based along the coast, had arrived in twenty-­four ships and occupied the island of Brill (Brielle) in Holland, and that it will be difficult to remove them from there.3

Even if it was not the first news Philip II had of the invasion, it could have confirmed earlier reports, and nothing was believed until confirmed from reliable sources. The courier from the Low Countries to Venice normally delivered dispatches weekly but due to the delay Guzmán de Silva had no way of knowing that his assiduous correspondent in the Low Countries, the secretary and financial official Miguel Prado, had also written to him relaying the news on 5 April, adding that the corsairs (as he called them) ‘are counting on receiving aid from France and England, where they are levying troops with great haste’. He was confident they would be quickly dislodged by the forces dispatched to the area by the Duke of Alba.4 Prado continued to send the latest news on the invasion as soon as it arrived in Brussels, and on 14 April also sent Guzmán de Silva a copy of a relación – a detailed narrative of the conflict that confirmed

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the failure of the duke’s counter-­attack. Guzmán de Silva continued to relay the news to the king in his correspondence, while the embassy’s secretariat made copies of Prado’s letters and the Relation, omitting any data that would identify Prado as the author and sender of the information, or Guzmán de Silva as the recipient.5 Why would an ambassador in Venice summarize even unconfirmed reports of events in the Low Countries for the king? And is it not far-­fetched to suggest that Philip II could have learnt the news of the fall of Brill from a dispatch sent from Venice which arrived at the court almost two months afterwards? More to the point, why was the ambassador in Venice making anonymized copies of information he received from a high-­ranking royal official in the Low Countries? This chapter examines the manipulation and dissemination of news and information on the Low Countries by officials of the Monarchy outside Spain, particularly by Diego Guzmán de Silva.6 It demonstrates that the king depended on ambassadors and other royal officials resident outside the Low Countries for news of the war, and that they used news both to inform and to engage in the debate over the best policy to apply in the troubled provinces. ‘For heaven’s sake, let us know something of Flanders!’ Protocol required Philip II to impart important matters to other princes, and in particular his allies. Host governments expected ambassadors to be informed and to provide them with essential information. The value of an ambassador was partly measured by reference to whether he received frequent dispatches and fresh news. When requiring ambassadors to transmit details of his policies, or of significant personal and military events, from all parts of the Monarchy, Philip II would send them information and instructions. For example, in July 1572 the king sent don Juan de Borja information on the continuing conflict in the Low Countries – ‘las alteraçiones de Flandes’ – to transmit to the Portuguese monarchs who were both kinsmen and allies. They were also concerned that the conflict would have a negative impact on his commitment to the war against Islamic states in the Mediterranean.7 At times, especially if the news was good, the king would send additional material for the ambassador to disseminate in the court.8 The monarch was not the sole, or even the main, source of information for his ambassadors on world affairs. Much of it came from fellow officials, including governors, viceroys and other ambassadors based outside the court. On appointment they were all instructed to correspond with each other as well as with the king. Announcing Guzmán de Silva’s transfer to Venice, Philip II ordered his ambassador in France to maintain close contact and exchange

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information with his counterpart in Venice, adding that he had ordered Guzmán de Silva to do the same with him.9 This was standard practice, and if any of them failed to do their duty, a complaint would be made directly to the king. Philip II’s determination to create and maintain a regular flow of information both to the court and around the Monarchy was due in large measure to the instability of the postal networks.10 Variable weather conditions constantly disrupted them, and in the second half of the sixteenth century, wars in the Low Countries and France combined with piratical and corsair activity in the Channel and in the Mediterranean to cause frequent and lengthy disruptions. Even short delays could have deleterious consequences. The suspension of two weekly couriers from the Low Countries to Italy in June 1573 ‘led to terrible news of what is happening there to spread everywhere’.11 During the summer of 1568 and well into 1569 communications from the Low Countries to Spain were severely disrupted. The Channel was infested with pirates making the direct sea route unsafe and the invasions from France and the German lands made it difficult for the governor to get dispatches to Paris or Augsburg. If news from the various fronts made it to Brussels officials could send them by land to Milan and thereafter to Genoa or Venice-­Milan-­ Genoa, and then by sea to Spain, or via Lyons and thence south. Corsairs, both Muslim and French, affected the security of the former, and the suspected involvement of the French king in the invasion made the land route via Lyons unsafe. During this protracted crisis, the ambassador in France, Francés de Alava, became the best, and sometimes the only, source of information for the king on the war in the Low Countries. On 1 August 1568 Philip II’s secretary of state for foreign affairs, Gabriel de Zayas, informed Alava: ‘Your Grace has given us life with the news from Flanders because we have not had letters from there for so long. In these circumstances it is necessary for Your Grace to use extraordinary diligence to secure and send us information in writing.’12 Although Alava responded, in October Zayas pleaded: ‘Let us know something about the duke and Flanders, for heaven’s sake.’13 The first news of the failure of the invasion from France and the defeat of the Prince of Orange’s reinforcements came in one of Alava’s dispatches which arrived in mid-­November.14 It could not be taken as true without confirmation and Zayas begged Alava to supply it and ‘make His Majesty and the whole of this kingdom happy’.15 It arrived at the end of December via a tortuous route that highlights the importance of the circulation of copied correspondence: the Viscount of Orta obtained a copy of a letter dated 3 December from the Duke of Anjou to Blaise de Montluc, and sent it to don Juan de Acuña, who forwarded it to Madrid. Dispatches from both Alba and Alava with details of the defeat of the invasion arrived together days later.16

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Alava’s news continued to reach Madrid before the Duke of Alba’s letters,17 and Zayas wrote in January 1569, ‘if Your Grace really understood how much the king values information of what is happening there and in Flanders at this juncture, I assure you, you would write on the very air’.18 The king expressed gratitude for his efforts.19 By April 1569 they depended on Alava to send fresh news of England too.20 At times even the post between Italy and Spain went through him. But the spread of war in France diminished the ambassador’s capacity to deliver timely information.21 The crisis proved the wisdom of Philip II’s orders that ambassadors and officials abroad should exchange information with each other as well as with the court, and that any one of their dispatches could purvey either the freshest news, or the necessary confirmation. Guzmán de Silva was with the king at the time and clearly learnt the lesson.22 As soon as he was abroad he assiduously gathered and circulated news. In February 1570 while in Genoa, he received a dispatch from Philip II’s ambassador at the imperial court which he was instructed to forward to the king. It contained details of the journey of the future queen. A cover note to Guzmán de Silva included a copy of a single paragraph of the letter to the king. As the sealed dispatch had to wait until it could be sent securely, Guzmán de Silva sent copies of the paragraph in duplicate, by land and sea, arranging for special couriers.23 News of the victory in Lepanto found him in Venice. He immediately sent details to the ambassador in Genoa asking him to forward them at once to the king, unless he had already sent a courier with the news. His letter was copied in Genoa and sent in duplicate to Madrid, where a secretary noted on one: ‘this is the duplicate of the one Your Majesty has seen’.24 During 1572–73 Guzmán de Silva forwarded all the information he could get on the Low Countries to the king from Venice, summarizing Alba’s letters and news from merchants, and material from other sources.25 This was particularly important as the postal networks were again repeatedly disrupted by the fighting in France and the Low Countries. The situation was made worse in 1572 following a dispute between two key postmasters, Leonardo Tassis in Brussels and Serafino Tassis in Augsburg.26 Alba’s decision to take Leonardo Tassis with him on campaign compounded the problems. Despite his multiple contacts and strategic position as governor of Milan, Luis de Requesens endured weeks without news from the Low Countries, notably from May to July 1572.27 This was serious because, as he put it, ‘everything depends on what happens in Flanders’, and he often relied on Guzmán de Silva to provide him with this vital information.28 For his part, Alba needed to know what was happening in the Mediterranean, and complained in September 1572 that he had been without letters from Venice ‘for a thousand days’. In October he promised to have the ordinary posts running smoothly soon.29 But

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first, Tassis had to deal with the backlog that had built up in Brussels in his absence, which included at least a month’s worth of undelivered dispatches from Guzmán de Silva.30 Even when that was done, the post continued to be erratic and with long gaps. More than a month after the Sack of Zutphen (14 November 1572) Requesens too lamented, ‘I have not had letters from Flanders or Germany for a thousand days!’ and urged Guzmán de Silva to send him confirmation of what news he had. It was not until the end of December that the ambassador provided him with confirmation of the fall of Zutphen. It arrived in Milan the same day as other sources but was no less welcome for that.31 In such circumstances, therefore, it was not impossible that Guzmán de Silva’s letter from Venice could have been the first to convey news to Philip II on the fall of Brill, or its confirmation. Obligation and favour in the economy of information exchange Why should the governor of Milan have expected the ambassador in Venice to have more news from the Low ­Countries – t­hat was fresher and more ­trustworthy – ­than he did? True, Venice was one of the most important information hubs of the early modern world due to its strategic position on sea and land and its exceptional commercial and diplomatic networks.32 But Milan was a major hub for post between the states of the Monarchy and its allies, and a major thoroughfare for troops and individuals from many lands. In addition, Requesens had excellent contacts throughout the Monarchy due to his closeness to the king, and his previous office as ambassador in R ­ ome – ­that other key information hub where his brother was now based. What Requesens lacked was the depth of knowledge of the Low Countries and the contacts that Guzmán de Silva had there. In 1564 Philip II entrusted a delicate mission in the Low Countries to Guzmán de Silva that brought him into close contact with the governor, royal officials and local nobles. As ambassador in England from 1564 to1568 he collaborated very closely with the governors and their advisers.33 On taking up his ambassadorial posts in Genoa (1570–71) and Venice (1571–77) he activated some of these contacts to obtain regular news, but he was under no obligation to share this with other royal officials as it did not fall within his official remit in Italy. Other royal officials certainly limited what information they shared. Diego de Zúñiga, then ambassador in France, made a clear distinction between ‘letters that have to be written to serve our master’ and providing ‘a great quantity’ of news ‘of great import’. He did not expect thanks for doing his duty, but required full reciprocity from those with whom he shared detailed, valuable information.34

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The Count of Monteagudo’s correspondence with Guzmán de Silva often falls into the first of those categories. As Philip II’s ambassador at the imperial court, he was obliged to inform Guzmán de Silva of German troop levies and movements, of Orange’s diplomatic negotiations in the region, and matters relating to the Turks. The information he provided was important and Guzmán de Silva habitually summarized it in his letters to the king, and made copies which he sent to select correspondents.35 The copies clearly identified Monteagudo as the author and gave the date of the letter, but omitted details of the recipient, including any mention of earlier exchanges.36 Monteagudo was in a good position to acquire news of the Low Countries but seldom shared them on the grounds that he thought Guzmán de Silva would ‘know this already’. Yet he never failed to report that Alba had written to him, reiterating the duke’s assurances that the war would be over soon. On rare occasions he included brief, factual data, for example: ‘the Duke of Alba [has] entered Mons and they say also Mechelen, and they hope the same will be true of the other places occupied by Orange’; or, ‘the Duke of Alba has written to me that don Fadrique has taken Zutphen, sacked it and killed many of the defenders’.37 By contrast, when Luis de Requesens was appointed governor of Milan and received the usual orders from Philip II to communicate and collaborate with Guzmán de Silva, he stated that this was ‘unnecessary given the great obligation and desire I have to do this’.38 From the outset they shared information from all areas, probably through anonymized copies or digests of news.39 A similar bond linked the embassies in Paris and Venice, although there were periodic complaints from both Diego de Zúñiga and Guzmán de Silva that the other was falling short of his duty to reciprocate fully.40 To investigate how news from the Low Countries was manipulated and used by Guzmán de Silva let us consider two case studies which correspond to these different forms of exchange. Case study in obligation: the Duke of Alba’s correspondence, 1572–73 In several letters to Guzmán de Silva, Alba alluded to his duty to send the ambassador details ‘of everything that happens here’,41 once specifying that he was writing, ‘as I should, because it will be beneficial in all respects that you should understand it’.42 Guzmán de Silva in turn provided him with ample information of what was happening in Venice and elsewhere.43 If they failed to send letters through the ordinary weekly post, they would explain why and apologize. Alba’s letters were written by his secretary. The duke added a final, brief greeting and signed it. They were short, mostly one and half well-­spaced

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sides; at most three. The style was clipped and guarded and devoid of personal touches, with the exception of a letter dated 30 June 1572 when he stated: ‘I don’t know how my head can cope with any other matters’,44 and his frequent, pious hopes that the war would soon end. Cypher was used when describing serious problems or operational details.45 There were no considered opinions or complaints, a staple of the duke’s intimate correspondence. These letters provided Guzmán de Silva with a bare outline of what was happening politically and militarily in the Low Countries. The taking of Brill and other places, and the failed attempt on Rotterdam are packed into a short section of the letter of 22 April 1572, which gives only marginally more detail of the counter-­measures.46 Reporting was sometimes laggard despite the frequency of the post. The unrest in Flushing which was roughly contemporaneous with these events was not mentioned until a month later.47 In July 1573 Alba sent news of the fall of Haarlem to some correspondents but not to Guzmán de Silva, who had the information from a secretary of the Duke of Mantua who summarized for him Alba’s letter to the Duke of Mantua.48 It should have been the other way round, of course, but Guzmán de Silva hastened to report the ­news – ­and the circumstances in which he had received ­it – t­ o the king. Alba’s correspondence avoided emotional language, whether for victories, defeats or massacres, as illustrated in his report of Naarden. Having admitted it had been ‘gallantly defended’, Alba’s letter proceeded thus: ‘eventually they lost, and not a man escaped with his life. Don Fadrique informs me that they cut the throats of over a thousand men, mostly soldiers but some burghers.’ The conflict, he went on, would soon end.49 The longest and more vivid letter describes the struggle for Haarlem up to 9 April 1573.50 Subsequent letters reduced massacres to numbers: ‘the throats of 700 of them [rebels] were slit. Some of their leaders were t­aken … W ­ e have dealt them another good blow near Berghen-­op-­Zoom, taking five of their companies, and cut the throats of 600 of them.’ Sandwiched between this and information on reinforcements, either Alba or his secretary let their guard down: ‘but [the rebels] are so numerous that even with many more such actions we cannot exterminate them, because the very blood of the dead seems to grow and engender even more of them to shatter the public peace.’51 It is the only time in this series that Alba’s letters showed a genuine understanding of the situation. On one occasion, in October 1572, Alba communicated his victory over the Prince of Orange by issuing copies of a paragraph from his letter to don Juan de Zúñiga, Philip II’s ambassador in Rome.52 As governor, he sent letters with details of major events to officials in the region with orders for them to be copied and disseminated to the localities so that celebrations and religious services would be organized. A copy of one such letter sent to the governor

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of the Franche Comté in July 1572, can be found among Guzmán de Silva’s papers, demonstrating that these would be copied and disseminated further afield.53 Mostly, however, Alba’s letters were copied and shared without his permission or prior knowledge because the information was considered so important. In June 1572, for example, Cardinal Granvelle sent Guzmán de Silva a summary of a dispatch from Alba to Luis de Requesens. The courier had leaked details on his arrival in Genoa where someone made a note and sent it to Granvelle in Naples, who passed it on to Guzmán de Silva in Venice, and probably others besides.54 On 2 December of that year, Miguel Prado interrupted his supper in Brussels to summarize a letter for Guzmán de Silva that he had just received from Alba, although he thought that the duke would also write to the ambassador on the matter.55 Irrespective of their tone and brevity, whenever Alba wrote to him, Guzmán de Silva informed others, because the letters contained valuable information, and because it was an indication of the ambassador’s importance. His worth was measured in part by the frequency of dispatches from the court and its leading ministers, as well as the quality and quantity of his information. The ambassador used the information in different ways. Besides summarizing Alba’s letters to the king, Guzmán de Silva had them partially copied by his secretariat. The copies identified the duke as the author and gave the place and date of issue. Old news was excluded, and some words were altered. At times there was a change from direct to reported speech, so that ‘I was informed yesterday that …’ became ‘on 10th they …’. Sections in cypher were occasionally copied in cypher, proving that these copies at least were intended for transmission to royal officials who had access to it.56 By removing also all information that would identify the recipient, often what was left was a single paragraph. Consequently, the letters were sometimes circulated under the heading ‘copy of a paragraph from a letter by the Duke of Alba’.57 Occasionally, Alba provided the ambassador with more details by appending a Relation to his letters. It was the norm for commanders and governments to issue detailed narratives of key victories or defeats in this format. They appear to have been put together on the spot by the secretariat of the commander from eyewitness reports and written materials, which gave them an aura of immediacy and lent excitement to the narrative. They were often hastily written, as in the case of the relación describing the victory over the reinforcements from France in July 1572, which was amended in Alba’s subsequent letters.58 He alluded to the dispatch of another Relation to Guzmán de Silva on 18 September 1572 for example, which may be the Relaçion de lo subçedido en el pais de henao desde los 7 de 7bre hasta los 13 del (1572) in the ambassador’s papers. This included details of the duke’s strategy, of various skirmishes, of the refusal of the royal army to follow orders at one stage and of

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their assault on the enemy which is described as butchery (carnicería). Notable incidents are narrated, and those who distinguished themselves in action are named.59 Another Relation sent by Alba in December 1572 provided a detailed account of events in Holland.60 We do not know who wrote these official accounts as they do not name the author(s), and it is not clear that Alba sent them to all fellow officials as a matter of course. Nor were they the only Relations in circulation. Guzmán de Silva received copies of those circulating in Brussels from his correspondent, Miguel Prado, who also updated them as more information became available.61 Among Guzmán de Silva’s papers are two Relations of 15 and 16 November 1573. The first was mostly devoted to the war around Sluis (L’Écluse); the second to events in Zutphen. Both name some of Philip II’s commanders and describe key episodes but are otherwise different in style. The first is longer, more detailed and includes graphic descriptions, including the taking and killing of prisoners; the second offers a more succinct, factual description of places and skirmishes and gives figures rather than descriptions of those decapitated and hung.62 There was clearly no set format, and terminology to describe these documents remained fluid. It is even possible that detailed letters sent by Alba were disseminated under the guise of short Relations.63 It seems plausible that Relations giving great prominence to Alba and especially his heir, don Fadrique, originated with their secretariats, but other commanders were keen to make their exploits known and wrote their own accounts, which circulated under a variety of labels. In January 1573 the royal secretary, Gabriel de Zayas, sent the ambassador in Portugal, don Juan de Borja, what he referred to as ‘news from Holland’ and which Borja described as a ‘relaçion’. It was either a letter or a narrative by the commander Julián Romero to Zayas, which the secretary forwarded and wished to have returned forthwith.64 It was unusual to send an original; the norm was to send copies. Even the king did this.65 The practice of copying and disseminating correspondence was so widespread there was no way of knowing where information would end up or who would read it, and this conditioned not only what they wrote but who they wrote it to. Case study in reciprocity and manipulation of news: Miguel de Prado’s correspondence In one of several informative letters to Guzmán de Silva on the situation in the Low Countries, Leonardo Tassis wrote: ‘Your grace must not attribute anything to me.’ He claimed this was because others would surely provide the ambassador with greater ­detail – ­an odd excuse for the postmaster general!66

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In fact it arose from his caution and fear of being identified as the author of this information. In September 1572 he temporarily suspended correspondence with the ambassador explaining that he was ­busy – ­and more to the point, did not dare put things in writing.67 This was not an option for Miguel de Prado, who acknowledged an obligation to Guzmán de Silva, who had asked him to send information from the Low Countries. Prado had been an official in the Low Countries government for many years and had married a local woman. He needed the help of the ambassador to receive a grant the king had assigned him in Milan which was being blocked by Alba’s secretary, Ibarra, and Guzmán de Silva needed him to get his salary and expenses from the Low Countries, where one of Alba’s officials habitually delayed or withheld payments.68 During 1572–73 Prado wrote to the ambassador at least once a week, at length and in his own hand. He made this correspondence a priority, even if it meant that he did not have time to write to close friends in Italy. In those instances, he expected the ambassador to pass on news to them on his behalf.69 Some officials and military commanders serving in the Low Countries gave Prado news to pass on to Guzmán de Silva, and this enriched his missives.70 The ambassador responded with frequent, informative letters from Venice.71 Prado reported news as it came in and had a flair for writing. His letters are full of revealing detail and shrewd analysis.72 They contained explanations of policy, military strategy and troop movements along with exciting accounts of the fighting and references to common acquaintances.73 His descriptions of the war are vivid and moving.74 The encamisada and skirmishes against Orange’s army took on vivid hues in a hastily written account in September 1572.75 The ‘numantine defence’ of Goes and its relief by Mondragon’s troops must count among his finest narratives.76 By contrast, the atrocities by royal troops tended to be dealt with briefly. The Sack of Mechelen, which he tried to avert in order to save friends, affected him so deeply he could not bring himself to describe it.77 He gave the date of the sack of Zutphen adding only that they had left neither a dog nor a cat alive ‘because the duke ordered them to do this’.78 He made it clear that don Fadrique de Toledo had refused the belated surrender of Naarden and ‘sacked it and cut [them] down with swords, reducing the whole city to blood and fire’.79 Whenever he could, Prado sent Relations of these events as well. But it is clear that by naming individuals and framing the narratives in a particular fashion, he was influencing how events were understood. Prado’s opposition to the policy of repression and the subsequent war were known. He had tried to influence Alba by arguing and engaging with the duke’s closest advisers, including his confessor, but to no avail. Consequently, at the beginning of 1572 he decided that in order to bring about a change of policy he must make the king understand what was happening. He prepared a detailed memorandum with supporting documentation. Don Alvaro de Sande,

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the castellan of Milan, offered to forward it inside one of his own dispatches to Philip II. In March 1572 Prado informed Guzmán de Silva of all this and asked whether he would consider sending all the information to the king in his cypher, adding that it would be better received also if it came from him. If the ambassador did not want to do this, it would still be helpful if the dossier could go via Venice to Sande.80 He did not have to explain why such tactics were necessary, but it may be as well to do so here. Correspondence from outside the Monarchy to the king and court went through the secretariat headed by Gabriel de Zayas, with the exception of matters relating to Italy which were handled by Antonio Pérez. Zayas was an ardent supporter of the Duke of Alba;81 Pérez a known enemy. But why would Sande and Guzmán de Silva get involved? Sande was a well-­known military commander with good reason to hate Alba, who on one occasion at least had branded him a fool and incompetent, and persuaded Philip II not to appoint him interim governor of Milan.82 His intervention is understandable but it might make it look as if the dossier was part of a coordinated attack on Alba, rather than a cry for help for the Low Countries. If historians are correct in identifying Guzmán de Silva as a member of Ruy Gómez de Silva’s ‘party’ at court, then he too would be known to belong to a faction opposed to Alba. This is not the place to reopen the contentious issue of factions in Philip II’s court, but we should note this at least: first, Guzmán de Silva had risen to prominence under another (now defunct) court patron, Cardinal Tavera, and there is no evidence who put him forward for the embassies in 1564 or 1568/9.83 Second, the question of how best to deal with the unrest in the Low Countries was deeply divisive, often highly emotive and profoundly divided royal officials, cutting across kinship and other alliances. Third, Guzmán de Silva acted with extreme caution, consequently we do not know if he responded to Prado’s request, only that he did take covert measures to circulate criticism of the duke’s policies in the Low Countries. As the situation deteriorated, Prado’s hostility to Alba and don Fadrique grew more intense but he remained convinced that the solution was to inform Philip II fully, so he again asked Guzmán de Silva in May 1572 to help him.84 In fact, as I can demonstrate by collating originals with partial copies, the ambassador was already doing so. He had Prado’s letters with their criticisms and alternative policies copied and disseminated in anonymized format. With all personal details of the author and recipient removed, the private correspondence circulated under innocuous headings. The letter of 14 March 1572 became simply ‘Avisos’ (news);85 that of the 13 June was turned into the ‘copy of what they have written from Brussels’, and similarly those of 4 and 18 August.86 An even briefer ‘from Brussels’ headed the copies of the letters of 26 August and 1 September.87 As Fernando Bouza and Nina Lamal have stressed, this did not

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devalue the information. Anonymous avisi had a reputation for transmitting reliable news due to their origins as sources of information for merchants, and similarly letters from eyewitnesses.88 Research for this project has convinced me that whatever the heading, contemporaries understood that many of these ostensibly anonymous dispatches were taken from trusted, private correspondence, either with or without the knowledge or permission of the author. Prado did not ask for anonymity until 6 June 1572 yet the ambassador had observed this rule from the outset, a wise precaution as Prado’s letters explicitly criticized the policy of repression devised by Philip II and executed by Alba. The secretary’s belated request for anonymity was prompted by his decision to send another dossier to the king describing and attacking Alba’s actions and putting forward alternative policies. His aim was to make Philip II understand that his subjects in the Low Countries had ‘persuaded themselves that it is better to be hacked to death, or be burnt alive, and to eat their own children to satisfy their hunger, rather than live under our yoke’. He sent the documents to Guzmán de Silva and asked him merely to ‘do what is right’ but ‘without revealing that I am the author of this memorandum or anything else I write in future’.89 As he stressed again two months later, Prado was convinced that the case for change would be more effective if it came directly from Guzmán de Silva who was known to be in the king’s favour.90 Whether it was forwarded or not, the lack of progress led to Prado escalating his attack. He wrote a substantial Relation of what had occurred in the Low Countries, appending supporting documentation and recommendations for a resolution which he wanted circulated in Rome. Apologizing for adding to his workload, Prado asked Guzmán de Silva to read and correct these materials and have a copy made of everything before sending them to Rome.91 This suggests that he expected compliance despite the fact that all of them knew how angry it made Catholic sovereigns to have their affairs aired in public in gossip-­ridden Rome. Prado continued to attack Alba and the ambassador to circulate these anonymously.92 The multiple uses of manuscript news The information contained in letters and Relations was also distilled and incorporated into digests of information by the ambassador’s secretariat, along with similarly brief accounts taken from other correspondents, some of whom were identified and others rendered anonymous. Mostly these were done in Castilian but there were some in Italian, and they might be included in a mixture of information from the Low Countries or combined with news from other regions. Judging from some of the corrected drafts, the secretaries

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did not always find such precis straightforward. They were also producing ‘headline news’ – much briefer notes of what was happening, which tended to have news from multiple areas.93 The different formats suggest that the embassy was producing information for different audiences. As Filippo de Vivo demonstrated, during these years there were significant changes in the circulation and commercialization of information in Venice, with the emergence of professional copyists and authors of digests of news. Subscribers paid to receive regular digests at two different ­levels – ­simple headlines or with more detail. ‘Curiosity caused demand for information’, he noted, especially as a result of the Italian wars and French Wars of Religion.94 Other wars should be added to the list, and surely mere curiosity is an insufficient explanation for the demand for more information and faster means of dissemination. Lamal has argued that some printed news and pamphlets served as an important propaganda tool and boosted morale by reporting only victories. Most of the studies on written culture have, as in these two cases, privileged published materials,95 to the detriment of our understanding of the circulation and use of handwritten news. Renate Pieper has convincingly argued that handwritten newsletters increased in number and continued to be the primary means of disseminating news about American territories and treasure fleets well into the seventeenth century, in spite of the availability of printed material.96 Research in noble epistolary collections convinced Fernando Bouza of the enormous value they placed on receiving varied information, and prompted him to encourage further research on these sources both to recreate the complex networks of information exchange as well as the way this affected personal and political relationships.97 The papers of Guzmán de Silva provide similarly fertile source material to address these questions and force us to analyse how and why news was manipulated and disseminated. Every letter Guzmán de Silva received provided material to exchange with favoured correspondents, and information to add to news digests. Was it also transmitted orally in the morning meetings of ambassadors at the Rialto bridge?98 There is still much to research on the anonymizing of information and who received what, and in what form.99 Bouza distinguished between Relations, which he considered narratives; summaries of events, which retained some of its qualities; and the brief news digests or headlines which had lost all semblance of narrative.100 As the sixteenth century ended, however, the chronicler Prudencio de Sandoval felt compelled to urge historians to avoid the use of news digests, arguing that they could not be relied on to be true, and lacked discernible order.101 Clearly, they were already being used as source materials for historical narratives. Another implication of his comment is that a structured, detailed narrative was closer to the truth. But as we have demonstrated with Guzmán de Silva’s documentation, even the brief-

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est headline could be, and often was, a distilled and transmogrified version of longer summaries, letters and even Relations. Research so far has persuaded me that the exchange of anonymized handwritten news reinforced the position and importance of Guzmán de Silva and underpinned his relationship with several royal officials. It is also evident that by circulating information critical of the Duke of Alba and the policy of repression in the Low C ­ ountries – n­ ot just from Prado but also from other correspondents I am ­analysing – ­Guzmán de Silva contributed significantly to overturning these policies and to the removal and disfavour of Alba and don Fadrique de Toledo, proving that information was also an important tool of political dissent. Unlikely as it might first appear, the ambassador in Venice played a significant role in the politics of the Low Countries during these years, not only by indirectly attacking the politics of repression, but also by providing Luis de Requesens with in-­depth information and analysis of the situation which proved invaluable when Requesens was appointed governor of the Low Countries in 1573. Guzmán de Silva’s intervention, as also that of don Frances de Alava from the embassy in Paris during 1568–69,102 contributed to the hostile climate and gradual undermining of the Duke of Alba, thereby helping to alter the balance of power at court as well as the general direction of Philip II’s policy. Notes

1 AGS E. 1331–58, Diego Guzmán de Silva to Philip II, Venice, 23 April 1572: ‘q se entendia por cartas de anuers q los foragidos de flandes hauia/ tomado la ysla de Bril en olandia’. 2 ‘The second revolt of the Netherlands had begun’, Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (London: Allen Lane, 1977), p. 126. 3 AGS E. 1331–58, Guzmán de Silva to Philip II, Venice, 23 April 1572. 4 AGS E. 1504–5, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 5 April 1572: ‘con el fauor q spera / tener de francia e inglaterra q arman a furia’. 5 AGS E. 1330–81, Miguel Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 14 April 1572; E. 1331–181 (copy). 6 I am grateful to Isabel Aguirre for encouraging me to use his papers in the Archivo General de Simancas (AGS). 7 AGS E. 390–4. 8 AGS E. 390–8, Juan de Borja to Philip II, Lisbon, 22 July 1572; E. 390–24 Borja to Gabriel de Zayas, Lisbon, 9 August. 9 Pedro Rodríguez and Justina Rodríguez (eds), Don Francés de Alava y Beamonte. Correspondencia inédita de Felipe II con su embajador en París (1564–1570) (Donostia-­San Sebastián: Instituto Dr. Camino de Historia Donostiarra, 1991), n. 201, pp. 370–2, Philip II to Alava, Madrid, 14 October 1569. 10 Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham (eds), News Networks in Early Modern Europe (Leiden and Boston: Brill online 2016) especially chapter 2: N. Schobesberger et al., ‘European postal networks’, in Raymond and Moxham (eds), News Networks, pp. 19–63. 11 AGS E.1503–70, Luis de Requesens to Guzmán de Silva, Milan, 10 June 1572. 12 Rodríguez and Rodríguez, Alava, n. 109, Zayas to Alava, Madrid, 1 August 1568, p. 254: ‘La vida nos ha dado V.S. con las nuevas de Flandes por aver tantos días que no viene carta de allá,

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y assí conviene que V.S. en estas tales sazones use de diligencia extraordinaria para saber las cosas y scrivirlas.’ 13 Rodríguez and Rodríguez, Alava, n. 128, p. 267, Zayas to Alava, Madrid, 15 October 1568, ‘Sepamos del duque y de Flandes, por amor de Dios!’ 14 Rodríguez and Rodríguez, Alava, n. 136, p.  276, Zayas to Alava, Madrid, 15 November 1568. 15 Rodríguez and Rodríguez, Alava, n. 138, p.  277, Zayas to Alava, Madrid, 18 November 1568: ‘no viene confirmación ni carta de ­Flandes … ­no dubdo que V.S. ha de ser el de la primera buena nueva y que ha de alegrar a su Magestad y a todo este Reyno’. 16 Rodríguez and Rodríguez, Alava, n. 143, pp. 281–4, Philip II to Alava, Madrid, 24 December 1568. 17 Rodríguez and Rodríguez, Alava, n. 151, pp.  292–4, Zayas to Alava, Madrid, 13 January 1569, p. 292. 18 Rodríguez and Rodríguez, Alava, n. 149, p. 291, Zayas to Alava, Madrid, 12 January 1569: ‘si V.S. entendiesse la cuenta que el Rey tiene con saber lo de ay y de Flandes en esta sazón, yo le digo que escriviría por el ayre’. 19 Rodríguez and Rodríguez, Alava, n. 140, p. 279, Philip II to Alava, Aranjuez, 2 December 1568. 20 Rodríguez and Rodríguez, Alava, n. 169, p. 325, Zayas to Alava, Madrid, 15 April 1569. 21 Rodríguez and Rodríguez, Alava, n. 181, pp. 341–2, Philip II to Alava, Párraces, 25 June 1569. May letters arrived in late August, ibid., n. 199, pp. 367–8, Zayas to Alava, Madrid, 3 September 1569. 22 Rodríguez and Rodríguez, Alava, n. 140, p. 279, Philip II to Alava, Aranjuez, 2 December 1568. 23 AGS E. 1339–22, Guzmán de Silva to Philip II, Genoa, 27 February 1570. 24 AGS E. 1401–48, Guzmán de Silva to Sancho de Padilla, Genoa, 19 October 1571, ‘Es dupp. do de lo que V. Md. ha visto’. 25 AGS E. 1332–88, Guzmán de Silva to Philip II, Venice, 1 August 1572. 26 Couriers were being held up in Augsburg, AGS E. 1503–76, Requesens to Guzmán de Silva, Casalmayor, 15 October 1572. 27 From late May Requesens had no news for several weeks and no confirmation of key events until mid-­July, AGS E. 1504–52. 28 AGS E. 1504–54, Requesens to Guzmán de Silva, Milan, 16 June 1572: ‘todo depende de los subcessos de Flandes’. 29 AGS E. 1330–25, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, near Villaborde, 30 September 1572: ‘mill dias ha que no me hallo con carta de V.m.’; on 18 October (E.1330–26) he complained that he had received no letters for three weeks. 30 AGS E. 1504–29, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 21 October.1572. 31 AGS E. 1504–58, Requesens to Guzmán de Silva, Milan, 13 November 1572; E. 1503–82 (17 December) E. 1503–84 (24 December). 32 Filippo de Vivo, Information and Communication in Venice. Rethinking Early-modern Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 33 Manuel Fernández Álvarez, Tres embajadores de Felipe II en Inglaterra (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1951), part III. 34 AGS E. 1504–26, Diego de Zúñiga to Guzmán de Silva, Paris, October 1572: ‘A quien embia tantas nueuas y tan buenas a v.s. justo sera que se le p­ ague … q­ uando las cartas son forzosas en cosas que tocan a nro/ dueño, ni grado ni gracias/’. 35 AGS E. 1503–93, Count of Monteagudo to Guzmán de Silva, 20 August 1572 who sent it to the king 5 September; E. 1331–266 deciphered copy. 36 AGS E. 1332–223, Lo q escriue el conde de Monteagudo a 5 de Mayo 1573. 37 AGS E. 1503–99, Monteagudo to Guzmán de Silva, Vienna, 31 December 1572: ‘El señor duque de Alua me escriue que esperaua que muy presto se acabaria aquello.’ AGS E. 503–94, Possonia 15 October 1572: ‘ya v.s.a sabra como el duque de alua estaua dentro de Mons

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lo mesmo dizen de Malinas y seesperaua lo mesmo de las demas plaças’. AGS E. 1503–97, Viena, 17 December: ‘el duq dalba me a escrito como don fadriq sea b­ ia – s­ c – apoderado zutphen auiendo la saq/ado y muerto muchos de los q la ­defendian … y­ a creo sabra esto v.s.a’. 38 AGS E. 1504–45, Requesens to Guzmán de Silva, Rome, 19 January 1572, ‘tengo tanta oblig.on y voluntad para cumplillo’. 39 AGS E. 2504–53, Requesens to Guzmán de Silva, Milan, 25 June 1572; E. 1504–54, 16 July. 40 AGS E. 1504–26, Diego de Zúñiga to Guzmán de Silva, Paris, 8 October 1572. 41 AGS E. 1330–21, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 27 July 1572. 42 AGS E. 1330–14, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 22 April 1572: ‘solo me ha pareçido auisar a v.m., como es razon, de todo lo q por aca occurre muy particularmente, que para qualquier respecto es bien que v.m. lo tenga entendido’. 43 AGS E. 1330–160, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Nijmegen, 27 May 1573. 44 AGS E. 1330–18, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, 30 June 1572, ‘çierto no se como me basta la cabeça para acordarme de otra cosa’. 45 AGS E. 1330–23, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 26 August 1572, decyphered in E. 1331–190. 46 AGS E. 1330–14, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 22 April 1572. 47 AGS E. 1330–15, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 5 May 1572; copy in E.1331–183. 48 AGS E. 1332–75, Guzmán de Silva to Philip II, Venice, 31 July 1573. 49 AGS E. 1330–28, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Nijmegen, 9 November (sic., December) 1572: ‘defendieronse gallardamente pero al cauo vinieron a perdersse sin escaparse hombre dellos a vida, scriueme don fadrique se degollaron passados de mill hombres, entre soldados y alg.os Burgesses’. 50 AGS E. 1330–157, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Nijmegen, 9 April 1573. 51 AGS E. 1330–160, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Nijmegen, 27 May 1573: ‘degollaronseles 700, cojieronse algunos ­prinçipales … ç­ erca de Berghes op zoom se les a dado otra buena mano, tomaronseles çinco banderas degollaronseles 600, pero son tantos q aun en muchas vezes no pueden acabarse por q de la misma sangre de los muertos p/ce q nasçe y se leuanta mayor num.ro dellos para boluer a perturbar la Paz publica/yo hago leuantar vn Regimi.o de Alemanes’. Other examples of atrocities in E. 1330–161 (1 June) and E. 1330–162 (27 June). 52 AGS E. 1330–26, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Maastricht, 18 October 1572: ‘v.m. vera por vn capitulo de carta que scriuo al señor don Joan de çuniga para que de quenta a su sd.’ 53 AGS E. 1503–218, Copia de carta de Duq/ de alua al gou.or de borgoña. 54 AGS E. 1330–79, cardinal Granvelle to Guzmán de Silva, Naples, 26 June 1572. 55 AGS E. 1504–34, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 2 December 1572. 56 AGS E. 1330–22, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, 11 August 1572, copy without reference to the ambassador or old news, E. 1331–189. 57 AGS E. 1330–18 became ‘copia de un capitulo’ as can be seen in E. 1331–187. 58 AGS E. 1330–21, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 27 July 1572, ‘v.m. vera por la rrelación que sera conesta’. He had sent news to Rome with some provision for it also to be passed on to Venice, AGS E. 1503–221, 30 July 1572. 59 AGS E. 1330–27, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, 18 September 1572; Relaçion in E. 1503–224. 60 AGS E. 1330–29, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Nijmegen, 22 December 1572, ‘vm. vera por la rrelación q va con esta’. 61 AGS E. 1504–15, 1504–16 (letter) and 1504–17 (relación), Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 22 July 1572 ; Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 28 July 1572, letter E. 1504–18; relación 1504–19. 62 AGS E. 1330–165, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 15 November 1573; E. 1503–197, Relaçion de lo subçedido en la entrada de Zuphain en 16 de Noui.e. 63 Compare AGS E. 1330–161 and 1330–162, Alba to Guzmán de Silva, Nijmegen, 1 June 1573 and 27 June.

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64 AGS E. 391–133, Juan de Borja to Gabriel de Zayas, Lisbon, 22 January 1573. 65 AGS E. 1390–8, Borja to Philip II, Lisbon, 22 July 1572; E. 390–24, Borja to Zayas, Lisbon, 9 August 1572 acknowledging the ‘relación’ sent on 5 August 1572. 66 AGS E. 1507–17, Leonardo de Tassis to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 15 March 1572. 67 AGS E. 1507–45, Tassis to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 21 September 1572. 68 AGS E. 1504–24, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 1 September 1572: ‘no me ha paresçido q/ cumpliera con lo q/ soy obligado, y me tiene mandado, si dexara de Embiar la Relaçion q sera con esta/’. A few details on Prado in José Eloy Hortal Muñoz, Los asuntos de Flandes (Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing GmbH & Co., 2011), pp. 119–20. 69 AGS E. 1504–14(2), Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 14 July 1572; once it was the other way round, E. 1504–20 (4 August 1572). 70 Examples in AGS E. 1504–20; E. 1504–22. 71 AGS E. 1504–1, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 10 March 1572. 72 For example, E. 1504–14(2), Brussels, 14 July 1572, five pages of dense narrative as events unfolded. 73 AGS E. 1504–24, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 1 September 1572 became ‘De Brusselas primero de sett.e 1572’, in E. 1503–182. 74 Including the letters from Brussels in June 1572, AGS E. 1504–9 (2nd); E. 1504–10 (9th); E. 1504–11 (24th); E. 1504–20 (4 August 1572). 75 AGS E. 1504–25, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, 16 September 1572; another letter is probably the origin of ‘De Bruselas a 21. de setiembre 1572’ in E. 1503–183. 76 AGS E. 1504–30 Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 27 October 1572; another succinct account, 17 November, E. 1504–31. 77 AGS E. 1504–27, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 12 (sic. 11) October 1572. 78 AGS E. 1504–32, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 24 November 1572: ‘sin dexar como dizen a vida gato ny perro, por auerles sido assi ordenado por el duq’. 79 AGS E. 1504–35, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 8 December 1572: ‘passados a filo despada, saqueados, y puesta la villa a sangre y fuego’. 80 AGS E. 1504–6, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, 28 March 1572. 81 His ardent defence of Alba in the correspondence with Alava, supra note 9. 82 M.J. Rodríguez-­Salgado, ‘Il Capo dei Capi: the Duke of Alba in Italy’, in Maurits Ebben, Margriet Lacy-­Bruijn and Rolfo van Hövell tot Westerflier (eds), Alba. General and servant to the crown (Rotterdam: Karwansaray Publishers, 2013), pp.  226–55, this at p.  239. Guzmán de Silva reported favourably on Sande, AGS E. 1398–265, to Philip II, 27 December 1569. 83 Luis de Salazar y Castro, Historia genealogica de la Casa de Silva, 2 vols (Madrid, 1685), II, pp. 205–8; Fernández Álvarez, Tres embajadores de Felipe II, pp. 137–212. Michael J. Levin, Agents of Empire. Spanish Ambassadors in Sixteenth-century Italy (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005), argues (pp. 35–8, 160–5) that he did not want the Low Countries to divert resources from the Mediterranean. 84 AGS E. 1504–7, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 15 May 1572; E. 1504–8, 24 May. 85 AGS E. 1330–81, letter from Brussels, 14 March 1572; copy in E. 1331–181. 86 AGS E. 1504–12 Prado to Guzmán de Silva, 30 June 1572; anonymised in E. 1331–180. AGS E. 1504–20, Brussels, 4 August; E. 1504–22, 11 August; E. 1504–21, 18 August which turned into E. 1331–188, ‘Copia de lo que se scriue de Brusselas a los 18 de Agosto’. 87 Letter E. 1504–23 turned into ‘de Brusselas a 26 de Agosto 1572’ in E. 1503–181; Letter E. 1504–24 became E. 1503–182 ‘De Brusselas primero de sett.e 1572’. 88 Email exchange with Bouza on the subject, February 2019. Nina Lamal, ‘Promoting the Catholic cause on the Italian peninsula. Printed Avvisi on the Dutch Revolt and the French Wars of Religion, 1562–1600’, in Raymond and Moxham (eds), News Networks, pp. 675–94, especially pp. 683–4. 89 AGS E. 1504–13 and 1504–14(1), Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 6 June 1572: ‘persuadidose q es mejor morir hechos pedaços, o quemados viuos, y comer sus hijos de hambre q

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estar debaxo de nro/ yugo’; ‘la memoria q.e sera conesta q seruira pa/ si, sin hazerme auctor della, ny de lo demas q.e scriuo de nueuo’. 90 AGS E. 1504–20, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 4 August 1572. 91 AGS E. 1504–22, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 11 August 1572. 92 AGS E. 1504–37, Prado to Guzmán de Silva, Brussels, 29 December 1572 illustrates his growing despair. 93 AGS E. 1331–184 bullet points of letters from Alba and Monteagudo; E. 1503–171 summaries of letters in Italian and Spanish; AGS E. 1503–203 draft summaries with corrections. 94 Vivo, Information and Communication in Venice, p. 81. 95 For the current position and references: Fernando Bouza, Del Escribano a la Biblioteca. La civilización escrita europea en la alta edad moderna (siglos XV–XVII) (Madrid: Ediciones Akal, 2018). Lamal, ‘Promoting the Catholic cause’, pp. 684–93. 96 Renate Pieper, ‘News from the New World: Spain’s monopoly in the European network of handwritten newsletters during the sixteenth century’, in Raymond and Moxham (eds), News Networks, pp. 495–511. 97 Fernando Bouza, Corre manuscrito. Una historia cultural del Siglo de Oro (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2001), especially chapter IV. 98 Vivo, Information and Communication in Venice, mentions these weekly gatherings, pp. 81–2. 99 Fernando Bouza touched on some of these issues in relation to printed materials in his recent ‘El pueblo desea las noticias. Relaciónes de sucesos y gacetas entre propaganda y esfera pública en la España de los Austrias’, in Cuatro siglos de noticias en cien años (Madrid: Hemeroteca Municipal, 2018), pp. 113–43. 100 Bouza, Corre manuscrito, p. 149. 101 Prudencio de Sandoval, Segunda parte de la vida y hechos del emperador Carlos V, cit. by Bouza, El pueblo desea las noticias, p. 118. 102 The correspondence published in Rodríguez and Rodríguez, Alava, contains several references to Alava’s attacks and examples of Zaya’s attempts to defend Alba.

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2 The fabrication of Francisco de Valdés: episodic narratives in Spanish and Dutch chronicles on the siege of Leiden (1573–74) Leonor Álvarez Francés

The legend and the man The Spanish commander of the royal troops, Francisco de Valdés, besieged, but never attacked Leiden. The reason for this, so the popular story goes, is that his fiancée Magdalena Moons begged him to spare the town. She was from The Hague but had relatives trapped in Leiden, and threatened not to marry him if he dared attack. Moons’s gesture created the necessary delay for the town to be liberated, and gained her the role of heroine of the Netherlands in theatre plays, paintings and the collective memory of the Revolt. Since 2018, Leiden University has hosted a Chair Magdalena Moons devoted to the study of urban culture with special attention to the role of gender. Moons’s story is evidently focused on extolling her, but it simultaneously gave Valdés a role that was far from ideal for a commander, prioritizing his romantic whims over his military duties. As a consequence, he is not perceived as a threat, which might in turn explain why a street in Leiden carries his name. However, the emergence of Moons the heroine was a manufactured process. The first to place a­ – ­still ­unnamed – ­woman persuading Valdés not to attack Leiden was the Italian chronicler Famiano Strada in his De Bello Belgico decades duae (1632). The first version of the story in Dutch appeared in the second printing of Jan Jansz Orlers’s urban history Beschrijvinge der stad Leyden (1641). In his theatre play Belegering ende het ontset der stadt Leyden (1645), Reinier Bontius has Valdés’s ­lover – ­here called ­Amalia – ­spend the night at the commander’s tent. This play, with no mention of an engagement between them, became hugely popular in the second half of the seventeenth century. This version impugns her virtue, as she had been categorized as a ‘Spanish whore’.1 Although she had not yet been (accurately) named in chronicles or

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1  Simon Opzoomer, Magdalena Moons begs her fiancé Francisco de Valdés to postpone the storming of Leiden another night, 1840–50 in plays, her identity was eventually revealed. Magdalena’s family accordingly launched a campaign to present her as an honest woman and a heroine.2 Recent historiography has refuted the myth of Moons convincing Valdés not to attack and thereby save Leiden. Stories of hunger as the primary cause of the thousands of casualties within the town walls have also been proven to be myths designed to present the locals as united.3 In parallel, Raymond Fagel

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has analysed Spanish chronicles and letters in search of accounts of Valdés’s performance at the siege in sources that were previously ignored. Research has therefore so far focused on one side of the conflict in their respective languages, as if mirroring the siege itself, when those inside and outside the walls were, above all, concerned with their own circumstances. Yet Dutch chroniclers had a preconceived opinion about Valdés before the campaign to clear Moons’s name. As a matter of fact, diverging portrayals of Valdés emerge from the many chronicles that focused on the siege of Leiden. How did sources prior to the campaign then describe Valdés’s conduct of war during the siege? And did Moons play a part in it? How can we explain why Dutch chroniclers, but also the Spanish ones, so strongly disagreed on Valdés? By comparing local and general chronicles in Dutch, with general chronicles in Spanish, I account for the variety of portrayals of Valdés circulating during and after the siege. Before turning to the presence of Valdés in narrative sources, it is useful to summarize the little we know of him through archival sources. Speculation on the place and year of his birth point to Gijón, Spain, in 1511 or 1512, though he does not figure in a recent dissertation on the Valdés family in early modern Gijón.4 Francisco de Valdés was no n­ obleman – ­that much is clear. He is referred to as ‘smart, but very poor’ in a letter from the ambassador in Lisbon to the king.5 The same source addresses his recent marriage to Magdalena Moons, which is proven by archival evidence.6 Other biographical details that have been traced in contemporary correspondence include his request to travel to Spain for his daughter’s marriage, or how his right arm was injured in the siege of Mons in Hainaut. We know of his long military career, mainly thanks to a letter to the king he himself wrote in 1575. He had by then been serving him for thirty-­eight years, first in Italy and, from 1567, in the Low Countries. His superior at the Battle of Dalheim in 1568, Sancho de Londoño, praised his performance as a sergeant major and a captain. Valdés later wrote a treatise on the function of a sergeant major, Diálogo militar (1578), which was eventually printed together with Londoño’s Discurso and translated into English and Italian. By the time he was given leadership of the troops recently arrived from Italy in 1573, he was a seasoned military man. Shortly after, the first siege of Leiden began. Between October 1573 and March 1574, the town was surrounded by loyalist troops. Since Haarlem had received supplies by water for months while being besieged between 1572 and 1573, the strategy at the siege of Leiden was based on blocking waterways. It has been suggested that it should be called an encirclement instead of a siege, for there were no cannons, mines or trenches. The Leiden inhabitants had sufficient provisions but not enough troops for a direct attack, while the loyalists had no artillery.7

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As a result, it was a quiet endeavour, and Valdés expected victory if the waters in the moats were to freeze. But the winter was mild, and when Valdés was asked to stop the invading rebel troops of Louis of Nassau (1538–74), the blockade of Leiden was lifted. This attempt at starving Leiden is either briefly discussed or altogether ignored by chroniclers, which means there is not enough material for a comparative study. The most important event that took place during this first siege of Leiden was the replacement of the Duke of Alba by Luis de Requesens y Zúñiga (1528–76). Requesens, grand commander of the prestigious military Order of Santiago, had stood out during the Battle of Lepanto (1571), where the Holy League crushed the fleet of the Ottoman Empire. Most importantly for our purposes, he received orders from the king to proceed gently in the Low Countries. Although Alba had advised the monarch to burn to the ground every territory that could not be conquered, Philip II was unwilling to apply such drastic measures.8 Valdés arrived late at the Battle of Mookerhei, where Sancho Dávila (1523–83) defeated the rebel troops. On his way back to Leiden, Valdés was denied access to Utrecht by the Count of La Roche, who had replaced the imprisoned Count of Boussu as stadtholder of Holland. This is the first time Valdés and La Roche clashed.9 The second siege of Leiden lasted from May to October 1574 and is nowadays one of the most remembered episodes of the Revolt.10 Again, the strategy was a supply blockade, for Valdés had no means of attacking Leiden.11 During the event, the locals contemplated the possibility of reaching a surrender agreement, and communicated about this with Valdés and the Count of La Roche. Their negotiations were, however, unfruitful, perhaps due to the tension between Valdés and La Roche. Besides correspondence with Valdés, there was little contact between those inside Leiden and the besiegers. Only once was there a severe attack, conceived by the locals at the schanse of Boshuizen on 30 July. But the coup de grâce came only in October, after the sea-­beggars opened the dikes and forced the loyalist troops to abandon their posts. Local portrayals of Valdés On the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the relief of the town, historian Robert Fruin shared the results of a search for original documents on the siege of Leiden.12 The collection contains three eyewitness accounts produced during or shortly after the events. Two were printed in Delft: Een waerachtig verhael, an anonymous narration of the skirmish at Boshuizen on 29 July 1574 printed during the siege, and Jan Fruytiers’s Corte beschrijvinghe, which covers the whole siege and was published for the first time anonymously in 1574 after

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the siege.13 The also anonymous Dag-Verhael is a manuscript journal covering the five months Leiden was besieged. Fruin suggested that the version he edited was a copy of the original, which complicates the dating of the text.14 Based on the highly episodic style of the account and important lacunae discussed here, however, it is safe to state that it was written during the siege. It is interesting to observe that at first all three local accounts were anonymous. Fruytiers claimed his work only three years later. Perhaps the change of governorship made them cautious. If Requesens’s policy was beneficial to the loyalists, the end of the rebel cause could be near, making authorship of these accounts inconvenient. Een waerachtig verhael emphasizes the merit of the local population. Despite lacking a proper garrison during the second siege, they launched an attack on the outside troops that posed a danger to anybody daring to peek over the walls.15 The author takes the time to mention by name the men leading the different militias, like Gerrit van der Laen, made captain of ‘sixteen brave men from the town’s shooting company, mostly musketeers’.16 Perhaps to prevent the tough odds from causing cold feet, prizes are offered to the first four to arrive at the schanse, and for Spanish heads.17 Once there, they attacked ‘the enemies’, who were ‘stabbed, burnt, massacred with stones or killed in other ways. Some were covered in soil from the schanse, and enough were buried alive, for [the attackers] did not want to take prisoners, despite them pitifully shouting ‘mercy, mercy”’.18 One exception was made, and a severely injured Spaniard was brought into Leiden carrying loot and Spanish heads and ears. The locals aimed not only to clear the schanse, as the author later confesses. The attack was meant ‘only to give the arrogant Spaniards a taste of their own medicine, to have them leave the holes, where they seemed so strong and invincible’.19 Apparently, they called the Leidenaren ‘nothing but fullers and weavers’,20 and the author rejoices that, not having a garrison, the inhabitants turned into soldiers. This account, characterized at first by a highly episodic style, gradually attaches deeper meaning to the anecdotes being told. They might be mere civilians, but they would ‘rather die bravely fighting for freedom and for God’s honour, than live in slavery under the unbearable Spanish yoke’.21 The Leidenaren are standing up for themselves. There is a clear tone of pride and revenge that explains why an event that lasted two hours is described in such detail. Valdés is absent from the story. On the loyalist side, only a certain Captain Carion is mentioned. Perhaps Valdés was not perceived as the embodiment of the Spanish yoke, or perhaps the author simply did not know that Valdés was leading the royal army. Being a man of letters, Jan Fruytiers was much better informed.22 On the title page we already read who is besieging Leiden: ‘Valdés under the great Commander Luis de Requesens’.23 He had read Een waerachtig verhael, too.

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All the information in Fruytiers’s account of the skirmish at Boshuizen can be found in Een waerachtig verhael in the same order, and some fragments are copied verbatim. But Fruytiers cut out precisely those passages that made the attack sound like an act of personal revenge by Leidenaren who wished to teach the proud Spaniards a lesson, thereby making the locals appear much more virtuous. The chronicler summarizes the inhabitants’ outrage and motivation as follows: ‘they wanted to show, that although they had no soldiers inside, necessity and experience make soldiers’.24 He did not picture an ideal situation in Leiden, however. Some wavering Leidenaren brought a dead man before a staunch burgomaster, blaming him for the dire circumstances and demanding he remedy them.25 This is the first reference to the myth of burgomaster Pieter Adriaansz. van der Werff, who upon being confronted with a corpse offered his own arm as food for the starving. In Fruytiers’s first edition, the burgomaster carries no name. It is only in the reprint from 1577 that he is identified as Van der Werff.26 Fruytiers only incidentally refers to division within Leiden, however, and when he does, he tends to justify it. In his own words, in Leiden there were ‘wavering and corrupt hearts … (that were also affected by hunger)’.27 In the end, we witness the town heroically rejecting Valdés’s offer for a surrender. That Fruytiers spared the loyalists when describing the events at Boshuizen does not mean he did not scorn them. In fact, this passage is rather the exception to the rule. It could be that he disliked how the negative fragments on the enemy in Een waerachtig verhael implicitly portrayed the locals as revengeful and vain. Based on qualifications of the loyalists, the account is divided into two clear parts. The first page of the chronicle already contains negative descriptions of the enemy. Fruytiers introduces Requesens as ‘head of the Papists, … who wants to bring his cruelty to North-­Holland … ­where the first attack [Mookerhei] was successful with two thousand dead (which is little to him, since deaths mean so little for the mentioned Papists, as they do for the Turks)’.28 In the first part of the chronological account, Fruytiers refers to the loyalists as ‘the enemy’, and Valdés is merely a background figure.29 Suddenly everything changes. The second and much more extensive part of the account begins when Valdés offers mercy to the Leidenaren, replacing Requesens as the main enemy, while the loyalist troops are now identified as ‘Spaniards’.30 In this second part, Fruytiers chose a much more elaborate narrative based on a comparison of the siege of Leiden to those of Jerusalem, Samaria and Bethulia in the Bible. He is convinced that the same God who miraculously freed those cities from the Assyrians, did as much for Leiden.31 Most importantly, as Valdés repeatedly approaches the town offering a pardon, he is portrayed as the rabshakeh,32 the commander-­in-­ chief of the Assyrian king Sennacherib (740–681 bc) who exhorted Hezekiah, king of Judah, not to be obstinate and to surrender.33 The ‘pious inhabitants’

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of Leiden were firm in rejecting ‘the Spanish rabshakeh’ because they did not trust his ‘beautiful promises’: he wanted to ‘overpower the town so horribly […] and spare nobody, young or old, woman or man, not even the baby in the cradle’.34 Upon his insistence, they gave him a ‘Roman and Maccabean answer worth eternally remembering’. They would not stop defending the Freedom of the Fatherland, because they preferred ‘to die fighting with the Maccabees […] than to suffer his bloodthirst on their bodies and conscience’.35 The simile between Valdés and the rabshakeh is powerful on different levels, certainly for the informed reader. First of all, in the Bible, and until the nineteenth century, the Assyrians were perceived as bloodthirsty oppressors.36 Second, his tone and rhetoric show that the rabshakeh looks down on Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem. He repeatedly calls Sennacherib ‘king’ but refers to Hezekiah only by name, and mocks his decision to rebel against the Assyrian king trusting in the grace of Yahveh, who he claims to be on his side.37 He also wants to address the inhabitants of Jerusalem, ‘doomed […] to eat their own dung and to drink their own urine’.38 The king’s emissary thus speaks with extreme arrogance. Third, he appeals to the inhabitants not to listen to Hezekiah because he cannot preserve them, but the people of Jerusalem stay loyal and will not talk to him.39 Last but not least, the angel of Yahveh struck dead 185,000 Assyrian military, keeping Jerusalem safe from Sennacherib.40 Of course, the simile as a whole makes the course of events in Leiden seem natural and God-­given, and presents the Leidenaren as the chosen people. The bloodthirsty and arrogant Spaniards/Assyrians point out that Orange/ Hezekiah cannot save them, and call on the people of Leiden/Jerusalem to surrender. The latter are, however, united in trusting that God/Yahveh will keep the enemy away, which He does. Besides being an evil of biblical proportions, the loyalists are divided. This is how Fruytiers manages to include the correspondence between loyalists and the town in his account while continuing to portray a ­virtuous – ­and for the most part ­united – ­Leiden population. According to Fruytiers, the four men fighting to force Leiden to surrender did so in order to enhance their reputation: two of them being Valdés and La Roche.41 The loyalist plan to make the locals surrender fails, and Valdés has to retreat from his lodgings in Leiderdorp. There he left a map of Leiden, annotated in Latin: ‘Farewell, town; farewell fortresses; left behind due to the force of water, and not to the enemy’s strength.’42 Perhaps he was adding some fantasy to a letter Valdés in fact wrote to Requesens, where he proudly claims: ‘if the heavens are against me, this flood, as this can be so called, will defeat me, but not the enemy’.43 The author of the manuscript Dag-verhael opens his account with the arrival of ‘the army of the Duke of Alba’.44 He appears to have no informa-

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tion on the commander-­in-­chief and more generally on the state of affairs beyond the town walls throughout the whole account. Fruin already observed that he seems to have been a well-­to-­do burgher, but not a member of the government.45 Like many other chronicles dealing with the day-­to-­day of a besieged town, it contains minute compilations of everyday occurrences, for instance when the bell of the Hooglandse Church breaks because it was struck as an alarm signal too often.46 The author’s fixation on these matters, and the lack of accurate information on the outside circumstances, points to the Dag-verhael being written during the siege. Only through correspondence or when a burgher comes in contact with those on the outside, will the author relate external events. That was the case of baker Jan Heindricksz., whose son had been made prisoner. After long negotiations, the parties agreed on a reasonable ransom, and Frans, uncle of the prisoner, travelled to the meeting point. There he was taken to meet Valdés in Leiderdorp, who interrogated him over a glass of wine. The author writes that people said the whole negotiation was meant to find out more about the state of affairs in Leiden.47 Quite a devious strategy, which is, however, at no point criticized in the Dag-verhael. Nor is the correspondence with Valdés and La Roche presented as a scheming campaign against the virtuous Leidenaren. The author regarded it as an outright attempt to reach an agreement. He does agree with Fruytiers that Leidenaren were hesitant to trust Valdés, but has no further comment on how legitimate their fear was. The situation does, however, become highly confusing for the Leiden magistrates, as it is unclear with whom they should be discussing a possible surrender. Or, as the author puts it: ‘who was regarded as the commander’.48 No wonder, since Valdés and La Roche themselves ‘disagreed on who had the authority to communicate with the town’.49 Once they resolved to negotiate with La Roche, the Leidenaren informed Valdés of their decision. Valdés requested that they choose two or three to come and negotiate with him, for he wanted to do all that he could.50 The silence that followed results in a messenger from La Roche coming to the town on 17 September, where he is told that Valdés would not allow them to travel to Utrecht to discuss matters with La Roche.51 When another envoy of the Count meets with the magistrates five days later, it is already too late. They had been receiving letters from Orange and decided to wait and see what God would bring them.52 The locals are thus shown to be struggling with the negotiations for surrender and are at no point presented as heroes. The author has, for instance, no opinion on the Boshuizen skirmish against ‘the enemies’, a story told in as factual a tone as is thinkable.53 Misery and hunger are certainly part of the narrative, but the episode with the dead body being brought to the praiseworthy burgomaster is lacking.54

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Local sources thus vehemently disagreed on the situation within the town walls and on Valdés’s behaviour. Een waerachtig verhael focused on showing the merits of the local population. The loyalist front was referred to as ‘the enemy’ or ‘the Spaniards’, just as in Fruytiers’s account. The latter extensively elaborated on Valdés and did so within a biblical narrative. The locals acted according to their principles and were fairly united in their struggle against the evil Spaniards. Besides their wickedness, Fruytiers emphasises how deeply divided the loyalist were. The black-­and-­white narratives found in these two printed sources contrast with the much softer tone of the manuscript Dagverhael. Its author is ignorant of the situation outside the ­walls – ­as could be expected of a besieged ­individual – ­and presents both locals and besiegers as divided. The result is a highly realistic narrative on the events that neither scorns nor extols its protagonists. Valdés in general chronicles I have searched for and analysed episodic narratives on the siege of Leiden in four Spanish and four Dutch general chronicles of the conflict. The earliest chronicle is Sumario de las guerras civiles y causas de la rebelión de Flandes (1577), by Pedro Cornejo. This priest arrived in the Low Countries with the Duke of Alba in 1567 and left with the Perpetual Edict (1577).55 For the publication of the next comprehensive account on the Revolt we need to wait until 1592. In that year, two chronicles were published, by two natives of Guadalajara, who like Cornejo related the war up to 1577.56 We know that Bernardino de Mendoza (1540–1604) was involved in the Revolt as an army officer, but Antonio Trillo’s identity remains largely unclear. Around the turn of the century, the so-­called Dutch trias historica, composed of the Protestant chroniclers Emanuel van Meteren, Pieter Christiaansz. Bor and Everhard van Reyd, started working on their respective accounts of the Revolt.57 Van Meteren (1535–1612) fled his hometown, Antwerp, and spent most of his life as a merchant in London. His career as a chronicler is marked by censorship and unauthorized editions of his Belgische ofte Nederlantsche historie van onsen tijden. I examine the two editions he was responsible for (1599, 1608), and the 1614 printing, approved by the Estates-­General, who had confiscated the first edition in 1599. Pieter Bor’s (1559–1635) life is largely unknown beyond his birth in Utrecht and his work as notary public in Haarlem from 1578 onwards. For his Oorsprongk, begin en vervolgh der Nederlandsche Oorlogen, beroerten, en borgerlijke Oneenigheden (1603, 1621), he was granted access to the archives by the States of Utrecht and the States of Holland. Van Reyd (1550–1602) not only differs from his colleagues in the important role

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he assigns to God in the events, but also in his conception of history writing. In his Voornaemste Geschiedenissen in de Nederlanden ende elders (1626, 1633, 1644), he has no ambition to be impartial, as he claimed to have always belonged to ‘the party of Religion and Freedom’. One Spanish and one Dutch chronicler from later generations complete the corpus. Luis Cabrera de Córdoba (1559–1615) with his Historia de Felipe II (1619) and Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft (1581–1647), known as the author of the canonical Nederlandsche Historiën (1642).58 When compared to the rest of  the corpus, they share a style that is markedly sophisticated in literary quality and analytical dimension. Cabrera was born to a family that had served the Spanish court for generations, and he followed suit. Hooft, the son of a burgomaster in Amsterdam, was judge and administrator to the nearby fortress of ­Muiden – ­a rather symbolic, but respected political position. Surprisingly, the siege of Leiden is absent altogether from Cornejo’s chronicle. For those who did take up the t­ime – ­and the ­ink – ­the story revolves around two themes. The most recurring one, exactly as in local chronicles, is the tension between Valdés and the Count of La Roche as they both tried to make Leiden surrender. General chroniclers made sense of this episode in tellingly different ways, ranging from omission to hyperbole. The second event to define Valdés in general chronicles is his romantic relationship to the local Magdalena Moons, the story Valdés is remembered for in popular culture, though only two chroniclers actually mention it. From exemplary leader to agent of tragedy Spanish accounts greatly disagree in their portrayal of Valdés. Mendoza and Cabrera, on the one hand, and Trillo, on the other, seem to be describing two different commanders. Mendoza introduces us to a professional Valdés who listens to his peers’ strategic considerations and acts resolutely.59 He also treats the common soldier fairly. We see him punish a soldier who had run away and abandoned his comrades in a dangerous situation, and appreciate the services of a sub-­lieutenant and his soldiers during the retreat from Leiden.60 Concerning his relationship to La Roche, Mendoza has Valdés reproach the locals for not negotiating the surrender with him. This he did, as Mendoza immediately clarifies, to gain time. Cabrera agrees with Mendoza that he reacted in this manner owing to strategic c­ onsiderations – b­ ecause he knew they wanted him to ‘loosen the siege, and because he knew through notes carried by pigeons that they were to be aided shortly’.61 According to Mendoza, maestre de campo Julián Romero (1518–77) leaves thereafter following Requesens’s orders, but not before saying to Valdés that he thinks the locals should be allowed to travel

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to Utrecht to meet with La Roche.62 Twenty-­seven years later, Cabrera preferred to omit these words of criticism, and relates Romero’s arrival merely as a welcome numerical support. Trillo gives us an alternative version of this story. When Romero plans to join the commander, ‘considering to be doing a service to the ­King … ­Valdés was not a­ mused … h­ e wanted to be alone and not to share the honour and effort with anybody else’.63 Loyal Romero is rejected by a self-­centred Valdés. Unlike the Valdés we know from Mendoza and Cabrera, in Trillo’s account he will listen to nobody, even when that means risking his own physical integrity. On his way to Leiden, Valdés insists on taking a fort on a bridge near Alphen aan den Rijn. He thereby ignores Martín de Ayala’s64 recommendations not to try and take it, for artillery was needed to ensure success, as it was garrisoned, and Alphen could easily come to the fort’s aid. But Valdés ‘decided to attack it with what he had, without waiting for artillery’.65 He thus acts hastily, if not recklessly. Trillo’s Valdés has no tensions with La Roche, but of course his weaknesses have already been shown, and in a manner that affects only his own image while sparing the Count’s. Mendoza and Cabrera also disagree with Trillo when referring to the locals. Mendoza describes an exemplary Valdés fighting locals who are characterized as a cancer, for they are generously taken care of by the king, but choose the destructive option of opening the dikes.66 While Valdés continues wisely with his strategy, Cabrera relates that ‘the rebels tried to break the dikes of Rotterdam to render the fields navigable, although this implied ruining the villages, and the grains sown with great cost, but they ignored all that to persist in their heresy’.67 Trillo, on the other hand, describes this action merely as ‘strange’, while the locals are referred to with the neutral ‘enemies’ and Valdés is no hero.68 The interplay between depictions of the ‘own’ and the ‘other’ seem to follow a logic here. As we have seen for the local chronicles, only triumphalist narratives openly condemn the opponent. Narratives that are neutral or even critical with the ‘own’, on the contrary, refrain from scorning the ‘other’. The latter can also be observed in Van Meteren’s account, where Valdés is a background character with no distinguishing features. Van Meteren omits any tensions with La Roche or Romero. We only read about his experience of the siege of Leiden after having lost. As he returns to The Hague, his troops despise him, ‘they said “shame” to him, and started a mutiny’.69 Interestingly, Van Meteren includes Fruytiers’s anecdote about the map left behind by Valdés with the lines in Latin, but decided not to portray him as the evil persona the local chronicler had considered the commander to be.70 Van Meteren does, however, agree with Fruytiers on the episode where some Leidenaren bring a corpse to burgomaster Van der Werff’s door. Both contrast the magistrate’s

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virtue with the inhabitants’ vacillation.71 Interestingly, his name has been removed in later editions, and thus the burgomaster is anonymous.72 The 1608 edition also adds short sentences that either further discredit Valdés’s troops as they retreat or emphasize the locals’ agency and bravery in an adverse situation. These two discourses strengthen one another, of course.73 As tangible evidence of the locals’ merit, the town is granted a university by the Estates-­ General in the 1608 version, tellingly given in the 1614 edition by both the Prince of Orange and the States.74 The series of Van Meteren’s editions thus gradually emphasizes loyalist division and local unity. Bor’s narrative contrasts with Van Meteren’s, as his story is one of local good opposing foreign evil. Although he admits to disagreements among the inhabitants, the general picture is one of shared misery. He clearly borrowed the fragment on the dead body from Fruytiers, but chooses to keep the burgomaster as a staunch individual, and does not criticize the inhabitants who present him with the corpse. At the same time, Bor passionately despises Valdés. In doing so, he follows the pattern outlined above, where triumphalism for one’s ‘own’ implies negative portrayals of the opponent. Bor relates how Valdés ‘became furious’ when he heard that Utrecht was not willing to receive him and his troops.75 We know Bor read the anonymous Dag-Verhael, as he relates the story of the baker’s brother who is brought to Valdés and has a glass of wine with him,76 but he clearly depicts a Valdés that is closer to Fruytiers’s. In both chronicles, the commander ‘speaks beautiful words while he threatens’.77 He also shows poor leadership, as he is the first to leave when he realizes his defeat.78 But Bor’s harshest words on Valdés refer to the commander’s argument with La Roche. According to him, some wavering citizens were reaching out to La Roche, who presented himself as more trustworthy than Valdés, for the latter was a Spaniard. Valdés replied with the argument that he was the one besieging them and therefore they should talk to him, leading to confusion in the town council. Bor expanded the story by including La Roche’s words on Valdés untrustworthiness, and also in relating the aftermath of this event. He has ‘those in Utrecht’ denounce Valdés to Requesens, because it was Valdés’s aversion that led him to deny the Leidenaren the possibility of going to Utrecht. This made him responsible for Leiden not returning to the king’s side, and therefore for ‘all misfortunes, the mutiny of the Spaniards and the destruction of the King’s lands’. Romero agrees. ‘If he had been commander, he would have let them go [to Utrecht].’79 Van Reyd follows suit. After the siege, Valdés is ‘hated and suspected by the Spaniards’, who mutinied and apprehended him. La Roche, in turn, ‘openly accused him at the Court in Brussel for being the cause of all misfortunes’.80 Van Reyd was not necessarily exaggerating. In a letter to ­Cardinal Granvelle, La

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Roche’s brother-in-law, Maximilien Morillon, relates that La Roche stormed out from supper with other nobles as he saw Valdés through the window. He allegedly said that ‘if he ran into that hateful coward Valdés, he would break his head and finish him’.81 But even when Van Reyd is not lying about the animosity between these two loyalists, his goal in relating the siege of Leiden is clearly intended to show Valdés’s unpopularity. This effect is reinforced by his refusal to relate local anecdotes. Van Reyd mentions only the great hunger suffered and devotes all other observations to Valdés’s misfortunes.82 Finally, Hooft provides Valdés’s actions with a psychological background. ‘He promised himself to win Leiden practically effortlessly’ and ‘experienced the negotiations with La Roche as belittling’.83 Although at first it sounds as if it could have been a matter of honour, La Roche spoke to Requesens about how Valdés’s ‘untimely, spiteful pride’ ruined their chance to have Leiden. Once again, Romero adheres to the criticism, this time in direct speech and also referring to Valdés’s reproachable pride.84 Hooft omitted the confusion experienced in the town and refrained from criticizing the inhabitants who brought a corpse to the burgomaster’s door. In line with Bor’s rhetoric, he spares the inhabitants and focuses solely on extolling Van der Werff, who should be ‘greatly praised for his tenacity’ as he addresses the Leidenaren in a direct speech passage based on Fruytiers’s second edition. According to Hooft, Van der Werff’s words ‘reached their souls’.85 Once again, the joint effort of the praiseworthy locals contrasts with the internal quarrels within the evil enemy front. Valdés’s love life under review The myth of Valdés’s beloved convincing him not to attack first appeared in Italian in 1632 and in Dutch only in the 1640s. Until then no chronicler, local or general, Spanish or Dutch, had wondered why Valdés did not attack Leiden. That was simply not part of his plans. Bor and Hooft, the chroniclers most negative about Valdés, are tellingly the only two to mention his relationship with a local woman who remains unidentified. Bor’s narrative might seem rather harmless at first: ‘He spent much time in The Hague, where he had fallen in love with a local lady, whom he supported.’86 However, when read within the context of Bor’s general portrayal of Valdés as a proud and negligent commander, his prioritization of love over war is entirely out of place. Hooft is much more explicit: ‘Despite the duties of war, Valdés, easily in love as can be expected from a Spaniard, fell for a woman in The Hague; proposed, and supported her since’. He calls the relationship an ‘amusement, to put the worries on hold and not to think of the circumstances’.87 In Bor’s and Hooft’s

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narratives, Valdés is, however, far from the commander subjugated to his beloved’s wishes that stars in the popular tale of the siege. While he is equally negligent, general chroniclers also have him react selfishly and appeal to the reader to despise him. Another difference lies in Moons’s anonymity in these sources. The identity and whereabouts of Valdés’s conquest is irrelevant to Bor and Hooft, because her function in the narrative is to further emphasize the commander’s lack of competence, which has been shown throughout his conflict with La Roche and Romero. In other words, these fragments are meant to say something about Valdés, and not about Magdalena. In previous historiography mentions of her have been evaluated out of context. Gender history studies were motivated by a wish to give her back some of the heroism lost to nineteenth-­century historians, who had concluded that a woman could have never influenced a commander’s decisions.88 I take issue with the gender methodology, because it has consisted of a cherry-­picking search for her appearances based on a finalist approach to her condition as a heroine. In other words, researchers hoping to prove her heroism have taken the fragments that mention her literally, without considering their function within the narratives surrounding them.89 Moons’s fame derived from a campaign launched by her relatives in the 1640s. From then on (proto)nationalism only had to integrate this story as one more example of patriotic love, as it did with other female figures like the Haarlem heroine Kenau.90 Unlike Kenau, Moons remains anonymous in chronicles. Interestingly, the other Leidenaar to feature in the canonical histories of the Revolt also remains largely unnamed. Pieter van der Werff, the burgomaster who offered his arm to his faltering neighbours, is identified by name only in the second edition of Fruytiers’s account, in the first edition of Van Meteren’s chronicle and by Hooft. Pollmann has suggested that this tale was also the result of a manufactured campaign, orchestrated by the burgomaster himself.91 The fabrication of a character By the time he approached Leiden in the spring of 1573, Valdés was a seasoned military commander. His strategy to starve out Leiden was proving effective, given the shortages suffered by its inhabitants. The sea-­beggars, however, managed to expel the loyalist army by flooding the fields. Upon victory, Leiden was given its university, and its inhabitants decided to celebrate the happy ending annually, which they continue to this day. In collective memory, Magdalena’s intervention spared the town. Although nothing points

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to Valdés wanting to attack Leiden, the story has Moons begging him not to. While Valdés and Moons did in fact marry after the siege, her role in general chronicles is entirely rhetorical. Only Bor and Hooft, the two chroniclers to scorn Valdés most forcefully, relate his love affair in order to further damage his reputation. There is no trace of his long career and experience in the Valdés that they presented. Bor and Hooft did not, however, portray him as a background character subject to his lover’s wishes, as the popular story wants us to believe. Their Valdés is above all a proud and untrustworthy military leader to the point that Romero and La Roche severely criticize him. As in the case of Moons, there are sources that point to these anecdotes being based on real-­life events. And again, as they did with Moons’s story, these chroniclers moulded narratives of tensions among loyalists to fit their rhetorical goals. Bor, Hooft and Van Reyd, the chroniclers from the last generation, focus their episodic narratives on the bad blood within the loyalist front. Van Meteren’s subsequent editions offer further proof of increasing pressure to emphasize division among the loyalists. The later the edition, the more criticism loyalists level at Valdés. That printed sources necessarily scorned the loyalists can also be appreciated in the case of the local chronicles. The manuscript Dag-Verhael is the only account not to demonize the royal army. In the Dutch chronicles, the more negatively Valdés is portrayed and the more divided the loyalists are, the more united and heroic the locals. This can be clearly appreciated in the anecdote where the locals bring a corpse to the door of the burgomaster. Of the chroniclers who criticize Valdés most severely, Van Reyd omits the episode, and Bor and Hooft are the first not to disapprove of the inhabitants’ faltering. The further back in time, the more room there was for admitting division within Leiden. Van Meteren, who presents the most innocent Valdés in any Dutch general chronicle, mildly criticizes the inhabitants’ wavering. Local chroniclers who wrote during or shortly after the siege all showed the division present among Leidenaren. Within this local corpus, a direct relationship between the view of Valdés and of the Leidenaren is again at work. The chronicler most critical of Valdés, Fruytiers, is lenient towards the inhabitants, who act as they do because they are hungry, whereas the anonymous author of the Dag-Verhael spares Valdés and openly portrays local division. The direct relationship between characterizations of Valdés and the locals can also be found in Spanish chronicles. These narratives disagree strongly about Valdés’s responsibility for the outcome of the siege. Mendoza’s and Cabrera’s Valdés is a highly qualified military commander facing a local cancer, whereas Trillo promotes a disastrous Valdés in a narrative where the locals are merely ‘the enemy’. With the exception of the author of the Dag-Verhael,

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Mendoza and Cabrera, there is little to see in chronicles of the Revolt of the experienced Valdés who loyally served his king for over forty years. Even before the story that has him accede to his lover’s desire spreads, Valdés is, like Van der Werff and Moons, a fabricated character with a rhetorical function. They are all based on real-­life people and events, but the episodic narratives they star in are moulded to fit grander schemes. Notes

  1 Judith Pollmann, Herdenken, herinneren, vergeten. Het Beleg en Ontzet van Leiden in de Gouden Eeuw (Leiden: Primavera Pers, 2008), p. 17.   2 Judith Pollmann, Memory in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 113, and Herdenken, herinneren, vergeten, p. 18.   3 Ibid., 8–9.   4 Raymond Fagel, De Spaanse belegeraar van Leiden. Het eigen verhaal van Francisco de Valdés (Leiden: Primavera Pers, 2017), pp. 7–12.   5 ‘hombre de buena razon, mas muy pobre’. ‘Letter from Juan de Silva to Gabriel de Zayas, Lisbon 09–05–1578’, CODOIN, vol. 40, pp. 5–6.   6 E. Kloek, Kenau & Magdalena. Vrouwen in de Tachtigjarige Oorlog (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2014), pp. 260–1.   7 Raymond Fagel, Leids Beleg en Ontzet door Spaanse ogen (Den Haag: Sdu Uitgevers, 1998), pp. 5–6.   8 Ibid., 7.   9 Fagel, Spaanse belegeraar, pp. 20–1. 10 Pollmann, Herdenken, and Memory, pp. 63–5, 105–16, 153–4. 11 There are no mentions of artillery being at hand. Moreover, Mendoza implicitly points to Valdés lacking it, as a Frenchman at some point offers Valdés a means to attack. B. de Mendoza, Comentarios de Don Bernardino de Mendoça de lo sucedido en las guerras de los Países Baxos, desde el año de 1567 hasta el de 1577 (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 2008), pp. 501, 507. 12 There exists a recent modernized edition by J. Koppenol, but I have used Fruin’s publication, as Koppenol’s lacks Een waerachtig verhael and includes only a fragment of Fruytiers’s work. R.J. Fruin, J.E.H. Hooft van Iddekinge, W.J.C. Rammelman Elsevier, De oude verhalen van het Beleg en Ontzet van Leiden bij gelegenheid van het derde eeuwgetijde in hun oorspronkelijken vorm herdrukt (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1874); J. Koppenol, Het Leids Ontzet. 3 oktober 1574 door de ogen van tijdgenoten (Amsterdam: Athenaeum-­Polak & Van Gennep, 2002). 13 Fruytiers speaks of the water covering the fields. There is no mention of Valdés leaving The Hague, which he did on 27 November. Therefore, he must have written his account immediately after the siege. 14 Fruin, Hooft van Iddekinge and Rammelman Elsevier, Oude verhalen, p. 19. 15 Anonymous, Een waerachtig verhael van schermutsinghe by die van Leyden opten xxix julij 1574 jeghen den viandt ghehouden, in Fruin, Hooft van Iddekinge and Rammelman Elsevier, Oude verhalen, unpaginated, 1. 16 ‘sestien cloeckmoedighe mannen wtghecosen wt de schutterie’. Ibid., p. 2. 17 Ibid., p. 3. 18 ‘de vianden aldaer altesamen of deursteecken of verbrant of met steenen gemassacreert of anderssins ommegebrocht: Ja eenige van hem met d’aerde vande afgeworpen schansse bedect ende ghenoech levendich begraven sonder dat sy yemant wilden ghevangen nemen niet iegenstaende sy deerlicken misericorde misericorde riepen’. Ibid., pp. 4–5. 19 ‘den aenslach niet en was gedaen om de schansse te houden mer alleenlick om den hoochmoedighen Spangiaerden een hoochmoet te doen en wt haer aertholen daer sy so geweldelicken in waren en ghenoech scheenen onwinlicken te wesen te verdrijven’. Ibid., p. 7.

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20 ‘niet dan Volders en Wevers en zijn’. Ibid. 21 ‘Liever hebben voor Gods eer en haer vrijheyt vromelicken vechtende te sterven dan in slavernije onder het onlijdelicke Spaensche Jock te leven’. Ibid. 22 This chronicle was published anonymously, but he signed the 1577 edition. However, his identity remains a mystery. Fruin, Hooft van Iddekinge and Rammelman Elsevier, Oude verhalen, pp. 5–6. 23 ‘Van Baldeo/deur des grooten Commandeurs Loys de Requesens bevel’. J. Fruytiers, Corte beschryvinghe vande strenghe belegheringhe ende wonderbaerlicke verlossinghe der stadt Leyden in Hollandt (Delft, 1574) in Fruin, Hooft van Iddekinge and Rammelman Elsevier, Oude verhalen, title page. 24 ‘sij wouden betoonen/ hoe wel sij geen crijchsvolck binnen en hadden/ dat den noot ende dagelicxse ervaringhe crijchsluyden maecten’. Ibid., p. 9. 25 Ibid., p. 22. 26 J. Fruytiers, Corte beschrijuinghe van de strenghe belegheringhe ende wonderbaerlijcke verlossinghe der stadt Leyden in Hollandt (Delft, 1577), in Fruin, Hooft van Iddekinge and Rammelman Elsevier, Oude verhalen, pp. 36–37. 27 ‘wanckelbare en qualick ghegronde herten … (aenghesien hun honger mede hert aendreef)’ Fruytiers, Corte beschryvinghe (1574), p. 18. 28 ‘hooft der ghenoemder ­Papisten … ­om Noordthollandt in zijn gewelt te ­brengen … ­den eersten aenslach den voorsc. Commandeur in Noordthollandt gheluct is/ met het groot verlies van over de twee duysent mans (twelck doch een cleyn saecke by hem is aenghesien de ghenoemde Papisten volckspillinge soo weynich achten als de Turcken)’. Ibid., pp. 5–6. 29 For instance ‘De vyandt’. Ibid., p. 7. 30 For instance ‘Spangiarden’ Ibid., p. 14. 31 Ibid., p. 3. 32 Rabshakeh in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia Online: ‘A compound word, the first part, rabh, indicating “head” or “chief”. The second part, which in the Aramaic, probably meant “cupbearer,” had in this connection and elsewhere, according to later discoveries, an extended significance, and meant chief officer, i.e. chief of the heads or captains.’ www. internationalstandardbible.com/R/rabshakeh.html (accessed 15 October 2018). 33 Fruytiers, Corte beschryvinghe (1574), pp. 12, 17–18. 34 ‘De Vrome Burgheren betoonden alle standtvastigheyt’ … ‘De voorsc. Spaensche Rapsake ­ et … s­ choone ­beloften … S­ oo sy oock oft sijn lidtmaten quamen daghelicx voor de stadt / m desen tijt niet waer en namen/ hy woude de stadt overweldigende soo grouwelick met hun om springen / … Jae en soude niemanden sparen / ionck noch oudt/ vrou noch maecht / noch oock het kint inder wieghen.’ Ibid., pp. 12, 17–18. 35 ‘hebben de Burghers ten laesten generaelick op Rapsakes woorden niet allenlick een Romeynsche dan een Machabeesche antwoorde ghegheven/weerdich der eewiger g­hedachtenisse … ­Vaderlandtsche Vijheyt te verdedighen: Want het is ons lijdelicker met den Machabeen inden strijdt om te comen / dan iammer aen onse volck ende Heylichdom te siene / namelick uwe bloetdorsticheyt over onse lichamen ende conscientien de lijden.’ Ibid., 19–20. 36 See for instance the narrative of the destruction of Nineveh, Assyrian city, where its inhabitants are referred to as ‘lions’. Book of Nahum, 2, 11. 37 P.S. Evans, The Invasion of Sennacherib in the Book of Kings. A Source-critical and Rhetorical Study of 2 Kings 18–19 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), p. 156. 38 2 Kings 18: 19–27. 39 Ibid., 28–36. 40 2 Kings 19: 15–36. 41 Fruytiers, Corte beschryvinghe (1574), p. 19. 42 ‘Vale Civitas; valete Castelli parvi; relicti estis propter aquem, & no per vim inimicorum’. Ibid., 28. 43 ‘si el cielo me fuere contrario vencerme ha el diluvio que tal se puede llamar, pero no el enemigo’. AGS E. 560–61, letter from Valdés to Requesens, 15 September 1574.

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44 ‘des Hertoghen van Alba crijchsvolck’. Anonymous, Dag-Verhael, gehouden binnen Leiden, in Fruin, Hooft van Iddekinge and Rammelman Elsevier, Oude verhalen, first page (unpaged). 45 Fruin, Hooft van Iddekinge and Rammelman Elsevier, Oude verhalen, p. 18. 46 Ibid., p. 11. 47 Ibid., pp. 9–10. 48 ‘wie men van beyden / Lannoy ofte Baldeus / voor de Opporste ofte Overste houden’. Ibid., p. 14. 49 ‘Lannoy / ende Baldeus met malcanderen oneens ende discord waeren / wie can beyden d’auctoriteyt hebben soude/ om metter stat in toecomende tijt in communicatie te treden’. Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., p. 15. 52 Ibid., p. 16. 53 ‘den vianden’. Ibid., p. 7. 54 Ibid., p. 17. 55 F. Ruiz Martín, ‘El pan de los países bálticos durante las guerras de religión. Andanzas y gestiones del historiador Pedro Cornejo’, Hispania, 21:84 (1961), 549–79. 56 Biographical information can be found in the introductions to the modern editions: B. de Mendoza, Comentarios; Antonio Trillo, Historia de la rebelión y guerras de Flandes, ed. M.A. Echevarría Bacigalupe (Vienna and Munich: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik and R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2008). 57 A.E.M. Janssen, ‘A “Trias Historica” on the revolt of the Netherlands. Emanuel van Meteren, Pieter Bor and Everhard van Reyd as exponents of contemporary historiography’, in A.C. Duke and C.A. Tamse (eds), Clio’s Mirror. Historiography in Britain and the Netherlands (Zutphen: De Walburg Pers, 1985), pp. 9–30. 58 L. Cabrera de Córdoba, Historia de Felipe II, Rey de España, eds J. Martínez Millán and C.J. de Carlos Morales (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1998). For Hooft, E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier, ‘Grotius, Hooft and the writing of history in the Dutch Republic’ in Duke and Tamse (eds), Clio’s Mirror, pp. 55–72. 59 Mendoza, Comentarios, p. 500. 60 Ibid., pp. 498–9, 513. 61 ‘Valdes conociendo era para que afloxase en el asedio, porque con avisos de las palomas sabían serian brevemente socorridos’. L. Cabrera de Córdoba, Historia, p. 798. 62 Ibid., p. 508. 63 ‘por parecerle que azía servicio al R ­ ey … n­ o holgó mucho dello el maestro de campo V ­ aldés … ­quisiera ser solo y que no huviera con quién partir de la honra ni del trabajo’. Trillo, Historia, p. 254. 64 Martín de Ayala was a knight of the Order of Saint John. No further biographical information has been found. 65 ‘Pero el Valdés se resolvió en acometerle como se hallava, sin esperar artillería’. Trillo, Historia, p. 255. 66 Mendoza, Comentarios, pp. 517–18. 67 ‘los rebeldes trataban de ronper los diques de Roterdan para bolver navegable la canpaña, aunque era con gran ruina de las aldeas, i frutos senbrados de gran precio, desestimado por mantener su eregia’. Cabrera de Córdoba, Historia, p. 798. 68 ‘una cosa estraña’, ‘los enemigos’. Trillo, Historia, p. 256. 69 ‘Baldeus met syn krijchsvolck van Leyden ghetrocken zijnde na Den Haghe is onder haer in grooter verachtinge ghecomen soo dat sy hem alle schande na seyden ende begonden te muytineren’. E. van Meteren, Belgische ofte Nederlantsche historie van onsen tijden (Delft: Jacob Cornelisz. Vennecool, 1599), fo. 80v. 70 Ibid., fo. 80r. 71 Ibid., fo. 79r. 72 E. van Meteren, Commentarien ofte Memorien van-den Nederlandtschen staet, handel, oorloghen

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ende gheschiedenissen van onsen tyden, etc. Mede vervattende eenige haerder ghebueren handelinghen (Scotland: Hermes van Loven, 1608), fo. 101r; E. van Meteren, Historie der Neder-landscher ende haerder na-buren oorlogen ende geschiedenissen (The Hague: Hillebrant Iacobssz van Wouw, 1614), fo. 104v. 73 Van Meteren, Commentarien, fos 101v, 102r. 74 Ibid., fo. 102r; Van Meteren, Historie der Neder-landscher, fo. 105v. 75 ‘Baldeus oft Valdez dit verstaen hebbende was seer ghestoort’. Pieter Bor, Oorsprongh, begin, ende vervolgh der Nederlantsche Oorloghen (s.l.: s.n., 1621), book 7, fo. 22r. 76 Another evidence is the verbatim copied fragment in which Valdés and La Roche themselves disagreed on who had the authority. Anonymous, Dag-Verhael, p. 14; Bor, Oorsprongh, fo. 57r. 77 ‘De voorsc. Spaensche Rapsake oft sijn lidtmaten quamen daghelicx voor de stadt / met dreyghingen / met spotwoorden ende leugenen / oock schoone beloften’. Fruytiers, Corte beschryvinghe (1574), pp. 12, 17–18. ‘Baldeus metten sijnen schreven veel brieven aen die van Leyden / om haer te beweghen tot overgevinge vande stadt gebruyckende daer toe schoone woorden/ om haer te bewegen ende oock dreyghen / indien sy niet en wilden overcomen. Bor, Oorsprongh, book 7, fo. 56v. 78 Bor, Oorsprongh, book 7, fo. 60v. 79 ‘Die van Utrecht hebben naermals aenden Groot Commandeur Baldeus beschuldicht dat hy uyt haet / dien hy tot die van Utrecht ende den Grave van la Roche droech / om dat hy de Spaengiaerden uyt Utrecht gehouden hadde / als vooren verhaelt is / daerom de voorsz. paspoorte gheweygert haddde [sic] / ende over sulcx oorsaecke was / van dat Leyden onder de ghehoorsaemheyt vanden Coninck niet en was gecomen / ende consequentelijck van alle ’t quaet / mutinatie der Spaengiaerden / ende ‘t verderff van des Conincx Landen. Juliaen de Romero seyde oock / dat hy aldien hy daer het opperste bevel hadde gehadt/ hy henluyden die versochte paspoorte soude verleent hebben’. Ibid., fos 56v–57r. 80 ‘Francisco Baldez quam hier over by die Spaniaerts in grooten haet ende ­verdacht … ­Ferdinand van Lannoy, Graef van Roche, doen Gouverneur van Hollandt beclaeghde den voornoemden Baldez opentlijck voor ‘tHof tot Brussel/ dat hy oorsaeck van al ‘tongheluck was’. E. van Reyd, Voornaemste gheschiedenissen inde Nederlanden ende elders beschreven (Arnhem: Ian Iansz, 1626), p. 18. 81 ‘il luy romperoit la teste et le despescheroit’. ‘Letter from Maximilien Morillon to Granvelle, 31–03–1576’, Correspondance du Cardinal de Granvelle (Brussels: Commission Royale d’Histoire, 1887), vol. 6, p. 42. 82 Van Reyd, Voornaemste Gheschiedenissen, p. 18. 83 ‘Hy zich beloofde, genoeghzaam zonder slagh oft stoot, zyn’ wil van Leyde te kryghen’, ‘Baldes, duidende ‘t handelen met La Roche t’zyner verkleening’. P.C. Hooft, Alle de gedrukte werken 1611–1738, eds W. Hellinga and P. Tuynman (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1972), vol. 4, pp. 373, 384. 84 ‘die van Uitrecht hem naamaals by den Londtvooghdt te last leiden, dar door zyn’ ontydighe, nydighe grootsheit, en haat op den Graave, die de Spanjaards uit hunne stadt had helpen houden, de geleeghenheit, om Leyde te doen wenden, leelyk verwaarloost was. Jaa men wil, dat zelft Romero verluiden liet; Indien hem ‘t hoogh bestier waar bevoolen geweest, hy zoud’ het zoo naauw met het punt der eere niet genoomen hebben; maar liever de gemaghtighden met den Graave te woorde laaten koomen, dan d’intreê des winters afgewacht, die ‘t verhindren van ‘t ontzet wel grootelyx in twyffel kon stellen’. Ibid., p. 384. 85 ‘Ooverloflyke standtvastigheit van der Werve’, ‘hen tot in der ziele troffen’. Ibid., pp. 388–9. Passage based on Fruytiers, Corte beschrijuinghe (1577), fo. 24v. 86 Ten tyde als Valdez Leyden hadde belegert / was hy hem veel tijdts onthoudende binnen Den Hage / al waer hy amoreus geworden zijnde van een Haeghsche Joffrouwe / dien hy onderhielt’. Bor, Oorsprongh, book 7, fo. 25r. 87 ‘Nitteghenstaande de beezigheeden der oorlooghe, quam Baldes, gelyk de Spanjaardt minvalligh is, op een’ Joffrouw in Den Haaghe te verslingeren; bekoorde, en onderhield haar sint. Deeze speelsheit, doorgaands gewoon de zorghen uit te spannen, en de geleeghentheeden oover ‘t hooft te zien’. Hooft, Nederlandsche historien, p. 374.

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88 Kloek explicitly says so; in Meijer Drees’s article it is implicit. Kloek, Kenau & Magdalena, pp.  7–8, 19; M. Meijer Drees, ‘Vaderlandse heldinnen in belegeringstoneelstukken’, De Nieuwe Taalgids, 85 (1993), 71–82. 89 Kloek, Kenau & Magdalena, pp. 6, 14. 90 Meijer Drees, ‘Vaderlandse heldinnen’, p. 82. 91 Pollmann, Memory, pp. 106–7, 110.

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3 The year of the Furies: military correspondence around the Sack of Antwerp (1576) Beatriz Santiago Belmonte

On 5 March 1576 Luis de Requesens, Governor-­General of the Low Countries, passed away. He had been unwell since the second half of February, yet no one was prepared for his death. It was the last setback in a series of events that put the Habsburg monarchy in jeopardy, not only at a local level, but also at a European level, in what Geoffrey Parker has called ‘the crisis of the realm’.1 The months following Requesens’s death constitute a period of political, economic and military instability, and the infamous Sack of Antwerp stands out, thanks to its prolific media coverage, which dates back to the moment the event took place.2 In Peter Arnade’s words, the Sack of Antwerp did ‘symbolic work as the greatest example of Spanish villainy against the civic realm’.3 He sketches a picture of a violent attack by Spanish mutineers, killing thousands of innocent civilians and violently sacking the city. Antwerp indeed stood out, as its significance culturally and economically had no rival at the time, and the city was both the printing centre of Europe and the main port of the continent during the sixteenth century.4 However, the events in Antwerp do not stand on their own. The narratives of the military commanders posted in the Low Countries at that time offer a counter-­image worth looking at, for they offer a perspective from the other side of the conflict and broaden the historical context of the event. The military commanders saw things differently, but they also saw different things. This chapter delves into the correspondence of mostly Spanish royal commanders during the regime change of 1576. The information conveyed in their letters has a strong episodic character. In other words, the content was presented through a string of events or anecdotes, each with its specific function within the war effort. On the one hand, these narratives introduce the image of the collapse of the military apparatus of the army of Flanders, which

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could no longer properly operate without the figure of a governor-­general, who in his capacity as captain-­general had also functioned as head of the whole army. On the other hand, these narratives reveal the importance of events in other cities whose circumstances were similar to those of Antwerp, thus allowing for a new interpretation of the Sack within its own historical context. The power vacuum and its inconveniences Governor-­General Luis de Requesens had embodied both political and military power in the Low Countries.5 After his death, a profoundly divided Council of State would function as the new interim government in Brussels, and its two most powerful members, Gerónimo de Roda and the Duke of Aarschot, personified this division. The former had been present in the Low Countries since 1570, where he worked as a member of the Council of Troubles. His command of the French language made him the perfect right-­hand man of Luis de Requesens. He was the only member of the Council of State of Spanish origin.6 Perhaps because of this, he did not have the support of his fellow Council members. His political rival, in contrast, had the support of many noblemen within and outside the Council. The Duke of Aarschot was a member of the powerful Cröy family and had been a councillor since 1565. He and his supporters believed that politics, not religion, explained why a peace settlement had not yet been reached in the Low Countries.7 Within the military sphere, the command of the Spanish units in the Habsburg army was organized by a group of Spanish veterans, most of them present in the Low Countries since the governorship of the Duke of Alba and even earlier. Sancho Dávila had been the castellano of Antwerp since 1569.8 Francisco de Montesdoca was governor of another key city on the southern border of the Low Countries: Maastricht.9 Some maestres de campo such as Francisco de Valdés10 and Julián Romero11 were in Brussels when Requesens died. Alonso de Vargas,12 general of the light cavalry, was a member of the Council of War and as such present in Brussels at the time. Finally, Cristóbal de Mondragón, a colonel of Walloon troops, was governor of the cities of Middelburg and Ghent. By March 1576, he was leading the siege of Zierikzee, whose aftermath would become one of the major causes of the troubles that arose during summer.13 The army of Flanders followed a strictly hierarchical structure. At the top stood the captain-­general, who would give his orders to the infantry general. Subsequently, the latter transmitted these orders to the intermediate ranks.14 Notwithstanding its strongly hierarchical character, the army’s system was flexible and mid-­ranking officers had direct communication with

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the ­captain‑general, and even with the king himself. When Requesens died, one of the main interlocutors of these veterans disappeared, and all military commanders prompted the king to solve the situation. The lack of an immediate replacement for the governor-­general had no precedent since the outbreak of the rebellion. Without news from Madrid, the commanders expressed their concern. As early as 9 March Sancho Dávila suggested that the king appoint and send a new governor.15 This was crucial to prevent locals from invoking customary laws and privileges to summon the Estates-­General to choose their own successor. Francisco de Valdés expressed distrust of the ­population – ­he claimed that ‘the unexpected death of ­Requesens … h­ ad led to malefic intentions and bad wishes amongst particulars’,16 while others, such as Cristóbal de Mondragón, pointed out the specific military problems that arose after Requesens’s death, especially regarding the siege of Zierikzee that he was directing.17 No matter their reasons and fears, one thing was clear: Requesens’s death caused great complications for the commanders’ military performance and their personal situations. While military commanders asked for a solution from Madrid, other political actors were certain the moment had arrived to return the power to local institutions in order to finally solve the military conflict. This was the case of the Estates of Brabant, whose members met a few hours after Requesens’s death to discuss how to proceed. In their view, only the Estates-­General had the right to choose the new governor.18 They tried to set up an appointment with the Council of State to defend their viewpoint, but against their wishes, the Council of State assumed full power regarding political and military matters on 8 March. The confirmation from Madrid would not arrive until more than a month later. On 24 March, Philip II had issued a general order stating that every servant of the king had to obey the Council of State until a new governor-­general was appointed, but the document took up to three weeks to arrive in the Low Countries.19 This letter was supposed to end a period of four to five weeks of complete uncertainty. However, this temporary solution was not to everyone’s taste. On the one hand, commanders’ narratives showed the growing disconnection between military and civil power. For the first time the governorship of the Low Countries rested in the hands of several people, the majority of whom were not of Spanish origin. On the other hand, the Estates of Brabant did not trust the ability of the Council of State to deal with the urgent problems of the Low Countries. They did not trust the foreign troops and continuously asked for permission to raise their own. Together with the Estates of Flanders and Hainaut they insisted on the need to summon the Estates-­General in order to end the war.

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The seeds of disagreement: mutiny and popular rebellion The Council of State tried to take over the more urgent financial and military matters. They decided to continue the siege of Zierikzee, started in October 1575 under command of Cristóbal de Mondragón. From March 1576 until August 1576 the commander reported on the events to the Council as the new representative of royal power.20 The main information related to logistics, and the urgent need for money Mondragón needed to engage more men and to pay the troops he already had. Sancho Dávila, for instance, had been warning the Council about the lack of money and supplies for the troops, and the fatal consequences of keeping the troops without payment.21 After the decisive victory of the royal side over the rebel troops on 28 May, everything indicated that the siege would end with a royal victory. From this moment on, the correspondence reveals the different approaches of the military and the Council to the negotiations of surrender and the manner of proceeding after the victory. While the Council of State wished for a clement and quick surrender, military commanders started to think ahead and suggested preparing for an attack on the northern regions.22 Mondragón insisted on asking for money that the Council was not willing to pay, and suggested allowing his troops to enter the city after the capitulation. Gerónimo de Roda, the only Spanish member of the Council and the political rival of the Duke of Aarschot, wrote a long letter to Philip II on 1 July in which he described the situation within the Council and the apparently unpredictable and disloyal behaviour of the duke, who had been facilitating an increase of anti-­Spanish sentiment within and beyond the Council: ‘he is used to speaking badly of the Spaniards in our presence’. According to Roda, the duke also started the debate about the suitability of Mondragón, as a Spaniard, to carry out the negotiations on the capitulation of Zierikzee. Aarschot considered that Spaniards ‘had already been in command for a long time, and now the time had arrived for people of the country to rule’.23 Despite Aarschot’s wishes, Mondragón continued as the official representative of the Council of State during the negotiations, and on 2 July he informed the Council that Zierikzee had returned to the obedience of the king.24 However, he had clearly disobeyed some of the Council’s guidelines for the surrender: the most damaging one was not to force his troops to swear an oath not to take up weapons against the king in the future.25 During this period, Mondragón not only informed the Council, but also the king, whom he reminded of Requesens’s wish to continue the war effort by taking Brill (Brielle) and IJsselmonde as soon as possible. However, he was quite sure the Council would not allow this because of the costs involved.26 Before any other military enterprise could be undertaken, a mutiny broke out and the troops headed for Brabant. On 25 July

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a group of some 3,000 Spaniards made a surprise attack on Aalst, a small Flemish town that had never questioned Philip II’s rule in the Low Countries. The fear of the mutineers drove several cities to organize their own defence. In Brussels, for instance, the Count of Mansfelt, military governor of the city, decided to establish complete control over the gates of the city.27 Social unrest reached a turning point in summer 1576. The strong military presence in the loyalist provinces of Brabant, Flanders and Hainaut had led to a fragile cohabitation between civilians and soldiers.28 Moreover, the anti-­ Spanish propaganda campaign led by the Prince of Orange also left a mark on the already exhausted inhabitants of the loyal territories.29 Around mid-­July Orange realized that Philip II’s rule in the loyal territories was very weak, so, besides continuing with his propaganda campaign, he also employed his diplomatic skills by urging his friends to make common cause against the crown. He approached not only noblemen belonging to the opposition, but also loyalists such as the Duke of Aarschot.30 On 26 July, the inhabitants of Brussels took to the streets against the Spaniards, attacking and even murdering several residents of Spanish origin.31 To counteract the mutiny and appease the inhabitants, the Council of State published an edict by which mutineers were declared outlaws, rebels before both God and king, allowing any inhabitant to kill them in self-­defence.32 Furthermore, the Estates of Brabant were granted permission to raise troops for protection.33 The Council of State had now to deal with both a mutinied military force and a local population in open rebellion. Sancho Dávila became the main military interlocutor with the members of the Council of State during these weeks, and the correspondence they maintained from mid-­July until mid-­ August allows us to analyse the two parties’ disagreements regarding mutiny, popular rebellion and the overall situation in Brussels.34 Both parties were in agreement about the bad timing of the mutiny and the damage it caused the king’s interests. However, while Dávila suggested that the means of punishment should be carefully considered,35 the Council was convinced that the mutineers deserved all the punishment they could get.36 The correspondence focuses on two specific issues: the attitude of the mutineers and the popular rebellion. Was the latter a rightful response to the former? Could the mutiny be considered a justification of popular rebellion? Regarding these questions Dávila and the Council were diametrically opposed. The councillors defended the idea that the reaction of the locals was understandable, holding the mutineers responsible for the outrage of the local population.37 This was the Council’s justification for issuing the Edict because the situation would otherwise have caused irreparable damage.38 Dávila, how-

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ever, had a different understanding about what had happened, and expressed empathy towards the mutineers. On 3 August, he explained the events in Aalst as a defensive strategy carried out by the mutineers. According to his information, when the mutineers were called to negotiate, ‘they were warned […] of the gathering of bandes d’ordonance […] and of the rise of three or four regiments of Walloon troops, ready, together with armed townspeople, to cut their throats, and thereafter do the same to all Spaniards serving the king’.39 Therefore, and ‘in order not to being forced to fight every hour against subjects of the King […] they decided to do something safer, that is entering the city, from where they could negotiate with your Excellences at a lesser harm’. The outbreak of the mutiny was of great importance, not only because it left Zeeland ‘à la miséricorde du Prince d’Oranges’,40 but also because it increased the anti-­Spanish sentiment all over the Low Countries. However, Sancho Dávila’s correspondence during these weeks focused on completely different matters: the control of the burghers of the city of Brussels, and the lack of freedom of the members of Council of State. When popular riots broke out in the city of Brussels, some Spanish members of the administration present there (Gerónimo de Roda [councillor] Alonso de Vargas [member of the Council of War] and Julián Romero) sought refuge in the palace of the dukes of Burgundy. Once safe, local militia blocked the palace and nobody could enter or leave. They remained under de facto house arrest.41 This situation led Dávila to distrust all the decisions of the Council that did not meet his expectations. One of these decisions was the publication of the Edict on 26 July. It was the first time that the civil government rejected its own troops. During previous mutinies, both commanders and politicians had always showed their discontent, disappointment and anger at mutineers only in their letters.42 Now the situation was different: a public edict had been published by which the authorities banned their own troops, although mutinied, from the country. Dávila believed this unusual decision resulted from the fact that the members of the Council were deprived of liberty ‘without being able to either provide or negotiate’.43 Against Dávila’s claim, the members of the Council insisted that no such deprivation of their will existed, and that the presumed kidnapping of some of its members was a decision made by them to appease the popular rebellion. However, he was partly right in his suspicion, at least as far as Gerónimo de Roda and other Spaniards were concerned. Janssens points out that the house arrest had actually taken place. Roda’s relationships and influence within the Council vanished, and he became a mere witness of the spreading of anti-­ Spanish sentiment.44

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Dávila elaborated on the reasons why he was not convinced about the Council’s statement. He stated that the Council was supposed to be ­responsible for controlling the gate of the city of Brussels. However, he was sure the burghers of the city had absolute control over the gates ‘which they open and examine; they grant permission to enter and exit the city, and they bar the entrance to whomever they consider’.45 This, together with the issue of the Edict, was reason enough for Dávila to call into question the supposed freedom of the members of the Council.46 Sancho Dávila spoke up for all Spanish military serving Philip II throughout the country when conveying that: ‘we see the country so angry and disturbing the peace, for some Spaniards have been murdered; and according to what I understand little can be done to solve the problem since the Council is under arrest in that city’.47 Presumably, the publication of the Edict had been understood by the population as a carte blanche to attack Spanish military in general. Many military commanders on the spot expressed their concern to the Council. However, the Council considered it wrong to interpret the Edict against the mutineers as a document against all Spaniards and did nothing about the actual violence.48 Dávila’s episodic narratives focused on the events that had direct consequences for the military. He was shocked by the content and consequences of an edict that led to a generalized witch-­hunt against Spaniards. The fact that the Council of State was, in his view, not reacting, increased the distrust between the Spanish military and the members of the Council. For the first time since the Revolt, military ­commanders – n­ ot low-­ranking ­soldiers – ­questioned and challenged the official political authority. While negotiating with the Council of State, Dávila was also acting on his own to solve the problems in the Low Countries. He maintained correspondence with other actors within and beyond the borders. In his letters he was extremely judgemental and constantly complained about the ‘inability of the Council to provide or solve anything’.49 He had therefore decided to gather as many people as possible to set free its members. On 1 August he wrote two letters: one to the Prince-­Bishop of Liège, the other to Louis del Río,50 sketching the situation in a strongly alarmist tone. He reported on how the burghers of Brussels had taken up arms against the authorities, describing them as ‘so arrogant and bad-­tempered as to ask the members of the Council of State to declare the Spaniards that entered the city of Aalst as disobedient, rebels, and enemies of both the king and the ­country … ­They compel them in such a manner, as to publish this placard against their will.’51 He continued to insist on the idea of the deprivation of will of the members of the Council, even when he had received an explanation why this was not the case. Perhaps his lack of communication with the only

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Spanish member, Roda, led him to generalize when asserting that the members ‘have been imprisoned by the mentioned burghers, whose insolent behaviour and shamelessness is so extreme, as to not let them talk, write, or communicate with anyone, but with whom they want to, and always under their supervision’.52 Already in spring the castellano feared an outbreak of major troubles, and in early July he started preparing the citadel of Antwerp for all possible eventualities.53 During these months he kept gathering both weapons and men around the citadel.54 On 5 August, several military commanders took a step forward and sent a letter to the members of the Council in a tone that can best be described as subtle threat. They wrote a statement explaining the ‘unprecedented situation’ created by burghers of the city of Brussels, who had not only taken over power, by controlling the gates of the city, but also maintained under arrest Gerónimo de Roda, Vargas and Romero. Furthermore, they demonstrated that those same burghers were responsible for the drafting and publication of the Edict of 26 July. All these reasons encouraged them to write to the magistrates of Brussels formulating a set of demands, stating that if they wanted to avoid military intervention, they had to set free the arrested members of the Council. The letter ended with a warning and a deadline: If, by 8 August, they had not received proof of the complete freedom of the members of the Council, either by sending one of them to Antwerp, or by allowing a garrison paid by his Majesty to enter the city of Brussels, they would directly proceed with the execution of their plans.55 This ultimatum can be considered a true act of treason, and the Council was greatly surprised by this threat.56 However, it was taken seriously, and the Council agreed to negotiate with the military so the statement would not be sent to the magistrates in the end. A meeting was set up in Willebroek on 9 August, which Gerónimo de Roda attended.57 However, the differences between the two parties proved insurmountable. By the end of August, Philip II had practically lost control over the Low Countries. The official political power was not recognized by the loyal troops, who openly disobeyed their orders, a considerable part of the army had mutinied, and the local population had taken up arms for self-­defence against the Spanish troops. Furthermore, provincial Estates had started raising their own troops and insisted on the need to summon the Estates-­General to resolve the situation. What was Philip II doing? Where was the new governor? Where was the so badly needed news from Madrid? The Marquis of Havré,58 envoy of the crown, arrived in Brussels on 31 July. Although he was supposed to bring clear orders from the king, he only carried the message that the solution to the problems was under active consideration in Madrid.59 Although John of

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Austria had been appointed the new governor-­general of the Low Countries, he would not start his journey to Brussels before having discussed everything with the king in person.60 The negotiations of Philip II with his half-­brother on his appointment created an unbearable situation in the Low Countries. Sancho Dávila wrote to the king conveying the urgency of sending John of Austria because the country needed a real political head.61 As he did not receive any news from the court, on 16 August he suggested a series of radical steps that, in his eyes, were necessary to solve the problems. The king had first ‘to send a lot of Spaniards, as many as possible, raise German troops and that all would come here on the pretext of the war against Holland and Zeeland’. If not, he continued, they should ‘confiscate goods and properties of magistrates and abbots, leave them with very little’. Finally, he pointed out the need for ‘constructing fortresses in the main cities […], destroying the walls of some cities and punishing them, for this and more is what they deserve.’62 Clearly, the military commanders were ready to act or react to everything that could happen. On 17 August, Francisco de Valdés reported to the Duke of Alba the advances they had made after the earlier meeting with the Council. Roda, Vargas and Romero had left Brussels; the Spanish mutineers in Aalst were apparently appeased, and an agreement with them had been reached; they were only awaiting payment. However, he warned, things were not getting better, for the recruitment of soldiers against the army did not stop, the cities were still being fortified, and the entire population was as armed and unruly as in the beginning. He was certain that the Council of State and the city of Brussels sided with the Prince of Orange.63 Indeed, during these weeks, William of Orange’s position had shifted from an observant role towards an active one. The troops raised by the Estates of Brabant stood under command of William of Horn, Lord of Heeze.64 Thanks to him, the Prince of Orange could start an outreach policy towards the Estates of Brabant and the burghers in Brussels. On 13 August Heeze tried to read a letter from Orange in a meeting of the city council, calling for unity in order to expel the Spaniards. However, it was still too soon for the city to openly support Orange’s cause.65 That moment arrived on 30 August when the magistrates of Brussels granted permission to Heeze’s troops to enter the city of Brussels for its defence. The troops of Heeze paraded every day with their lieutenant colonel, Jacques de Glymes. On 4 September, the parade ended with what most scholars have called le coup d’état: the troops broke into the meeting chamber of the Council of State and its members were put under arrest.66 This event had crucial consequences from a political point of view, since it led to the summoning of the Estates-­General and initiated the negotiations that would lead to the Pacification of Ghent.

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For the military le coup d’état had far-­reaching consequences, as shortly afterwards, on 22 September, the original ban against the mutineers was republished, yet this time its content was extended to all Spanish soldiers of the royal army, regardless of their loyalty. Maastricht as Antwerp’s mirror The main Spanish military units had been gathered in Antwerp since the beginning of summer. After losing all his influence within the Council, Gerónimo de Roda became the political leader the Spanish military commanders would recognize as legitimate. Militarily speaking, the main strongholds of the army remaining in Spanish hands were Antwerp, Ghent and Maastricht. Shortly after le coup, the Prince of Orange started negotiating with Aarschot and members of the Estates of Brabant, Flanders and Hainaut.67 Besides his diplomatic efforts, he also carried out an aggressive military policy to expel the Spanish troops from the main strongholds. On 26 September his troops entered the city of Ghent. By the beginning of October, Francisco de Montesdoca, governor of the city of Maastricht, wrote, in a rather pessimistic tone, that ‘our business does not go well because we have neither head nor money’.68 Likewise, he referred to the new edict by telling a friend that ‘all Estates and their governors have commanded everyone in cities and towns to take up a­ rms … ­and any Spaniard on foot or on horseback to be found had to be killed’.69 Few military testimonies on the situation in the main fortresses controlled by the Spanish military have come down to us. For instance, the military commander that would have a leading role in the Sack of Antwerp, Sancho Dávila, did not write a report because Gerónimo de Roda, as a political figure, was responsible for writing the letters.70 However, some military accounts of what befell the military garrison in Maastricht have survived. Only a few weeks before the Sack of Antwerp, on 20 October, the city of Maastricht was sacked by royal troops. At the time, these events were considered two sides of the same coin. In the Spoyle of Antwerp, for instance, George Gascoigne puts the two sacks together when giving his opinion on the Spanish military.71 In his account he explained how the events in Maastricht developed, and he presented them as the preliminary ground for the Sack of Antwerp.72 And he was not the only one who established this connection. The Estates-­General regarded as obvious the relationship between the two events in a complaint they wrote to the king.73 Despite its connection and the similarities with Antwerp’s case, the Sack of Maastricht has been surprisingly neglected in the grand narrative of the

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Revolt, in which, if mentioned at all, it has been briefly described as another example of mutineers ransacking cities on their way to Antwerp.74 This is surprising, as, unlike with Antwerp, we have accounts of this event written by two military commanders present in Maastricht: Francisco de Montesdoca and Alonso de Vargas. These narratives make the Sack of Maastricht an excellent case to examine all relevant aspects of the military experience during these months (the power vacuum, the distrust towards local authorities, the fear towards locals’ rage, and so on). Before the beginning of summer, the military garrison in Maastricht consisted of five companies of German infantry, two companies of Walloon infantry troops,75 and one Spanish company.76 On the other side of the river Meuse there was also a Spanish company under the command of Captain Martin de Ayala. As the king had commanded, from April onwards Montesdoca addressed all his petitions to the Council of State. The fear of mutiny due to lack of money, as had happened after the victory in Zierikzee, concerned both Montesdoca and the Archbishop of Liège, who shared the sovereignty of the city with Philip II.77 Montesdoca was particularly worried about the attitude of the German companies, and he suggested bringing them out of the city because of the risk of mutiny.78 In his letters we see the importance of nationality when it comes to loyalty and trustworthiness. In his opinion, it was imperative to have Spanish veterans in the territory in order to keep everything under control.79 After publication of the new edict, the presence of Montesdoca in Maastricht became extremely contested among the burghers of the city. In a letter written on 2 October he reported on his situation to the royal court. He complained about the lack of men and resources, and warned that ‘if the governor does not arrive soon, only Antwerp will remain under royal troops […] for where I am, there are barely 400 Spaniards and there are 10,000 armed burghers within this town, and all of them willing to chase us out or kill us’.80 The tension in Maastricht had been building up rapidly since summer, as Montesdoca reported: ‘we warned them [the inhabitants of the city] that in case they would rise up against us, we would leave no man alive in the country, and that we would set fire to all corners of the city’. He was confident that with these kinds of threats, he would be able to keep everything under control. However, he was still worried because: ‘We eat together with them, we sleep in their houses, and all military are desperate b­ ecause … w ­ e do not know if a new governor is going to come.’81 The power vacuum, the distrust between the military and the locals, and the lack of resources and men were all factors that increased the tension within the city until 20 October, when a series of events provoked a battle within the city and a subsequent sack. The account provided by Montesdoca was sent on

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2  Frans Hogenberg, Murder at Maastricht, 1576, 1576–77 10 November to John of Austria. He started by pointing out the disloyal behaviour of the German troops who, since the publication of the edict, had started to cooperate with the inhabitants of Maastricht against his will.82 The turning point came when a new local governor appointed by the Estates-­General to replace him arrived in the city with, according to Montesdoca’s account, the order from the Estates to ‘slaughter us [the Spanish garrison]’.83 Montesdoca advised Martin de Ayala to cross the bridge to Wyck, a part of the city on the other side of the river, to prepare the Spanish companies for any eventuality. In the meantime, Alonso de Vargas with his cavalry units, and Hernando de Toledo with infantry soldiers, tried to convince the mutineers of Aalst to join the troops to aid the garrison in Ghent castle, which was being besieged by troops of the Estates-­General. After the mutineers’ refusal to help them, Vargas and Toledo headed for Brabant where some of their units were lodged in the city of Zoutleeuw. On their way there, they received news about events in Maastricht and they decided to come to Montesdoca’s rescue.84 According to Montesdoca, after the arrival of the governor, he was held prisoner and both Germans and locals requested him to order the Spaniards to leave Wyck ‘if he did not want to be smashed together with his troops’.85

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To prevent a possible escalation of violence in a disadvantaged position, he offered to go to the other side of the river to discuss a solution with his troops. However, the German troops quickly changed their minds and asked him to return to Maastricht to talk to the burgomasters. Montesdoca accepted ‘in order to gain time for our people to arrive’.86 Alonso de Vargas wrote a letter on 21 October to Gerónimo de Roda reporting what had happened in Maastricht the day before. The letter is a vivid description of the battle that took place within the city between the royal army and the inhabitants of Maastricht with the support of the German regiments. From Wyck, Martín de Ayala had asked Vargas to ‘send help fast, because everything was lost, and they did not have anything else to eat but for two more days’.87 Vargas arrived at the gates when the battle ‘against the Spaniards’ had already commenced. It took from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon for the regiments attacking from Wyck to finally clear a path to enter the city. According to Vargas, at that moment, a captain of the German troops was sent to him to negotiate the terms of surrender. However, and still according to Vargas’s account, the negotiations were a ploy to save time while the city awaited help from Liège. As there was no peaceful surrender of the city by its inhabitants, the troops entered the city by force. Before the main attack, Montesdoca had been taken to his house where the new governor, the lieutenant of the German troops and two representatives of the Bishop, requested that he hand over the keys to the city, to which Montedoca answered that he did not acknowledge any governor or estate but  the king. According to his own account, a German captain helped him escape the city. Upon his arrival in Wyck in the morning, the battle had already started, with people from Maastricht attacking Wyck with artillery, musket and harquebus fire.88 Within the walls of Maastricht were 400 German soldiers and 3,000 armed burghers. When the Spaniards entered the city, crossing the bridge from Wyck, they started ‘killing both Germans and burghers […] And when the gate was finally broken, Don Alonso entered the city and they [the Spanish troops] slaughtered many and the city was sacked without us been able to prevent it.’89 The surviving story of the Sack of Maastricht within the grand narrative of the Revolt shows the image of an uncontrolled group of mutineers attacking the city on their way to Antwerp. However, if we look at the military accounts left by the commanders involved during the event, we must, at least, call into question this simplification of the events. According to these narratives, the mutineers of Aalst had not yet joined the troops of Vargas. We can divide the events into two phases: a deliberate battle within the city between its defenders and the Spanish troops trying to regain the control, and the subsequent sack that the military commander Montesdoca claims not to have been able to avoid.

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Conclusion The political and military situation in the Low Countries in 1576 stands out as one of the most complex periods since the outbreak of the rebellion. The lack of a governor-­general, the inability of the Council of State to govern effectively during the interim (its power was challenged by both the military and the provincial Estates), the outbreak of mutinies, and the popular rebellion put in jeopardy the rule of Philip II in the Low Countries. In general terms, the correspondence of the mid-­ranking officers of the army of Flanders has been used as a complementary source to analyse the major military events of the Revolt in the Low Countries. Because of their strongly anecdotal character, these sources have been relegated to fact-­ checking. However, if we go beyond the historicist perspective, these sources have much more to offer. The narratives of both Sancho Dávila and Cristóbal de Mondragón show the disconnection between the military and the nobility of the Low Countries, embodied in the Council of State and the Duke of Aarschot. Both commanders questioned the loyalty of the Council and openly disobeyed its orders when disagreeing. Their narratives also reveal the increasing anti-­Spanish sentiment among the local population and some members of the Council. The military commanders, as the most visible group of the Spanish nation in the Low Countries, started to join forces to prevent attacks from the locals, which in turn led to a sharp division between locals and Spaniards and opened the door to William of Orange to directly negotiate with the provincial Estates. The narratives of Sancho Dávila, however, seem to overlook the urgent need to deal with one of the biggest problems the army of Flanders had to face during the Revolt: the mutiny of their troops. At some point in his correspondence it seems that mutiny plays no role within the overall picture, even when mutiny was one of the major reasons for the growing anti-­Spanish sentiment in the Low Countries. This division between Spaniards and locals reached its turning point after the publication of the Edict of 22 September. This led to events such as the Sack of Antwerp in November 1576, when the confrontation between local forces and Spanish troops fostered the monolithic image of cruelty of the Spanish military as conveyed by the Black Legend. However, narratives such as Montesdoca’s illustrate the turning point reached by some in the military during this period. In his eyes, the military confrontation between Spanish and local (and German) forces, and the subsequent sack of the city of Maastricht was the inevitable consequence of months without a clear political leadership, in which the tension between the military and the population had been increasing continuously.

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Military commanders such as Dávila understandably focus on the problems that directly affected their military performance, but at the same time, the military narratives nuance and contest the general assumptions of unpredictability and the cruelty of the royal ­army – ­the Sack of Maastricht, for instance, can no longer be regarded as simply an episode of uncontrolled mutineers attacking an innocent city. In turn, this contribution shows the importance of analysing the episodic narratives left by military commanders directly involved in the events, since we can compare their experience with general statements assumed as facts by the grand narrative of the Revolt. Notes

  1 Geoffrey Parker, Felipe II: la biografía definitiva (Barcelona: Planeta, 2013), p. 608.   2 The Spoyle of Antwerpe is the most quoted and used eyewitness account of the events. George Gascoigne, The Complete Works of George Gascoigne, ed. J.W. Cunliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), II, pp. 587–99. Raymond Fagel has proved that this account owes much to a pamphlet originally written in Dutch. Raymond Fagel, ‘Gascoigne’s The Spoyle of Antwerpe (1576) as an Anglo-­Dutch Text’, Dutch Crossing, 41 (2017), 101–10, p. 102.   3 Peter Arnade, Beggars, Iconoclasts, and Civic Patriots. The Political Culture of the Dutch Revolt (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), p. 243.   4 John J. Murray, Antwerp in the Age of Plantin and Brueghel (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1972), p. 9.   5 Since the irreconcilable disagreements between Margaret of Parma and the Duke of Alba, the governor-­general also functioned as captain-­general. Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567–1659 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 91.   6 J.M. Cabañas Agrela, ‘Gerónimo de Roda’, in Diccionario Biográfico Español (DBE): http://dbe. rah.es/biografias/42941/geronimo-­de-­roda (accessed 19 June 2018).   7 Aarschot and his peers blamed the failure of the peace negotiations at Breda on the king’s refusal to expel the Spanish troops from the Low Countries and convene the Estates-­General. Hugo de Schepper, ‘Un catalán en Flandes. Don Luis de Requesens y Zuñiga, 1573–1576’, Pedralbes: Revista d’historia moderna, 18:2 (1998), 157–67, 162–4.   8 Sumaria relación de lo que contienen las consultas y pareceres que el duque de Alba ha enviado sobre la provisión de los gobiernos y bandas de Flandes, encomiendas, feudos y mercedes, fecha a último de enero de 1569, CODOIN, vol. 30, p.  436. On Sancho Dávila see Enrique Martínez Ruiz, ‘Sancho Dávila’, in DBE: http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/5787/sancho-­davila-­y-daza (accessed 25 July 2018); Gonzalo Martín García, Sancho Dávila, soldado del rey (Ávila: Institución Gran Duque de Alba, 2010).   9 Rodrigo Caro, Memorial de la Villa de Utrera: autor el licenciado Rodrigo Caro, originally written in 1604 (Sevilla: El mercantil sevillano, 1883), pp. 245–96. 10 For a brief account of his performance in the Low Countries: Beatriz Santiago Belmonte, ‘La correspondencia de los comandantes militares españoles como fuente para el estudio de las guerras de Flandes (1567–1577)’, in Enrique García Hernán and Davide Maffi (eds), Estudios sobre guerra y sociedad en la monarquía hispánica. Guerra marítima, estrategia, organización y cultura militar (1500–1700) (Valencia: Albatros, 2017), pp. 623–38; José L. Sánchez Martín ‘Francisco de Valdés’, in DBE: http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/4658/francisco-­de-­valdes (accessed on 24 July 2018). 11 Raymond Fagel, Kapitein Julián. De Spaanse held van de Nederlandse Opstand (Hilversum: Verloren, 2011). 12 Santiago Fernández Conti, ‘La profesionalización del gobierno de la guerra: Don Alonso de Vargas’, in José Martínez Millán (ed.), La corte de Felipe II (Madrid: Alianza 1994), 417–50;

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J.M. Cabañas Agrela, ‘Alonso de Vargas’, in DBE: http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/30322/ alonso-­de-­vargas (accessed 23 July 2018). 13 J.M. Cabañas Agrela, ‘Cristóbal de Mondragón’, in DBE: http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/42982/cristobal-­de-­mondragon (accessed 7 July 2018); Ángel Salcedo Ruiz, El coronel Cristóbal de Mondragón apuntes para su biografía. (Madrid: Marceliano Tabarés, 1905). 14 Fernando González de León, The Road to Rocroi. Class, Culture, and Command in the Spanish Army of Flanders, 1567–1659 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), p. 91. 15 Sancho Dávila to Philip II. Brussels, 9 March 1576. AGS E. 567–26. 16 ‘La impensada muerte del comendador ­mayor … ­a dado lugar para que las ruines intenciones y malos deseos de algunos particulares se declaren’: Francisco de Valdés to Philip II. Brussels, 14 April 1576. AGS E. 567–121. 17 Mondragón to Philip II. Nieuwkerk, 24 March 1576. AGS E. 567–122. 18 Gustaaf Janssens, ‘Brabant in het verweer’. Loyale oppositie tegen Spanje’s bewind in de Nederlanden van Alva tot Farnese; 1567–1578 (Kortrijk and Heule: Standen en Landen, 1989), p. 270. 19 Mandato abierto de Felipe II a don Alonso de Vargas, Julián Romero, Hernando de Toledo y Francisco de Valdés, Madrid, 24 March 1576. AGS E. 569–90. We know for sure that this letter was received by some of the commanders no later than 14 April 1576: Francisco de Valdés to Philip II. Brussels, 14 April 1576. AGS E. 567–121. 20 Archivist L.P. Gachard has edited this correspondence, CP, vol. 4, pp. 543–738. 21 Sancho Dávila to Philip II. Brussels, 9 March 1576. AGS. E. 567–26. Many soldiers were owed up to forty months’ wages: Geoffrey Parker, ‘Mutiny and Discontent in the Spanish Army of Flanders 1572–1607’, Past and Present, 58 (1973), 38–52, p. 48. 22 Sancho Dávila to Philip II. Antwerp. 26 June 1576, CODOIN, vol. 31, pp. 62–5. 23 ‘el ha tomado por costumbre en nuestra presencia hablar mal de los españoles’, ‘harto han mandado y agora es bien que manden los destos payses’ Gerónimo de Roda to Philip II. AGS E. 567–22. 24 Mondragón to the Council of State, Zierikzee, 2 July 1576, CP 4, 646–7. 25 Mondragón to the Council of State, Zierikzee, 6 July 1576, CP 4, 655–7. 26 Mondragón to Philip II, Zierikzee, 4 July 1576, AGS E. 567–126. 27 Janssens, Brabant in het verweer, p. 279. 28 Schepper, ‘Un catalán en Flandes’, p. 159. 29 K.W. Swart, William of Orange and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1572–1584 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), p. 107. 30 Ibid., p. 105. 31 Janssens, Brabant in het verweer, p. 282. 32 Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 174. 33 Flanders, Brabant and Hainaut had been requesting permission to raise troops since the Council of State assumed power. Janssens, Brabant in het verweer, p. 274. 34 CODOIN, vol. 30, pp.  72–111, contains copies of the letters written originally in French, whose transcription covers only the fragments translated into Spanish in the margins of the originals. 35 CODOIN, 31, p. 77, 28 July 1576. 36 Ibid., pp. 80–1, 30 July 1576. 37 Ibid , pp. 82–4, 2 August 1576. 38 Ibid , pp. 80–1, 2 August 1576. 39 ‘fueron ­advertidos … ­de haberse mandado juntar las bandas de ­ordenanzas … ­y de levantar nuevamente tres o cuatro regimientos valones para que juntados con los paisanos que todos estaban armados los degollasen, y tras ellos a todos los otros españoles que en estos estados servimos a SM’. ‘por no obligarse a pelear cada hora con los subditos de SM, … tomaron por expediente mas ­seguro … ­meterse en aquella ­villa … ­desde donde con menos ofensa de las partes se podia tratar lo que VVEE fuesen servidos’. CODOIN, 31, p. 85, 3 August 1576. 40 Mondragón to the Council of State, Zierikzee, 10 July 1576, CP 4, pp. 668–74. 41 Janssens, Brabant in het verweer, p. 282.

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42 Francisco Valdés to Luis de Requesens, The Hague, 25 November 1574. Biblioteca de Francisco Zabálburu (Zabálburu) Altamira 96, GD1, D.27. 43 ‘que aun no pueden proveer ni negociar’, CODOIN, 31, p. 79, 29 July 1576. 44 Janssens, Brabant in het Verweer, p. 282. 45 ‘y mano absoluta para tomar cartas, abrirlas y examinarlas, dar licencia para entrar y salir, y negarla a a los que se les antoje’, CODOIN, 31, pp. 84–8, 3 August 1576. 46 CODOIN, 31, pp. 84–8, 3 August 1576. 47 ‘viendo este pais tan alterado y que han muerto ya algunos españoles, y tambien entendido lo poco que se puede probar para apaciguar todo esto, estando el Consejo detenido y preso en esa villa’, CODOIN, 31, pp. 81–2, 1 August 1576. 48 CODOIN, 31, p. 83, 2 August 1576. 49 ‘no pueden proveer ni remediar nada’ Sancho Dávila to Doctor del Río (copy). Antwerp. 1–8-­1576. AGS E. 567–78. 50 A member of the Privy Council, living in Brussels since the arrival of the Duke of Alba. Julie Versele, ‘Louis del Río’, in DBE: http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/65535/louis-­del-­rio (accessed on 12 September 2018). 51 ‘se hallaron tan soberbios y bravos que pidieron a los señores del Consejo de ­Stado … ­que declarasen a dichos españoles que entraron en Aalst por desobedientes, rebeldes y enemigos de SM y del p­ ais … ­y los apretaron de manera que contra su voluntad les hicieron despachar en esta sustancia placarte general’, CODOIN, 31, p.  109. Sancho Dávila to the Duke of Brunswick, the Duke of Cleves, the Bishop of Liege and the Archbishop of Cambrai. 1–8-­1576. 52 ‘son prisioneros, como en efecto lo estan de los dichos burgueses, cuya insolencia y desvergüenza pasa tan adelante que no los dejan hablar, screbir ni comunicar sino con las personas que ellos quieren y en sus presencias’, Ibid. 53 CODOIN, 31, Sancho Dávila to Philip II. Antwerp. 25 April 1576, pp. 46–7. 54 Ibid., Sancho Dávila to Philip II. Brussels, 1 July 1576, pp. 65–8. 55 Ibid, 31, pp. 92–4. Letter from four German Colonels: Baron of Polviller, Baron Fransberg, Carlos Fúcar and Cornelius van Emden, the castellano Sancho Dávila, the maestre de campo Francisco de Valdés, Francisco Verdugo and Antonio de Olivera, to the members of the Council of State in Brussels, 5 August 1576. 56 CODOIN, 31, pp. 90–2, 6 August 1576. 57 Ibid , pp. 101–2. Letter from 4 German Colonels… to the members of the Council of State in Brussels. 7 August 1576. 58 Charles Philippe de Cröy, Marquis of Havré, was the brother of the Duke of Aarschot. Unlike his brother, he stood in royal favour and had been named official envoy in autumn 1575 to bring the ‘vrayes remèdes’ to the Low Countries. J.E. Hortal Muñoz ‘Charles Philippe de Cröy and Lorrain’, in DBE: http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/60855/charles-­philippe-­de-­croy-­ylorena (accessed on 27 February 2019) 59 Parker, Dutch Revolt, pp. 174–5. 60 Parker, Felipe II, pp. 608–47. 61 Sancho Dávila to Philip II. 15 August 1576. AGS E. 567–95. 62 ‘embiasse mucha gente Española, toda la que se pudiese y que se hiziesen alemanes y que todos biniesen del pays tomando por azesorio la guerra de Holanda y Gelanda … ‘los magistrados y abades quitandoles todas sus rentas y gavelas y dejandoles dellas muy pocas’ ‘convernia hazer castillos en todas las villas p­ rincipales … ­derrocar las murallas a algunas de las villas y castigarlas pues todo esto y mas parece que lo merezen’: Sancho Dávila to Philip II (deciphered), Brussels, 16 August 1576. AGS E. 567–100. 63 Francisco de Valdés to the Duke of Alba. Antwerp. 17 August 1576. AGS E. 567–69. 64 He was the godson of William of Orange and supported the Prince in the province of Brabant: Swart, William of Orange, p. 107. Gordon Griffiths, William of Hornes, Lord of Hèze and the Revolts of the Netherlands (1576–1580) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954). 65 Griffiths, William of Hornes, pp. 26–7.

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66 James D. Tracy, The Founding of the Dutch Republic. War, Finance, and Politics in Holland, 1572– 1588 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 136. 67 Parker, Dutch Revolt, pp. 175–7. 68 ‘Nuestras cosas no van bien porque no tenemos cabeza ni dineros’ Francisco de Montesdoca to Diego de Zúñiga. Maastricht, 2 October1576. ARAB, Microfilms, 172. Lettres Misives (LM), B1740/2/2 doc 6. 69 ‘los estados y gobernadores de todos ellos an mandado que todos tomen las a­ rmas … ­que qualquier español a pie o cavallo que toparen que lo maten y que lo dan por bien muerto’, Ibid. 70 Sancho Dávila to Don John. Antwerp. 14 October 1576. CODOIN, 31, pp. 140–2. 71 Gascoigne, Spoyle, p. 597. 72 Ibid., p. 591. 73 Pierre Génard, La Furie Espagnole. Documents pour servir à l’histoire du sac d’Anvers en 1576 (Antwerp: G. van Merlen, 1876), p. 129. 74 Gascoigne, Spoyle, p. 591; Judith Pollmann, Catholic Identity and the Revolt in the Netherlands, 1520–1635 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 103; P.J.H. Ubachs and Ingrid Evers, Historische Encyclopedie Maastricht (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2005), p. 496; M. Schoonbrood and J.S. Grossier, Schetsen uit de geschiedenis van Maastricht en omstreken (Nieuwendijk: De Forel, 1972), p. 110. 75 CODOIN, 102, pp. 465–71. ‘Relación de la gente de guerra que en fin de diciembre de 1573 había en los estados bajos, 18–12–1573’. Montesdoca to Philip II, Maastricht, 24 May 1576. AGS E. 567–89. 76 Montesdoca to John of Austria. Maastricht, 10 November 1576. AGS E. 569–173. 77 Maastricht was a condominium whose sovereignty was held by both the prince-­bishops of Liège and the dukes of Brabant. This means that the co-­rulers of this region were both Philip II (as Duke of Brabant) and Gerard van Groesbeeck (as Bishop of Liège). 78 Montesdoca to the members of the Council of State. Maastricht, 10 July 1576. ARAB, Microfilms, 172 LM, B 1740/2/2 sf. Doc. 4. 79 Montesdoca to Sancho Dávila, Maastricht, 12 August 1576. AGS E. 567–113. 80 ‘si no viene gobernador bien presto no se en que pararemos si no es el castillo de ­Amberes … ­donde yo estoy no ay que quatrocientos españoles y ay diez mil burgeses armados dentro la villa y todos con animo de hecharnos o matarnos’, Montesdoca to Diego de Zúñiga. Maastricht, 2 October 1576. ARAB, Microfilms, 172. LM, B1740/2/2 sf. doc 6. 81 ‘hemos dicho a los burgeses que quando cometen a nosotros que no a de quedar hombre vivo en la tierra. Y que meteremos fuego en todas las partes de la villa’, ‘Con ellos comemos, con ellos dormimos, toda la gente de guerra esta con grandisima d­ esesperacion … ­sin nueva si viene gobernador o no’. Ibid. 82 The Estates-­General sent a letter to the colonels of the German troops to obey their orders if they wanted to be paid. Copy of the letter written from the Estates-­General to the colonels of German troops. 4 October 1576, AGS E. 567–64. 83 Montesdoca to John of Austria (copy). Maastricht, 10 November 1576. AGS E. 569–173. 84 Bernardino de Mendoza, Comentarios de don Bernardino de Mendoça, de lo sucedido en las guerras de los Payses Baxos, desde el año de 1567 hasta el de 1577, eds A. Cortijo Ocaña and A. Gómez Moreno (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 2008), fos 304v–308r. 85 ‘si no queria que a mi y a ellos nos hiziesen pedaços’, Montesdoca to John of Austria (copy). Maastricht, 10 November 1576. AGS E. 569–173. 86 ‘por dar tiempo a que llegase nuestra gente’, Ibid. 87 ‘a gran prisa socorro, porque todo era perdido y que no tenian nada que comer para dos dias’, Alonso de Vargas to Gerónimo de Roda and the members of the Council of War. Maastricht, 21 October 1576 (copy). AGS E. 567–139. 88 Montesdoca to John of Austria (copy). Maastricht, 10 January 1576. AGS E. 569–173. 89 ‘empiezan a matar asi alemanes como b­ urgeses … y­ acavandola de romper, entro don Alonso y degollaron a muchos y se saqueo la villa sin podello remediar poco’. Ibid.

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4 ‘Lode della nazione italiana’: Italian historians on the Spanish soldiers Cees Reijner

In the preface of his Las Guerras de los Estados Baxos (The Wars in the Low Countries) the Spanish army officer and chronicler Carlos Coloma de Saa (1573–1637) discusses several Italian historians of the Revolt in the Low Countries.1 He praises some, such as the Genoese author Pompeo Giustiniani (1569–1616) whom he describes as ‘a warrior of great distinction who fought on our side and a chronicler favouring himself and his country’.2 He also refers to an anonymous historian from Naples who wrote a compendium of all wars in the Low Countries, relying to a certain extent, according to Coloma, on the works of the Italian Cesare Campana (1540–1606). The Neapolitan author in question is probably Francesco Lanario (1588–1624), a captain in the Habsburg army. Coloma mentions also another Italian historian, albeit one who, in his history of the Revolt in the Low Countries looked less favourably on the Spanish presence. According to Coloma, the Genoese author Gerolamo Conestaggio (1540–1611) painted a dismal picture of Alba’s harsh policy in the Low Countries and of several Spanish commanders of his army.3 His description was in Coloma’s view overly affected by heretical authors from the Low Countries. Coloma could appreciate Conestaggio’s history of the Spanish annexation of the kingdom of Portugal, but he was highly critical of his history of the Revolt.4 He argues that the Italian’s work is harmful to the image of the Spanish monarchy in the world. The Genoese author was, still in Coloma’s view, so taken by the works of some of the most heretical of the Dutch ­writers, undoubtedly meaning Pieter Bor (1559–1635) and Emanuel van Meteren (1535–1612), that he followed them unconditionally.5 Coloma even accuses some of the Spanish authors of taking their cue too much from anti-­Spanish works, such as those by Italian and French authors. What mattered most to

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Coloma were truth and objectivity, values that are generally emphasized by most early modern historians.6 However, few historians during the early modern era were free from ideological influences or political and polemical interests. And the Italian authors publishing their works in the seventeenth century on the Revolt in the Low Countries were no exception. In general, their histories argued in favour of Spain. In this contribution I nonetheless discuss some Italian histories that, in spite of their general pro-­Habsburg tendencies, take a different view on Habsburg policy in the Low Countries. We find this other, more critical view, especially in those Italian histories that focus on the conduct of the soldiers of the Habsburg army. An obvious reason for the Italian interest in the Revolt in the Low Countries was the large contingent of Italian troops fighting in the war, together with those of other nationalities, serving the Spanish king’s good cause. Among the Italian historians who in the seventeenth century described the events in the Low Countries we find soldiers who recorded their own experiences and adventures on the battlefields. Some of these works were written in order to underline the Italian involvement in these wars, but their most important aim was to record their personal military achievements in a fine (and sometimes richly illustrated) book. Telling examples in this genre are the works by Pompeo Giustiniani and Francesco Lanario. In addition to these books by veterans who served in the Habsburg army, there were many more Italian contemporary historical works on the Revolt in the Low Countries, written by a range of authors from all walks of life, such as merchants, clergymen and even hacks who found commercial possibilities in the revolt against the Spanish monarchy. One of the principal features of these works is that they were often based on personal experience. Another important characteristic is their pro-­Habsburg tendency. This should not come as a surprise, as the Spanish-­Habsburg dominance over the Italian peninsula was, to a great extent, responsible for the Hispanophilic character of Italian historiography.7 This does not mean that there were no Italian historians whose works criticized the Habsburg policies in the Low Countries. I have already referred to the work of Gerolamo Conestaggio. Some Italian histories on the Revolt in the Low Countries during the first half of the seventeenth century were affected by existing anti-­Habsburgs sentiments. How do we explain this criticism of the Habsburg policy reflected in the Italian historiography about the Revolt? By looking at the descriptions of the Spanish Fury in Antwerp of 1576 as a case study, I discuss in this chapter the image of the Spanish soldiers in several seventeenth-­century Italian historical works. However, besides the political interest, I would also like to bring the military aspect into the discussion. We already know that the Spanish crown

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raised a huge standing army in the Low Countries during the Eighty Years’ War and that a large part of the Habsburg force consisted of soldiers recruited from outside their territories. However, most foreign soldiers fighting for the Habsburg army were subjects of the Spanish monarchy, with a considerable number coming from the Italian peninsula.8 Among the five alien ‘nations’ that comprised the Habsburg army, the Spanish army leadership considered the Italian men reliable, second only, of course, to their own army units which consisted completely of Spanish soldiers.9 It is a well-­known fact that was suspicion and rivalry between Italian soldiers and Spanish ones, and it is interesting to work out to what extent this rivalry has influenced the Italian historiography on the Revolt.10 Italian authors on the Sack of Antwerp: Bentivoglio and Lanario According to most Italian authors, the war waged by the Spanish king on the rebellious and heretical inhabitants of the Low Countries was a just one. In their works they consider the religious question to be the chief cause of the Revolt. These historians saw the religious conflict as a threat to the unity of the Spanish Empire. Most Italian chroniclers of the Revolt considered the  nobility, and particularly William of Orange, the source of all evil in the Low Countries. This clearly partisan image of a pro-­Spanish disposition in the Italian historiography is, however, less evident when we focus on more concrete themes such as the mutinies within the army of Flanders. The many mutinies in the Habsburg army in the Low Countries between century Spanish, 1572 and 1607 have been documented by seventeenth-­ 11 English, Dutch and Italian chroniclers. The majority of Italian historians do not pay a great deal of attention to these mutinies, albeit with one exception, the Spanish Fury of 4 November 1576, the violent finale to a protracted mutiny, which started on the Zeeland Isles and has received ample treatment in the work of several Italian historians. Almost all Italian historians claim in their works on the Revolt that the Spanish Fury marked a watershed in the war. From that point onwards, Protestants and Catholics united in opposition to the Spanish troops. The Pacification of Ghent of 8 November 1576, which immediately followed the Spanish Fury, was a result of the changed situation in the Low Countries. Dutch historians, such as the already mentioned Pieter Bor and Emanuel van Meteren, make much of the atrocities in Antwerp in their chronicles, deliberately creating an adverse image of the violent and ruthless soldiers of the royal army. This explicitly black image is non-­existent in the work of most Italian historians, since as Spanish subjects and Catholics they were, as a matter of principle, faithful to the Spanish monarch. Yet, although

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the Italian authors defend the position of the Spanish monarchy in general, some of them offer a more balanced story on the events in Antwerp. In his great history of the Revolt, Della guerra di Fiandra, published in three volumes between 1632 and 1639, Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio (1579– 1644) provides a detailed analysis of the phenomenon of mutiny which ravaged parts of the Low Countries in the second half of the sixteenth century.12 In his diplomatic account of 1611, published in 1629 as the Relatione delle provincie unite di Fiandra, he had pointed out the main problem of the Spanish army in the Low Countries.13 The Dutch Republic, according to the cardinal, paid its soldiers well (but not too well!) and on time, which was not the case with the Habsburg troops. While Dutch policy prevented mutiny in the States army and chaos in the country, it was precisely the Habsburg regiments that witnessed many mutinies, which would inflict infinite harm on the Spanish cause. Bad (financial) policy on the part of the counsellors at the Spanish court in Madrid was at the root of the mutinies in the Low Countries.14 In Bentivoglio’s view, the mutiny and the subsequent Sack of Antwerp were the most bloody and tempestuous events of the entire war in the Low Countries. Because of the dispute over the legitimation of authority, the events in Brabant culminated in the Sack of Antwerp.15 Bentivoglio relates how in early November several units of the royal army advanced jointly on Antwerp. According to the cardinal, about 3,500 troops gathered under the command of Sancho Dávila and Gerónimo de Roda in the castle of Antwerp. Among those troops were mutinous soldiers who had ransacked the town of Aalst. Under the command of the ‘eletto Giovanni di Navarrese’ they had joined the Spanish troops in the fortress.16 When the Spanish troops, continues Bentivoglio, left the fortress and marched into the city they split into two groups. One group stood under the command of the Spanish captain and maestre de campo Julián Romero, ‘the bravest and most fortunate’ ever among the commanders of the Spanish army, as described by Bentivoglio.17 The other group consisted of the Aalst mutineers who under the command of their ‘eletto’ advanced against the troops which defended the city. In his description of the Spanish Fury, however, Bentivoglio then stops distinguishing between the mutineers and the soldiers of the royal army. Showing ‘great courage and perseverance’ the Spanish infantrymen attacked the barricades erected by the troops of the Estates-­General and men in the service of the city of Antwerp.18 The fighting between the Spanish king’s troops and the defendants of the city spread into the city centre. When at last the Spanish troops had crushed all opposition and ‘their lust for blood was fully satisfied’ they began looting the houses and property of the Antwerp population, over a period of three days. In his description of the looting of the city Bentivoglio talks only about Spanish soldiers who indulged in violence against the citizens of Antwerp.19

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Unlike other Italian authors, Bentivoglio distanced himself from statements that entirely blamed the ‘heretical’ rebels for the Spanish Fury (and other examples of mutinous soldiers being a scourge on the population) and that judged it God’s punishment.20 The author’s judgement was a rational one; religion played little part in his description of the Revolt. This may seem rather strange in an author with a clerical background, but his experience as nuncio in Brussels had shaped his view of the Revolt and had made him sympathize with the Dutch Republic. Bentivoglio’s empathy for the victims among the citizens of Antwerp is clear from these pages in which he describes the Spanish Fury. Such sympathy and compassion for the victims of the Spanish Fury is hard, if not impossible, to find in other Italian works on the first stage of the Revolt. Francesco Lanario, a member of the Neapolitan aristocracy, and a captain under Ambrogio Spinola, never commented in detail on the disgrace of the pillaging and murdering soldiers. In his history of the Revolt, published under the title Le guerre di Fiandra brevemente narrate (A concise history of the wars in the Low Countries), he briefly relates the course of the atrocities in Antwerp. His description corresponds to the stories not only of other Italian, but of Spanish historians as well, as there existed a high level of intertextuality among the stories about the Revolt, stories that informed the reader: of the number of soldiers of the Hispano-­Habsburg army who, in Antwerp, advanced on the troops that had to defend the city; how long the pillaging took; how much loot was obtained from the inhabitants under duress or by force; and the damage inflicted by roaming looters. Every story mentions the burning down of the town hall and the number of houses set on fire and destroyed. And the Italian historians, including Lanario, stress the point that losses on the side of the Spanish army were small (200 in most histories). Yet in Lanario’s history we find, on reading between the lines, a critical remark on the violence perpetrated by the Spanish soldiers: ‘Apart from the foreign troops the city was defended by 14,000 militiamen, but the Spanish soldiers, who were there in only small numbers, carried out a terrible massacre which allegedly killed more than 7,000 people, part of whom were put to the sword and others perished in the flames.’21 It is remarkable indeed that, in the pro-­Spanish histories as well, the numbers of civilian casualties are very high. Thus the Roman Jesuit Famiano Strada (1572–1649) assesses the sack of thriving Antwerp: As for the number of lives lost on the Spanish side during the massacre reports vary greatly, also by those present there. Some write that at least two hundred lives were lost on the Spanish side; the Spanish themselves maintain that only fourteen soldiers were killed. Both the Spanish and the authors from the Low Countries state that more than six thousand lives were lost among the Antwerp civilians and soldiers.22

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However, Strada puts those numbers in perspective, by adding that they might possibly have been greatly exaggerated by hatred and pride. Two more Italian histories: Conestaggio and Bocchi At this point I would like to introduce briefly two more historical works in which we find both compassion for the victims in Antwerp and criticism directed against the Spanish tercios and Spanish policy in the Low Countries, though the Spanish monarch was admittedly spared this criticism. The first is by Gerolamo Conestaggio, author of a long-­forgotten work on the first stage of the Revolt.23 This Genoese merchant had spent many years in Antwerp and was a witness to the iconoclasm of 1566 in the Scheldt city. It is, however, doubtful whether he had first-­hand experience of the Spanish Fury ten years later. Maybe Conestaggio made inquiries among members of the Genoese ‘nation’ in Antwerp whom he knew well. His cosmopolitan world ­view – ­he was envoy of the city Republic of Genoa in Lisbon and ­Venice – ­and his involvement in the political debates on the Spanish influence in his native city determined the critical stance of his history of the wars in the Low Countries. In his detailed accounts of the mutinies preceding the tragic events in Antwerp, he gives the conventional representation of the events of October and November 1576 in Brabant that we might also find in other historical works. In his description of the pillaging and violence against the population of Antwerp Conestaggio does not distinguish between the mutineers and other, non-­mutinous, parts of the Spanish a­ rmy – ­except in one phrase where he does make a distinction: Many of the people told about their experiences, but they could not tell the religion of the soldiers. The mutinous soldiers in particular behaved in ways that were different from their beliefs […] One would expect this [conduct] from non-­believers, but apparently it all goes with the war.24

The Genoese author is very clear in his description of the fighting, the looting and the robberies. It is clear that Conestaggio was not blind to the dire circumstances in which the inhabitants of Antwerp met their end, or were robbed of their possessions by the Spanish tercios. Conestaggio found it hard: to describe the brutal misconduct of the Spanish soldiers: Nobody could escape the scourge of the Spanish soldiers […] Innocent people, such as the many foreign merchants who cannot be blamed for the war, were treated as though they were the culprits.25

Conestaggio wrote his history during the last years of his life after he had returned to Genoa in the mid-­1590s. The book was published in 1614, three

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years after his death, and the first negative comments followed soon after.26 Until his death he had kept in touch with his Protestant business associates in Venice and the Low Countries. The Genoese author’s stay in Antwerp during the first stage of the Revolt and his contacts with Protestant friends and acquaintances from the Low Countries certainly help to explain his criticism of the Spanish policy. Furthermore, his moderate political opinions were undoubtedly affected by his taking part in the political debates (e.g. in the Senate of Genoa), on the Hispano-­Habsburg influence in the city republic.27 We find the same compassion and empathy with the citizens of Antwerp in another historical work, which can be read only in manuscript. Francesco Bocchi’s Historia della ribellione della Fiandra, in the Archivio di Stato in Florence, is, as far as we know now, the oldest Italian historical work on the Revolt in the Low Countries.28 The Florentine humanist’s history dates from 1585 and covers the period 1566–77. Bocchi gives a vivid account of the hostilities during this period, which revolves around the exploits on the battlefield of the Florentine commander Gian Luigi Vitelli, also known as Chiappino Vitelli, who was serving the Habsburgs in the Low Countries. Bocchi was a versatile and prolific author. His works include orations, political and military texts, historical essays and a city guide to Florence. Part of his literary work was commissioned by the Florentine Grand Duke Cosimo I. Historiography was a major constituent of Cosimo’s cultural policies that served his attempts at consolidating his government.29 From 1560, Cosimo’s policy centred on distinguishing the Grand Duchy from the other city-­states on the Italian peninsula. His policy was also aimed against Hispano-­Habsburg domination in Italy. It seemed obvious that the commission for a work on one of the highest-­ranking and most highly esteemed officers in the Habsburg army should be given to Francesco Bocchi. It was not only his versatility that made him the right man for the job. His above-­average interest in military affairs and in the commanding officers of the Habsburg army, as demonstrated in several of his works, could have motivated the commision to write a work in which Vitelli would be the principal character. As with other Italian histories, the Florentine polymath’s work is, on the face of it, pro-­Spanish in character. Bocchi considers the fight for freedom in the Low Countries illegal and an attempt by the rebels to overthrow a legitimate power. In his view it is only appropriate that the Hispano-­Habsburg monarch tried to contain the heretical influences in his crown lands, using any means at his disposal. According to the author, the rebellious provinces were a hotbed of heretical ideas, and it is this situation that urged him, so he says in his account to the reader, to write about this terrible war. Even if Bocchi’s intention was to write a Hispanophile history, the reader may still find examples of his balanced view on the wars in the Low Countries.

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Bocchi is one of the few Italian historians paying considerable attention to the Spanish Fury. In evocative language he relates the atrocities in Antwerp, following the engagements between the Spanish troops and the defenders of Antwerp. According to Bocchi, the defenders were in the majority by far, numbering more than 15,000 soldiers and civilians. However, they could not beat back the Spanish troops. The ensuing atrocities committed by enraged soldiers, who, as the Florentine author stresses, were Spanish nationals, resulted in a massacre, so harrowing and bloody that it defied every description.30 In his story of the looting, the Florentine did pile it on a little and mentions 18,000 mortalities, a figure far beyond that offered in other works. His descriptions of the violence go a step further than those of the first Spanish historians, Pedro Cornejo and Alonso de Ulloa, whom Bocchi certainly used among his sources. Through his descriptions, clearly recalling the Black Legend, Bocchi, perhaps unwittingly, sided with the anti-­Spanish camp, which had everything to gain from wildly exaggerating the looting of the Spanish soldiers. In his history the author expresses his surprise at the fierceness of the resistance of the common people of Antwerp. Despite the fact that he saw the events in the city above all as a fitting punishment for their disobedience to the Catholic monarch, he expresses his admiration for the resolve of the natives of Antwerp. He commends their solidarity and conveys his sympathy for the resistance of the population against the roaming and looting soldiers who had invaded the city. On the eve of the Fury the population prepared to withstand the attack by digging trenches and erecting barricades. And particularly striking, according to Bocchi, was the behaviour of two women among the resisting civilians.31 These women continued their work in hazardous circumstances, under heavy shelling from the fortress. When one of them was fatally injured by a cannonball, the other nevertheless went on ferrying baskets of sand to the trenches. This woman’s love of freedom and her profound distaste for the Spanish strengthened her resolve to continue the resistance. The desire to live in peace and the love of freedom was stronger than the fear of the shelling.32 The resistance of these women was, emphasizes the Florentine author, praiseworthy because they wanted to ‘defeat the Spaniards in order to be masters of their own house and to expel the foreigners from the Low Countries’.33 These words demonstrate the author’s doubts concerning his judgement of the rebels. There is no other Italian historical work in which we find such empathy for the rebels in the Low Countries. There is yet another reason why Francesco Bocchi’s history is interesting to us. It is clear in the manuscript that the leading role is played by Chiappino Vitelli, the experienced commander who, first in the service of the Florentine monarch Cosimo I, and from 1567 within the Habsburg army, performed brilliantly. It is historiography disguised as a biographical story against the

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backdrop of the theatre of war in the Low Countries. The significance of Bocchi’s history of the first stage of the Revolt, however, lies in his focus on the relations, within the Habsburg army, between the Spanish and Italian soldiers. The qualities and capabilities of the Italian soldiers, including the generally esteemed (including by the Duke of Alba) Vitelli, are frequently commented on and applauded. The author praises the courage and military discipline of the Italian officers and soldiers. Nowhere in the manuscript does he refer to Tuscan, Neapolitan or Milanese soldiers. He speaks in the highest terms of the Italian soldiers, ‘our compatriots’ as he calls them, several times in his manuscript. We may find examples of Bocchi’s personal and patriotic view of the relations within the Habsburg army in passages where the author lavishly praises the Italian nation: ‘Lode della nazione italiana’, drawing a sharp distinction between the ‘Italian’ and ‘Spanish’ men. When the Florentine author talks about the different ‘nations’ in the metropolis of Antwerp he does not refer to the names of the native cities of the merchants. We read chiefly about ‘Italians’, ‘Spaniards’ and ‘Germans’. The ‘Italian’ Vitelli took Italian nobles along with him to the battlefields in the Low Countries regardless of where they came from. By emphasizing the Italian contribution to the Habsburg campaign in the Low Countries and his praise of the Italian soldiers, Bocchi creates a sharp division between ‘us’ (the Italians) and ‘them’ (the Spaniards). There is, in his history, a clear distinction between the Italian virtues (‘la virtù italiana’), such as discipline and the domination of the arts of war, and the Spanish soldiers’ lack of vigour. According to recent studies, there was a strong national spirit among the soldiers in the Spanish army. Notions which can be connected to national consciousness, such as fatherland, Spaniard and Spain, repeatedly emerge in their correspondence, as well as the phrase ‘We Spaniards’.34 Vitelli’s popularity with the soldiers of the royal army is repeatedly stressed in the manuscript. His soldiers, we read, admired him for his military skills, indomitable will and concern for his men. Bocchi states that there certainly existed a mutual admiration between Alba and Vitelli. That does not alter the fact that they also harboured resentment against one another, which goes back to Alba’s successful, though merciless, campaign in Italy in the mid-­sixteenth century. Attitudes towards the duke at the Medici court were not particularly favourable. In sharp contrast to the popularity of the Italian commander, the author paints a completely different picture of the stern Alba and his son Fadrique. The contrast evoked by Bocchi is much like the contrast between Alba and the Italian commander Alexander Farnese. The Duke of Parma’s good reputation established during his stay in the Low Countries bolstered his public image against Alba’s. Through his policy of reconciliation the

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3  Jacob Neefs, Portrait of Giovan Luigi Vitelli, 1620–80

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Italian governor-­general tried to prevent his government from being equated with Alba’s harsh regime. Bocchi completed his manuscript in 1585, the year Alexander Farnese succeeded in relieving Antwerp. Conclusion What conclusions can we draw from the image of the Spanish soldiers created in the Italian histories discussed in this chapter? The Italian image of the Spanish war efforts to suppress the Revolt in the Low Countries is predominantly pro-­ Spanish. Yet some histories comment critically on the policy of the Spanish government in the Low Countries and the deployment of the Spanish army to crush the resistance. It is obvious from the examples given here that some authors found an excuse in the events in Antwerp to criticize both Spanish policy and the behaviour of the Spanish soldiers. Clear examples of a critical attitude towards the Hispano-­Habsburg policies in the rebellious Low Countries can be found in the works of the Genoese cosmopolitan Gerolamo Conestaggio and the scholarly prelate Guido Bentivoglio. It is no coincidence that these two authors spent prolonged periods in the Low Countries and witnessed the Revolt at close quarters. They were eyewitnesses at two different stages of the Revolt of the resistance against the Habsburg dynasty. The other example of a critical author, the humanist polymath from Florence Francesco Bocchi, presents a picture of the Spanish soldiers in terms that remind us of Black Legend stereotypes. In his description of the Spanish Fury the Florentine draws a contrast between the picture of the mutinous Spanish soldiers and his dramatic and empathetic story of the two sisters of Antwerp. Like Bentivoglio, Bocchi does not only describe the acts of violence committed by the Spanish soldiers in Antwerp. The violence against the population that went with it took place only after the engagement between the Spanish army and the defenders of Antwerp, who were in the majority. After having fairly easily overcome the resistance of the defending troops, Spanish men roamed the city pillaging and murdering. In his description of the violence Bocchi does not distinguish between the mutinous and the obedient soldiers of the royal army. Moreover, in his history these stereotypes add to the contrasting emphasis on the superiority and virtuousness of the Italian soldiers. Bocchi deliberately focuses on the differences between the Italians and the Spaniards in the Habsburg army. Together with this contrast the Florentine writer uses terms that refer to a certain Italian ‘national consciousness’, maybe a patriotism that was related to his Tuscan background and that of his patron Cosimo I. Historiography was an important element of the cultural policy of

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the Duchy of Tuscany. Histories like Francesco Bocchi’s served not only to present the Grand Duchy as distinct from other city-­states in Italy, but also to oppose a dominant Hispano-­Habsburg influence on the Italian peninsula. Bocchi’s history fits the picture we have of the Italian historiography of the Revolt. Many Italian regions were either part of or closely connected with the  Hispano-­Habsburg Empire. This geopolitical situation in early modern Italy determined to a great extent the nature of the Italian historiography about the Dutch wars. Writing their histories enabled some Italian historians to express themselves critically and subtly about the Hispano-­Habsburg policies in the Low Countries. However, as is clear from their histories, Conestaggio and Bocchi also implicitly referred to political developments and disputes in their own city or region. Notes

  1 Carlos Coloma de Saa, Las Guerras de los Estados Baxos desde el año de M.D.LXXXVIII hasta el de M.D.XCIX (Antwerp: Pedro and Juan Bellero, 1624), pp. 6–8.   2 Coloma de Saa, Las Guerras de los Estados Baxos, p. 6: ‘soldado de estimacion, mientras militó debaxo de nuestras banderas, y aventajado coronistica de si mismo, y de su nacion’.   3 Pompeo Giustiniani, Delle Guerre di Fiandra Libri VI (Antwerp: Ioachimo Trognesio, 1609); Cesare Campana, Della guerra di Fiandra fatta per difesa di Religione da Cattolici Re di Spagna Filippo II e Filippo III di tal nome, 2 vols (Vicenza: Giorgio Greco, 1602); Francesco Lanario, Le guerre di Fiandra brevemente narrate (Antwerp: Geronimo Verdussen, 1615); Gerolamo Conestaggio, Delle Guerre della Germania Inferiore (Venice: Antonio Pinelli, 1614).   4 Coloma de Saa, Las Guerras de los Estados Baxos, pp. 6–7; Gerolamo Conestaggio, Dell’unione del regno di Portogallo alla corona di Castiglia (Genoa: Girolamo Bartoli, 1585). The Spanish translation: Gerolamo Conestaggio, Historia de la union del reyno de Portugal, a la corona de Castilla (Barcelona: Sebastian de Cormellas, 1610).   5 Coloma de Saa, Las Guerras de los Estados Baxos, p.  6; Pieter Bor, Oorspronck, begin ende aenvang der Nederlantschen oorlogen en beroerten ende Borgerlijcke oneenicheyden (The Hague: Beuckel Cornelisz. Nieulandt, 1603); Emanuel van Meteren, Belgische ofte Nederlandsche historie van onsen tijden (Delft: Jacob Cornelisz. Vennekool, 1599).   6 Coloma de Saa, Las Guerras de los Estados Baxos, p. 5; as for the perception of the Dutch Revolt in early modern Spanish historiography and literature, see Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez, The Dutch Revolt through Spanish Eyes. Self and Other in Historical and Literary Texts of Golden Age Spain (c.1548–1673) (Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang, 2008).   7 S. Moretti, ‘La trattatistica italiana e la guerra. Il conflitto tra la Spagna e le Fiandre (1566– 1609)’, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, 20 (1994), 129–64; see also my article: Cees Reijner, ‘Il mito dell’Olanda. Politiek en geschiedschrijving in vroegmodern Italië’, Incontri, 30:2 (2015), 41–55.   8 Hispano-­Habsburg troops were stationed in the Spanish territories on the Italian peninsula in order to keep the peace. When urgently needed, these troops were deployed in other parts of the Habsburg Empire. Until 1590 every ‘nation’ had its own regiments within the Habsburg army.   9 Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 25–7. 10 Some examples of the extensive literature on rivalry and military careers in the Habsburg Army: Parker, Army of Flanders, pp. 100–2; Angelantonio Spagnoletti, ‘Onore e spirito nazionale nei soldati italiani al servizio della monarchia spagnola’, in Claudio Donati and Bernhard R. Kroener (eds), Militari e società civile nell’Europa dell’età moderna (secoli XVI–XVIII) (Bologna:

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Il Mulino, 2007), pp. 211–53; Giuseppe Bertini, ‘Carriere di militari italiani nell’esercito di Alessandro Farnese nei Paesi Bassi: merito o privilegio’, in Giuseppe Bertini (ed.), Militari italiani dell’esercito di Alessandro Farnese nelle Fiandre (Fidenza: Mattioli 1885, 2013), pp. 171–203. For the participation of the Italian nobility in the officer corps of the Habsburg army, see Gregory Hanlon, The Twilight of a Military Tradition. Italian Aristocrats and European Conflicts, 1560–1800 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1998); for the participation of Neapolitan soldiers in the Habsburg army, see Angelantonio Spagnoletti, ‘Quale patriottismo per i soldati napoletani al servizio della Monarchia Cattolica?’, in Enrique García Hernán and Davide Maffi (eds), Guerra y Sociedad en la Monarquía Hispánica. Política, Estrategia y Cultura en la Europa Moderna (1500–1700), vol. II (Madrid: Ediciones del Laberinto, 2006), pp. 163–77. 11 In addition, in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries dozens of pamphlets were published that denounced the mutinies and reported on the violence perpetrated by mutinous soldiers of the Hispano-­Habsburg army. See Fernando Martínez Luna, Een ondraaglijk juk. Nederlandse beeldvorming van Spanje en de Spanjaarden ten tijde van de Opstand 1566/1609 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2018), pp. 117–37. For mutinies in the royal army, see Geoffrey Parker, ‘Mutiny and discontent in the Spanish army of Flanders, 1572–1607’, in Geoffrey Parker, Spain and the Netherlands 1559–1659. Ten Studies (London: Collins, 1979), pp. 106–21; D.J.B. Trim, ‘Ideology, greed, and social discontent in Early Modern Europe. Mercenaries and mutinies in the rebellious Netherlands, 1568–1609’, in Jane Hathaway (ed.), Rebellion, Repression, Reinvention. Mutiny in Comparative Perpective (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007), pp. 47–62; Peter Arnade, Beggars, Iconoclasts and Civic Patriots. The Political Culture of the Dutch Revolt (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2008), pp. 212–59; Lisa Kattenberg, ‘Military rebellion and reason of state. Pacification of mutinies in the Habsburg army of Flanders, 1599–1601’, BMGN-Low Countries Historical Review, 131:2 (2016), 3–21. 12 Guido Bentivoglio, Della Guerra di Fiandra, vol. 1 (Cologne, Rome, 1632–39), pp. 169–73. 13 The diplomatic account on the Republic has been recorded in: Guido Bentivoglio, Relationi fatte dall’ill.mo, e rev.mo sig.or cardinal Bentivoglio in tempo delle sue nuntiature di Fiandra, e di Francia. Date in luce da Erycio Puteano (Antwerp: Jan van Meerbeeck, 1629). 14 Based on Guido Bentivoglio, Relationi fatte dall’ill.mo, e rev.mo sig.or cardinal Bentivoglio. Date in luce da Erycio Puteano (Cologne: Nicolao Pantino, 1629), pp. 34–5. This is a second edition which, according to the information on the title page in 1629, was published at Cologne by one ‘Nicolao Pantino’. It is likely that this is a false imprint and that this edition too was published by the Antwerp printer Jan van Meerbeeck. 15 For the Spanish Fury, see Pierre Génard, La Furie espagnole. Documents pour servir à l’histoire du Sac d’Anvers en 1576 (Antwerp: G. van Merlen, 1876); Et. Rooms, ‘Een nieuwe visie op de gebeurtenissen die geleid hebben tot de Spaanse Furie te Antwerpen op 4 november 1576’, Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis, 1:2 (1971), 31–55; Raymond Fagel, ‘Gascoigne’s The Spoyle of Antwerpe (1576) as an Anglo-­Dutch text’, Dutch Crossing, 41:2 (2017), 101–10. 16 According to Bentivoglio, Juan Navarrese (Juan de Navarrete), the electo of the mutinous soldiers, was among the 200 Spanish soldiers who were killed, see Bentivoglio, Della Guerra di Fiandra, vol. 1, p. 210. 17 Bentivoglio, Della Guerra di Fiandra, vol. I, p. 208. On Julián Romero, see Raymond Fagel, Kapitein Julián. De Spaanse held van de Nederlandse Opstand (Hilversum: Verloren, 2011); Raymond Fagel, ‘Julián, un héroe Español en Flandes. Entre el príncipe de Orange y el duque de Alba’, in René Vermeir, Maurits Ebben and Raymond Fagel (eds), Agentes e identidades en movimiento España y los Países Bajos siglos XVI–XVIII (Madrid: Silex, 2011), pp. 271–88. 18 Bentivoglio, Della Guerra di Fiandra, vol. 1, p. 209. 19 Ibid., p. 210. 20 See for example Bentivoglio’s description of the developments and causes that would, in the end, lead to the Spanish Fury. He considers the passionate resolve of William of Orange as one of the causes, but the Italian also refers to the Spanish who, because of the mutinies of a few army units, had brought the situation in the insurgent Low Countries to a head. See Bentivoglio, Della Guerra di Fiandra, vol. 1, p. 200.

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21 ‘Erano in Anversa piu di 14.000 Terrazzani, armati, oltre la gente forastiera; e nondimeno gli Spagnuoli, in cosi picciol’ numero, vi fecero grandissima strage, essendosi scritto, che vi morissero piu di 7000 persone, parte di ferro e parte estinte dal fuoco’, Lanario, Le Guerre di Fiandra brevemente narrate, pp. 53–4. It is remarkable that the pro-­Spanish authors also reported a large number of victims, whereas the real number was actually much smaller. Of course, by doing so the authors only helped to increase anti-­Spanish sentiments. Recent publications estimate the number of dead at 2,500. See Anton van der Lem, Revolt in the Netherlands. The Eighty Years War, 1568–1648 (London: Reaktion Books, 2018), p. 112. 22 Famiano Strada, Della guerra di Fiandra, deca prima (Rome: Hermann Scheus, 1638), pp. 417– 18: ‘Hor’intorno al racconto della strage, e del computo de’ morti, svariano infinitamente quegl’istessi che vi si trovarono, quanto tocca à gli Spagnuoli, delli quali alcuni vogliono, che ne morissero almeno dugento, ed essi Spagnuoli non ne confessano, se non quattordici: là dove de i soldati de gli Stati, e de’ Cittadini esserne morti sopra sei mila’. 23 See my article on Gerolamo Conestaggio: Cees Reijner, ‘Een Italiaanse verdediger van de Opstand? De internationale controverse rond het werk van Gerolamo Conestaggio’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 125:2 (2012), 172–87. 24 Gerolamo Conestaggio, Historia delle guerre della Germania Inferiore (Leiden: Bonaventura and Abraham Elzevier, 1634), pp. 449–50: ‘non saper risolversi à dire di che religione fossero li soldati Spagnuoli, specialmente gli ammottinati, havendo gli effetti troppo differenti dalle parole […] quante in un’animo atheista possano capire; ma son frutti della guerra’. 25 Conestaggio, Historia delle guerre della Germania Inferiore, p. 449: ‘non rimase niuna sorte di tormente, per crudele che sia […]; gl’innocenti furono trattati come i colpevoli; perche i mercantanti forestieri […] che non havean colpa nella guerra, furono trattati come gli altri’. 26 Conestaggio’s work was considered controversial at the Spanish court. This is clear from some, especially Spanish, publications that severely criticise his history of the Revolt. See Reijner, ‘Een Italiaanse verdediger’, pp. 181–6. 27 Reijner, ‘Il mito dell’Olanda’, pp. 48–51. 28 Francesco Bocchi, Historia della ribellione della Fiandra, avvenuta sotto la corona del Re Cattolico, Filippo di Spagna (Archivio di Stato di Firenze. Carte Strozziane, Prima serie n. 275). 29 On the official historiography in Florence during the Medici governments see for example Elena Fasano Guarini and Franco Angiolini (eds), La pratica della storia in Toscana. Continuità e mutamenti tra la fine del ‘400 e la fine del ‘700 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2009); Caroline Callard, Le Prince et la République. Histoire, pouvoir et société dans la Florence des Médicis au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Presses de la Université Paris-­Sorbonne, 2007). 30 Bocchi, Historia della Ribellione, pp. 138–9. 31 No doubt Bocchi has taken the story of the two young women of Antwerp (‘due giovani fiamminghe molto belle’) from Pedro Cornejo’s history of the Revolt, see Bocchi, Historia della Ribellione, pp. 136–7. The Italian edition of Cornejo’s history appeared one year after the original Spanish edition from 1581: Pedro Cornejo, Della historia di Fiandra, di Pietro Cornelio libri X, nella quale si vede l’origine delle civili dissensioni …: con la descrittione di tutto quel paese (Brescia: Pietro Maria Marchetti, 1582). The Florentine author remoulded Cornejo’s history of the two sisters into a greatly exaggerated heroic story. The dramatic tone in Bocchi’s manuscript draws upon the literary skills of the Florentine humanist. What is striking in the description of the adventures of the two sisters is his wording. The words courage (‘ardire’) and passion (‘adore’) alternate in the passages about the bombardment of the city. See Cornejo, Della historia di Fiandra, p. 126. 32 Bocchi, Historia della Ribellione, pp. 136–7. 33 Ibid., p.  137: ‘abbattere gli Spagnoli per esser padroni in casa sua [e] levar dalla Fiandra i forestieri per vivere in pace’. The main motive for the rebels was, according to Bocchi, their longing for peace and freedom. Cornejo provides us with a different description of the dogged resistance of the women and their fellow citizens. They were anxious, according to the Spanish chronicler, to avenge their anger on the Spaniards. However, the author adds that, since

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there is no army more disciplined than the Spanish royal troops, he does not understand what caused this hatred for the Spaniards. This is acknowledged even by their greatest enemies. See Cornejo, Della historia di Fiandra, pp. 126–7. 34 See for instance Spagnoletti, ‘Onore e spirito nazionale’, pp. 211–53.

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5 Narrating mutiny in the army of Flanders: Cristóbal Rodríguez Alva’s La inquieta Flandes (1594) Miguel Martínez

‘Mutinies have happened since armies were first gathered for war and slaves for work, and the first crews of ships endured the sea.’ This sentence opened Tom H. Wintringham’s survey of mutiny throughout history, from Spartacus to the French soldiers of the Western Front in 1917.1 Wintringham (1898–1949), who had been a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain since 1923, was a veteran of the Great War, and an experienced mutineer himself when he wrote the book in 1936. Pioneering in many ways, his work reinscribed mutiny, ‘the revolt of men under discipline of life and death’, into a Marxist ­metanarrative – ­the history of all societies, he seems to say, is the history of that particular form of class struggle represented by mutiny.2 Wintringham’s bold gesture, however disputable, had the virtue of linking soldierly unrest to larger issues of social and cultural history that more focused and rigorous military historians have occasionally tended to avoid. What is most interesting about Wintrigham’s wide-­ranging survey, however, is that, while most accounts of mutiny have historically come from the officers in charge of repressing them, he offered a view from the ranks that was very attentive to the rationale, the feelings and the narratives of the mutineers themselves. Mutiny was inseparable from the practice of warfare in early modern Europe, and it has been well studied.3 Thanks to the masterful studies of Geoffrey Parker, moreover, soldierly riots in the army of Flanders have been at the centre of almost all historical accounts of the Eighty Years’ War.4 The cultural dimensions of mutiny, the ways in which its protagonists imagined, discussed and made sense of their actions are nonetheless in need of more scholarly attention. How do mutineers think about their own practices? How did they articulate collective subjects around a concrete set of limited demands? What is their capacity to define the terms of the conflict with

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authority? What are the vocabularies that articulate the language of protest in the documents they produced? And finally, and more importantly for the theme of this volume, how do they tell the story of their own uprising against their commanders and their king? While some of these questions require further research, this chapter is a preliminary attempt to explore the ways in which participant soldiers imagined mutiny during the Eighty Years’ War by narrating it in epic verse. By focusing on one particular text depicting soldierly revolt, I aim to contribute to the study of the practices and imaginaries of early modern mutineers, their repertoires of collective action, and the tropes and emplotment strategies that shaped the documents they produced. In this particular case, rather than focusing on letters and treatises or capitulaciones, I focus on an outstanding narrative poem produced by an infantry soldier who served in the army of Flanders in the last two decades of the sixteenth century, and who witnessed and participated in mutinies. Cristóbal Rodríguez Alva was a professional soldier who fought in Italy and the Low Countries. In 1594, in Turin, he finished an epic poem in ottava rima titled La inquieta Flandes. Poesía heroica de Christóual Rodríguez Alua, natural de la ciudad de Mérida. Debaxo de la qual se cuentan verdaderamente los ssuçessos de Flandes desde el año de mill y quis ochenta y çinco hasta el de nouenta. Dirigida a don Joan de Ydiáquez, comendador de Socuéllamos y de los Consejos de Estado y Guerra del rey nuestro señor. La inquieta Flandes, or The Restless Flanders, is preserved in a s­ ingle – ­to my ­knowledge – ­manuscript copy now kept at Spain’s National Library in Madrid (BNE).5 Both the paper and the clear handwriting, perhaps by more than one copyist, seem to be consistent with the time of composition in the last two decades of the sixteenth century. The neatness of the surviving copy and the manuscript signatures at the bottom of the recto side of some ­ hich indicate gatherings of eighteen ­pages – s­uggest that the poem ­folios – w was almost ready for the printing press. In 1895, the manuscript belonged to the Biblioteca di S. Ignazio in Vigevano, a small town in the province of Pavia, close to Milan. This library was formed by the canon of the Vigevano cathedral, Giovanni Maria Ferrara, in 1694. According to Parker, the manuscript was acquired by the BNE in 1993.6 A cursory material history of the volume indicates that La inquieta Flandes must have not been widely read and its circulation, if any, may have never gone very far beyond its place of composition in northern Italy. The poem narrates in 28 detailed cantos and over 18,000 verses the events of the war in the Netherlands from 1585 to 1590, when Rodríguez Alva saw action under the command of his dedicatee, maestre de campo Alonso de Idiáquez. Although we know nothing about the author’s biographical background, he seems to have been well connected with some important leaders of the army of Flanders: a good number of high-­ranking commanding officers

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provided commendatory pieces for his promising epic.7 The writers of preliminary poems would have not failed to note if Rodríguez Alva was a hidalgo, had he been one. Despite the courteous ways of laudatory sonnets and epigrams, the poet is never addressed as don. Among his poet and soldier friends, Sánchez de León lists ‘ingenuity, intelligence, valour, and art’ (ingenio, discreción, esfuerzo y arte) as the author’s conventional virtues.8 The fact that nobility is not listed among them could persuade us that Cristóbal Rodríguez Alva was a commoner despite his good standing in the army of Flanders. In 1577, Pedro Cornejo published in Lyon his Sumario de las guerras civiles, y causas de la rebelión de Flandres; and Bernardino de Mendoza’s Comentarios de lo sucedido en las guerras de los Países Bajos desde el año de 1567 hasta el de 1577 appeared in Madrid in 1592. Neither of these works covers the period 1585–90, which is the focus of Rodríguez Alva’s historical poem. La inquieta Flandes, while written in ottava rima, as is characteristic of Renaissance epic poetry, predates most of the Spanish narrative accounts of the Eighty Years’ War, such as Carlos Coloma’s Las guerras de los Estados Bajos desde el 1588 hasta el 1599 (1622), Francesco Lanario’s Las Guerras de Flandes, desde el año de mil y quinientos y cincuenta y nueve hasta el de seiscientos y nueve (1623), or Antonio Carnero’s Historia de las guerras civilies que ha habido en los estados de Flandes desde el año 1559 hasta el de 1609 (1625), to name a few. The same is true for works by Diego de Villalobos, Alonso Vázquez and Francisco Verdugo. Rodríguez Alva’s poem thus constitutes a crucial, though overlooked, source for the study of war narratives of the Revolt in the Low Countries and certainly deserves a critical edition and historiographical attention.9 Rodríguez Alva maintained that the events depicted in his epic poem ‘have been entirely seen by my eyes’ (es toda obra por mis ojos vista) as did many other soldiers who offered their own firsthand accounts of their and their comrades’ exploits; he claimed, moreover, that the lines of his poem were ‘watered with the blood of [his] veins, and written among the arms and the furor of death’ (regada con la sangre de mis venas y escrita en medio de armas y furor de muerte). As I have argued elsewhere, writing on the front line entailed a sort of precarious survival amidst the violent urgencies and unpredictable contingencies of early modern warfare.10 That Rodríguez Alva witnessed most of the events he recounted is undoubtedly true. So is his claim that his history of the war was written in the ‘truthful fashion’ (estilo verdadero) of soldierly writing and contained ‘many details that are necessary to know for the practice of warfare’ (muchas curiosidades que en la milicia es forzoso saber). These included practical instructions not only on how to batter and assault a city, or to defend a position, but also on how to recount and represent battles.11 This insistent rhetoric of truthful eyewitnessing notwithstanding, Rodríguez Alva’s Flemish epic draws heavily

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on the previous tradition of Renaissance heroic poetry written in Spanish. In particular he imitates Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana (1569–89), a hugely influential epic poem on the Spanish attempts to quell the first general rebellion of the Chilean Mapuche in the 1550s. Like Rodríguez Alva, Ercilla was a first-­hand witness to some of the war events he wrote about. While never mentioned explicitly, La Araucana remains a powerful, yet problematic, model for Rodríguez Alva’s epic of Flanders, which replicates some of Ercilla’s most characteristic structural and rhetorical devices, fictional characters and episodes, and the soldierly ethos of the narrative.12 Rodríguez Alva sings, says the exordium of his poem, el valor, proezas, gallardía. altas impresas y efectos altos de los varones que la España envía contra las belgas gentes de fe faltos.13 the valour, deeds, gallantry, high endeavours and achievements of those men that Spain sends against the infidel Belgian people.

He describes, in Ercilla’s fashion, the landscape, economy, political organization and customs of the ‘Belgians’. His protagonists are not only the commanders of the two armies, but also the low-­ranking officers (sergeants, lieutenants, corporals) and rank-­and-­file pikemen and arquebusiers that he tirelessly lists taking part in different military actions. The poetic catalogue, a time-­honoured narrative and prosodic device in the epic tradition, becomes in La inquieta Flandes a key strategy to give identity to some of the lesser protagonists of the Eighty Years’ War. Some of the plebeian names of the common soldiers reappear in more than one canto, as if giving momentary biographical continuity to the lives of fighting men, running against the ‘unnatural anonymity [that] marks late Renaissance battlefields and siege trenches’, according to John Hale.14 These common soldiers, however, did not only take part in sieges, defences, trench warfare or ­ambushes – ­the kind of military actions that win battles, gain honour and determine the outcome of a war. One of the most interesting aspects of Rodríguez Alva’s text is that it embraces the narration of mutiny with the same enthusiasm with which it extols the military virtue of his fighting comrades. In one of the preliminary poems to the epic, Francisco Calderón includes mutiny, ‘fierce uprisings’ (alborotos fieros), as a legitimate matter of the narrative. Mutinies are not, in Rodríguez Alva’s text, an exception, just as they were not an exception in the war. At least cantos 3, 4, 13, 26 and 28 narrate riots against military authorities. As paradoxical as it may seem,

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armed ­disobedience – ­and even ­rebellion – ­against the chain of command seems to have been a perfectly epic matter for some narratives about the war in the Low Countries.15 The first ‘alteration’ Rodríguez Alva narrates is the mutiny of Bommel (Bommelerwaard) in the summer of 1589.16 The main motive for the uprising was, as usual, ‘that they had been campaigning / for more than five years with much affliction / having received not even fifteen payments’ (el haber que servían en campaña/ cinco años y más con muchas plagas/ no habiendo recebido quince pagas).17 The problem, however, was never exclusively the king’s delays in paying the soldiers’ salaries. In this case servicemen associated their misery with the corruption of officers and administrators: [El dinero] nadie sabía qué se hiciese, ni a do se despendía ni en qué parte, y cuanto a Flandes le venía de allende parecía moneda ser de duende. [The money,] nobody knew where it went, or where it was spent, and all that came to Flanders seemed to be leprechaun coin.

Several tercios, with Lombardy’s tercio viejo taking a leading role, exploded and ­rebelled – ­the metaphorical figuration of mutiny in both poetic and prose narratives always has to do with bursting, detonating, overflowing: En fin la hinchazón que ya brotaba saltó de golpe la represa amarga: dos tercios fueron en común consejo y en el primer crujido el tercio viejo. Finally the swelling build-­up burst out from the bitter dam, two tercios collectively decided [to rebel] and the Lombardy’s tercio joined at the first crack.

The mutiny would last for only one day: the authorities disrupted it by immediately ‘reforming’ or discharging the entire units involved in the tumults.18 In Rodríguez Alva’s text, a marginal annotation calls the attention of the reader to one particular stanza that openly criticizes the dismantling (reformación) of the unit: ¡Oh Madre España cuánto te ha costado esta reformación que aquí heciste! Pues como fue tu mando ejecutado de tristísimo luto nos cubriste,

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el ánimo perdió cada soldado y al enemigo fiero se le diste: tanto que desde entonces hasta agora no has sacado una mano vencedora. Oh Mother Spain, how much this dismissal has cost you! For as soon as your orders were executed you threw us in the saddest mourning, every soldier lost his valour and emboldened the fierce enemy: so much so that ever since then you have not played a single winning hand.

What caused the turn of fortune in the w ­ ar – a­ nnounces the vatic voice of the poet with the emphatic address of prosopopeia, ‘¡Oh Madre España …!’ – is not mutiny itself, but the decision made to tackle it by dismissing the units. A few folios ahead, in canto 4, Rodríguez Alva has no problem in acknowledging that he personally participated in a mutiny which he refers to as ‘our discontent’ (nuestro descontento).19 The common soldiery of the army of Flanders, who are the true heroes of the epic plot in this narrative, are always on the verge of rioting, when they are not well into their mutinies already. The restlessness of The Restless Flanders is thus not only the rebellion of the States, but also the permanent social and labour tension within the massive armies of the ­monarchy – G ­ abriel Wymans had spoken of ‘chronic revolt’.20 Indeed, Rodríguez Alva also registers the mutinies that took place in the enemy’s camp. Those who are heretics when found in the opposite trench are capable of ‘valiant deeds’ (gallardos hechos) when fighting for their lives and against their own commanders.21 Rodríguez Alva might very well have heard about the events in the town of Geertruidenberg (Gitrenbergue in the Spanish text), where the Dutch mutinied. But in any case, the dynamics of mutiny, its practices and social meanings, were very similar on both sides of a conflict always fought by multinational armies. In fact, the Dutch seem to have learned how to mutiny from the Spanish.22 The rumours of the offended troops always precede the explosion of an organized uprising in the garrison: ‘Coteries gather every day / and they murmur about the delays in payment’ (corrillos van haciendo cada día / y el dilatar de pagas se murmura).23 Corrillos refer to the popular sphere of soldierly public opinion, which Sancho de Londoño’s foundational regulations attempted to suppress: ‘there shall not be secret gatherings or public coteries, because that is where mutinies are formed and they conjecture about what has been discussed in secret by the military command, from which many times

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the enemy is warned and the defenders of posts are discouraged’ (que no haya juntas secretas ni corrillos públicos, porque en los tales se fabrican los motines y se trata por conjecturas de quanto pasa en los consejos secretos, de que procede avisar a los enemigos para que se aperciban y muchas veces desaniman a los que tienen cargos de defender fortalezas).24 Once it starts, the mutiny wreaks havoc in the army: Quien mata al capitán, quien descalabra al sargento, o al alférez que cogía, quien a menudo pasa la palabra ‘¡muera el traidor que esto defendía!’ Quien con bastón ñudoso allí le labra al soldado que blando le sentía crece el rumor confuso de tal suerte que los unos a otros se dan muerte.25 Someone kills the captain, someone wounds the sergeant, or the caught lieutenant; someone spreads the word: ‘Death to the traitor who defends this!’ Someone with a hard stick hits the soldier he deemed too soft. The perplexing uproar mounts to the point that everyone starts killing one another.

Like other narratives dealing with mutiny, Rodríguez Alva’s account depicts the outbreak of a mutiny as disorderly and confusing. Very quickly, however, two sides are formed: those who support it and those who do not. According to some testimonies, ‘¡afuera los Guzmanes!’ was a common war cry among mutineers in the initial moments of a rebellion: it was used to draw the lines between the two sides and to boost the morale of the disobedient troops. The Guzmanes – the proper noun turned into a common ­one – ­were ‘men of noble lineage’ and upbringing, who ‘always go around well dressed and well equipped’ (hombres de buena ­casta … ­de buena ­crianza … ­andan siempre bien aderezados y galanes), according to Diego Montes.26 While some scholars have questioned the clear-­cut social distinction that the war cry seems to draw, the performative power was undoubtedly effective to rally the rank-­ and-­file against their military superiors.27 Rodríguez Alva’s account, however, records a slightly different oppositional logic in the Dutch mutiny of Geertruidenberg: ‘Some say “death to the bad government!” / others respond “long live Mauricio!”’ (‘Unos “el mal gobierno, dicen, muera,” / otros “¡viva Mauricio!” replicaban’): the lines that divide the rebels and the loyalists are more openly political than in other cases. The usage of a phrase such as ‘mal

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gobierno’, would be consistent with Rodríguez Alva’s deployment of a political vocabulary that links the discourses of military and civilian revolt in early modern Spain. Despite the violence of the initial moments of a mutiny, as narrated in La inquieta Flandes, those who remain loyal to the military authorities are usually allowed to leave the camp. Officers who take sides with the m ­ utineers – n­ ot an uncommon d­ evelopment – a­re allowed to join the mutiny only if they renounce their rank and agree to serve on equal footing with rank-­and-­file soldiers. This kind of horizontality, as well as the rioters’ traditions of elected leadership and representational politics has been characterized by some historians as democratic.28 Rodríguez Alva’s poem recounts some of the social and political practices that sustained almost any early modern mutiny. His point of view as a rank-­and-­file poet soldier and very likely a mutineer himself is particularly compelling: Formado el escuadrón en plaza y calles, un dispuesto soldado de él sacaron a quien para mandar y gobernalles todos de mancomún le señalaron.29 Once the squadron was formed in the square and the streets they selected an apt soldier, whom they collectively singled out to command and govern them.

The collective appointment of the electo is immediately followed by another vote to decide who will partake in the council in charge of the destinies of the mutiny. In order to avoid the usual abuses of those officers in charge of internal discipline and order, the sergeancy rotates daily among the soldiers: Al consejo de guerra se han nombrado seis práticos soldados animosos, los cuales con acuerdo recatado provean en los tránsitos forzosos y a cada compañía señalado hubieron de los mozos más briosos un sargento, el cual pasado un día provea en otro él la sargentía.30 Six practical valiant soldiers were elected to the war council, who with prudent agreement would govern in troubled times; and for every company they picked – among the most spirited young men –

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a sergeant who, by the end of the day, would pass on the rank to another one.

However idealized, Rodríguez Alva powerfully depicts the spaces of collective deliberation enabled by the mutineers’ rupture of military authority. The egalitarian exchange of views, the autonomy of self-­government, and the handling of the negotiations by the collective body of the common soldiery are recounted by the poet: Si entre ellos hay diversas opiniones de algunas repentinas novedades cartas, chismes, capitulaciones, graves sospechas o contrariedades, a modo de batalla en escuadrones dicen su parecer y voluntades: sobre ello se decreta muy aína y lo útil se sigue y determina.31 Whenever there are different opinions among them regarding new developments, letters, rumours, agreements, grave suspicions or setbacks, in squadrons, as if in battle order, they share their opinions and wills: then a ruling is quickly made and the common good is determined and followed.

The words and phrases I have ­highlighted – ­bad government (el mal gobierno), collectively (de mancomún), novelties (novedades), diverse opinions (diversas opiniones), the common good (lo útil) – constitute a rich vocabulary that links the rhetorical strategies and self-­representations of the mutineers to the political language of their civilian counterparts, the language of early modern popular revolt. The egalitarianism of the escuadrón – here understood in opposition to the elected council, not as the tactical fighting ­unit – ­offered ways of socialization that are utterly opposed to the hierarchical discipline of the ideal army. Mutinies reorganized loyalties, but also allowed room for political experimentation. The class ethos of the rank-­and-­file in early modern armies gave way, as Parker suggested, to ephemeral egalitarian republics. The Machiavellian idea that military discipline, for instance, was one of the ‘socializing processes through which men learned to be political animals’ can give us a sense of the relevance of mutiny in the configuration of political subjectivities within the army. ‘There is an intrinsic connection’, continued Pocock in his reading of Machiavelli, ‘between military expansion, the arming of the plebeians and the vivere popolare.’32 This is why the connections between the lexicon

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of Rodríguez Alva’s mutineers and the vocabularies of early modern popular republicanism deserve further study.33 The powerful performativity of a shout like ‘afuera los guzmanes’, or ‘mueran los traidores’ (death to the traitors), or ‘lo queremos todo’ (we want it all), contributed to the constitution of a coherent social subject for collective action that had the potential to persist once the mutiny was defused. Instead of being prepolitical forms of labour agitation, mutinies contributed to a radical political culture linked to the common soldiers’ socio-­professional identity that transcended the immediate disputes for their salary. The texts these soldiers wrote celebrated the epic of collective action and rioting camaraderie, the self-­sufficiency of a soldierly body ephemerally in power of their own destiny. As John Hale put it, ‘nothing so fused a sense of solidarity among soldiers off the battlefield as mutiny’.34 Rodríguez Alva’s La inquieta Flandes is, to my mind, a key text for us to understand the narrative cultures of Spanish soldiers in the army of Flanders and the ways they intersect with the practices and imaginaries of the early modern mutiny. In addition to soldierly protest, La inquieta Flandes provides insight into a series of heterodox practices, particularly regarding religious beliefs and sexuality that seem to have taken root in the tumultuous and plebeian cultures of the rank-­and-­file soldiery of the late sixteenth century. Canto 5 recounts how the author Cristóbal Rodríguez, turned fictional protagonist of his own narrative, meets with Charlota, the daughter of magician Gociano, a fantastic character that squarely imitates Ercilla’s Fitón in La Araucana. These kinds of imaginative interludes were common in Renaissance epic poems that, while distancing themselves from the aristocratic and chivalric ethos of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, were crucially influenced by one of the most widely read texts of Renaissance Europe. Even within the context of the most fictional passage of the entire poem, canto 6 of La inquieta Flandes surprises the reader with a stanza that has been scratched out: Contra el factal destino es devaneo querer torcer el hombre cosa alguna, pues no puede eximirse del trofeo que va predestinado su fortuna; bien puede vacilando algún rodeo tomar de la ocasión que le importuna, pero a la fin riqueza o poderío no bastan al decreto dar desvío.35 It is futile that a man tries to bend fate or destiny in any way, for he cannot avoid the outcome

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that fortune has predestined; he can perhaps take a little detour to go grab the occasion as it arrives, but in the end money or power will not suffice to avert the decree.

Predestination was undoubtedly one of the most divisive theological issues in post-­Reformation Europe.36 However simplified in this stanza, Rodríguez Alva’s usage of loaded terms (‘factal destino’, ‘predestinado’, ‘decreto’) must have triggered all the alarms for some readers of this particular copy. The extremely controversial nature of the theme was even more troubling in a poem that narrated the Spanish Habsburgs’ desperate efforts to contain the spread of Protestantism within and without their dominions, and particularly the power of Calvinism in the Low Countries. The scratched-­out lines in La inquieta Flandes, however, remind us that issues of faith and doctrine must not have been so far removed from the daily conversations of soldiers fighting in a multi-­confessional army and living among ‘the infidel Belgians’ (las belgas gentes de fe faltos).37 We find deletions and corrections in other sections of the poem, yet in most cases the revision seems to obey an aesthetic or poetic logic to improve prosody, metrics or the general structure of the octave. It is certainly not the case here: whether the symptom of an underground spirituality among the soldiery or the echo of everyday conversations in the barracks and trenches of the Low Countries, religious heterodoxy emerges in the narrative texture of La inquieta Flandes; and this appearance is troubling enough to force a reader, a copyist or the author himself, to edit it out of the poem. John Milton’s Paradise Lost includes a scene where the demons discuss ‘providence, foreknowledge, will and fate / fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, / and found no end, in wandering mazes lost’.38 That the soldiers of Satan’s cosmic rebellion appear chatting about theological topics of forbidding intricacy gives us the measure of the stanza’s significance in the context of the religious wars in the Low Countries. Rodríguez Alva’s rich verse, its detailed narrative capaciousness, portrays a ‘society of soldiers’ that created constant trouble for the authorities that employed them, whether we think of organized labour strikes or the overly free conversations about matters of faith among loquacious infantrymen.39 La inquieta Flandes, moreover, includes a celebration of same-­sex love between two soldiers that should invite scholars to further study the significance of non-­ normative sexualities in the spaces of war in the Low Countries. In canto 12, a story modelled after the Virgilian episode of Nisus and Euryalus in the Aeneid (Book 9), recounts the love and heroic exploits (‘heroic desire’) between soldiers Pierres Estien and Ricardo, who infiltrate the enemy lines to secretly

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4  Cristóbal Rodríguez Alva, deleted stanza on predestination, La inquieta Flandes, 1594

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introduce a military engineer into the Spanish camp of Grave, in the Duchy of Brabant. An entire canto is devoted to the fictional affair, in which the two soldiers exchange loving words (‘dulce amigo’, ‘tú eres siempre como yo soy tuyo’) and display physical affection: El fuerte Pierre Estien el brazo al cuello al bizarro mancebo le cruzaba, y con amor y sentimiento bello, las mejillas y frente le besaba; al cabo dijo alzándole el cabello: ‘no sé, dulce Ricardo, qué ira brava me espolea, me aguija y facilita y a cosas altas este pecho incita.’40 The strong Pierre Estien put his arm around the neck of the valiant soldier, and with love and kind tenderness kissed his cheeks and forehead; then he cleared his hair and said ‘I do not know, sweet Ricardo, what’s this ire that spurs, goads, and eases in and to high deeds incites my heart.’

While closely following its classical source, the early modern elaboration of a romance between two male soldiers may have startled some of the author’s contemporaries. And yet, what seems to me most significant about Rodríguez Alva’s text is the naturalness with which it narrates masculinized friendship and same-­sex love in the army of Flanders. Erotic restraint was certainly a crucial aspect of military discipline, and sodomy, moreover, was harshly and summarily punished in the tercios.41 And yet, some soldiers defied orders and wrote about it. Andrés Rey de Artieda, another soldier who served in the Low Countries in the late sixteenth century, rewrote the Iliadic story of Achilles and Patroclus in one sonnet titled ‘Vínculo de amistad’.42 Soldierly intimacy in the homosocial spaces of the camarada, the company, and the army at large, as well as the texts soldiers wrote about it, certainly require more scholarly attention. Rodríguez Alva’s story may suggest the existence of more widespread underground sexual cultures in open conflict with the severe ordinances of military discipline.43 Rodríguez Alva’s La inquieta Flandes is, by any measure, an outstanding text, but far from exceptional. A number of common soldiers and low-­ranking officers wrote lyrics, chronicles, ballads and long narrative poems in the same vein as Rodríguez Alva’s. Many men of ‘the school of Alba’ wrote about the war. Alba’s legendary first journey along the Spanish road in 1567 is

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recounted by Baltasar de Vargas’s Breve relación en octava rima de la jornada que ha hecho el ilustrísimo y excelentísimo señor Duque de Alba.44 Diego Ximénez de Ayllón, a minor noble from Andalusia, collected a series of blazon-­like sonnets praising the soldiers and commanding officers of the Spanish army of Flanders. Miguel Giner, an Aragonese arquebusier, wrote El sitio y toma de Anvers (1587, 1588), a highly personal, testimonial poem about the conquest of Antwerp by Alexander Farnese between 1584 and ­1585 – ­a text that was published subsequently in Zaragoza, Milan and Antwerp, an editorial history that almost perfectly overlaps with some nodal points in the Spanish road.45 The Portuguese soldier Emanuel Antunes served in the army from the 1580s to the 1590s and wrote Primera parte de la baxada de los españoles de Francia en Normandía in Rouen, in 1593. In the same years, soldier and lieutenant Pedro Alfonso Pimentel wrote a massive poem about the Guerras civiles de Flandes, which reads like a personal diary recounting over thirty years of campaigning in Flanders.46 While sharing a similar narrative culture and soldierly ethos, not all of these texts show the same attitudes towards soldierly protest and self-­ determination. And yet, we should not be surprised to find in some of these texts of the Eighty Years’ War a similar engagement with dangerous beliefs, heterodox sexualities, and especially mutiny. Take the last one I mentioned, for instance: Pedro Alfonso Pimentel’s long poem narrates the ‘fury of the rioting soldiers’ (el furor de la gente levantada) with the same enthusiasm as does Rodríguez Alva’s work and exhibits the same kind of familiarity with mutiny. Guerras civiles de Flandes narrates, at least, the alterations of Haarlem and Aalst, and weaves into the epic stanzas the versified letter of a group of mutineers from Antwerp to the authorities with whom they were negotiating. Next to some of some stanzas that discussed mutiny we find editorial marginalia, written in the same hand, according to the editor, that comment on the narrative matter. ‘Jesus! 35 months without pay!’ (¡Jesús, 35 meses sin paga!), ‘poor soldiers’ (pobres soldados), or ‘pay earlier and they would not go over to the enemy’ (pagar antes y no se pasaran al enemigo).47 Soldierly discontent is as much the narrative stuff of these texts as the sieges and assaults of sixteenth- and seventeenth-­century military history. There were forty-­six mutinies between 1572 and 1607, an average of two per year, occasionally involving as many as 7,000 men.48 Already in 1574, and referring to the first mutiny of Antwerp, Luis de Requesens wrote that ‘it was not the prince of Orange who had lost the Low Countries, but the soldiers born in Valladolid and Toledo’.49 The resistance of common soldiers, whether active or passive, uncovered the limits of the expansionist and militaristic logics of early modern empires and forced the state to reconsider its foreign policy. Competent, proud, and unruly soldiers such as Rodríguez Alva,

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Pimentel, and the many others who wrote mutinous texts and participated in riots did as much to win battles for the Spanish Habsburgs as they did to shake the foundations of their power. Moreover, by narrating mutiny, soldiers gave meaning to their actions and became, in the words of Michel-­Rolph Trouillot, ‘purposeful subjects aware of their own voices’.50 The connections between the practices and imaginaries of mutinous soldiers and those of the popular radicalism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries offer a promising line of research. The first English Levellers were soldiers of Cromwell’s New Model Army, which Christopher Hill saw ‘as a short-­lived school of political democracy’.51 Mutinies in the Habsburg armies do not seem to have had the ideological depth of these movements, or the political capacity of mutinying Ottoman janissaries, who were able to depose and install sultans in an era that Ottomanist Baki Tezcan called ‘the age of the janissaries’ because of their political protagonism in Constantinople’s court.52 But as I have argued, there are continuities in the political vocabularies and narrative cultures of military mutineers and those of civilian popular uprisings. The relations between soldiers and civilians may not have been exclusively antagonistic. Much remains to be studied regarding the practices and imaginaries of early modern mutineers. Practices such as the publication of carteles, the erection of ‘trees of justice’ in the garrison’s main square, the usage of collective signatures, and the writing of diplomatic letters and internal documents have been identified, but not systematically analysed across a number of mutinies. Similarly, as I have pointed out, we have a sizeable corpus of literary texts written by soldiers from the ranks, who witnessed or participated in mutinies. Cristóbal Rodríguez Alva’s La inquieta Flandes is the perfect representative of the kind of narrative and poetic culture that constituted what I have elsewhere called the soldiers’ republic of letters, but it is also a document of the defiant confidence of the mutinous rank-­and-­file. It is, moreover, an audacious account of the lively underground society developed, in part autonomously, by the soldiers of the army of Flanders: one that was fuelled, to a significant extent, by the pursuit of dignity and liberty in the midst of what modern mutineer Tom Wintringham deemed ‘the blind barbarities of military discipline’.53 Notes

  1 Tom H. Wintringham, Mutiny. Being a Survey of Mutinies from Spartacus to Invergordon (New York: Fortuny’s, 1936), p. 9.   2 Wintringham, Mutiny, p. 338.   3 Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp.  157–76; Clare Anderson et al. (eds), Mutiny and Maritime Radicalism in the Age of Revolution. A Global Survey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Idan Sherer, ‘“All of us, in one voice, Demand what’s owed us”. Mutiny in the Spanish Infantry during the Italian Wars, 1525–1538’, Journal of Military History, 78 (2014),

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893–926; D.J.B. Trim, ‘Ideology, greed, and social discontent in Early Modern Europe. Mercenaries and mutinies in the rebellious Netherlands, 1568–1609’, in Jane Hathaway (ed.), Rebellion, Repression, Reinvention. Mutiny in Comparative Perspective (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007), pp. 47–62; John Morrill, ‘Mutiny and discontent in English provincial armies, 1645– 1647’, Past & Present, 56 (1972), 49–75. For mutinies in the army of Flanders, in addition to Parker’s work, see Lucas de Torre, ‘Los motines militares en Flandes’, Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y museos, 25–32 (1911–15); Gabriel Wymans, ‘Les Mutineries militaires de 1596 à 1606’, Standen en Landen, 39 (1966), 105–21; Fernando González de León, The Road to Rocroi. Class, Culture and Command in the Spanish Army of Flanders, 1567–1659 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), pp. 107–15; Lisa Kattenberg, ‘Military Rebellion and Reason of State Pacification of Mutinies in the Habsburg Army of Flanders, 1599–1601’, BMGN-Low Countries Historical Review, 131:2 (2016), 3–21. This poem (BNE, MSS/22648) has been completely neglected by literary critics. I found the reference in Parker, The Army of Flanders, p. 101, who in his turn thanks Fernando Bouza for mentioning it to him. La inquieta Flandes is the title as it appears on the first folio, but the spine reads Flandes inquieta. The heading of every folio’s verso in the volume reads ‘Sucesos de Flandes’. Geoffrey Parker, ‘Soldados del imperio. El ejército español y los Países Bajos en los inicios de la Edad Moderna’, in Werner Thomas and Robert A. Verdonk (eds), Encuentros en Flandes. Relaciones e intercambios hispano-flamencos a comienzos de la Edad Moderna (Leuven: Leuven University Press/Fundación Duques de Soria, 2000), pp.  275–90, p.  289, n. 37. See also Giuseppe Mazzatinti, Inventari dei manoscritti delle biblioteche d’Italia (Forli: Luigi Bordandini, 1895), 5: pp. 51–2. The preliminaries of La inquieta Flandes were written by Alonso de Idiáquez, Sancho Martínez de Leyva, Simón de Iturbeda, Diego Pérez Maldonado, Francisco de Miranda, Rafael de Aiyar, Diego de Ribera y Caravajal [sic], Juan Suárez Carrillo, Cristóbal Sánchez de León, Francisco Calderón, Miguel de Ayala and Francisco Cascales. Long before writing his famous Cartas filológicas (Murcia: Luis Verós, 1634), humanist Francisco Cascales was a soldier in Flanders and fought alongside Rodríguez Alva in the 1580s. Rodríguez Alva, La inquieta Flandes, fo. 7v. On these historians, see Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez, The Dutch Revolt through Spanish Eyes. Self and Other in Historical and Literary Texts of Golden Age Spain (c.1548–1673) (Bern and Oxford: Peter Lang, 2008), and Antonio Espino López, Guerra y cultura en la época moderna (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 2001), pp. 183–93. Rodríguez Alva, La inquieta Flandes, fo. 1v. Miguel Martínez, Front Lines. Soldiers’ Writing in the Early Modern Hispanic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), chapters 1 and 3. Rodríguez Alva, La inquieta Flandes, fo. 1v. I have more thoroughly discussed the solid intertextual connections between these two texts in Martínez, Front Lines, pp. 161–4. Rodríguez Alva, La inquieta Flandes, fos 10r–v. John R. Hale, War and Society in Renaissance Europe. 1450–1620 (Montreal: McGill-­Queen’s University Press, 1998), 84. For some epic catalogues of fighting soldiers see, for instance, fos 58v–59v, 151v, 153r–v, 154r, 155r, 188r–v, 194r, 258v–261v, 295r–297r and 314v. Similarly, mutiny is the main topic and dramatic framework of a few Golden Age plays. See mainly Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez, ‘El amotinado como español ejemplar. Rojas Zorilla y Los amotinados de Flandes de Vélez de Guevara’, in Eugenia Houvenaghel and Ilse Logie (eds), Alianzas entre historia y ficcion. Homenaje a Patrick Collard (Genève: Droz, 2009), pp. 237–48. See Parker, Army of Flanders, p. 253. All the following quotes from Rodríguez Alva, La inquieta Flandes, fos 41v–42v. On reformation see Parker, Army of Flanders, pp. 186–9. Rodríguez Alva, La inquieta Flandes, fo. 51r. Wymans, ‘Les mutineries militaires’, p. 12.

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21 Rodríguez Alva, La inquieta Flandes, fo. 361r. 22 Parker, Army of Flanders, p. 167. 23 Rodríguez Alva, La inquieta Flandes, fos 363v–364r. 24 A manuscript copy of the Discurso, held by the Leiden University Library, Codices Vulcaniani 92D, was originally written in 1568. It was first printed in Brussels in 1587, but I quote from Sancho de Londoño, Discurso sobre la forma de reducir la disciplina militar a meyor y antiguo estado (Brussels: Rutger Velpius, 1589), fo. 36r. For the complex textual history and transmission of this key military ordinance see G. Mazzocchi, ‘Nel testo del Discurso di Sancho de Londoño. Note bibliografiche ed ecdotiche’, in Giovanni Caravaggi (ed.), La espada y la pluma. Il mondo militare nella Lombardia spagnola cinquecentesca (Viareggio, Lucca: Mauro Baroni, 2000), pp. 563–79. 25 Rodríguez Alva, La inquieta Flandes, fo. 364r. 26 Diego Montes, Instrucción y regimiento de guerra (Zaragoza: Jorge Coci, 1537), fo. aiiii–r. Similarly, Brantôme considered these men to come ‘from grand noble houses’ but serve as infantrymen ‘like the commoners’ in order to gain honour (de bonnes et grandes m ­ aisons … ­comme les moindres); Pierre de Bourdeille, Oeuvres complètes de Pierre de Bourdeille seigneur de Brantôme, ed. Ludovic Lalanne (Paris: 1864–82), 1, p. 335. 27 ‘Meanwhile other disgruntled Captains channelled their frustrations into mutiny. resentment against aristocratic bias in promotions was probably behind the cry of “Afuera los guzmanes!” (Noblemen out!) often heard around a tercio’s quarters in the early moments of some mutinies. Many of the ringleaders of the rebellions that crippled the Army of Flanders in the 1590’s and early 1600’s were in fact senior Ensigns and Captains venting their frustration at the growing scarcity of promotion opportunities’ (González de León, The Road to Rocroi, p. 74). 28 Parker, Army of Flanders, p. 160. 29 Rodríguez Alva, La inquieta Flandes, fo. 365v. My emphasis, here and below. 30 Ibid., fos 365v–366r. See also the protagonism of Nus’s electo in fo. 369r–v. 31 Ibid., fo. 366r. 32 J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 198–9, 202. 33 Imogen Sutton offers a detailed analysis of republicanism in Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana, which is, as we have seen, one of Rodríguez Alva’s most important epic predecessors; see her ‘“De gente que a ningún rey obedecen”. Republicanism and Empire in Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 91:4 (2014), 417–35. 34 Hale, War and Society, p. 171. 35 Rodríguez Alva, La inquieta Flandes, fo. 78v. 36 See, for instance, Bernard M.G. Reardon, Religious Thought in the Reformation, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1995). 37 For more on the depiction of heresy in La inquieta Flandes see Paolo Pintacuda, ‘El hereje desde la “épica de la pólvora”. Los rebeldes de Flandes vistos por los tercios españoles’, in Javier Burguillo López (ed.), Épica y conflicto religioso en el siglo XVI. Anglicanismo y luteranismo desde el imaginario hispánico (London: Tamesis, in press). I thank professor Pintacuda for sharing his unpublished work while the current chapter was being copy-­edited. 38 John Milton, Paradise Lost, eds Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 389 (book 2, lines 557–61). The moral exordium of canto 10 in La inquieta Flandes contains another potentially problematic statement, though in this case it has survived the fury of the (self-)censoring hand: ‘porque parece encanto o exorcismo/ vencer el hombre su destino mismo’ (138r). 39 Hale, War and Society, pp. 127–78. 40 Rodríguez Alva, La inquieta Flandes, fo. 174v. See the entire sequence in fos 173v–183v. 41 G. Civale, Guerrieri di Cristo. Inquisitori, gesuiti e soldati alla battaglia di Lepanto (Milano: Unicolpi, 2009), pp. 111–14, explored cases of sodomy in the Lepanto fleet. See also G. Civale, ‘Tunisi spagnola tra violenza e coesistenza (1573–74)’, Mediterranea: Ricerche storiche, 21 (2011), 51–88, and especially pp. 67–8.

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42 Andrés Rey de Artieda, Discursos, epístolas y epigramas de Artemidoro, ed. Antonio Vilanova (Barcelona: Selecciones Bibliófilas, 1955), p. 198. 43 One could envision a study similar to Brian Martin’s Napoleonic Friendship. Military Fraternity, Intimacy, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century France (Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2011) that focuses specifically on the army of Flanders. The number of people tried for sodomy in Valencia who identified as soldiers is not insignificant: Rafael Carrasco, in his Inquisición y represión sexual en Valencia. Historia de los sodomitas (1565–1785) (Barcelona: Laertes, 1985), pp.  167–8. See also the occasional references to soldiers in Cristian Berco, Sexual Hierarchies, Public Status. Men, Sodomy, and Society in Spain’s Golden Age (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). 44 Baltasar de Vargas’s Breve relación en octava rima de la jornada que ha hecho el ilustrísimo y excelentísimo señor Duque de Alba desde España hasta los estados de Flandes (Antwerp: Amato Tabernerio, 1568). 45 See Paolo Pintacuda, ‘Sobre las dos versiones del Sitio y toma de Amberes de Miguel Giner’, in Paolo Pintacuda (ed.), Le vie dell’epica ispanica (Lecce: Pensa Multimedia, 2014), pp. 95–122. 46 Diego Ximénez de Ayllón, Sonetos a illustres varones este felicísimo y católico ejército y corte (Antwerp: Viuda de Juan Lacio, 1569); Emanuel Antunes, Primera parte de la baxada de los españoles de Francia en Normandía (Rouen: George L’Oyselet, 1593; and Antwerp: Giraldo Wolsschatio, 1622); Pedro Alfonso Pimentel, Guerras civiles de Flandes, ed. María América Gómez Dovale, in ‘Una fuente inédita sobre la guerra de Flandes’ (PhD thesis, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1957). See Fernando González Ollé, ‘Guerras civiles de Flandes. Poema épico inédito’, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 45 (1965), 141–84. 47 Gómez Dovale, ‘Una fuente inédita’, 327v, 346r, 366r. The letter in fos 330v–331r. See, moreover, cantos 1–6 in part I. 48 Parker, ‘Mutiny and discontent’, p. 39; Army of Flanders, pp. 157–6, 253–6. 49 Quoted in Parker, Army of Flanders, p. 157. 50 Michel-­Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past. Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), p. 24. 51 Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down. Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 1975), 128. See also Morrill, ‘Mutiny and discontent’ and Anderson et al., Mutiny. 52 Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire. Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 53 Wintringham, Mutiny, p. 340.

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6 Orange’s Spanish mulatto and other side-­changers: narratives on Spanish defection during the Revolt in the Low Countries Raymond Fagel At the famous Battle of Nieuwpoort in 1600, Spanish general Francisco de Mendoza was captured by the rebel forces under stadtholder Maurice of Nassau. Mendoza, described by a Dutch author as ‘that great fear of Germany and the whole of Christianity’, could be captured because ‘he was recognized by some Spaniards’. He had fallen off his horse during the charge, and his armour and his coat of arms had given him away. Geoffrey Parker suggests these Spanish horsemen in rebel service could well have been former mutineers. The wonderful portrait made of Mendoza in Dutch captivity indeed shows the very recognisable features of this majestic high nobleman.1 In his book on the Spanish army, Parker refers to the circumstances in which Spanish mutineers defected to the rebel army, such as during the mutinies of 1599. The mutineers had been ordered to leave the Low Countries within two weeks or else they would be sentenced to death: ‘This made some of them, deprived of all shelter and protection, with the last example of misery and bad luck, go over to the enemy.’2 Chronicler Carlos Coloma, himself a maestre de campo in the Low Countries at the time, seems almost to pardon the defectors, by pointing out their miserable state. When the Spanish infantry of the tercio of Italy mutinied in The Hague in 1574, they threatened their maestro de campo Francisco de Valdés with changing sides: ‘they were so possessed by the devil swearing that if they were not let through, they would go and serve the Prince [William of Orange]’.3 We must interpret it literally as an effective threat: the mutineers knew their commanders would not like the idea of their changing sides and employed this argumentation to get out of their misery. Of course, it is one thing to threaten, another to put it into practice. In the end, these mutineers returned to the loyal service of the king.

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Side-­changing was not an uncommon practice during the wars of the early modern period. All armies employed ‘men who had fought on all sides’.4 During the chaotic situation in the Low Countries in 1576, German mercenaries left the Habsburg service for that of the Estates-­General (that did pay them). British soldier and adventurer Roger Williams went to the Low Countries in 1572, to fight on the rebel side, but changed to serve the Habsburgs because he did not want to go home. In 1587, two Catholic Englishmen from the army of the Earl of Leicester, William Stanley and Rowland York, defected on the same day to the Habsburg camp, delivering both the city of Deventer and the fortress of Zutphen into the hands of the royal army. However, specific scholarly attention to the subject of defection is limited, and mostly refers to defection in the contemporary era. An exception is Andrew Hopper’s exemplary study on defection during the English civil wars that offers a wide array of causes for ‘side-­changing’, besides demonstrating its impact on the course of the Civil War.5 We know little about Spanish soldiers crossing over to the side of the rebels, since this understudied practice has not been addressed in recent works, and only in passing in older ones.6 Besides the already mentioned references in Parker’s book, we find the subject described by Dutch Hispanist Johan Brouwer in 1933, using the chronicle of Alonso Vázquez as his main source.7 The theme of Spanish defectors to the rebel army is especially intriguing, as Dutch rebel (and mostly Protestant) propaganda made it perfectly clear that Spaniards could never be trusted. Furthermore, the Spanish soldiers were seen as being extremely cruel by nature. How could one collaborate with these people? These negative images belong to a European narrative tradition that is known as the Spanish Black Legend, and this form of propaganda was especially strong in the Low Countries.8 As such, the defectors do not fit neatly within the grand narrative of the Revolt in the Low Countries that is based on a Manichean duality between good Dutchmen and bad Spaniards. To render matters even more complicated, side-­changing to the rebels also implied for the Spanish military partly deserting one’s religion, as they were to join a side dominated by Protestants. This chapter contends that narratives of defection have received little attention, whereas these texts surely count as war narratives. They become especially engaging when we possess texts from both sides of the conflict, and, if possible, from the side-­changers themselves. In many cases they offer a personal episodic narrative, of one person finding himself in a kind of no-­man’s land. Why do they defect, how is their deed judged by authors from both sides, and how are these defection texts to be characterized?

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Orange’s mulatto captain Within the authoritative Nederlandsche historiën (1642), by Dutch Calvinist author P.C. Hooft, we find the story of a Spanish captain in the service of William of Orange capturing the Brabantine city of Diest, situated north-­east of Leuven, in 1580: ‘He [William of Orange] had much faith in a certain Alonso Vanegas, cavalry captain of that nation; a man who also from his side tried to prove that the positive feeling of his Highness was not in vain.’9 Though the episode in Diest has largely been forgotten, it was once one of the great stories of its time, resulting in an engraving by the famous Frans Hogenberg. Some of Vanegas’s soldiers silently climbed the city walls and succeeded in opening one of the city gates. The tense and bloody battle that followed was ultimately won by the attackers. Other Dutch chroniclers like Emanuel van Meteren also describe the attack on Diest and the presence of a certain Spanish Captain Alonso, ‘who loyally served the Estates’.10 Hooft emphasized his loyalty to William of Orange, while Van Meteren focused on his relationship with the Estates. This man was Spanish, but nevertheless he could be trusted. More information on Alonso de Vanegas can be found in the chronicle of the wars in the Low Countries by Spanish officer Alonso Vázquez. He wrote a lengthy work on the period between 1577 and 1588, which remained unpublished until the nineteenth century.11 Though Vázquez ­speaks – ­more ­correctly – ­of Venegas instead of Vanegas, he is undoubtedly referring to the same individual: The city of Diest had also been lost, taken by Alonso de Venegas, mulatto and Spaniard, and a native of the city of Andújar […] by climbing the city walls. He was a captain of the Prince of Orange, who trusted him greatly […] As one Spaniard in their service has already been so important, one wonders what all the Spaniards that had been thrown out of Flanders could have done, because without them many cities had been lost, and there was nobody to regain them.12

While Hooft merely speaks of a Spaniard, Vázquez’s text reveals that Venegas was not only a Spaniard, but also a mulatto, rendering him a fascinating figure. Vázquez’s information seems reliable, as the chronicler served many years in the province of Jaén after returning to Spain. He travelled around the province and would even die in Venegas’s home town Andújar while in office. It is more than plausible that he overheard stories about this exceptional captain during that period.13 But, of course, he had also been present himself in the Low Countries. The way he instrumentalized Venegas’s success at Diest in order to defend the use of more Spanish soldiers in the Low Countries is quite bold, since he was praising a defector’s qualities in order to promote the sending of more Spanish soldiers to Flanders. Vázquez proceeds then with

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Venegas’s history: after fighting for the French he started serving Fadrique de Toledo: Who received and treated him very well, making sure he was well received among the other Spanish soldiers. He served with great punctuality and took care he was better armed than the others. And as those men are preferred in war, he was always put in the front row and in the squadrons (because of being better armed) he always occupied the best positions.14

And as in any good story, after the initial exposition sketching the background there follows the intrigue: This made some of these reformed officers and other particular soldiers envious, and they started hating him, especially a sergeant major, who would later die a captain and whose name I do not give out of respect […] who wanted to attack him, instigated by those who disliked him, but as Don Fadrique de Toledo favoured him, nobody dared to act. One day before the fighting started, this officer […] wanted to take him out of the front row, and gave the opportunity to others to despise him as a Negro and vituperate against him (as soldiers do things like that when they see they are favoured and supported by their officers).15

This combined deed of envy and of flagrant racism must have taken place before the end of December 1573, when the Duke of Alba and his son left the Low Countries. Alonso was called a Negro by his envious fellow military, but a mulatto by Vázquez. The 1611 dictionary by Sebastián de Covarrubias defines mulatto: ‘he who is the son of a black woman and a white man, or the other way round, and because of being an extraordinary mixture it has been compared to the nature of a mule’.16 Being illegitimate by nature, in Spanish society the mulatto was considered abnormal and dangerous, and in a recent article they are described as the ‘outsider par excellence’.17 Vázquez’s story continued with Venegas challenging the officer to a duel: Who answered that he was not a man to quarrel with a mulatto dog, only with somebody of his own station and colour. There arose a dispute within the army and some supported him, while others stated that those who were equals in dress should also be equals in their deeds, and besides he was a well-­to-­do man and a good soldier.18

Venegas clearly was not satisfied with the situation: He felt so insulted by the contempt shown, disrespecting his person because of his colour, wanting revenge, without taking into consideration his obligations as a Christian and as one of his nation. As he was dishonoured, he could not show his bravery anymore or live among those that had despised and attacked him, and he chose to be known among the enemies of the church, whom he went to serve.19

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The only escape from this obvious case of racism was going over to the other side, to join the forces of William of Orange. And so he became a captain in the rebel army, married well, and was highly regarded by the rebels as a brave officer, never to be despised, as Vázquez stated in his chronicle. The tone of Vázquez’s story shows that he sympathized with the defector, although Venegas was serving one the greatest enemies of the Spanish crown. The author took his argument even a little further: ‘in the Spanish infantry all soldiers are children of their own deeds, and it is not right to despise anybody, and generals and other officers should not permit this behaviour’.20 Particularly intriguing is the way history and fiction seem to coalesce in the realm of literature, particularly on the Spanish stage, the main entertainment medium of the early modern period. In Andrés de Claramonte’s comedia El valiente negro en Flandes (1638, the courageous Negro in the Low Countries), the protagonist is a Spanish black slave who wants to serve in the army of Flanders. At home in Spain, he was laughed at, and already in the first scene he is insulted as being a dog, to which he assertively replies that: ‘being dark is not the same as being a dog’.21 Insulting blacks by calling them dogs as in the play thus echoes the events in the life of Alonso de Venegas. The valiant Juan finally succeeded in entering the army of Flanders, gaining the respect of the Duke of Alba, and stating from that point on that: ‘I will be the dog of Alba’, converting the dog comparison into a badge of honour.22 Juan even captured William of O ­ range – a­ fictitious encounter between the soldier of colour and the Prince of Orange, just as in the real story of Venegas, albeit in a completely different way, capturing him instead of fighting for him, a plot element that would obviously be much applauded by a Spanish public. Notwithstanding the similarities, there is no evidence the playwright was inspired by the example of Alonso de Venegas, but the striking resemblance leaves the reader of the play with an undefined sense of recognition. Alonso of Herentals Within Hooft’s Historiën we find a second episode about a Spanish Captain Alonso, describing the captain’s tragic death in 1582, after the taking of Lier by royal troops.23 However, the story refers to another Spanish captain in the service of William of Orange, also called Alonso, active during the same years and in the very same region as the Alonso from Andújar. No reader of Hooft’s work could have suspected this sudden twist, and his text even shows that the author himself did not realize it. Lier, situated north of Leuven, returned to royal hands in 1582 when the Scottish governor of the city changed sides.24 Also, this former key moment in the history of the Low

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Countries was immortalized by Hogenberg. The story, in Hooft’s words, relates that: The Spanish Captain Alonso, of whom we have shown before his loyalty to the Estates, fell here into the hands of the royal troops, still not cured from a wound he had received earlier. They hung him by one foot until he died, then quartered him, and the pieces were hung on the gallows outside the city gates. There Antwerp horsemen took the parts down and these were buried respectfully according to the customs of war.25

We find the episode of the cruel death of Captain Alonso also in a letter from Maximilien Morillon, the confidant of Cardinal Granvelle in the Low Countries, describing how the heavily wounded defector was hung by his feet.26 English correspondence offers more detail: A ransom of 4,000 crowns was paid to the Scottish captain to get his hands on Alonso, who was then charged by somebody who had escaped from Alonso’s prison in the castle of Hoogstraten. This witness declared that Alonso had brought Lier into the hands of William of Orange and had betrayed Governor-­General Alexander Farnese, the Duke of Parma: In the English version of the events, Alonso was given a coup de grâce: ‘in the marketplace of that town hanged up by one foot, and so shot to death’. His head and part of his limbs were exhibited in the city, but consequently stolen by some of his servants, who took the remains to Antwerp in order to be solemnly buried in the Cathedral of Our Lady.27 These descriptions of his cruel death chime much more with the vindictive posture that can be expected when dealing with these kinds of offences, even paying a ransom to get hold of the defector in order to subsequently torture and execute him, and expose his body to public shame. Alonso Vázquez was perfectly aware of the existence of the two captain Alonsos in the service of William of Orange, as he treated this second one separately: Alonso López, whose real name was unknown for a long time because he used that of Herentals, a city in Brabant of which he was governor and captain of lancers serving the Prince of Orange, one of the bravest Spaniards of his time. He valiantly served the rebel Estates and he raided the Spanish army several times, often daring to enter with his company in their garrisons. He embarked on many a considerable expedition by which he rightfully deserved fame as a valiant captain among the rebels whom he served very loyally. He did so because he had been afraid to be hung after having been the leader of Spanish soldiers that had started to run away and had broken a safeguard. He was always very merciful to the Spaniards and other Catholic soldiers he had in his prison, and when he was spoken of, people used the name Alonso of Herentals.28

Again we see how Vázquez offers a very positive description of a defector, written with empathy, and with no signs of any sense of betrayal, not even

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when mentioning his attacks on Spanish army camps. He omits the story of his cruel execution, but does offer an explanation for his defection. Though the description does not reveal the time of the defection, another, rather unexpected, source does: The Relación de como se ha fundado … el muy devoto monasterio de Nuestra Señora de la Quietacion.29 The author, a Carmelite nun, describes how the first nuns of this Portuguese convent were refugees from the Low Countries, finding shelter at a time when Philip II was present in Lisbon as the new King of Portugal. She was the natural daughter of the Spanish Governor of Hoogstraten, Luis Carrillo de Castilla. In the prologue, written by a Carmelite father, her life story is summarized: she had been living in the convent of Hoogstraten, but there her life had been in danger: There was a Spanish nobleman, captain of three companies of horsemen, who in times of the Duke of Alba had conspired against the King of Spain, joining the rebels and following the Prince of Orange. The f­ ather … h­ ad commission of the Duke of Alba to apprehend him and when this traitor knew of this he decided to revenge himself through his daughter, promising a large reward for whoever could find her, and because he lacked scruples, he swore it was not to hurt her, or the convent, because although he was an enemy of the Spaniards, he was a Catholic and only wanted to hurt her father, by whom he felt chased.30

It is interesting to see how the text begins with a negative description, but does mention the fact he had remained Catholic. The life-­story of the nun, who ultimately took refuge in the convent in Lisbon, returns in the last chapter: What most tortured me was the cruel persecution by Don Alonso, who in times of the Duke of Alba rebelled against His M ­ ajesty … T ­ his enemy had his seat in Herentals, not far from this convent; the whole countryside had to pay t­ ribute … ­It was his work to attack, steal, and put the villagers in great misery, taking his revenge with fire and blood against all those who failed to pay tribute.31

Cathalina herself did not find in her heart any forgiveness or understanding for the terrible behaviour of Don Alonso, whose several attempts to kidnap her are described in detail. Cathalina also describes a military confrontation taking place close to the convent in Hoogstraten where she witnessed ‘a bloody battle, with many deaths on both sides’.32 In the fighting Don Alonso was wounded: They killed his horse in front of the convent’s gate, but he kept fighting for a long time on foot, losing a lot of blood. Many tried to catch him, but as this battle took place in between houses they could hide him, and after four days, when everybody thought he was dead, his friends took him to Herentals, severely wounded. The Catholics emerged victorious.33

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Although the last quotation originates from a book on the foundation of a Carmelite monastery in Lisbon, it clearly reads like a war narrative. In a letter from 2 July 1580 to Lord Burghley, we find a description of the same event: ‘Certain horsemen of Herenthals, under Alonso the Spaniard, who is in the States’ service, were surprised by the enemy at Hoegstraete and ten of them slain and taken. The rest escaped, but Alonso is not yet heard of.’34 Also Dutch Calvinist historian Pieter Bor mentions the rumour that Alonso was dead, followed by the news of his safe arrival in Herentals.35 William of Orange wrote letters to Alonso López, although unfortunately none has been preserved. From other letters by Orange we know how he used the captain and his men to control Herentals and its surroundings, sending him on reconnaissance missions with his cavalry.36 On Easter Sunday, 3 April 1580, the French soldiers of the Herentals garrison attacked the village of Heeze in Brabant, for the fourth consecutive time. Eight villagers were killed, 20 severely wounded, women and girls raped, 27 men taken prisoner, and 108 houses burnt to the ground. The negotiation on the relief of the prisoners took place with Captain ‘Allonzo Lopez’, both in Tongeren and in Antwerp. The negotiator from Heeze even organized a banquet for Alonso and ten of his officers, followed the subsequent morning by breakfast.37 Finally, Alonso agreed on a ransom for the prisoners, signing a document as ‘Je Alonce Lopes, capitaine d’une compagnie des chevaulx legiers soubz la charge de son Excellence et Estats Generaulx’.38 Francisco de Paredes and the 1583 conspiracy One year later, Spanish defectors again play a small but noteworthy role in the history of the Revolt. On 31 August 1583, somebody knocked on the door of Juan Bautista de Tassis, residing at the time in Paris. A few days later, this high-­ranking officer and diplomat in Habsburg service, reported in a letter to Alexander Farnese on his meeting with this interesting figure. The man visiting him had been a Spaniard ‘of average build, short, with a red beard’, some 40 years of age and born in Medina del Campo, who went by the name of Francisco de Paredes.39 Paredes told him he had collaborated with the mission of Captain Francisco de Eraso to Sweden, and maybe he was also the same person that had served as an important envoy between the Habsburg courts in Spain and the Empire.40 If so, he knew the Habsburg government from the inside. He had found himself prisoner of William of Orange in Utrecht, who invited him to enter into his service. Of course, this defector added that he had only accepted the offer because he was ‘forced by necessity’.41 He stayed for one year and a half in Calvinist-­dominated Brussels, going by the

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name of Albarado in public, serving as captain of an infantry company and marrying the French widow of the former captain of the company. By the time of the meeting, Paredes’s company was residing in Veere, on the island of Walcheren.42 The Spanish defector wanted to amend his error and return to the Spanish fold: It was for necessity he had gone over to the rebel side, but never in his heart had he abandoned the Catholic religion, nor had he forgotten the obligations he owed his King, or his wish to redress his errors.43

And he was not the only one. Paredes provides information on three more Spanish officers serving the rebels who thought the same as he did and all had remained Catholics at heart. The first one is Antonio (sic)44 Vanegas. He is described as a ‘mulatto, who when he was a soldier during the times of the Duke of Alba in the regiment of Julián Romero in Brussels, was called a Negro by a certain Solis, starting his watch, despising him as if he did not belong to them, and after this quarrel he decided to go over to the other side’.45 The letter thus offers additional proof of the veracity of Alonso Vázquez’s story. The second defector mentioned by Paredes was Diego Alonso, who in public went by the name of Captain Lemburo. A former lieutenant of ‘Alonsillo’ in Herentals, he had now taken over his company. Half his men were now in Bergen-­op-­Zoom, and the other half of the company was on its way from Gorinchem to Grave. His lieutenant was also a Spaniard, called Pedro Carrasco. The third defector Paredes mentioned was Diego de Fonseca, an infantry captain stationed in Nijmegen. In the four companies of the defectors were some forty Spanish soldiers in total, eleven of them with Paredes, who must have followed their officer in defecting.46 More than a year earlier, these four Spanish captains had decided to join forces ‘to get away from this bad path, and do something in the service of His Majesty’.47 Their idea was to render Flushing (Vlissingen) to the king, as Venegas had his troops there. Besides, most of the inhabitants would support their plan, as William of Orange was ‘disliked by many’.48 In return they wanted letters of pardon, ‘wanting to return for their honour’.49 As they realized there was no time to receive letters from the king, they were satisfied with documents from Farnese. In order to prove their honesty, they were willing to provide several hostages, among them Paredes’s wife, who, according to his suggestion, could then stay in the house of the famous army commander Cristóbal de Mondragón. As Mondragón came from Medina del Campo, like Paredes, and both had French-­speaking wives from outside the Low Countries, it is possible the two men knew each other personally. Juan Bautista had his doubts about the plan, imagining Paredes sending Mondragón a ‘cross-­dressed boy, speaking with a female voice’, instead of

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his wife. Nevertheless, Farnese sent four very promising letters of pardon for the captains and the plan was put on the calendar, for 30 November 1583. However, in the end there were too many doubts about the complex scheme and the plan was abandoned.50 The conspiracy plan of 1583 not only proves that Venegas was still alive in 1583, but it reveals a much larger group of Spanish defectors in the rebel army. We also find honour as an important element in motivating a return to the obedience of the king, together with the importance of having remained faithful Catholics at heart. Even more Spanish defectors in the Low Countries Alonso Vázquez not only mentioned the two captains Alonso; he added three more names to the list of defectors. Of a certain Manzano, from a village near Ocaña, he stated: Manzano […] who by not becoming friends with another soldier who had lied to him, could or would not recover his honour, and it seemed he had lost his reputation in the Spanish army, so he went over to the rebels, where he became a captain of the Prince of Orange.51

Again the cause of the defection was a matter of personal conflict, noted by Vázquez without any form of criticism. However, no trace of the specific praise present in his descriptions of the two Alonsos is to be found in this case. Manzano was the assistant of the important French captain and sergeant major Sébastien Tapin, who in the service of William of Orange performed wonderfully as an engineer at the siege of Maastricht in 1579.52 Manzano was afterwards taken prisoner by Alonso de Solís, a native of Ocaña and thus from the same region as Manzano: He found him hiding in an attic, and the Spanish soldiers asked permission of the Prince of Parma to punish him and this he accepted. They asked him how he wanted to die and he answered that he wanted to be killed as a soldier. So he had to pass the pikes, offering an example to others that showed the loyalty and valour of this nation and how they rightly proceeded when punishing those who in order to live in freedom left Spanish obedience and went with the heretics.53

Here, for the first time, we see that Vázquez is capable of wanting vengeance against a defector, combining a national and a religious sentiment to defend his execution. Of course, it was also plain and customary military law in the Low Countries not to give quarter to captured side-­changers.54 Interestingly, the man who captured Manzano came from the same home town as Vázquez himself, while defector Manzano came from a nearby village. Was there a

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personal feud going on? Vázquez’s text offers two more names, the first a lieutenant of Alonso López in Herentals called Castrillo, whose execution he seems to defend as this ‘brave and strong man’ had committed war crimes: Man of great bravery and strength, who was caught by the Spaniards near Herentals, and their governor Don Pedro de Toledo, Marquis of Villafranca, was persuaded by the other Spaniards and had him shot by harquebuses in Turnhout, tied to the pole of a well, the same spot where this Castrillo had ordered the hanging of a farmer because he had refused to give him his money. It was God’s judgement he would lose his life where he had unjustly taken it from this poor farmer.55

Finally, he mentions a Bartolomé de Cabañes, ‘who served the rebels, though not as bravely or hazardous at those already mentioned’.56 Though we have seen him almost defending and at least justifying the behaviour of some of the defectors, in a conclusive paragraph we see Vázquez distancing himself from some of his own stories: But none of these were right and they do not deserve excuses, even those who had more legitimate reasons, as there were Christian princes whom they could serve, as we have seen other Spaniards do, who because of scorn, quarrels or crimes, had found themselves forced by their superiors to leave the King’s service and go over to the Emperor or the Duke of ­Lorraine … ­In no way is it possible to excuse these men, nor believe anything else but that in order to live licentiously and outside of the military obedience and discipline of the Spanish nation, they had left their banners and followed those of the enemies of the church.57

Archival documents offer more examples of Spanish defectors to the rebel side. In a letter from the Duke of Alba to Philip II he informed the king of a Spaniard who headed a company of horsemen in the service of the Prince of Orange. This native of Alcalá de Henares was a family member of the host of Felipe Guillermo, the Count of Buren in Spain, who as the eldest son of William of Orange had been taken hostage by Alba and been sent to Spain, where he would study at the University of Alcalá.58 The reason for his defection seems thus to have originated in a personal bond between the Spaniard and the Nassau family. Letters from Maximilien Morillon and Luis de Requesens mention a failed attempt to surrender the Antwerp citadel to William of Orange in 1573–74, in which several Spanish soldiers were involved. According to chronicler Pieter Bor, the two Spanish figureheads were promised 20,000 ducats by the Prince and already 450 rebels had secretly entered the city of Antwerp by the time the plan was discovered. Bor speaks of 38 Spanish soldiers, all involved in the plot, and he describes the severe punishment of the two figureheads, Pedro

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Maldonado and Juan Alonso, who were tortured and quartered. However, documentary evidence from the Habsburg government only mentions the execution of Pedro de Serna and Martín López.59 Spanish chroniclers of the war, like Mendoza and Trillo, do not mention the event at all. Requesens also tells a different story, compared to Bor: the two Spanish soldiers had worked in complete isolation, without telling anybody, and they had not really intended to surrender the citadel, but had only been after the rebels’ money. But it was still enough for Requesens to have them executed. Morillon speaks of seven Spaniards from the citadel being involved and he mentions ‘a negro or white moor, where a large sum of money was found to buy people’.60 So there may even have been another Spanish side-­changer with a discriminatory motive. In 1575, Pedro de Mondragón was taken prisoner. In his interrogation he spoke about the defence of the castle of Loevestein, where he had served the rebels and where two other Spaniards were still part of the garrison. The prisoner suggested that these two men, Juan López and Francisco Perpiñán, would be happy to help out in return for a pardon, as they wished to leave the enemy and return to royal service. In the end Pedro de Mondragón was executed by a firing squad: ‘he was shot by harquebuses on the square of Antwerp castle’.61 The final example supports Parker’s idea that mutiny was an important reason for defection. Francisco López went to the Low Countries in 1598 and became involved in the 1601 mutiny of Hoogstraten. In his statement before the Inquisition in 1608 in Madrid, he claimed that all infantry soldiers, some 3,000, had gone over to the troops of Maurice of Nassau. This is the first moment when historian Werner Thomas, who studied this case, doubts the reliability of his testimony. For five years he fought with the rebels, leading a Protestant lifestyle, and residing for a period in Flushing, before returning to Castile.62 Probably in order to mollify his inquisitors he offered a scandalous image of Protestant practices: making fun of the mass and the saints, eating meat during Lent and refusing to confess, their religious services ending up in orgies. As he recounted, the service started normally, but at some point the ‘papaz’ [minister] took a woman for himself and for all the others, and everyone went to a separate place to treat carnally with the women in the dark, as he had also done. The said ‘papaz’ married and unmarried them time and again for one Real.63

Conclusions The narratives of defectors, with their detailed accounts of individual cases, are clear examples of episodic war narratives, and by combining different

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genres relating the same stories, it is possible to gain more insight into the way these texts functioned. The first observation is that Spanish defection to the rebel side during the Revolt was not uncommon. We can find two different Captain Alonsos active during the same period, and within the same region. In 1583, we have four captains and some forty Spaniards serving the rebels. Though mutiny was probably an important factor in defection, as Geoffrey Parker has stated, there also existed a whole range of personal motives: varying from fear of punishment, to personal conflicts within the army, with the racism towards Alonso de Venegas a special case in point.64 It is also revealing that changing sides to a predominantly Protestant army was not an insurmountable problem for Catholic Spaniards. So they actually did risk the ‘shipwracke of [their] consciences’, unlike Calvinist English soldiers who almost exclusively fought on the Protestant side.65 Dutch chronicles tried to overcome the bad image of Spaniards by pointing to their great loyalty, either towards William of Orange or the Estates. However, their presence within the rebel army has been mostly occluded. We find only small fragments on their role within the conflict. Their presence in Spanish narrative sources is very diverse, but what is most striking is the great variation in the description of a series of defectors by military chronicler Alonso Vázquez. He seems to fully understand the choices made by both Alonsos and praises their conduct, while he condemns others, especially those who committed war crimes. However, in a conclusive paragraph he denounces all defectors from the Spanish cause. The internal contradictions in his text are maybe illustrative of the way Spanish military around 1600 thought about the matter of defection. Defectors themselves sometimes tried to explain the reasons for their choice, but they tended to emphasize the fact that whatever had happened during their defection, they had always remained in their hearts loyal subjects of the king and faithful Catholics. To this they added the possibility of helping the royal cause by delivering a rebel bulwark through treason. The danger of treason must have been present in the minds of all those who were making use of Spanish defectors. You could never trust a Spaniard. Could you? Notes

  1 ‘Dien schrick van Duytslant ende de gansche cristenheit’; ‘bij eenige Spangiaerden (onder Panier) bekent’. Anthonis Duyck, Journaal van Anthonis Duyck, Advokaar-fiscaal van den Raad van State 1591–1602, ed. Lodewijk Mulder (The Hague and Arnhem: Martinus Nijhoff and D.A. Thieme, 1864), p.  676; Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p.  165; Pieter Goosens, ‘De slag bij Nieuwpoort in 1600, vanuit een Zeeuws logistiek perspectief’ (MA thesis, Universiteit Gent, 2007), p. 157; J. Been, ‘Krijgsgevangenen ten tijde van de Republiek’, Vragen van de

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dag, 31 (1916), 10–1; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: SK-­A-3912, possibly by Daniël van der Queborn (1601).   2 ‘Fué esto causa de que algunos dellos, privados de todo refugio, con el último ejemplo de miseria y desventura, se pasasen al enemigo’. Carlos Coloma de Saa, ‘Las guerras de los Estados-­Bajos, desde el año 1588 hasta el de 1599’, in Biblioteca de autores españoles, historiadores de sucesos particulares, 28:2 (Madrid: Real Academia Española, 1948), pp. 4–203, 186. The first edition of Coloma’s work dates from Antwerp 1625.   3 ‘Estan tan endemoniados que juran si les quitan el paso, de yrse a servir al Príncipe’. Francisco de Valdés to Luis de Requesens, The Hague, 25 November 1574, Biblioteca Zabálburu, Altamira 96D27.   4 Geoffrey Parker (ed.), The Thirty Years’ War, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 204; Andrew Hopper, Turncoats and Renegadoes. Changing Sides During the English Civil Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 62.   5 Hopper, Turncoats, p. 12.   6 Roger Williams, The Actions of the Low Countries, ed. D.W. Davies (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1964); Fernando González de León, The Road to Rocroi. Class, Culture and Command in the Spanish Army of Flanders, 1567–1659 (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2009); Erik Swart, Krijgsvolk. Militaire professionalisering en het ontstaan van het Staatse leger, 1568–1590 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006); Antonio José Rodríguez Hernández, Los tercios de Flandes (Madrid: Nowtilus, 2015).   7 Johan Brouwer, Kronieken van Spaansche soldaten uit het begin van den Tachtigjarigen Oorlog (Zutphen: W.J. Thieme, 1933), pp. 69–71.   8 See the Introduction to this volume.   9 ‘Hij stelde groot betrouwen op zeekren Alonso Vanegas, ritmeester van dien landaardt; man, die ook van zyner zyde pooghde te bewyzen, dat het goedt gevoelen zyner Doorluchtigheit niet ydel was.’ P.C. Hooft, Alle de gedrukte werken 1611–1738, vol. 5, eds W. Hellinga and P. Tuynman (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1972), p. 709. 10 ‘Die den Staten trouwelijck diende’. Emanuel van Meteren, Belgische ofte Nederlandsche historie van onsen tijden (Delft: Jacob Cornelisz. Vennecool, 1599), fo. 172v; See also Pieter Bor, Oorspronck, begin ende vervolgh der Nederlantsche oorlogen, 5 vols (Leiden: Govert Basson and Amsterdam: Michiel Colijn, 1621–34), vol. 2, book 15, fo. 208r–v. 11 Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez, ‘Alonso Vázquez en Johan Brouwer. Een zestiende-­eeuwse Spaanse militair en zijn twintigste-­eeuwse vertaler’, Armada, 38 (March 2005), 10–17; Alonso Vázquez, ‘Los sucesos de Flandes en tiempo de Alejando Farnese 1577–1588’, in CODOIN, vols 72–4. 12 ‘La de Diste se habia tambien perdido, y que la habia ganado á escala vista Alonso de Venegas, mulato y español, natural de la ciudad de Andújar […] que era capitán del Príncipe de Orange y muy su confidente […] y pues un sólo español que les servia les habia sido de tanta importancia, se deja considerar de la mucha que serian tantos como habian echado de Flandes, pues por su ausencia se iban perdiendo las villas sin haber quien las recuperase’. Vázquez, ‘Sucesos’, vol. 72, pp. 245–8. 13 On the important Venegas family of Granada: Mercedes García-­ Arenal Rodríguez and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano (eds), The Orient in Spain. Converted Muslims, the Forged Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013), pp. 78–81. 14 ‘Recibióle bien y agasajóle mucho, encargando le hiciesen buena acogida entre los demas soldados españoles. Servia con puntualidad y se preciaba de andar más bien armado que otros; y como los que en la guerra lo están son preferidos, siempre le daban la primera hilera, y en los escuadrones ocupaba (por más bien armado) los mejores puestos.’ 15 ‘Envidiosos desto algunos oficiales reformados y otros soldados particulares, le cobraron ódio, especialmente un ayudante de Sargento mayor, que despues murió Capitán, que excuso escribir su nombre por justos respetos […] deseaba atropellarlo, incitado de los que le querian mal; pero como D. Fadrique de Toledo le favorecia, nadie se le atrevió. Un dia de ocasion de pelear quiso este ayudante […] quitarle de la primera hilera, habiendo dado ocasión á que

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otros le despreciasen como á negro y vituperasen (que poco han menester los soldados para semejantes cosas cuando se ven favorecidos y con alas de sus oficiales).’ 16 ‘El que es hijo de negra y de hombre blanco, o al revés: y por ser mezcla extraordinaria la compararon a la naturaleza del mulo’. Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, eds Felipe C.R. Maldonado and Manuel Camarero (Madrid: Castalia, 1995), p. 768. 17 Baltasar Fra Molinero, ‘Ser mulato en España y América: discursos legales y otros discursos literarios’, in Berta Ares Queija and Alessandro Stella (eds), Negros, mulatos, zambaigos. Derroteros africanos en los mundos ibéricos (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-­Americanos, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2000), pp. 123–47, 126–7. 18 ‘Respondióle que no era hombre que habia de reñir con un perro mulato, sino que con otro de su calidad y color; hubo disputas en el ejército y pareceres que apoyaron esto; otros, que pues eran iguales en el hábito lo habian de ser en las obras, demás de que era hombre de bien y buen soldado.’ 19 ‘Quedó tan corrido del menosprecio que dél se hizo, no respetando á su persona por el color, que viendo le estorbaban la venganza, sin considerar las obligaciones de cristiano y las que tenia á su nacion, y que ya deshonrado no podia mostrar el valor que tenia ni vivir entre los que le habian menospreciado y abatido, quiso que se conociese entre los enemigos de la Iglesia, á los cuales se fué á servir.’ 20 ‘En la infanteria española son todos los soldados hijos de sus obras, no es justo despreciar á nadie, ni que ningun general ni superior lo permita.’ 21 ‘Ser moreno no es ser perro.’ Andrés de Claramonte y Corroy, El valiente negro en Flandes, ed. Ana Ogallas Moreno (Würzburg and Madrid: Clásicos Hispánicos, 2016). 22 ‘El perro de Alba seré.’ Ibid., lines 974–5. A Dutch seventeenth-­century author wrote a follow-­up to Cervantes’s El Coloquio de los perros in which the dog Cipión becomes the dog of the Duke of Alba, first serving him loyally, but finally deciding to leave his master because of his cruelty towards the people of the Low Countries. Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez, ‘G. de Bay: un traductor de Cervantes del siglo XVII como agente de la memoria histórica neerlandesa’, in René Vermeir, Maurits Ebben and Raymond Fagel (eds), Agentes e identidades en movimiento. España y los Países Bajos, siglos XVI–XVIII (Madrid: Sílex, 2011), pp. 403–22. 23 Hooft, Alle de gedrukte werken, vol. 5, p. 826. 24 Cort, ende warachtich verhael van de verraderye der stadt van Liere: gheschiedt door capiteyn Semple met syne Schotten, die aldaer in garnisoen ligghende, de selve hebben verraden, ende den vyanden ghelevert, int iaer 1582, op den tweeden dach Augusti (1582). Royal Library The Hague, Knuttel collection 616. 25 ‘De Spaansche hopman Alonso, van wiens getrouwigheit aan de Staaten booven getuyght is, viel hier, noch niet geneezen van een’ quetsuur, ontfangen een’ wyle te voore, in de handen der kooningschen; die hem, by zyn eenen been opknoopten, en alzoo lieten sterven; thans vierendeelden, en de stukken buyten de poorten aan galghen hingen: van waar zy, door de Antwerpsche ruyters seedert gehaalt en eerlyk naar krysgebruyk begraaven werden’. Hooft, Alle de gedrukte werken, vol. 5, p. 826; see also Bor, Oorsprongk, p. 333. 26 Morillon to Granvelle, Tournai, 9 August 1582, Correspondance du Cardinal de Granvelle 1565– 1586, ed. E. Poullet and Ch. Piot (Brussels: F. Hayez, 1877–96), vol. 9, pp. 269–70; Léon van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, prince de Parme, gouverneur général des Pays-Bas, 1545–1592, 5 vols (Brussels: Librairie Nationale d’Art et d’Histoire, 1933–37), vol. 3, p. 91. 27 Calendar of State Papers Foreign, Elizabeth 1558–1589, vol. 16, ed. Arthur John Butler (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1909), pp. 477, 481, 492. 28 ‘Alonso Lopez, cuyo sobrenombre se calló mucho tiempo, porque tomó el de Arentales, villa de Brabante, en la cual fué gobernador y capitan de lanzas por el príncipe de Orange y uno de los más valientes españoles que en su tiempo hubo. Sirvió á los Estados rebeldes valerosamente, y hizo algunas correrías en el ejército español, atreviéndose muchas veces á entrar con su compañia en los cuarteles, y emprendió muchas cosas de consideracion con que alcanzó nombre de valiente capitan, como lo era, entre los rebeldes a quien sirvió con

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gran fidelidad, y lo fué á hacer por temor no le ahorcasen, por haber sido cabeza de soldados españoles desordenados que habian ido á correr y roto una salvaguardia. Este fué siempre muy misericordioso con los españoles y otros soldados católicos que tuvo en prision, y cuando se hablaba dél le llamaban Alonso de Arentales.’ 29 Cathalina del Spiritu Sancto, Relacion de como se ha fundado en Alcantara de Portugal junto a Lisboa, el muy devoto monasterio de Nuestra Señora de la Quietacion (Lisbon: Pedro Craesbeeck, 1627). A modern translation in Dutch is Raymond Fagel and Joke Spaans, Nonnen verdreven door geuzen (Hilversum: Verloren, 2019). 30 ‘Un hidalgo español capitan de tres compañias de gente de cavallo, que en tiempo del Duque d’Alva se avia conjurado contra el Rey de España, y hecho cuerpo con los rebeldes, siguiendo al Principe de Orange. Tenia ­el … ­padre comission del Duque d’Alva para le prender, supole el traydor, determinó de vengarse en su ­hija … ­y prometio grandes premios a quien se la descubriesse, y porque no huviesse escrupulo en ello hizo grandes juramentos, que no era para le hazer mal a ella, ò al monasterio, porque aunque era enemigo de españoles, era catholico, solo queria affadigar a su padre, de quien se sentia perseguida.’ Spiritu Sancto, Relacion, prologue. 31 ‘Lo que mas que todo me ha atormentado, fue la cruel persecucion que me hizo Don Alonso, que en tiempo del Duque Dalva rebelò contra su ­Magestad … ­Tenia este enemigo su asiento en Herentals, no muy distante deste monasterio; toda la Campina le dava ­tributo … ­Tomó officio de saltar, y robar, poniendo en gran miseria a los aldeanos, a fuego y sangre se vingava de quantos le faltavan con la contribucion’. Spiritu Sancto, Relacion, fo. 28r. 32 ‘una sangrienta batalla, y de parte a parte murieron muchos’. Spititu Sancto, Relacion, fo. 28v. 33 ‘Y le mataron el cavallo, delante de la puerta del monasterio: peró quedo peleando mucho tiempo a pie, corriendole mucha sangre. Persiguieronle muchos para le prender, mas como esta batalla ha sido entre las casas le escondieron, y a cabo de quatro dias, haviendo fama que era muerto, llevaronle sus amigos a la ciudad de Herentals mui mal herido. Los catholicos tuvieron la victoria.’ 34 Hoddesdon to Burghley, 2 July 1580, Calendar of State Papers Foreign, Elizabeth 1558–1589, vol. 17, ed. Arthur John Butler and Sophie Crawford Lomas (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1913), p. 543. 35 Pieter Bor, Oorsprongk, begin ende vervolgh der Nederlandsche oorlogen, beroerten, en borgerlyke oneenigheden, 4 vols (Amsterdam 1679–84), vol. 2, p. 198. 36 ING, Correspondence of William of Orange (http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/wvo), Orange to Charles de Tello, Antwerp. 17 April 1578, 3 July 1578 and 22 June 1579, letters 8292, 8294 and 8314 (accessed 1 February 2019). See also Calendar of State Papers Foreign, Elizabeth 1558–1589, vol. 13, ed. Arthur John Butler (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1903), p. 48. 37 Leo Adriaenssen, ‘Staatsvormend geweld’ (PhD thesis, Tilburg University, 2007), pp. 142–3; A.F.N. van Asten, ‘De gevangenschap van Heezenaren te Heerentals in 1580’, in De Comme geopend. Geschiedkundige opstellen uit de Kempen (Eindhoven 1983), pp.  86–92, p.  88; ING, Correspondence of William of Orange, letters 8311, 8310, 8297, 12268. 38 Van Asten, ‘Gevangenschap’, p. 90. 39 ‘De mediana estatura, rehecho, con barva roxa’. Letter from Juan Bautista de Tassis to Alexander Farnese, Paris, 3 September 1583, Correspondance de Guillaume le Taciturne, Prince d’Orange, vol. 6, ed. L.P. Gachard (Brussels, Leipzig and Ghent: C. Muquardt, 1857), pp. clix–clxvi. 40 Cristina Borreguero Beltrán, ‘Philip of Spain; the spider’s web of news and information’, in Brendan Maurice Dooley (ed.), The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 23–50, p. 31; Magdalena de Pazzis Pi Corrales, ‘La “comisión” del capitán Francisco de Eraso a Suecia: una posible alternativa al conflicto con Flandes’, in José Martínez Millán (ed.), Felipe II, 1527–1598. Europa y la Monarquía Católica (Madrid: Parteluz, 1998), vol. 2:2, pp. 617–33, p. 629. 41 ‘Forçado de la necesidad’. Prisoners were often asked to change sides. Hopper, Turncoats, p. 84.

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42 Juan Bautista de Tassis to Alexander Farnese, Paris, 3 September 1583, Correspondance de Guillaume le Taciturne, vol. 6, ed. Gachard, pp. clix–clxvi. 43 ‘Que si bien por la necessidad se havia acomodado por allá con los rebeldes, que no por esso jamás en su pecho se le ha quitado la religion cathólica, ni el entender la obligación que tiene á su Rey, ni el desseo de salir algun dia de aquel yerro.’ 44 Probably the editor mistook the abbreviation of Alonso for that of Antonio. The original letter at the time in the imperial archives in Paris, Simancas collection, B54, fo. 211. 45 ‘Mulato, á quien siendo soldado, en el tiempo del Duque de Alva, en la compañía de Julián Romero, en Bruselas, dize que un tal Solis, entrando de guardia, motejó de negro, menospreciándolo como si no huviera de yr entre ellos, y que de este desgusto se resolvió de darse á essa otra parte’; ‘del país como él’. 46 Hopper, Turncoats, pp. 94–5. 47 ‘Para salir ya deste mal camino, y hazer algun hecho en servicio de Su Magestad.’ 48 ‘Mal quisto de muchos’. 49 ‘Querer bolver por su honrra’. 50 ‘Moça travestida, dándole voz de muger’, Correspondance de Guillaume le Taciturne, vol. 6, ed. L.P. Gachard, pp. lxxxv–lxxxvii. 51 ‘Manzano […] que por descuido de no haberle hecho amigo con otro soldado que le habia desmentido, no pudiendo ó no haber querido cobrar su honra, pareciéndole no estaba con su reputacion en el ejército español, se fué con los rebeldes, donde también fué Capitan del príncipe de Orange’. Vázquez, ‘Sucesos’, vol. 72, pp. 245–8. 52 Vázquez, ‘Sucesos’, vol. 72, p. 187; Van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, vol. 3, pp. 152–3. 53 ‘Lo halló escondido en un sobrado de una casa, y los soldados españoles pidieron despues por merced al Príncipe [Parma] les permitiese que ellos lo castigasen, y se lo concedió, y preguntándole qué muerte quería, respondió que le matasen como á soldado, y así lo pasaron por las picas, con que dieron ejemplo á los demas para que se eche de ver la lealtad y valor desta nacion y cuán justificadamente procede, deseando castiguen los que por vivir con libertad dejan la obediencia española y se van con los herejes.’ Vázquez, ‘Sucesos’, pp. 216–17. 54 Geoffrey Parker, Empire, War and Faith in Early Modern Europe (London: Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 2002), p. 169; Hopper, Turncoats, pp. 78–82. 55 ‘Hombre de gran valor y fuerzas, al cual prendieron los españoles junto á Arentales, y Don Pedro de Toledo, Marqués de Villafranca, que los gobernaba, á persuasion de los demas españoles, lo mandó arcabucear en Tornante [Turnhout] en un palo de un pozo, y en el mismo palo habia hecho ahorcar este Castrillo á un labrador, por no haber querido dar cierto dinero que le pedia. Fué juicio de Dios perdiese la vida donde él la habia hecho quitar injustamente á este pobre labrador.’ 56 ‘Que servia á los rebeldes, no tan valeroso ni arriscado como los ya nombrados.’ 57 ‘Pero los unos y los otros tuvieron poca razon y no merecen disculpa, pues, cuando sus causas fueran más legítimas que estas, habia príncipes cristianos á quienes servir, como se ha visto que lo han hecho otros españoles; ó por desdeñados ó por pendencias y delitos que han cometido, viéndose forzados de sus superiores, dejar el servicio del Rey, nuestro señor, é ídose con el Emperador á Alemania ó con el Duque de L­ orena … ­En ninguna manera se puede admitir disculpa destos tales, ni creer dellos otras cosas sino que por mandar y vivir licenciosamente y fuera de la obediencia y disciplina militar de la nacion española, dejan sus banderas y siguen las de los enemigos de la Iglesia.’ Vázquez, ‘Sucesos’, vol. 72, pp. 245–8. 58 Alba to Philip II, Amsterdam, 22 Ocrtober 1573, Epistolario del III Duque de Alba, don Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, ed. Duque de Alba, 3 vols (Madrid: Diana, 1952), vol. 3, p. 533. 59 Morillon to Granvelle, Brussels, 24 and 27 February 1574, Correspondance du Cardinal de Granvelle, vol. 5, ed. E. Poullet and Ch. Piot, pp.  43–9; Requesens to Philip II, Antwerp. 5 March 1574, CP 3, pp. 27–30; Bor, Oorsprongk, vol. 1, book 7, fos 7v–8v. 60 ‘Ung nègre ou more blancq, auprès duquel l’on at treuvé beaulcoup d’or pour gaigner gens’. Morillon to Granvelle, Brussels, 24 and 27 February 1574, Correspondance, vol. 5, ed. Poullet and Piot, pp. 45–6.

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61 ‘Fue arcabuzeado en la plaça del castillo de Anveres’. Relación que a dado Pedro de Mondragón, que a sido preso, que a estado con los enemigos, mid-­May 1575, Hispanic Society of America, Altamira papers, box 18, folder II, document 3.I gratefully thank Geoffrey Parker for providing me with his notes on this document and also for bringing it to my attention in the first place. See also a letter from Diego de Zúñiga to Philip II, Paris, 29 May 1575, AGS E. K 1537/54. In this letter a skirmish is reported against three Spaniards fighting for the Dutch, two of which were killed and the other was to be shot. 62 Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid, Book 1150 (absueltos ad cautelam, Madrid 1608), fos 24r–26v. I gratefully thank Werner Thomas for providing me with his notes on this case. Werner Thomas, Een spel van kat en muis. Zuidnederlanders voor de Inquisitie in Spanje, 1530–1750, Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Letteren, 53:140 (Brussels: Koninklijke Academie, 1991), pp. 102–3. 63 ‘El papaz lleuaua vna muger para si y todos los demas, se apartaua cada vno con la suya y alli a oscuras las tratauan carnalmente y este hazia lo mismo. Y el dicho papaz los casa y descasa con vnas y con otras dandole vn real de a ocho.’ 64 Hopper, Turncoats, pp. 72–4, also mentions ‘frustrated ambition’, ‘slighted honour’, ‘personal fear’ and ‘desperation’ as possible causes of side-­changing. 65 Hopper, Turncoats, p. 63.

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7 How a defeat became a victory: the siege of Ostend in contemporary Dutch war coverage and post-­war chronicles (1601–15) Werner Thomas The siege of Ostend, a coastal city in Flanders, presents one of the more intriguing episodes from the Revolt in the Low Countries. For more than three years, from 5 July 1601 to 22 September 1604, an army of about 20,000 royal troops continuously attacked a garrison of about 5,700 defenders in the polders surrounding the city. At the time, Ostend was one of the most fortified places of the Low Countries, if not Europe.1 Starting from a small fishing town, the Spanish first built walls and basic defences between 1573 and 1578, while the Dutch added additional upgrades in the aftermath of the Pacification of Ghent, as the city had sided, along with many others in the Low Countries, with the rebellious provinces against Philip II.2 When Governor-­ General Alexander Farnese’s reconquest came to an end after the surrender of Antwerp in 1585, Ostend became the only Dutch stronghold in the southern provinces. It maintained a strong geographic position near the coast, as both Farnese and Archduke Albert of Austria failed to take the city in 1593 and 1596 respectively. With Dutch warships masters of the sea, it was too difficult to surround Ostend and cut off its supplies. This meant that Ostend was of strategic importance to the Dutch Republic.3 After 1578, its garrison began to make frequent forays into Flanders, ravaging the countryside and plundering villages. The Dutch soon replaced this rather unorganized and unofficial manner of warfare with ‘contributions’, or by demanding money from nearby towns in exchange for protection. The garrison imposed taxes on nearby villages, which led to extortion and reduced looting and destruction over an area that stretched from the gates of Bruges and Courtrai to Ypres and Menin.4 Ostend’s garrison continued to have a huge impact on the Flemish countryside, causing the Four Members of Flanders to construct a double circle of fortifications around the city to contain the danger

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after 1598.5 By 1600, however, many people had fled the surrounding villages, leaving them virtually abandoned and with little regional economic activity, which posed serious problems for royal taxation. Moreover, Ostend was an important bridgehead for military campaigns in the Southern Netherlands. It allowed the Republic’s army to gather artillery, provisions and troops at a location deep within enemy territory. Stadholder Maurice of Nassau exploited this particular advantage during the campaign of 1600, when he invaded Flanders to conquer the ports of Nieuwpoort and Dunkirk with the artillery, ammunition and provisions that the Dutch fleet brought to Ostend shortly before the invasion. The archducal army finally stopped Maurice’s army on a beach by Nieuwpoort. The States of Flanders continued to reiterate their request that royal forces capture the city and free the Flemish countryside.6 The loss of Ostend was undoubtedly a major defeat for the Republic. The defence of the city had consumed an enormous amount of money; four million guilders were spent with no tangible positive results. More importantly, by abandoning Ostend, the Republic lost its control over the Flemish countryside and suffered an important decline in i­ncome – ­money that could now be used by the government in Brussels to finance the war against the rebellious provinces. Moreover, the loss of its bridgehead in the south meant the end of any future military campaign in Flanders. Finally, the fall of Ostend caused instability in Zeeland, where local elites were quite unhappy with the fact that Maurice made no attempt to relieve the city.7 During the siege’s three-­plus years, the Dutch received news from Ostend through private correspondence, handwritten and printed newsletters, pamphlets and war reports, all excellent examples of episodic war narratives.8 They reached most European courts, where local elites were eager to read about the royal army’s (lack of) progress. Once the siege was over and the Twelve Years’ Truce signed, episodic war coverage transformed into history books.9 Curiously, information also transformed when passing from one medium to another. For many, what once was a clear defeat, changed into a resplendent victory. Dutch post-­war historiography, in particular, played an important role in this process, as these véritables histoires forged the legend of Ostend in contemporary Dutch memory, manufacturing a tale that has survived to date. This chapter analyses how Dutch post-­war historiography made use of episodic war coverage in order to transform the defeat into a victory. It does so by comparing the influential work by Leiden-­based printer Henrick van Haestens on the siege with its most important contemporary sources.10 This comparison allows us to discover the changes that were made in the siege’s narrative, and, equally important, in its framing. Publication strategies, both

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of the text itself and this specific edition as a whole, are also examined for their contribution to the change in perspective regarding the Dutch Republic’s loss of Ostend. From episodic war narrative to historiographic account The first attempt to publish an exhaustive report of the siege appeared as early as spring 1604, even before the city had fallen. This anonymous account, entitled Belägerung der statt Ostende Iournal, gave a day-­by-­day overview of the military operations, the arrival and departure of ships bringing troops and provisions to the besieged and taking away the wounded soldiers, daily life in the city, and, with less detail, the situation in the royal camp. The journal consisted of three accounts that observers wrote and printed separately. The first relates the events from the siege’s beginning until 10 January 1604. It was likely prepared at the same time as the 1604 spring edition of the Frankfurter Buchmesse, as the author stated at the end of that text that he had hoped that the siege would be over after two years and eight months (that is, in February 1604) of fighting, which did not happen.11 The second part continues the narrative from 20 March 1604 to 23 August 1604, or, as the title page explicitly mentions, ‘bis auff die gegenwertige Franctfurter herbstmiss in September’ (until the actual Frankfurter autumn fair in September). Again, the author had to deliver his manuscript before the siege had ended.12 Finally, the third part, which appeared in the spring of 1605, describes the events from 28 August until the city’s surrender on 20 September 1604.13 Extant copies of the Belägerung show that book owners generally bound the first and the second parts together and provided them with a common title page.14 All parts are folios and were printed on rather cheap paper. The typography is of poor quality, and there are several instances of incorrect pagination, running ink and clear marks left on the pages by the rulers that held the letters. All three parts were written in an episodic style that listed the events in a strictly chronological order. The Belägerung acted as a main source text for all important war narratives that publishers produced in the years following the siege. Jérémie Périer immediately translated the first part into French and published it in Paris in the summer of 1604.15 Périer, however, made some changes to the original text. At the end of the account relating the events of 1602, for example, he inserted a description of the royal troops rising in mutiny in Hoogstraten. He also added more context to the original documents published in the Belägerung, such as letters to or from the Archduke.16 Finally, he completed his translation by describing the period between February and 17 June 1604, for which he must have used sources other than the second part of the Belägerung.17

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Périer also published a Continuation des sieges d’Ostende, et de l’Escluse before the end of 1604.18 A few months later, Edward Grimeston produced an English translation of parts 1 and 2 from the Belägerung and published it in London.19 He used both the German source text and Périer’s translation, borrowing from the Belägerung the description of the events from 29 November to 8 December 1602 that is missing in the Histoire remarqvable, while reproducing the ‘L’avthevr av lectevr’ and the account of the mutiny at Hoogstraten from the latter account. Both Périer’s and Grimeston’s styles of writing were less episodic than the Belägerung, as they took the first stylistic steps towards producing a more historiographic account of the siege. During the Twelve Years’ Truce, Henrick van Haestens showed a renewed interest in the Ostend story. In his Nassauschen Lauren-crans, which he wrote together with Jan Janszoon Orlers, he included a chapter on the siege.20 In 1613, he published a full account of the story in Dutch, followed by a French version in 1615.21 While he based the Dutch text on the Belägerung, the Histoire remarqvable or, as is most likely the case, on both, the French account was, except for its modernized orthography, an exact copy of Périer’s translation from 1604.22 Van Haestens used additional sources only to remedy the lacuna in Périer’s work. He translated the introductory part of La Nouvelle Troye – including the description of the town and its history prior to ­1601 – ­from the Dutch edition, while he found inspiration for the account of siege’s final months in several other texts. Both of Van Haestens’s editions are in quarto and of a much higher quality than the Belägerung. They were designed to appeal to a public that was prepared to pay for them. They were printed on better paper and had a less overloaded type page. The types ­themselves – ­a gothic font for the Dutch edition and a humanist font for the ­French – ­were well cast and allowed for a clean print in two colours (black and red). If readers in the Republic, or Europe, had forgotten about Ostend, they could now find two accounts of the events. In fact, the Dutch version was so successful that Van Haestens reprinted it in a cheaper version in 1614. When comparing Périer’s, Grimeston’s and Van Haestens’s translations of the Belägerung, one would expect no major changes between the different versions, especially since all editions likely targeted the same audience, namely the supporters of the Dutch Republic and the enemies of the Spanish monarchy and archducal rule in the Netherlands. Authors such as Anna Simoni state that Van Haestens’s La Nouvelle Troye was nothing more than a reprint of the Histoire remarqvable. They also believe that in his De bloederige ende strenge belegeringhe, he translated the original source texts ‘with some discrimination, abandoning matter which seemed to him superfluous, adding a few tidbits which he had found in other sources’.23 What they failed to notice, however, was that Van Haestens, independently of whether he based his translation on

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5  Figure No. 5 from Van Haestens’s Bloedige ende strenge belegeringhe the Belägerung, on Périer’s French translation or on both, drastically interfered with the original account, and that his changes were far from innocuous. He manipulated his source texts by carefully selecting the information he included in his translation. He completely reframed his own description of the siege by

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connecting it to a series of other accounts. In addition, he included a selection of engravings that illustrated well-­chosen stages of the siege. In short, he deliberately reshaped the image of the conflict. What were the narrative changes that transformed a defeat into a victory? From translation to adaptation When one compares the Belägerung to Périer’s French, Grimeston’s English and Van Haestens’s French translations, the differences between all four texts turn out to be small. A few examples show the strong interrelationships between them. Describing the events from 7 October 1601, the Belägerung notes that ‘Den 7. October haben die Feinde von den abend ab biß forthin die gantze nacht durchaus mit fewrige kugel und kiselstein gar dapffer in der statt geschossen’24 (On 7 October, the enemy fired very furiously on the city with fireballs and pebbles from the evening onward during the whole night). Périer, Grimeston and Van Haestens translate this as follows: Le 7. d’Octobre les assiegeans tirerent furieusement des boulets de feu, & cailloux sur la ville, depuis le soir iusques au matin. Périer, Histoire remarqvable, fo. 30r

The 7. Of October, the enemy shot furiously with their firie bullets and stones unto the Towne from morning vntill night.

Le 7. d’Octobre les assiegeans tirerent furieusement des boulets de feu, & cailloux sur la ville, depuis le soir iusques au matin. Grimeston, A Trve Historie, Van Haestens, La Nouvelle p. 49 Troye, p. 142

A few weeks later, on 17 October 1601, the Belägerung reports that after the royal forces attacked the Spanish Ravelin east of the city, ‘Die wundt ertzte von der statt giengen dar nach in die selbe halbe mohn und haben gantze sacken voll menschen schmaltz von die todten Corper geschnitten in der statt gebracht’25 (The surgeons of the city went by night to the Spanish Ravelin and filled whole bags with human fat from the dead bodies, bringing it into town). The translations run as follows: Les Chirurgiens de la ville y allerent apres, & en rapporterent des sacs pleins de graisse d’hommes, qu’ils auoient tirez des corps. Périer, Histoire remarqvable, fo. 33v

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The Chirurgians of the towne went thether afterwards, and brought away Sacks full of mans grease which they had drawne out of their bodies. Grimeston, A Trve Historie, p. 55

Les Chirurgiens de la ville y allerent apres, & en rapporterent des sacs pleins de graisse d’hommes, qu’ils avoient tirez des corps. Van Haestens, La Nouvelle Troye, p. 147

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Clearly, all four texts are closely interconnected, and both Périer and Grimeston faithfully translated the Belägerung’s text. Spot checks show that Périer adopted most of the Belägerung’s vocabulary, making only small changes, such as replacing the biased term ‘Feind’ with the more neutral ‘assiegeans’. He does occasionally regroup several sentences into longer paragraphs, which gives the impression that his text is written in a less episodic and journalistic style. However, he makes only minor alterations in the content. Grimeston, for his part, faithfully translates Périer’s account into English, thus also sticking closely to the Belägerung. Van Haestens simply reprinted Périer’s text, while modernising the orthography (‘avoient’ instead of ‘auoient’). But when Van Haestens’s Dutch version is compared to the Belägerung, a very different story emerges: entire phrases are added and the author manipulates the wording to create greater dramatic effect. In the Dutch text, the events of 7 October 1601 are translated as follows: ‘Opten 7 ditto soo heeft den Vyant wederom beginnen te schieten seer afgrijselicken met vuyr ballen ende kegel-­steenen, dwelck een grouwel was om te hooren (my italics)’26 (On the 7th the enemy started again to fire very atrociously with fireballs and pebbles, which was horrible to hear). The bombardment is now described as ‘atrocious’, and the indication of its duration is replaced by an image of horror: ‘something horrible to hear’. The same happens in the second fragment: ‘En also sy nu daer uyt waren so lieppender veel uyter stadt ende sneeden de menschen op ende halden daer veel vets uyt ende sy gingender met om oft slacht-beesten gheweest waren (my italics)’27 (And now that they were out many people left the city and cut the bodies into pieces and got much human fat, and they treated them as if they were stock for slaughtering). Van Haestens speaks about ‘many people’, not just surgeons, which completely changes the passage’s meaning; indeed, human fat was an important medical commodity in early modern Europe and was used to heal wounds of all kinds, including gunshot wounds.28 He follows this with an additional image of horror: ‘they treated the dead bodies as if they had been stock for slaughtering’. Van Haestens thus turns a description of an expedition sent to collect the raw material of an important medical tool indispensable for a besieged garrison into a sadistic setting, the result of the Archduke’s willingness to sacrifice so many lives for his own glory and reputation. These two textual modifications are not random adaptations. A systematic revision of Van Haestens’s Dutch edition reveals a series of strategic methods he applied to deliberately change the meaning of the text, creating an image of a strong and invincible garrison that defended Ostend, and a weak and discouraged royal army that tried in vain to conquer it. Unlike Périer and Grimeston, Van Haestens deliberately changes the content and the meaning of the source text, thus offering the Dutch public a completely different version of the siege from the authors of the preceding works.

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The first strategy concerns the completeness of Van Haestens’s Dutch translation of the Belägerung. Périer fully respects the source text by translating almost all of it. He omits only a few fragments, probably because he considered that they needed too much context for the average French-­speaking reader to understand them. For example, he omits the author’s reflection when criticizing the attacks of the royal army during the first months of the siege: ‘Ich meine sie warden diesen menschen opffer [of soldiers during these attacks] zu Mexico in west-­Indien gelernt haben, aldasolchs fur der Spangiarden an kunfft einen erschricklichen gebrauch gewesen’29 (I believe they learned these human sacrifices in Mexico in the West-­Indies, where this was a terrible custom before the Spaniards arrived). He also drops the pasquil in rhyme on the strength of Ostend, surely because it was too difficult to translate it into French.30 As has already been observed, the only substantial part of the Belägerung that he did not include was the account of events from 29 November to 8 December, which make up three folios in the source text.31 As nothing of particular interest happened during those days, apart from the regular shooting and storming, this seems to suggest that Périer had made an unconscious error. Since Grimeston also faithfully followed his source text, the reflection on the Nahuas and the pasquil are likewise missing in his account.32 The same happens in Van Haestens’s French edition, although he does include the part on the events between 29 November and 8 December 1601 that is missing from Périer’s translation. However, it remains unclear whether he used the Belägerung or Grimeston for his translation. In any case, Périer, Grimeston and Van Haestens faithfully reproduced the Belägerung’s ­text – ­whether directly or ­indirectly – ­without making any major adaptations to its content. Van Haestens’s Dutch version, however, significantly abridges the Belägerung, something that historians have yet to notice. This becomes obvious when one compares the length of the Dutch and French editions. The type page of the two works is quite similar, despite the use of different fonts: the Dutch text counts 32 lines per page and 49 characters per line, the French 33 and 50 respectively. However, the translation of the first part of the Belägerung occupies 89 pages of De bloedige en strenge belegeringhe, while it takes up 175 pages in La Nouvelle Troye. Thus, Van Haestens deleted almost half of the original text. This, of course, must have been a conscious decision. Undoubtedly, the abridgment of the Dutch text was partly due to Van Haestens’s efforts to offer his readers a dynamic story. For example, he frequently drops the Belägerung’s almost daily references to the number of supply ships that arrive or depart, the number of dead and wounded soldiers, the intensity with which both sides bombarded each other, or the damage the city walls and the royal fortifications suffered from the high tide.33 Nevertheless, most omissions point to a deliberate manipulation of the source text. Van

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Haestens systematically forgets to include the fragments of the Belägerung related to: the successful attacks by the enemy; the failed sorties of the city’s garrison; the progress of the enemy approaching the city walls; the increasing efficiency of the enemy’s batteries blocking the new port and destroying supply ships; the destruction of buildings within the city; the disastrous effects of epidemics; the mutinies and insubordination by members of the garrison; the execution of traitors and thieves in the city; and the multiple desertions of soldiers. This is even more striking because Van Haestens describes the same phenomena occurring within the royal camp. He translates the fragments of the Belägerung that relate to the defections from the Spanish army to the city, as well as the unsuccessful assaults on the city walls; the mutinies and the hunger and misery in the camp; the desertion of the soldiers not receiving their wages; the inefficiency of the enemy’s bombardments; the failure of Spanish attempts to block the river by throwing stones in it, stretching ropes from one bank to another, or putting cannons on rafts; the damage the sea did to the Spanish trenches and fortresses; and the uselessness of machines such as the ‘sausages’ and the ‘Hell-­wagon’. Van Haestens, however, not only selectively omits sections of the story, but also adds information and comments to the source text. His additions usually reinforce the story’s dramatic nature, using less neutral and more colourful adjectives stressing the resisting garrison’s heroic character. Bombardments of the enemy become a ‘grouwel om hooren en sien’ (something horrible to see and hear), and its cannons shoot ‘dach en nacht seer affgrijselicken’ (day and night very atrociously). They cause ‘groot perijckel’ in the city (great peril), and the effect is such, ‘datmen meende dat de werelt vergaen soude’ (that people thought the world would perish). The attacks and sallies claim so many victims, ‘so dat het vleesch der menschen aldaer goet coop was, en ‘t Spaensche Speck veel int sant raeckte’ (the human flesh was cheap, and the Spanish bacon got stuck in the sand). The Archduke treats his soldiers as if they were ‘slacht-­beesten’ and leads them to the ‘slacht-­banck’ (stock for slaughtering being brought to the block). Arms, legs and heads fly around all the time. Many soldiers thus ‘quamen niet al wederom haerder moeder t’huys’ (did not return to their mother’s home). Words such as ‘sanglante’ or ‘bloederighe’ (bloody), ‘ellende’ and ‘ellendicheyt’ (misery and miserable), ‘een groot verdriet’ (great pain), ‘grouwel’ (horror), ‘affgrijselick’ (atrociously), ‘seer vreeselick’ (very frightful), and ‘ghewelt’ (violence), which were not used by the author of the Belägerung, appear on almost every page of his text. One particularly illuminating example of such manipulation is Van Haestens’s adaptation of the events of 20–24 February 1602. While the author of the Belägerung spends 81 lines telling the story, Van Haestens reduces this to 29 lines or 35 per cent of the original text in De bloederige ende strenge

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b­ elegeringhe.34 The majority of Van Haestens’s translation is dedicated to the arrival of six supply ships on 20 February, two of which reached the new port, while four got stuck in front of the enemy’s cannons. They were loaded with peat, beer, wood and other commodities. The garrison immediately opened fire to discourage the enemy from approaching them and seizing the load, eventually destroying them with fireballs. In the meantime, most of the men aboard were able to reach the Spanish Ravelin alive. Next, the text describes the effects of the high tide of 24 February on the enemy’s fortifications, especially in relation to its platforms east and west of the city. Although it also mentions the damage the storm did to the seawall near the Oostpoort city gate, it immediately stresses that the enemy could not take advantage of this situation because the city’s artillery kept the Spanish under continuous fire. Van Haestens, however, omits the progress the enemy made on 20, 21 and 22 February constructing platforms on both sides of the city, repairing the western trenches and parapets, and fortifying the sand hill on the same side ‘als wan sie da zehen jar bleiben wollen’35 (as if they wanted to stay there for ten years); the plundering of two supply ships; the death by enemy fire of a pregnant soldier’s wife who had left the Spanish Ravelin in order to try to recover some of the commodities that were floating in the river after the destruction of the other supply ships; the fire caused by the experiments of an engineer with fireworks, which destroyed several houses and killed numerous people on 23 February; the flooding of the English polder and parts of the city on 24 February, and the damage the high tide caused to the old city, the new port and the Peckels Bolwerk and Spanish Ravelin, two important bulwarks; the attempts of the enemy to increase damage by pointing its cannons into the gaps in the city’s defence structures; and its bombardment of the ships in the new port, which were suddenly exposed to its cannons as a result of the high tide and the wretched state of the fortifications. However, Van Haestens’s way of manipulating the information becomes most perceptible when he describes the fate of the women and children aboard the supply ships that became stranded in front of the royal troops. The Belägerung relates that ‘aber die Weiber vnd kinder konten so bald nicht gehülfen werden, so das sie in ihrer feinden henden gefallen seind’ (but the women and children could not be helped, and fell into the hands of the enemy), adding that ‘die draussen haben des abends zu vorn sechs Soldaten Weiber die sie aus die vier schiff gekriegt hetten nach der statt gesandt, hatten die selbe erst nackent aus gezogen gepleustert vnd schandliche missbraucht, ja die kleine kinder bey ihr hatten ihr leib blaw vnd schwartz geschlagen’36 (the evening before, those from outside have sent six women they captured from the four ships to the city; they first undressed them and then outrageously raped them, and they even beat black and blue those who had small children with them).

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Van Haestens translates this as: ‘uytghesondert eenighe soldaten vrouwen ende kinderen die quamen in des vyuandts handen, de welcke haer naeckt uyttrocken ende tracteerdese soo schandelick, oock soo wierden de kinderen haer lichaemen wel blauw gheslaghen, ende zijn also nae de stadt ghesonden’37 (except for some soldier’s wives and children who fell into the hands of the enemy, who undressed them and treated them outrageously, and the children were also beaten black and blue, and were then sent to the city). In addition, he adds a moral reflection on the Spanish soldiers’ behaviour: ‘Dit werde te recht een barbarisch feyt gheacht, also het niet menschelicken was dat men eenighe menschen also tracteeren soude, ick laet staen vrauwen ende onnosele kinderen’38 (this was rightfully considered as a barbarian act, as it is not human to treat any people in this way, let alone women and innocent children). From a military or strategic point of view, the incident involving the Dutch women and children was probably the least relevant of all. Nevertheless, Van Haestens prefers this story over other, more i­lluminating – a­ t least when it comes to understanding the development of the s­ iege – ­sequences because it allows him to negatively describe the Spanish troops. By manipulating the content of his translation, Van Haestens thus paints an image of a strong and well-­fortified city that was defended by a brave, disciplined, well-­paid and loyal garrison, determined to resist every attack, even though they suffered dearly from violent bombardment and the enemy’s cruelty. When describing the enemy, he puts an emphasis on the failure of Spain’s assaults, the inefficiency of the soldiers’ attempts to block the river Geule, the royal army’s desperation in view of the scant progress it made during the siege, the shortage of wages and the multiple desertions and defections. By so doing, he bestows an aura of invincibility on the army that lost the siege, while depicting the victorious Spanish as an unorganized and unmotivated group of mercenaries who participated in the siege against their will, were continuously looking for an opportunity to mutiny and who would fight only when threatened by the royal cavalry’s ability to capture those fleeing the battlefield. At a time when the Twelve Years’ Truce was under discussion, Van Haestens’s image of a Republic that successfully opposed Spanish military force and bravely fought against an enemy that showed little respect for the lives of its adversaries likely added to the arguments of those who opposed signing a peace treaty with Spain. Reframing the defeat When translating the account of Ostend’s siege into Dutch, Henrick van Haestens took great care to frame the text in such way that, instead of

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p­ resenting it as a single war narrative ending with the garrison’s defeat, it became a link in the Dutch Republic’s chain of victories over its Spanish enemy. This strategy represents a new way of presenting the siege when compared to earlier narratives. The author of the Belägerung hardly contextualizes the siege. In the first part, he includes only a two-­page description of the city’s history and geographic location, a short description of the city’s fortifications since 1572, and a list of the Spanish army’s earlier attempts at conquering it. The second part starts with an ‘An den leser’, in which he stresses, through the use of other examples of war in the Low Countries, that God will make the final decision as to whether the city will be taken or relieved.39 The third part contains only eight pages, six of which describe the siege’s last weeks. No additional contextualization is included.40 Jérémie Périer, apart from including a short dedication to Henry of Bourbon, Prince of Condé, that refers to Ostend as an inspiration for future military victories, compares the siege to others that occurred throughout the Low Countries in his four-­page ‘L’avthevr av lectevr’ by stressing its exceptionality. His corpus then begins with a translation of the Belägerung’s two-­page introduction.41 As previously observed, Edward Grimeston copies Périer’s ‘To the reader’ and, through Périer, the Belägerung’s introduction.42 Van Haestens briefly dedicates his La Nouvelle Troye to King Louis XIII of France.43 On the contrary, the preliminary texts in the Dutch edition take up no fewer than 72 pages that refer to other Dutch victories. The dedication to the Estates-­General stresses the bravery and perseverance of Ostend’s inhabitants who contributed more to the city’s impregnability during the three-­year siege than its fortified walls and gates. This is followed by a 40-­page account of the Dutch invasion of Flanders and their resounding victory over Spanish troops on the beach of Nieuwpoort during the summer of 1600. Almost half of this narrative consists of a list of 527 prisoners-­of-­war taken by the Dutch, while it makes no mention of the Dutch officers and soldiers who had fallen into enemy hands. The victory is further emphasized by the story of the captivity of Don Francisco de Mendoza, Admiral of Aragon and General of the royal armies, and an account of the resulting negotiations for both the Admiral and the other prisoners-­of-­war. Moreover, the siege’s description is flanked by the reports of two other successful military campaigns, one of which described the sea battle between Admiral of Holland Jan van Duyvenvoorde’s fleet and  the Spanish galleys of Sluis (L’Ecluse) in June 1601, and the other a successful siege of the latter by the Dutch army in the summer of 1604.44 Linking the loss of the city in September 1604 with the conquest of Sluis the previous month was probably the author’s most decisive move in reshaping the Dutch army’s defeat at Ostend. While its surrender occurred

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as a lucky side-­effect of Maurice of Nassau’s failed attempts to relieve Ostend (which infuriated the Estates-­General), it now became the siege’s ultimate goal, as if it had always been the main objective from the start. Beginning with claims that Sluis represented a simple diversion to draw away the royal army, the narrative shifted so that Ostend became a feint to preoccupy the Spaniards while Maurice took Sluis. The Belägerung’s author, however, had already developed this change in narrative. In its first two parts, he presents the city as an unassailable town, as its first, second and third harbours guaranteed the city’s uninterrupted supply. Thus, the Archduke would never be able to take the town. This narrative continues after the Spanish army took the polder and the first circle of fortifications in April and May 1603 respectively. Now, the emphasis shifted to the strength of the new fortifications raised within the city centre. However, when the Belägerung, published in 1605, discusses the final days of the siege in its third part, Ostend is suddenly presented as a ‘molehill’ or ‘sand hill’, and its loss as part of a favourable ‘exchange’ between the Spanish and the Dutch. While the Spanish army gained a completely destroyed town, the Republic laid hands on the almost undamaged city of Sluis, from which they could resume forays into the Flemish countryside. As a result, the conquest of Ostend did not really improve things for the Archduke. This part of the Belägerung reflects the Estates-­General’s official viewpoint, which inscribed coins with the Greek inscriptions ‘Leather for copper’ and ‘Iehova prius dederat plus quam perdidimus’ (God first gave us more than what we lost afterwards) a few short weeks after Ostend’s fall.45 Thus, the authors increasingly presented the city’s loss as God’s decision, reinforcing the Republic by instead giving it Sluis. Starting with Van Haestens’s Nassauschen Lauren-crans, Ostend’s exchange value increased: not only did the army of the Republic capture Sluis, but it also took five additional cities (Grave, Aardenburg, Cadzand, IJzendijke and Wachtendonk).46 In De bloedige ende strenge belegeringhe, this change in the narrative is consolidated. Van Haestens reinforces this argument by emphasizing the money invested in the siege, and the number of Spanish soldiers that the Dutch killed, thus stressing the high price paid by the Archduke in order to acquire this ‘molehill’. Despite the acceleration and intensification of military operations near Ostend, he dedicates only eight pages to the siege’s final months (from 30 March to 22 September), including three pages that summarized the garrison’s favourable conditions for capitulation. In comparison, his account of the siege of Sluis (from 25 April to 18 August), takes up eleven pages, of which only two are dedicated to the capitulation text.47 He ends his story of the siege by describing the Archdukes’ visit to the town and stressed that both were astonished to see that they had wasted so much monetary and human capital, only to conquer ‘eenen onnutten sandt-­hoop’48 (a useless sand hill). In his

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final address, he concludes that ‘Hy heeft te dier betaelt t’Oostensche geusen kerck-­hoff’49 (he paid too much for the Ostend graveyard of Beggars). In order to be sure that the reader would interpret the siege at Ostend from his perspective, Van Haestens included a series of rhyming poems and short texts that emphasized the defenders’ heroic character at the siege and its favourable outcome for the Dutch Republic at the beginning of his account. He also, for example, referred to the garrison’s bravery: ‘Vergeefs zijn poorten / wallen en vesten / Als niet en waeckt den Alder-­besten’ (useless are gates, walls and fortresses, if the best are not guarding).50 Daniel Heinsius’s poem, on the other hand, mentions the human blood and the Indians’ gold that had been spent to conquer the ‘dorren mollen hoop’ (an arid molehill). He concludes: Waer wilt den vyandt zijn? Wat heeft hy toch begonnen? OOSTENDE is hy quijt, al heeft hyt al gewonnen. De menschen staen int sandt. Hoe dat het komt of gaet, De stadt is lange wech: de Spaniaert komt te laet.51 Where does the enemy want to be? What did he start? OSTEND he has lost, although he gained it all. People are standing in the sand. Whichever way you turn, The city has long been gone: the Spaniard was too late.

The exchange of Sluis for Ostend had thus become the main argument of Van Haestens’s Ostend story. Portraying the siege Soon after the start of the siege, images appeared offering a view of the events occurring at Ostend. Printers produced and distributed leaflets containing engravings that represented and explained the conflict’s most important phases. The first part of the Belägerung also contained several images. The text itself explicitly refers to at least two, apart from the title page, and extant copies have two to three engravings attached, although not necessarily the ones that are referred to in the text.52 The second part even ends with the beginning of an appendix that promised a series of engravings representing the events that had occurred between the Frankfurter spring and autumn fairs, and explicitly mentions a map of Flanders, an image of the siege of Sluis and several copperplates representing the changing positions around Ostend and the construction of the ‘Nova Troia’ barricades. In addition, the work consisted of a separate appendix of engravings and a new title page. The appendix consisted of eleven or twelve ­engravings – ­judging by the surviving ­copies – ­that showed different episodes from the siege, although there were no engravings representing the

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fall of the city or the withdrawal of the garrison. In extant copies, the appendix is generally found attached to part 2, immediately following the page that introduces it (and not to part 3). Apparently, once the city had fallen, the Belägerung’s author did not feel the need to illustrate the defeat of the Dutch army. As a result, part 3 contains no images, not even on its title page. Taken together, the Belägerung’s three parts thus contain fourteen different engravings, three of which are duplicated on the title pages to parts 1 and 2, and the appendix. Each of these engravings consist of a title with a short contextualization, the engraving itself, a legend explaining the symbols on it, and a brief text explaining the events, all of which is in German. Apparently, the author based the explanations on the main text. In most cases, he kept the wording almost completely intact, with a few instances of slight rephrasing. Major changes occurred only when the author expanded the explanation’s text with additional information. It thus seems that an artist produced at least the engravings of the appendix as separate newsletters that were only later integrated into the Belägerung. Indeed, nine engravings have cartouches containing a legend written in Latin; hence, the need for supplementary contextualization in German preceding and following each engraving. If they were made for the Belägerung, these legends would also have been written in German. None of the engravings has a series number, although the stylistic uniformity suggests that they were produced within a short time frame, and that they might even have been typeset by the Belägerung’s author. While the engravings refer to the text, although without specifying which part they describe (instead using the sentence ‘Davon im Buch weiter zu sehen ist’; of which one can read more in the book), the Belägerung’s text does not reference the engravings (except for the two cases in part 1). At the end of part 1, for example, the Belägerung discusses the so-­called Hellewagen (‘Hell-­wagon’) of the Italian engineer Pompeo Targone, describing both its appearance and function. However, the text does not refer to the engraving that was made of it and included in the appendix attached to part 2. This suggests that it did not exist when the author initially described the Hellewagen. Thus, the engravings were likely not part of the book’s original design, but were later integrations. The engravings are a selection of the siege’s most striking events and stages. However, the emphasis is on the Spanish army’s defeats and failures: the sea battle between the Spanish galleys and the Dutch fleet in October 1601; the burning of the Archduke’s lodging at Fort Albertus in November 1601; the failed assault, the parlay and the archdukes’ visit to the camp in December 1601; the general assault of January 1602 (two engravings); the sea battle and subsequent death of Federico Spinola in May 1604; Targone’s mobile drawbridge, which was destroyed when it was first used; the city’s situation in August 1604, represented as the two chains of barricades that the garrison

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had erected behind the city walls, including Nova Troia; and a general map of the fortifications in and around Ostend. Only three engravings reflected a royal victory. The first represents the conquest of the polders in the spring of 1603, although the accompanying text stresses the uselessness of that victory, as soldiers previously stationed in these fortifications could now be used to reinforce the city’s garrison. The second engraving shows Bucquoy’s platform (the ‘Luysbosch’), from which the Spanish army tried to block the second harbour; again, the text emphasizes its uselessness, as ships could still reach the port. The third engraving illustrates the abandonment and subsequent loss of the city’s outer walls by the garrison as a result of the mining of the bastions by the Spanish army in May and June of 1604. Thus, by looking only at the appendices and the text below the engravings, the reader gets the impression that the siege of Ostend was a failure for the Spanish army. However, when consulting the engravings in combination with the Belägerung, as would be the case for the readers who purchased the engravings as part of the Belägerung’s appendices (and not as separately sold newsletters), the overall tone of the images is mitigated. Van Haestens somehow came into possession of the copperplates of the Belägerung’s engravings. He stripped the German text from the images and kept only the Latin legend. He occasionally added explanations in Dutch onto the engravings, identifying certain parts and events.53 Then, he gave each engraving a serial number from 1 to 14 and inserted them into De bloederige ende strenge belegeringhe.54 He marked the passages in his book where he inserted the engravings by writing the engraving’s title, the indication ‘Verclaringhe van dese Figuere. N° X’ (Explanation of Figure X), placed between two lines, and finished by translating the legend into Dutch. The engravings were then bound between the preceding and following page. Van Haestens also made some subtle but important changes, many of which look rather innocuous. For example, he used the engraving representing the sea battle between Spinola’s galleys and the Dutch fleet to instead illustrate the account of Duyvenvoorde’s victory near Dover in 1601, despite the fact that the names of the Zeeland cities are clearly legible. Since the account mentions only the number of the engraving (‘De eerste Figuere. N° 1.’), and omits the legend, this might have been a simple mistake.55 Other changes, however, are less innocent. Engraving no. 3 now represents the complete burning of Fort Albertus, not just the Archduke’s lodging.56 Engraving no. 4 is used to illustrate the royal army’s failed attack on the Spanish Ravelin on 3 December 1601, even though it originally depicted the attack on the eastern part of the city during the general assault of 7 January 1602.57 Thus, a supplementary defeat of the royal troops is delineated with a visual source. Moreover, the engraving showing the loss of the outer walls now illustrates

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6  Figure No. 10 from Van Haestens’s Bloedige ende strenge belegeringhe the general assault, again converting a defeat into a victory (the successful resistance to the assault). Curiously, no legend in Dutch accompanies the engraving; it is announced only as ‘De Figuere N° 5’ in the text.58 The legend of engraving no. 6, which represents the negotiations regarding the city’s capitulation, is reformulated. The emphasis is now placed on the crowds coming to Ostend (in vain) from the surrounding cities and villages hoping to witness the city’s surrender. The legend even specifies that people shouted things such as ‘morghen sullen wy by u te gastcomen’59 (tomorrow, we will come and be your guests). Van Haestens used engraving no. 8, which depicted the last barricades erected by the garrison in August 1604, to illustrate the fortifications that commander-­in-­chief Francis Vere instructed the garrison to build in order to resist the expected general assault after the breakdown of negotiations, again without any Dutch legend.60 The legend of engraving no. 9 omits that during this assault the royal troops were able to conquer the old town and were only later driven out by force, thus representing the attack as a total failure from the beginning.61 He used engraving no. 10, which originally showed the Spanish army’s conquest of the polder in April 1603, to illustrate the unsuccessful attack on the bastions of Helmont and Porc-­Epic during the general assault.62 Once again,

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he converts a clear royal victory into a defeat. This reframing is, of course, primarily achieved through the complete removal of the story of April 1603 from Van Haestens’s account, which led to an alteration of its original context. Nevertheless, Van Haestens’s deletion of this story was a conscious choice. Finally, Van Haestens preferred to not include an engraving that highlighted the Spanish army’s progress during the spring and the summer of 1604 by mining the outer city walls (which is now used to illustrate the 1602 attack on the polder), but selected two engravings showing the archducal engineer Pompeo Targone’s military machines and technological inventions, such as the Hell-­wagon (engraving no. 13), the candellieri, Targone’s castle or the ‘sausages’ (engraving no. 14).63 Engraving no. 14 was even copied from Pompeo Giustiniano’s Delle guerre di Fiandra.64 According to the text, most of these devices turned out to be completely useless. The success of the 1604 attack is thus mitigated by the failure of these devices. By inserting the Belägerung’s engravings in his already strongly biased De bloederige ende strenge belegeringhe and, in some cases, placing them in a different context and connecting them to other fragments of the text, Van Haestens perpetuated the image of a victorious garrison resisting the enemy’s fierce attacks until the end of the siege, while also portraying the Spanish army as a clumsy and unsuccessful force fruitlessly trying to score even the smallest victory. The engravings would become icons of the siege, and publishers used them in many other accounts until the twentieth century. Conclusion Some authors believe that Henrick van Haestens published Dutch and French accounts of the siege of Ostend because, after buying the copperplates representing different phases of the conflict, he was looking for a way to profit from them. He thus would have looked for any appropriate texts that could adequately accompany the engravings. To this end, he ended up using one or two of the earliest and potentially most popular and complete accounts of his time: the Belägerung and/or its French translation.65 In short, to Van Haestens the text illustrated the engravings, not the other way around. Therefore, he paid little attention to it and simply reprinted Périer’s work, while making superficial changes in his Dutch translation. Instead, as this chapter has shown, Van Haestens’s Dutch translation resulted from carefully chosen publication strategies that reshaped his source texts into a completely different end product. By selecting the kind of information he wanted to convey to his readers, by reframing the story of the siege by putting it in the context of a series of Dutch v­ ictories – i­n particular the

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conquest of ­Sluis – ­and thus changing the understanding of the siege, and by connecting the engravings with specific passages, Van Haestens was able to minimize both the defeat of the Republic at Ostend and the resulting Spanish victory. The overall result of his adaptation transformed the story of Ostend’s siege from a clear defeat into a heroic victory, thus reflecting the official version the Estates-­General offered shortly after the city fell. Notes

  1 For a full account of, and recent studies on, the siege of Ostend, see Edward Vlietinck, Het oude Oostende en zijne driejarige belegering (1601–1604). Opkomst, bloei en ondergang, met de beroerten der XVIe eeuw (Oostende: Jos Vlietinck, 1897), pp.  279–308; Luc De Vos, ‘Het Beleg van Oostende, 1601–1604’, in Luc De Vos (ed.), Veldslagen in de Lage Landen (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 1995), pp. 79–87; Werner Thomas, ‘Het beleg van Oostende’, in Werner Thomas (ed.), De val van het Nieuwe Troje. Het beleg van Oostende, 1601–1604 (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2004), pp.  81–99; Piet Lombaerde, ‘Oostende afgesneden, belegerd, opgegeven en ingenomen: 1599–1604’, in Dirk de Vries (ed.), Oostende verloren Sluis gewonnen, 1604. Een kroniek in kaarten (Leiden: Universiteitsbibliotheek, 2004), pp. 47–69. An English account of the siege, although heavily biased, is Edward Belleroche, The Siege of Ostend or the New Troy, 1601–1604 (London: Spottiswoode, 1892).   2 Jacob van Deventer drew a map of Ostend before the construction of its fortifications in the 1560s. See Reinout Rutte and Bram Vannieuwenhuyze, Stedenatlas Jacob van Deventer. 226 Stadsplattegronden uit 1545–1575 – Schakels tussen verleden en heden (Bussem and Tielt: Thoth/ Lannoo, 2018), p. 241.   3 Thomas, ‘De val van het Nieuwe Troje’, in Thomas, De val van het Nieuwe Troje, pp. 7–19.  4 Tim Piceu, Over vrybuters en quaetdoenders. Terreur op het Vlaamse platteland (eind 16de eeuw) (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2008), pp. 97–183. On the concept of ‘small’ or unofficial war, see John R. Hale, War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450–1620 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); Frank Tallett, War and Society in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1992); Beatrice Heuser (ed.), Small Wars and Insurgencies in Theory and Practice, 1500–1850 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016).   5 Piet Lombaerde, ‘De stad Oostende en de nieuwe gebastioneerde versterkingswijzen in de Nederlanden’, in Thomas, De val van het Nieuwe Troje, pp. 47–57.   6 B. Cox, Vanden Tocht in Vlaenderen. De logistiek van Nieuwpoort, 1600 (Zutphen: De Walburg Pers, 1986); Leen Dorsman, 1600: Slag bij Nieuwpoort (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000).   7 Thomas, ‘De val van het Nieuwe Troje’, in Thomas, De val van het Nieuwe Troje, pp. 7–19 (p. 16).   8 For a few examples, see Thomas, De val van het Nieuwe Troje, pp. 173–5.   9 Anna Simoni, The Ostend Story. Early Tales of the Great Siege and the Mediating Role of Henrick van Haestens (‘t Goy-­Houten: HES & De Graaf, 2003); Joos Vermeulen, ‘Rebels Oostende. Weergalm en naklank’, in Thomas, De val van het Nieuwe Troje, pp. 127–37. 10 On Van Haestens, who moved to Leuven in 1621, converted to Catholicism and became the city’s and university’s printer, see Anna Simoni, ‘Henrick van Haestens from Leiden to Leuven via ‘Cologne’’, Quaerendo, 15:3 (1985), 187–94. Van Haestens died in Leuven in 1629. 11 Belägerung der Statt Ostende. Iournal. Tagregister vnd eigentliche beschreibung aller gedenckwurdigsten Sachen (s.l., s.n., 1604). Henceforth referred to as Belägerung, part I. For a full bibliographical description, see Simoni, The Ostend Story, pp. 35–8. 12 Iovrnal. Ander Theil zusatz vnd Anhang des gantzen Journals vber die treffliche vnd weitberumte Belägerung der statt vnd Kriegs Vniversiteit Ostende in Flandern (s.l., s.n. [1604]). Henceforth referred to as Belägerung, part II. For a full bibliographical description, see Simoni, The Ostend Story, pp. 38–42. 13 Belägerung der Statt Ostende. Iovrnal Dritter vnd letster theill des gantzenn Journals vber die treffeliche

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vnd weith bervmbte belägerung der Statt vnd Kriegs-Vniversiteit Ostende in Flandern (s.l., s.n., 1605). Henceforth referred to as Belägerung, part III. For a full bibliographical description, see Simoni, The Ostend Story, pp. 42–3. 14 For example, the copies preserved at the Ghent University Library and the Kris Lambert Bibliotheek in Ostend. 15 Jérémie Périer, Histoire remarqvable et veritable de ce qvi s’est passé par chacun iour au siege de la ville d’Ostende, de part & d’autre iusques à present (Paris: Ieremie Perier, 1604). The privilege of the edition dates from 30 June 1604. 16 For example, when translating the letter of the Four Members of Flanders to the Archduke requesting that he continue the siege despite the previous decision of his Council of War, Périer adds two paragraphs on the preceding decision-­making process. Cf. Périer, Histoire remarqvable, fo. 24r–v. He also omits the Belägerung’s comparison between King Herod and Archduke Albert (Belägerung, part I, fo. 21v; Périer, Histoire remarqvable, fo. 68r). 17 Périer, Histoire remarqvable, fo. 122: ‘I’ay recouuert plusieurs memoires de diuers lieux, contenants la suite de ce qui s’est passe depuis.’ 18 Jérémie Périer, Continuation des sieges d’Ostende, et de l’Escluse, auec le portrait des nouueaux retranchement [sic] d’Ostende (Paris, 1604). 19 Edward Grimeston, A Trve History of the Memorable Siege of Ostend (London: Edward Blount, 1604). 20 Jan Janszoon Orlers and Henrick van Haestens, Den Nassauschen lauren-crans (Leiden: Orlers and Van Haestens, 1610), pp. 170–86. 21 Henrick van Haestens, De bloedige ende strenge belegeringhe der Stadt Oostende in Vlaenderen […] (Leiden: Henrick van Haestens, 1613); Henrick van Haestens, La Nouvelle Troye ou memorable histoire du Siege d’Ostende (Leiden: Louis Elzevier, 1615). 22 Simoni, The Ostend Story, pp. 27–69. 23 Ibid., p. 64. Simoni argues that Van Haestens only used Périer’s account for both translations, but comparing his Dutch edition with the Belägerung brings to light a series of similarities that cannot be explained by Simoni’s theory. However, space does not permit me to elaborate on this problem. 24 Belägerung, part I, fo. 10v. 25 Ibid., fo. 11v. 26 Van Haestens, De bloedige ende strenge belegeringhe, p. 93. 27 Ibid., p. 96. 28 Richard Sugg, Mummies, Cannibals, and Vampires. The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), pp. 157–62. 29 Belägerung, part I, fo. 5v; Périer, Histoire remarqvable, fo. 14v. 30 Belägerung, part I, fo. 19v; Périer, Histoire remarqvable, fo. 56v. 31 Belägerung, part I, fos 16 r–17v; Périer, Histoire remarqvable, fos 54v–55r. 32 Grimeston, A Trve Historie, pp. 23 and 100–1 respectively. 33 Beginning with the events of 15 March 1602, the author of the Belägerung also cuts out the news regarding incoming and departing ships, and the intensity of enemy fire ‘umb den gunstigen leser mit dis so offter mahln zu repetieren nicht uberdrussig zu fallen’ (part I, fo. 27v). From here, the pace of the story accelerates: the period between 15 March 1602 and 10 January 1604 (twenty-­seven months) only occupies 16 pages, while the previous period (nine months) takes up 55. 34 Belägerung, part I, fo. 25r–v; Van Haestens, La Nouvelle Troye, p. 127. 35 Belägerung, part I, fo. 25v. 36 Ibid., fo. 25r. 37 Van Haestens, De bloederige ende strenge belegeringhe, p. 127. 38 Ibid. 39 Belägerung, part II, fo. 1r. 40 Belägerung, part III, fos 11–14. 41 Périer, Histoire remarqvable, fos 1r–3v.

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42 Grimeston, A Trve Historie, fos Aiiv–Aiii. 43 Van Haestens, La Nouvelle Troye, ‘Av Roy Tres-­Chrestien de France et de Navarre, Loys XIII’. 44 Van Haestens, La Nouvelle Troye, pp. 9–56 and 164–74. 45 Thomas, De val van het Nieuwe Troje, pp. 190–1. 46 Orlers and Van Haestens, Den Nassauschen Lauren-crans, pp. 184–5. 47 Van Haestens, De bloedige ende strenge belegeringhe, pp. 155–62 and 164–74. 48 Ibid., p. 162. 49 Ibid., p. 163. 50 Ibid., p. 8. 51 Ibid., p. 7. 52 Are mentioned in the Belägerung, part I, fo. 14v, The burning of Fort Albertus (‘Hier zu gehort ein figur von es brennen in der Schantze Alberti die hinden tzu sehen ist bey die Kupfer-­ stucken’); and fo. 19r, The Christmas Truce (‘[…] ein umb sonst zugemachte vnterhandlung (wie in die nachfolgende figure versiert wirdt’). However, in the extant copies one or even both engravings are sometimes missing at the end of part I, or are included in the appendix of engravings. 53 For example, the engraving representing the ‘Luysbosch’, where explanations such as ‘Verdroncken Landt’ (inundated land), ‘Hier liggen des eertsshertogen sloupen’ (Here lie the sloops of the archduke), or ‘des eertsshertochs leger’ (the archduke’s army). Van Haestens, De bloederige ende strenge belegeringhe, engraving no. 2 (inserted between pp. 96 and 97). 54 There is neither a reference to an engraving no. 12, nor any engraving bearing that number. On the other hand, the general map did not receive a serial number, thus bringing the total of engravings to fourteen. 55 Van Haestens, De bloederige ende strenge belegeringhe, p. 49. 56 Ibid., p. 103. 57 Ibid., p. 108. 58 Ibid., p. 110. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid., p. 115. 61 Ibid., p. 116. 62 Ibid., p. 117. 63 Ibid., p. 155. 64 Pompeo Giustiniani, Delle Guerre di Fiandra Libri VI (Antwerp: Ioachimo Trognesio, 1609), plate X. 65 Simoni, The Ostend Story, p. 150.

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8 North and south: a comparison of episodic war narratives during the Revolt in the Low Countries1 Jasper van der Steen

In 2006, a Dutch commission led by the president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Frits van Oostrom, presented the Canon of the Netherlands. This was a government initiative aimed at improving the history curriculum in Dutch schools. Official depictions of the canon present the history of the Netherlands as a series of distinct, illustrated, episodes ordered chronologically. The life of Anne Frank, for instance, refers to the murder of Dutch Jews during the Second World War. Following this episode are the Indonesian war of independence and the rise of the welfare state. The canon was in many ways a success since its primary ­aim – ­implementation in school ­curricula – ­was ultimately largely achieved.2 But the development and subsequent use of this sequence of historical episodes also revealed the challenges of selection in the top–down construction of a historical canon. Christians felt underrepresented, there was criticism of the lack of attention to the negative influence of the Dutch East India Company, and both minority and local canons emerged due to the perceived neglect of ethnic diversity, regional variety and the Dutch periphery.3 Although the controversial nature of the Canon of the Netherlands will not surprise readers of this volume, the example reminds us of the problem of selectivity inherent to historical narrative. We can define ‘narratives’ as accounts of a series of ‘facts’ or bundles of consecutive facts known as episodes, presented chronologically, with the aim of establishing implicit or explicit causal connections between them. Only fairly recently have historians begun to investigate the cultural mechanisms of selection in the construction of narratives about the past. They have shown that historical narratives are not simply ‘out there’ to be discovered but have to be constructed through a process of selection.4 Since the 1980s, especially in the fields of nationalism

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and cultural memory, scholars have demonstrated that deliberate efforts are required for communities to keep the ‘memory’ of certain historical episodes alive. Aleida Assmann argued that ‘forgetting is the normality of personal and cultural life’ and that it requires ‘special and costly precautions’ to prevent the past from being forgotten.5 Astrid Erll made a similar point when she contended that for historical episodes to remain relevant in society they need to be ‘actualized’. Otherwise ‘monuments, rituals, and books are nothing but dead material, failing to have any impact in societies’.6 A historical episode can maintain its actual value only when people consider it as a meaningful part of a narrative. The meaning attributed to historical episodes on a national level tends to be political, inspired by nationalist or at least state-­driven motives. Scholars tend to rest on the assumption that the convergence of nationalism, mass media and the modern state formed an important condition for the politicization of memory, as Eric Hobsbawm suggested in his path-­breaking The Invention of Tradition.7 Yet this explanation for the politicization of historical narratives in the twentieth century is not entirely satisfactory because early modern people too were aware of the need for actualizations of the past and precautions against forgetting, not only on the scale of their rural community, village or town but also on the level that we can describe as ‘national’.8 In 1615, for instance, the Calvinist minister Willem Baudartius published Image and Description of all Battles, Sieges and other Notable Events […] during the War against the King of Spain. Baudartius assigned a central role to historiography for the preservation of memory against the ‘immortal and all-­devouring sharp teeth of time and spite’.9 His history of the Revolt bears some resemblance to the recently developed Canon of the Netherlands in that it, too, is a series of well-­defined episodes, each with a print visualizing the described episode, such as the murder of William of Orange in 1584 (figure 7). But while the modern Dutch canon was a government initiative, Baudartius’s publication was not. This raises questions about the mechanisms of selection in societies that lack modern state apparatuses, nationalism and mass media. Such questions become especially interesting when applied to the political use of the past in the war-­torn society of the early modern Low Countries during the Revolt in the Netherlands. This major rebellion against Philip II of ­Spain – ­who was also overlord of the Netherlandish ­principalities – ­broke out in 1566. Although the hopes and expectations of Netherlandish rebels varied widely and the causes of the Revolt remain a topic of scholarly debate, in general the insurgents had two major grievances: Habsburg attempts at administrative centralization and the regime’s persecution of Protestants. Initially, a coalition of nobles had attempted to voice their grievances peacefully with a petition to Margaret of Parma in April 1566. Yet they could not prevent militant Calvinists from

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7  The murder of William of Orange, discussed and illustrated in Willem Baudartius, Afbeeldinghe, ende beschrijvinghe van alle de veld-slagen, belegeringen, ende and’re notable geschiedenissen, ghevallen in de Nederlanden, geduerende d’oorloghe teghens den coningh van Spaengien also known as De Nassausche oorloghen (Amsterdam, 1616) r­ ansacking churches throughout the Low Countries in the summer of that year. These Iconoclastic Furies motivated Philip II to violently suppress what he considered to be a rebellious confederation of dissident nobles and Calvinists. In its first decades, the conflict led to the deaths of thousands of people and the displacement of up to 100,000 inhabitants.10 It was not the aim of the rebels to split the Low Countries into a northern and southern part, but this is what happened. In the 1580s Alexander Farnese, the Governor-­General in Habsburg service, reconquered rebellious territories in the south and east of the Low Countries (notably the city of Antwerp in 1585). In the 1590s Maurice of Nassau, serving the rebels as mili-

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tary commander, captured Habsburg territories in the northeast. Thus Farnese and Maurice established what was to become a lasting separation between North and South. Following his campaign, the Southern ­Netherlands – ­once a cradle of P­ rotestantism – s­aw the restoration of Habsburg authority and a recatholicization exemplary to the whole of Counter-­Reformation Europe.11 The Northern Netherlands became a federal republic with a Reformed public church but also with many other denominations and, in some regions of the Republic, a very sizeable number of remaining Catholics.12 It is worth noting that people in the 1560s, 1570s and early 1580s could not foresee the rift between the two parts of the Low Countries. Nevertheless, well before the Peace of Westphalia ended the Eighty Years’ War in 1648, accounts of the period 1566–85 diverged spectacularly. This phenomenon has only recently become the object of scholarly inquiry.13 It is not so surprising that people on the two sides of the political separation looked back on the communal conflict in different ways. But although this separation partly

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accounts for the development of two opposing interpretations of the war, it does not explain why this happened the way it did in the pre-­modern Habsburg Netherlands and the Dutch Republic. To provide an explanation, this chapter compares the distinct ways of narrating the Revolt in North and South around the year 1600. It illustrates how propaganda stood at the basis of at least two episodic narratives. In addition, it demonstrates that even though these narratives became constitutive features of North and South Netherlandish identity formation, they developed in mutual interaction with one another and their emergence cannot be considered separately from transnational practices of narrating the history of political conflict. The influence of political propaganda In 1567, the Duke of Alba arrived in the Low Countries to punish the radicals who had smashed religious images in the Iconoclastic Furies of 1566. To do so, he established a special t­ribunal – ­the Council of T ­ roubles – ­by whose order more than a thousand Netherlanders were executed. During its inauguration in September 1567, an account of the origins of the Revolt by Joachim Hopperus, a loyal councillor of Philip II, was read to the assembly.14 Hopperus’s starting point was 1559, when Philip II had left the Low Countries for Spain, leaving his Netherlandish provinces ‘in good peace and tranquillity, without any alteration, at least none that was recognized as such’.15 This last qualification was necessary, Hopperus explained, because under the surface discontent was brewing among the ambitious nobility aspiring for greater political influence and wealth. In the subsequent sections of the text, Hopperus attributed the growing instability of Habsburg governance in the Low Countries to the ambition and avarice of William of Orange, Lamoral I of Gavere, Count of Egmont and Philip de Montmorency, Count of Horn. He thus provided members of Alba’s tribunal, ­and – ­due to the copying and further distribution of the ­manuscript – ­also other high government officials, with a narrative of the Revolt that blamed dissident nobles for stirring up trouble and causing the rebellion. This reading of events was to become a kind of blueprint for future accounts of the conflict.16 Indeed, the development of distinct northern and southern approaches to the Revolt can be traced back to rebel and loyalist political propaganda at the beginning of the conflict. Monica Stensland has shown that, in reaction to the Iconoclastic Furies of 1566, the regime pursued a traditional communication strategy, branding political ­dissidents – ­notably the noble ­opposition – ­as traitors against their rightful overlord and as heretics.17 In that sense, Hopperus’s example is characteristic of the Habsburg approach to the rebellion. Similarly, Alba ordered the removal of the rebels’ coats of arms from public places.

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Contemporary observer Philip van Campene noted in his diary that, as a result, the heraldic signs of the Count of Egmont ‘in some places were turned around to dishonour him and his family’.18 Egmont himself was executed in 1568 for attempting to negotiate with the opposition. The Duke of Alba also famously ordered the demolition of the Culemborg Palace in Brussels, where the rebels had assembled.19 The regime’s communication strategy was initially quite successful. The well-­known chronicler Godevaert van Haecht wrote that the rebels quickly became known foremost as opponents of Catholicism, a qualification that alienated them from the majority of Netherlanders who occupied the middle ground.20 This was a major problem for the rebels. As challengers to the existing order they carried the burden of proof, yet found it comparatively difficult to justify their revolt consistently and persuasively. Four important reasons can explain why the insurgents could not simply fall back on traditional public communication strategies. First, they rebelled against their rightful overlord, which by most standards was considered a wicked crime. Second, they disagreed on how to resolve the troubles in the Low Countries. Third, some insurgents had broken with Roman Catholicism, some sympathised with the Protestant cause and others were unsure about their religious stance, but, in any case, they did not reach a consensus on religious principles. And, finally, insurgents justified their rebellion on the basis of customs and privileges which, they argued, were being flouted by Philip II. But, as Woltjer has shown, opponents of the rebels rightly argued that most privileges were by definition local privileges (or, in some cases, even non-­existent).21 In short, attacking the constitutional and religious policies of the Spanish king and lacking both a central authority and religious uniformity, the internally divided rebels thus had little common ground to fall back on. The leader of the r­ebellion – ­Prince William of O ­ range – ­found an innovative solution to this rather pressing communication problem. Alba had summoned him to the Council of Troubles after the Iconoclastic Furies, and, knowing that little good could be expected from Alba’s writ of summons, the prince fled the Low Countries. He enlisted the support of both Protestants and Catholics and organized two invasions from Germany, one in 1568 and one in 1572. Erik Swart has reminded historians that Prince William had quite some military experience. He had received a solid military education and fought the French on behalf of his Habsburg overlord until the Peace of Cateau-­Cambrésis (1559).22 Yet his position at the beginning of the Revolt was relatively weak against the Habsburg army of Flanders, and the invasion of 1568 turned into a fiasco. William lost his brother Adolf and was forced into retreat. Despite these personal and military setbacks, the propaganda published in Prince William’s name was to become hugely influential. During his

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campaigns he and his publicists issued pamphlets and leaflets, pointing to the injustice of the summons to Alba’s tribunal as well as inciting the population to rise against Alba’s soldiers.23 To create as much common ground as possible for his divided Netherlandish audience, he pioneered a communal and cross-­ confessional ‘Netherlandish’ identity.24 Initially, in 1568, the ‘tyrannical’ enemy primarily consisted of the Duke of Alba and his adherents. William of Orange framed the Netherlander in general terms as the opposite of ‘Albanic greedy blood thirst’.25 Yet, as Alba left the Low Countries in December 1573 and the war went on, xenophobia towards Spanish people in general increasingly complemented this new supra-­ regional sense of Netherlandish identity. Few sources illustrate this development more clearly than the Apology of 1581, written in defence of William of Orange’s character after Philip II had outlawed the prince. Whereas Prince William’s pamphlets of 1568 mainly targeted Alba as an evil councillor to the king, the Apology accused not only Alba but also Philip II and presented them and their soldiers as representatives of ‘Spanishe crueltie’ in general.26 In doing so Prince William remediated and further developed the Black Legend of the supposedly inherent cruelty of the Spanish nation as well as the general criticism of Philip II’s alleged ambitions for universal monarchy.27 The impact of propaganda should not be overestimated. Historians have shown, for instance, that William of Orange’s publications also met with significant scepticism.28 It was ultimately Farnese’s military conquest of rebellious cities in the 1580s rather than varying degrees of susceptibility to rebel and loyalist propaganda among the Netherlandish population that primarily explains the political rift in the Low Countries. Yet propagandistic approaches to the Revolt by rebels and loyalists served as influential models for subsequent historical narratives about the conflict. Northern accounts of the Revolt William of Orange’s propaganda lost some of its appeal in the 1580s and 1590s. But J.C. Breen, Judith Pollmann and Benjamin Schmidt have shown that a group of anti-­peace propagandists ‘remediated’ it again around ­1600 –w ­ hen North and South negotiated a ­ceasefire – ­to remind the Dutch population of Spanish cruelties from the early years of the Revolt.29 The fundamental arguments of William of Orange about the cruel and tyrannical nature of the Spanish remained useful, but these were couched in a historical narrative intended to bring home to the Dutch audience the perceived perfidy of Spain all the more strongly. Thus they created, in the words of Simon Schama, a ‘parade of readily recognisable events’.30

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In narrating this parade of episodes, anti-­peace propagandists relied on the up-­and-­coming visual print medium, which had become a popular medium for narrating the history of civil war during the French Wars of Religion, as Philip Benedict has shown.31 The print genre was eminently suited to tell the story of civil conflict. One image generally depicted and described a single event. Yet, a series of images (or prints), as an ‘ensemble of narratives’, could tell the story of an entire conflict.32 This holds true for Jean Perrissin and Jacques Tortorel with their print series on the French Wars of Religion (the Quarante tableaux) as well as for the printmaker Frans Hogenberg. Hogenberg was born in Mechelen, and, from 1570, settled in Cologne to produce hundreds of prints to report on current events, including the Revolt. Although claiming to communicate news, Hogenberg’s prints formed a historical narrative due to their serial character, and modern histories of the Revolt still use Hogenberg prints to enliven their texts. Ramon Voges has convincingly warned against uncritically adopting Hogenberg prints as a reservoir for reliable representations of historical events since they carried a bias as staged representations of (staged) events.33 Nevertheless, already by 1600 Hogenberg’s prints of the Revolt had become an important go-­to for Dutch people who sought to visualize the Revolt. One of the first national histories of the Revolt, De leone Belgico by the Austrian nobleman Michael Aitsinger, was effectively a compilation of Hogenberg prints.34 The historian Emanuel van Meteren used Hogenberg prints to illustrate his hugely influential general history of the Revolt, first published in 1599.35 And the prints were also collected by private individuals, the most famous example in the Northern Netherlands being Willem Luytsz van Kittensteyn, an inhabitant of Delft. With his Mirror or Image of the Netherlandish Histories (1613) he strung together Hogenberg prints and other engravings and used an edition of Van Meteren’s history published in 1608 to help him arrange the material.36 Figure 8 shows how Kittensteyn combined a handwritten account of the Revolt with visual supporting material. In the centre we see an allegory of the Revolt, which reduces the conflict to its essence without much attention to temporal development.37 Thus a Netherlandish virgin, depicted with Netherlanders fighting for freedom in her belly, is harassed by bishops and a soldier, both holding a burning torch of the inquisition and a placard against heresy. Surrounding this centrepiece, Kittensteyn introduced the temporal element by presenting the same sequence of episodes that can be found on the frontispiece of several editions of Emanuel van Meteren’s history of the Revolt.38 It presents images of the threatened welfare of the Netherlands, the inquisition, the petition to Margaret of Parma, the Iconoclastic Furies of 1566, Alba’s violent governorship, his introduction of the Tenth Penny (a much hated and ultimately ineffectual new permanent sales tax), the abjuration of

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8  Allegory and visualized episodic narrative of the Revolt in Willem Luytsz van Kittensteyn, Spieghel ofte afbeeldinghe der Nederlandtsche Geschiedenissen (1613) Philip II and the ceasefire of 1609. The series of prints also included drawings by Kittensteyn himself. In at least one print he added a correction to a historical error. Hogenberg had mistakenly staged the murder of William of Orange in 1584 in a hall (see figure 7). Creatively pasting his own alternative drawings on the original print, Kittensteyn remedied the mistake and correctly visualized the murder in a staircase (figure 9).39 Imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery. Indeed, Hogenberg found inspiration in the Quarante Tableaux of Perrissin and Tortorel, which he pirated and used as a model for his own work on the Revolt.40 Similarly, Willem Baudartius, already mentioned in the introduction, also borrowed from propaganda developed during the French Wars of Religion. Baudartius was a preacher in Zutphen, near the war zone. The ceasefire with Spain (1609–21) had only just commenced when, in 1610, he sought to ‘wake up’ the population of the Republic and remind them of Spanish misdeeds in the Low Countries in the 1560s, 1570s and 1580s. His Wake-Up Call was not a comprehensive history comparable to Emanuel van Meteren’s work.41 It was effectively an anti-­peace manifesto that reduced the history to a highly selective

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9  Kittensteyn’s correction of Hogenberg’s inaccurate staging of William of Orange’s murder in a hall and accessible narrative. In the form of a dialogue a Free Netherlander tells a Hispanicised Netherlander about the cruelties committed by the Spaniards. The Hispanicized ­Netherlander – w ­ ho had initially promoted peace and opposed the horror stories of his conversation p­ artner – s­ erves a straw man who ultimately sees the error of his ways. He concludes that the Free Netherlander was right all along and says ‘let us both be vigilant and pray’.42 Baudartius did not invent the idea of a wake-­up call himself. He was inspired by the Huguenot publication Le reveille-matin des Francois (1574), also a dialogue that focused on the horrors Catholics had inflicted on the French population, notably the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre. This book was translated into Dutch and saw many editions before Baudartius’s Wake-Up Call came on the market in 1610.43 Baudartius drew heavily on the Black Legend, another example of influences beyond the Low Countries. After discussing the massacres of Rotterdam, Mechelen and Naarden in 1572, he included a short anecdote, which he had probably drawn, directly or indirectly, from the work of the Spanish bishop Bartolomé de Las Casas, who in his Brevíssima Relacíon had strongly condemned the violence of Spanish conquistadores in the Americas.44 Not coincidentally, multiple Dutch editions of this work had appeared in the Low Countries after the outbreak of the Revolt.45 The story went as follows: when a local Indian

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chief by the name of Hatuey from the island of Hispaniola tried to organize resistance against the Spanish invaders on Cuba, Spaniards captured him. Tied to a stake, Hatuey was about to be burnt alive. A Franciscan monk then ‘began to talk to him of God and of the articles of our faith, telling him, that the small respite which the executioner gave him was sufficient for him to make sure his salvation if he believed’. Hatuey replied by asking the Franciscan if heaven was open to Spaniards and on the monk’s assent declared: ‘Let me go to hell that I may not come where they are.’46 Baudartius retold this story to bolster his account of Netherlanders ­who – ­rather than surrendering to the Spanish ­soldiers – k­ ept on fighting.47 The work of one clergyman would perhaps not be very significant, had it not been a major bestseller. It was published in many different editions, and was even adapted into an extremely popular children’s book used in schools.48 Other influential authors, such as the preacher Johannes G ­ ysius – ­like Baudartius, a Calvinist exile from the Southern N ­ etherlands – a­ nd the historian Pieter Bor, also published popular histories of the Revolt.49 Building on existing practices of composing narratives about (civil) conflict and military violence, they created a remarkably coherent series of consecutive episodes covering Spanish disrespect for local customs and atrocities against the native population. These primarily included a number of violent sacks of cities and deadly mutinies of Spanish soldiers during the 1570s. The aim was to convince Netherlanders that continuing and winning the war was better than concluding a disadvantageous peace. Curiously the works of Baudartius, Gysius and Bor paid little attention to the finer points of religious doctrine. This is interesting because both Baudartius and Gysius were orthodox Calvinists who had fled their native Southern Netherlands for their faith. It seems that in the Low Countries, initially at least, such episodic narratives about Spanish cruelties were popularized especially by those who could not easily draw on the more traditional arguments revolving around church and dynasty to support their shared Netherlandish political agenda. The elaborate chronology and the focus on enemy misdeeds rather than on religious differences were in many ways signs of weakness in a polity without a unified church, a ruling dynasty and a strong political centre. However, this argument can be made only when we compare the development of an episodic narrative in the Dutch Republic as described above with the situation in the Habsburg Netherlands in the South. Southern accounts of the Revolt The situation in the reconciled Habsburg Netherlands was very different. Here, it was for political propagandists on a ‘national’ level relatively easy to

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fall back on pre-­existing memory practices, revolving around the church and the dynasty. Both in the early repression of the rebellion and the subsequent implementation of Counter-­Reformation measures, notably by the archdukes Albert and Isabella from 1600 onwards, government and church authorities set an influential example.50 The most significant work of national history in the reconciled Southern Netherlands was in Latin by the Catholic priest Florentius van der Haer. Van der Haer published his work in 1587, when army commander Alexander Farnese was Governor-­General of the Habsburg Netherlands. Farnese had initiated a successful campaign of reconciliation and pacification.51 He allowed Protestants to go into exile and forbade public references to the troubled years of the Revolt.52 In this historical context, Van der Haer provided an influential historical basis for the idea that the Revolt had been caused by over-­ambitious nobles and by heresy, thus reinforcing the narrative by Joachim Hopperus. The priest presented the rebels in this latter category as foreign heretics or locals temporarily tricked into rebellion. In doing so, he conveniently exonerated the remaining local population from their participation, or passivity, in the Revolt.53 With his fundamental argument about the origins of the Revolt he needed to cover events only up to 1567, when the insurgence and Alba’s controversial governorship had just begun. Authorities welcomed discussions of 1566–85 only if they demonstrated the providential support for the Habsburg cause. In 1605 Etienne Ydens, a canon of the St Gudula Church in Brussels, published a history of Holy Sacrament of the Miracle, an anti-­Semitic account of a fourteenth-­century instance of host desecration followed by the miracle of a bleeding host. He also paid attention to the subsequent commemoration of the miracle in the city of Brussels. Ydens incorporated the troublesome years of the Revolt by pointing to the careful Catholic safekeeping of the relic during the period when Brussels was a Calvinist republic (1579–85) and the triumphant restoration of the cult after Farnese had taken the city.54 Doing so, Ydens downplayed the Revolt and emphasized the ultimate triumph of Catholicism. Albert and Isabella awarded Ydens 400 pounds Flemish for his work, and 850 copies were printed.55 It is similarly telling that prominent authors in the Southern Netherlands, such as Justus Lipsius, Jean-­Baptiste Gramaye and Erycius Putenaus, never published a Netherlandish history of the Revolt but did bring local histories and accounts of miracles on Netherlandish soil on the market.56 Still, apparently Southern authors could not entirely ignore the accusations of Northern authors that they were collaborating with a cruel and deceitful enemy. The Brabant Jesuit Thomas Sailly published The New Wake-Up Call (1612), which he wrote in reaction to Baudartius’s book, attacking the latter’s claim that the Spanish could not be relied on to uphold the articles of the ceasefire and would instead launch a surprise attack on the North as soon as

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possible. The Jesuit author argued conversely that his Calvinist adversary was in fact himself violating the conditions of the treaty by raking up old troubles.57 Sailly’s text is a good example of how it appears to have been relatively easy for authors in the restored Habsburg-­Catholic order of the Southern Netherlands to blame the Revolt on heretics and renegades without dealing with the episodes of violence that Northerners found so important. Sailly, for instance, covered the nobility’s protests and the Iconoclastic Furies of 1566, but he practically left out the Duke of Alba’s governorship. He only briefly discussed the Calvinist take-­over of power in South Netherlandish cities in the 1570s, focusing on their cruel treatment of Catholics. He subsequently jumped to the beginning of the reign of Albert and Isabella in 1600.58 The works of other authors published in the 1610s demonstrate that Sailly’s approach to the Revolt was no exception. In his Impartial Declaration (1612), the Catholic priest Franciscus Haraeus (who had moved from Utrecht to Antwerp), did not dwell on the period of the Duke of Alba’s governorship. Rather than discussing Alba’s attempts to strike down the Revolt and the violence of soldiers in Habsburg service in any detail, Haraeus euphemistically and metaphorically drew a comparison between the duke and a schoolmaster. Who could blame Philip II and Alba for punishing disobedient subjects?59 Furthermore, Haraeus attacked his adversaries at their weakest point, namely by refuting the claim of rebels, including François Vranck and Hugo Grotius, that they were protecting ancient privileges against the centralizing politics of Philip II. Thus he turned the Northern reading of the Revolt on its head, arguing that any violence on the Spanish side was the result rather than the cause of the rebellion. Although Southern narratives on the Revolt have tended to remain silent about the period 1566–85, historians have shown that elites in the Habsburg world remembered these turbulent years quite vividly. South Netherlandish elites cultivated a lively memory of the 1560s, 1570s and 1580s.60 And as Mia Rodriguez-­Salgado, building on the work of Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez, reminds us in this volume, Habsburg authorities had repositories of information at their disposal, consisting of published chronicles, past correspondence and handwritten news accounts.61 Nonetheless, Southern authors in their published chronicles and popular histories in the Dutch language found it undesirable and unnecessary to dwell on the most violent and controversial episodes of the Revolt. Southern authors thus denied the validity of rebel arguments not so much by refuting them point by point but rather by presenting an entirely different chronology with a focus on the fundamental evil of heresy and a rather euphemistic approach to the Habsburg repression of the rebellion. One spectacular example is the New Chronicle of 1624, published in Antwerp. The episodes included mainly concern princely successions and brief descriptions

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10  Nievwe chroniicke oft Verhael van alle de gedenckweerdichste saken die geschiet zijn, t’sedert den iare 1500. tot […] 1624 (Antwerp, 1624) of successive governors. Although the author listed the Duke of Alba’s arrival in the Low Countries in 1567, he did not provide any further details about the duke’s governorship. Instead, the brief mention was followed by the story of a woman in Antwerp with a ‘goatee of two inches long’ (figure 10).62 Apparently, the compiler had neither the space nor the inclination to discuss the duke in more detail. Delegations to Philip II: Egmont, Montigny, Bergen This chapter has shown that although the Revolt was a communal Netherlandish conflict, the selection of episodes in narratives about the origins of the rebellion split along the political fault line between North and South. It is now time to zoom in and discuss how this influenced Northern and Southern interpretations of the past. For purposes of brevity just one particular episode is analysed. Violet Soen has pointed out that the Revolt was not simply the result of a static division between Catholics and Protestants, between loyalists and rebels. She convincingly demonstrated that in its first decades it was a messy conflict

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that can also be approached as an ultimately discontinued process of reconciliation attempts by Netherlandish elites.63 It is precisely these reconciliation attempts that have been judged so differently in Netherlandish historiography after the political separation between North and South took shape. What was considered an honest pursuit of pacification and reconciliation on the one side was seen as a treacherous and deceitful attempt to bring down the Habsburg regime on the other. In the turbulent summer of 1566 two nobles travelled to see Philip II in Spain to plead for moderation of the religious persecutions. They were Floris of Montmorency, Baron of Montigny, and John IV of Glymes, Marquess of Bergen. Both nobles were detained in Spain and died there. Bergen succumbed to an illness in 1567 while Montigny was strangled secretly in the Castle of Simancas a few years later. Northern authors emphasized the importance of this noble delegation. Pieter Bor wrote in 1595 that Montigny and Bergen were delegates who had come to Spain to inform the king and communicate the nobility’s desire that the persecutions be less severe. The Reformed clergyman Willem Baudartius wrote in his Wake-up Call of 1610 that the Governor-­General Margaret of Parma, the Council of State and the Knights of the Golden Fleece ‘found it necessary to warn the king of the inconvenience in store for these lands’.64 In 1616, the Reformed clergyman Johannes Gysius drew attention to the episodes of Bergen and Montigny by showing his readers portraits accompanied by verse in his Origin and progress of the disturbances in the Netherlands.65 Gysius presented the fate of Montigny as follows: Knight of the Golden Fleece, and Tournai’s Governor Faithful to these lands, and Spanish ambassador The good counsel that I was to show in the king’s service Was, alas! also rewarded by death.66

These authors referred to the noble delegations to Spain in the run up to, and during, the Twelve Years’ Truce wishing to kill two birds with one stone. It enabled these authors to argue that Netherlanders had sought to voice their grievances and find peaceful solutions to the unrest long before starting their armed opposition. And the discussion of the fates of the delegates showed both how Philip II repaid the loyalty of his subjects and that Spaniards were unreliable partners in negotiations. The Second Part of the Mirror of Spanish Tyranny, for example, combines the portraits of Bergen and Montigny with an iconic depiction of Alba as an evil mastermind presiding over his tribunal. The title deliberately evoked the memory of Las Casas’s Brevíssima Relacíon, which had been translated in most Dutch editions as The Mirror of Spanish Tyranny.67 Northern authors had good reason to show that the protests against Philip II did not come out of the blue. On the contrary, authors in the Southern

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Netherlands aimed to convince readers that the rebels had started causing unrest before giving the king any warning. Franciscus Haraeus wrote in 1612 that the protests of 1566 were ‘doubtless the first public beginning […] of these troubles’ and very quickly went on to discuss the Iconoclastic Furies of that year.68 In this narrative approach to the rebellion it was unnecessary to mention the delegation of Montigny and Bergen, which indeed he left out. The omission triggered an angry reaction from François Vranck, a member of the High Court of Holland, Zeeland and West Friesland in the Dutch Republic.69 Thomas Sailly agreed with Haraeus and wrote that 1566 was the year that the rebels made their unreasonable grievances known. He framed their efforts as a conspiracy against royal authority.70 The Counter-­Reformation propagandist Richard Verstegan emphasized the opportunistic motivations underlying the nobility’s participation in the protests of 1566, without mentioning earlier efforts to inform the king.71 In short, the inconsistent amount of attention given to the Bergen and Montigny episode in popular historiography of the 1610s reflects the contrasting explanations of the origin of the Netherlandish troubles in Northern and Southern episodic war narratives. Conclusion The comparative examination of historical texts in this chapter has shown how the partition of a polity due to civil war can lead to diverging episodic narratives. In the context of the Revolt of the Netherlands, this phenomenon is by itself not so surprising. After all, one of the most important origins of episodic narratives about the conflict was the war propaganda in the 1560s and 1570s. But the process by which these narratives drifted apart depended on a whole range of factors, making it a worthwhile topic for further historical inquiry. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore the divergence of episodic war memories exhaustively, but two important conclusions may be drawn on the basis of the analysed material. First of all, the different interpretations of the Revolt were not simply two variants of the same episodic narrative. Several factors influenced how episodes about the Revolt were selected and narrated differently in North and South. Religious uniformity in the South allowed for a consensual Catholic reading of the Revolt while the existence of different Protestant confessions and the continuing presence of Catholics in the North obstructed a single religious framing of the conflict. Furthermore, authors in the Southern provinces rallied around the restored Habsburg authority to provide a reading of the Revolt that emphasized the innocence of the native population, the iniquity of foreign heretics and the dynasty’s status

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as ­protector of the true faith. In the North there was no political centre capable of embodying the ideal of Netherlandish unity, which explains why a ‘national’ narrative about Spanish cruelty and unreliability emerged relatively late as anti-­peace propaganda as well as the popularity of multiple episodes covering different regions of the Northern Netherlands. Finally, cross-­border interaction between authors on both sides of the border reinforced the differences between North and South and contributed to the increasing irreconcilability of Northern and Southern episodic war narratives. Finally, this chapter can teach us three interrelated lessons. The discrepancy between Northern and Southern narratives: 1) exposes the pitfalls of methodological nationalism, 2) underlines the importance of exploring the political motivations behind the development of episodic war memories, and 3) demonstrates once more the great potential of the comparative method. It is through comparison that we can learn how mechanisms of selection in the development of episodic war narratives operated in societies divided by civil war. Only comparatively can we discern the peculiarities and commonalities in the ways inhabitants of partitioned territories tell the history of shared political conflict. Notes

  1 This chapter is largely based on the same material as Jasper van der Steen, Memory Wars in the Low Countries, 1566–1700 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015) but its analysis of the material is purposefully redirected to, and contextualised in, the topic of this volume: the phenomenon of episodic war narratives in early modern Europe.   2 ‘Besluit vernieuwde kerndoelen WPO’ and ‘Besluit kerndoelen onderbouw VO’: https:// wetten.overheid.nl (accessed 12 November 2018).   3 Maria Grever, ‘Nationale identiteit en historisch besef. De risico’s van een canon in de postmoderne samenleving’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 119:2 (2006), 160–77.   4 Peter Munz, ‘The historical narrative’, in Michael Bentley (ed.), Companion to Historiography (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 851–72.  5 Aleida Assmann, ‘Canon and archive’, in Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (eds), Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 97–107, p. 98; see also Aleida Assmann, ‘Re-­framing memory. Between individual and collective forms of constructing the past’, in Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree and Jay Winter (eds), Performing the Past. Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), pp. 35–50, p. 43.   6 Astrid Erll, ‘Cultural memory studies. An introduction’, in Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (eds), A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 1–15, p. 5.   7 Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: inventing traditions’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, first published in 1983), pp.  1–14; see also Chris Lorenz, ‘Unstuck in time. Or: the sudden presence of the past’, in Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree and Jay Winter (eds), Performing the Past. Memory, History and Identity in Modern Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), pp. 78–80.   8 For the cultural practice of remembering the past in pre-­modern Europe, see Judith Pollmann, Memory in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Erika

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Kuijpers et al. (eds), Memory before Modernity. Practices of Memory in Early Modern Europe (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013); for a useful critique of modernist notions of national identity, history and memory, see Lotte Jensen (ed.), The Roots of Nationalism. National Identity Formation in Early Modern Europe, 1600–1815 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016).  9 Willem Baudartius, Afbeeldinghe, ende beschrijvinghe van alle de veld-slagen, belegeringen, ende and’re notable geschiedenissen, ghevallen in de Nederlanden, geduerende d’oorloghe teghens den coningh van Spaengien or De Nassausche oorloghen (Amsterdam: Michiel Colijn, 1616), preface: ‘de onsterfflijcke ende des al verslindenden tijts ende nijts scherpe tanden’; see also van der Steen, Memory Wars, p. 65. 10 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to analyse the causes of the Revolt in detail. For useful overviews, see Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979); Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Henk van Nierop, ‘Alva’s throne. Making sense of the Revolt of the Netherlands’, in Graham Darby (ed.), The Origins and Development of the Dutch Revolt (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 29–47. 11 H.J. Elias, Kerk en staat in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden onder de regeering der aartshertogen Albrecht en Isabella (1598–1621) (Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1931), pp.  47–8; Judith Pollmann, Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1520–1635 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 159–91. 12 Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic. Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 377–89. 13 This was the topic of the research project Tales of the Revolt: Memory, Oblivion and Identity in the Low Countries, 1566–1700 led by Judith Pollmann and funded by the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research. This project’s research output includes Pollmann, Memory; Kuijpers et al. (eds), Memory before Modernity; Johannes Müller, Exile Memories and the Dutch Revolt. The Narrated Diaspora, 1550–1750 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016); Marianne Eekhout, ‘Material memories of the Dutch Revolt. The urban Memory landscape in the Low Countries, 1566–1700’ (Leiden, 2014); Van der Steen, Memory Wars. 14 Joachim Hopperus, ‘Recueil et mémorial des troubles des Pays Bas du Roy, 1559–1566’, in Alphonse Wauters (ed.), Mémoires de Viglius et d’Hopperus sur le commencement des troubles des Pays-Bas avec notices et annotations (Brussels: Wauters, 1858); Gustaaf Janssens, ‘Alva en de Nederlanden (16de–21ste eeuw). Een biografische en historiografische benadering van een berucht historisch personage’, in Judith Brouwer and Michael Limberger (eds), Hedendaagse biografieën over vroegmoderne lieden (Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven, 2018), pp.  35–55, p. 45. 15 Joachim Hopperus, ‘Recueil’, pp. 236–7: ‘en bonne paix et tranquillité, sans aulcune altération, du moins qui fust cognue’. 16 Liesbeth Geevers, Gevallen vazallen. De integratie van Oranje, Egmont en Horn in de SpaansHabsburgse monarchie (1559–1567) (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), p. 152; Janssens, ‘Alva en de Nederlanden’, p. 45. 17 Monica Stensland, Habsburg Communication in the Dutch Revolt (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), pp. 18–25, 36, 105–7. 18 Cornelis en Philip van Campene, Dagboek behelzende het verhaal der merkwaardigste gebeurtenissen, voorgevallen te Gent sedert het begin der Godsdienstberoerten tot den 5en april 1571, ed. Frans de Potter (Gent: C. Annoot-­Braeckman, 1870), 144. ‘in sommeghe plaetsen ommeghekeert, tzijnder ende zijns familie onheere’; see also Stensland, Habsburg Communication, p. 32; Jasper van der Steen, ‘Remembering the Revolt of the Low Countries: historical canon formation in the Dutch Republic and Habsburg Netherlands, 1566–1621’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 49:3 (2018), 713–41, 718; this was a well-­known kind of punishment: P. de Win, De schandstraffen in het wereldlijk strafrecht in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden van de Middeleeuwen tot de Franse Tijd bestudeerd in Europees perspectief (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1991), pp. 214–15. 19 H. Schuermans, ‘La colonne de Culembourg à Bruxelles’, Bulletin des commissions royales d’art et d’archéologie (1870), 17–107; see also Van der Steen, Memory Wars, pp. 31–4.

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20 Godevaert van Haecht, De kroniek van Godevaert van Haecht over de troebelen van 1565 tot 1574 te Antwerpen en elders I, ed. Rob van Roosbroeck (Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1929), p. 30. 21 J.J. Woltjer, ‘Dutch privileges, real and imaginary’, in J.S. Bromley and E.H. Kossmann (eds), Britain and the Netherlands V. Some Political Mythologies (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), pp. 19–35. 22 Erik Swart, Krijgsvolk. Militaire professionalisering en het ontstaan van het Staatse leger, 1568–1590 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), p. 21. 23 P.A.M. Geurts, De Nederlandse Opstand in de pamfletten 1566–1584 (Nijmegen: Centrale Drukkerij, 1956), pp. 26–32. 24 Alastair Duke, ‘In defence of the common fatherland. Patriotism and liberty in the Low Countries, 1555–1576’, in Robert Stein and Judith Pollmann (eds), Networks, Regions and Nations. Shaping Identities in the Low Countries, 1300–1650 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), pp. 217–40. 25 William of Orange, Willem byder gratien Gods prince van Orangien, grave toe Nassau, Catzenellenbogen, Vianden, Dietz, &c. heere baron toe Bredae […] Allen ghetrouwen ondersaten des Con. Mai. in den Nederlanden, saluyt (s.l.: s.n., 1568), Knuttel 167a, p. 21: ‘Albaensche gierighe bloetdorsticheit’; see also William of Orange, De verantvvoordinghe des princen van Orangien, teghen de valsche loghenen, daer mede sijn vvedersprekers hem soecken t’onrechte te beschuldighen (s.l.: s.n., 1568), Knuttel 162 and William of Orange, Verklaeringhe ende wtschrifft des duerluchtighsten, hoochgeborenen vorsten ende heeren, heer Willem, Prince van Oranien, etc. ende zijner excellentien nootsakelicken defensie teghen den duca de Alba, ende zijne grouwelicke tyrannie (s.l.: s.n., 1568), Knuttel 164. 26 William of Orange, The apologie or defence, of […] prince William […] prince of Orange […] against the proclamation […] by the king of Spaine (Delft: s.n., 1581), fo. k4v. 27 K.W. Swart, ‘The Black Legend during the Eighty Years War’, in J.S. Bromley and E.H. Kossmann (eds), Britain and the Netherlands V. Some Political Mythologies (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), pp. 36–57, 43–4. 28 Ibid., p. 43. 29 J.C. Breen, ‘Gereformeerde populaire historiographie in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 37 (1922), 254–73, 372–82; Judith Pollmann, ‘“Brabanters do fairly resemble Spaniards after all”. Memory, propaganda and identity in the Twelve Years’ Truce’, in Judith Pollmann and Andrew Spicer (eds), Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands. Essays in Honour of Alastair Duke (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), pp. 219–24; Judith Pollmann, ‘No man’s land. Reinventing Netherlandish identities, 1585–1621’, in Robert Stein and Judith Pollmann (eds), Networks, Regions and Nations. Shaping Identities in the Low Countries, 1300–1650 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), pp.  253–60; Benjamin Schmidt, Innocence Abroad. The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570–1670 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 228–43. 30 Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (London: Collins, 1987), p. 86. 31 Philip Benedict, Graphic History. The Wars, Massacres and Troubles of Tortorel and Perrissin (Geneva: Droz, 2007), p. 76. 32 Olaf Mörke, ‘The content, form and function of Swiss and Dutch images of history’, in André Holenstein, Thomas Maissen and Maarten Prak (eds), The Republican Alternative. The Netherlands and Switzerland Compared (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), p. 171. 33 Ramon Voges, Das Auge der Geschichte. Der Aufstand der Niederlande und die Französischen Religionskriege im Spiegel der Bildberichte Franz Hogenbergs (ca. 1560–1610) (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019). 34 Michael Aitsinger, De leone Belgico, eiusque topographica atque historica descriptione liber … Rerumque in Belgio maxime gestarum, inde ab anno Christi MDLIX usque ad annum MDLXXXIII perpetua narratione continuatus (Cologne: Impensis Francisci Hogenbergii, 1583). 35 Emanuel van Meteren, Belgische ofte Nederlantsche historie, van onsen tijden (Delft: Jacob Cornelisz. Vennekool, 1599). 36 J.C. Nix, ‘De Atlas Van Stolk. Een verzameling historieprenten over de vaderlandse geschiedenis’, Ons Erfdeel, 39 (1996), 233–40.

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37 This image was also the frontispiece of Pieter Bor, Den oorspronck, begin ende aenvanck der Nederlandtscher oorlogen, geduyrende de regeringe van de Hertoginne van Parma, de Hertoge van Alba, ende eensdeels vanden groot Commandeur / beschreven door Pieter Bor Chistiaenszoon, ende nu deur denselven in liedekens vervaet (Leiden: Govert Basson, 1617). 38 Such as Emanuel van Meteren, Commentarien ofte memorien van den Nederlandtschen staet, handel, oorloghen ende gheschiedenissen van onsen tyden, etc. Mede vervattende eenige haerder ghebueren handelinghen (Scotland: Hermes van Loven, 1608), frontispiece. 39 Nix, ‘De Atlas Van Stolk’, p. 236. 40 See Voges, Das Auge der Geschichte, p. 170. 41 Meteren, Belgische ofte Nederlantsche historie. 42 Willem Baudartius, Morghen-wecker der vrye Nederlantsche Provintien. Ofte / een cort verhael van de bloedighe vervolginghen ende wreetheden door de Spaenjaerden ende hare Adherenten inde Nederlanden / gheduerende dese veertich-jarighe Troublen ende Oorloghen begaen aen vele Steden / ende ettelijcke duysent particuliere Personen ([Danzig]: Crijn Vermeulen de Jonge, 1610), fo. l4r: ‘laet ons ghelijckelijck Waken ende bidden’. 43 [Eusebe Philadelphe Cosmopolite], Le reveille-matin des Francois, et de leurs voisins ([Edinburgh]: Jacques James, 1574); Der Francoysen ende haerder naeghebueren Morghenwecker […] Ghemaeckt door Eusebius Philadelphus; ouergheset door Jan Fruytiers (Dordrecht: Jan Canin, 1574). 44 Baudartius, Morghen-wecker, fo. c4v; Bartolomé de Las Casas, Brevíssima relación de la destruyción de las Indias (Seville: s.n., 1552). 45 See the Short-­Title Catalogue Netherlands (www.stcn.nl) for the Dutch editions of De Las Casas’s work. 46 Bartolomé de Las Casas, The Tears of the Indians. Being an Historical and true Account of the Cruel Massacres and Slaughters of above Twenty Millions of innocent People; committed by the Spaniards in the Islands of Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, &c. As also, in the Continent of Mexico, Peru, & other Places of the West-Indies, to the total destruction of those Countries (London: Nath. Brook, 1656), p. 23. 47 See also Van der Steen, Memory Wars, p. 77. 48 Ibid., pp. 72–3. 49 Johannes Gysius, Oorsprong en voortgang der Neder-landtscher beroerten ende ellendicheden (Leiden: Henrick Lodewijcxsoon Haestens, 1616); Bor, Den oorspronck, begin ende aenvanck der Nederlandtscher oorlogen. 50 Luc Duerloo, ‘Dynastieke vroomheid en herbouw van het vorstelijk gezag’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 112:1 (1997), 1–18. 51 Florentius van der Haer, De initiis tumultuum belgicorum ad Serenissimum D.D. Alexandrum Farnesium Parmae et Placentiae Ducem Libri Duo (Douai: Johannes Bogardus, 1587). 52 Violet Soen, ‘Reconquista and reconciliation in the Dutch Revolt. The campaign of Governor-­ General Alexander Farnese (1578–1592)’, Journal of Early Modern History, 16 (2012), 1–22, 10–11. 53 B.A. Vermaseren, De katholieke Nederlandse geschiedschrijving in de 16e en 17e eeuw over de Opstand (Leeuwarden: Gerben Dykstra, 1981). 54 Etienne Ydens, Histoire dv S. sacrement de miracle (Brussels: Rutger Velpius, 1605), p. 68. 55 Jules Finot, ‘Les subventions accordées aux Litterateurs, au Savants et aux Artistes par les Gouverneurs des Pays-­Bas au XVIIe siècle relevées dans les comptes de la recette générale des finances’, Annales du Comité Flamand de France, 19 (1891), 179. 56 Justus Lipsius, Diva Virgo Hallensis (Antwerp: ex officina Plantiniana, apud Ioannem Moretum, 1604); Jean-­Baptiste Gramaye, Gallo-Brabantia (Brussels: Jan Mommaert, 1606); Erycius Puteanus, Miracles derniers de Nostre Dame de Montaigv (Leuven: Hendrik van Hastens and Petrus II Zangrius, 1622). 57 T. Sailly, Den nievwen morghen-vvecker, wijsende de natuere […] der ketterije (Leuven: Joannes Christophorus Flavius, 1612), p. 6. 58 Sailly, Den nievwen morghen-vvecker, pp. 121–2. 59 Franciscus Haraeus, Onpartijdighe verclaringhe der oorsaken des Nederlantsche oorloghs sedert t’iaer 1566. tot 1608 (Antwerp: Gheleyn Ianssens, 1612), p. 21.

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60 See F.G. Scheelings, ‘De geschiedschrijving en de beeldvorming over de Opstand in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (16e–18e eeuw)’, in J. Craeybeckx et al. (eds), 1585: op gescheiden wegen. Handelingen van het colloquium over de scheiding der Nederlanden, gehouden 22–23 november 1985 te Brussel (Leuven: Peeters, 1988), pp. 151–79, p. 175. 61 Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez, The Dutch Revolt through Spanish Eyes. Self and Other in Historical and Literary Texts of Golden Age Spain (c.1548–1673) (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008). 62 Nievwe chroniicke oft Verhael van alle de gedenckweerdichste saken die geschiet zijn, t’sedert den iare 1500. tot […] 1624 (Antwerp: Godtgaf Verhulst, 1624): s.p.: ‘eenen kossen Baert wel ii. duymen lanck’. 63 Violet Soen, Vredehandel. Adellijke en Habsburgse verzoeningspogingen tijdens de Nederlandse Opstand 1564–1581 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012). 64 Baudartius, Morgen-wecker, fo. a3r: ‘hebben nootwendich gheacht den Coninck te waerschouwen van het onghemack d’welck dese landen hier door over het hooft was hanghende’. 65 Gysius, Oorsprong en voortgang der Neder-landtscher beroerten ende ellendicheden, pp. 115, 117. 66 Ibid., p. 117: ‘Ridder des gulden Vlies, en Doornicx Gouverneur, / De Landen seer ghetrouw, oock Spaensch Ambassadeur; / Den goeden raet die ick, tot s’Conincx dienst gingh thoonen / Gingh-­men my oock helaes! al met de doot beloonen.’ 67 Tweede deel van de Spieghel der Spaensche tyrannye, gheschiet in Nederland (Amsterdam: Jan Evertsz. Cloppenburgh, 1620), p. 11; Bartolomé de Las Casas, Spieghel der Spaenscher tyrannye, in West Indien (Amsterdam: Nicolaers Biestkens de Jonghe, 1596). 68 Franciscus Haraeus, Onpartijdighe verclaringhe, p. 13: ‘welcke ongetwijfelt het eerste openbaer beginsel geweest is van dese troubelen’. 69 François Vranck, Wederlegghinghe, van een seker boecxken, uyt ghegheven by Franchois Verhaer, ghenaemt Onpartijdighe verclaringhe der oorsaken vande Nederlantsche oorloghe (Breda: Steven Wylicx, 1618), fo. c6r. 70 Sailly, Den nievwen morghen-vvecker, pp. 68–70. 71 Richard Verstegan, De spiegel der Nederlandsche elenden. / Getoont door een lief-hebber der waerheyt ende der Nederlanden welvaert (Mechelen: Hendrick Iaye, 1621), pp. 32–4.

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9 Chaplains and soldiers: experience and narratives in the Low Countries (1567–1648) Vincenzo Lavenia

Breda and related matters The Surrender of Breda (Las lanzas) is surely one of the most famous images to come down to us from the Eighty Years’ War.1 Art historians have established that, since it was painted some ten years after the event, Diego de Velázquez sought inspiration from a number of maps and accounts of the war, one of ­which – ­and perhaps the most ­important – ­was that of Ambrogio Spinola’s confessor, Herman Hugo (1588–1629).2 The fine illustrations and maps that embellish his Obsidio Bredana, printed by Plantin in 1626,3 confirm that the Jesuit, apart from being a mathematician and the compiler of a famous book of religious emblems,4 was also an expert on military history and fortifications. In fact, not only did he publish in that same year a five-­volume work on cavalry, dedicating it to Philip IV,5 but he was appointed the first ever professor to occupy a chair in military affairs, founded by the Jesuits at the Imperial College of Madrid, whose patron was the Count-­Duke of Olivares. In the event, as De Lucca has shown, Hugo, who ‘inaugurated nearly two hundred years of Jesuit writings about military matters’, taught only b­ riefly – p­ artly because the establishment of a chair dedicated to the study of techniques of slaughter did not meet with universal approval from the members of the Society of ­Jesus – ­and he soon returned to his former calling as a courageous military chaplain, dying in Rheinsberg at the front in September 1629, at the age of 41.6 His history meanwhile was translated into English by Henry Gage and into Spanish by Emanuel Sueyro (1627). Hugo was not only a skilful narrator but also an eyewitness to at least some of the 11-­month-­long siege, which saw the eventual triumph of Spinola’s 18,000–strong force over the Dutch defenders. The Jesuit was also very much alive to the propaganda aspects of the struggle,

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recording how the Protestants made fun of the tercios’ efforts, writing satirical sketches and circulating a cartoon depicting Philip IV looking for a lantern and Spinola scratching his head with both hands in an alien landscape, captioned with lampooning verses.7 The chronicle gives God the credit for bringing about the victory and spreading the news far and wide (an intercession demonstrated by ‘muchos y muy claros indicios’),8 but otherwise dedicates very little space to religion, a brief passage recording the exploits of a pair of Jesuits in the village of Zevenbergen, where they flanked the billeted soldiers and sought to ‘temper the insolence of the mercenaries’ and deflect offences against the civil population. When soldiers on the rampage assaulted the family of a Protestant ­minister – ­we ­read – ­the chaplains intervened energetically, arousing the admiration of witnesses who were amazed to see wild beasts so promptly transformed into lambs by the very Jesuits that the enemy propaganda had painted in such lurid hues.9 Hugo does not hold back from describing the hideous sights on the morning of the final surrender, the moat choked with corpses, the earth sticky with blood, body parts all over the place.10 The groaning wounded were attended by the efficient Spanish medical corps, we are assured, but most died soon after. On entering Breda, the conquerors found that the cathedral had been disfigured by the iconoclastic fury of the heretics, a statue of the Madonna had been removed from the tomb of a leading noble family at the instigation of a preacher’s wife who had set herself up as a prophetess fulminating against Mariolatry, and the walls were defiled with scribbled insults to the church and to Spain. The Habsburg regent, Isabella Clara Eugenia, however, quickly moved to restore the true religion, allowing the Jesuits (and the Capuchin Friars) to open houses in the city. Prayer, according to Hugo, had done more than firearms to reduce Breda.11 Hugo’s testimony is one of war as experienced by a Jesuit and an enthusiastic student of military things. His other life as a chaplain is nowhere to be seen in his text, which enjoyed a wide circulation. Nonetheless, the pastoral care of the soldiery during the Eighty Years’ War has left a considerable written legacy, which I want to review in this chapter, focusing, for brevity’s sake, almost exclusively on the Catholic sphere. As we shall see, it was the Society of Jesus who invented the genre of narratives of war from the chaplains’ point of v­ iew – ­an innovation that took off almost as soon as religious missions to soldiers in arms began to acquire a degree of permanence. The experience of the chaplains was told through printed texts and catechisms for officers and soldiers, through judicial testimonies but above all through the letters written according to a narrative style typical of the Jesuits and sent to the superiors of the Society and confrères of other colleges. These letters circulated in manuscript form and later served to draw the Imago

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primi saeculi (1640), a great propaganda text that extolled the Catholic missions among the troops as a providential intervention during a long and brutal war. Putting priests alongside soldiers My research in recent years has largely centred on the history of a particular genre of writing that flourished from the mid-­sixteenth century in the context of the wars of religion in Europe and the struggle against the Ottoman Empire: the series of catechisms aimed at officers and enlisted men, which would continue to circulate in the Old World and the New down to the World Wars of the twentieth century and their mass mobilizations under the banners of nation states.12 The first of these texts was the Soldato Christiano by the Jesuit diplomat and polemicist against Machiavelli and Erasmus, Antonio Possevino, who was prompted by Pius V, and with some input from his confrère, Emond Auger, confessor to Charles IX, to distribute his pamphlet among the soldiers dispatched by the pontiff against the Huguenots in 1569, and among those embarked to take on the Turks at Lepanto two years later. Translated into many languages, Possevino’s catechism sparked numerous imitations, not only in the Catholic world, and chiefly served to encourage the Jesuit missions to the battlefronts, contributing to the establishment of the first Catholic military chaplaincy.13 Charles V had already ordained in the 1530s that there be priests attached to the tercios, to inspire the soldiery, administer the sacraments, comfort the dying and bury the dead,14 but the Eighty Years’ War furnished the theatres where an organized attempt would be made to ideologize war and provide at the same time a religious and political model of discipline to curb the more savage aspects of the conflicts. Many of the subsequent Jesuit protagonists of this story were also influenced by Justus Lipsius’s revival of the language of stoicism.15 After the overall failure of the Duke of Alba in the Low Countries, the situation began to change when Alessandro Farnese took command of the Spanish armies. Back in 1565, the Jesuit Peter Canisius had promoted a campaign against heresy during his time at Nijmegen, and Pollmann has shown how war and violence were fomented by both Catholic and Protestant preaching.16 Later, from 1579, the Habsburg authorities appointed a chaplain-­ in-­chief to all the armies of Philip II engaged against the rebels in the Low Countries, in the person of the Bishop of Cambrai,17 who delegated his duties to an Italian Franciscan friar and a Spanish prelate, Francisco de Umara. These proved so unsatisfactory that they were charged with corruption over their mismanagement of the hospitals’ accounts.

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The task of organizing the priests working alongside the troops of many different languages was next entrusted by Archduke Albert to the Archbishop of Malines who, in turn, in 1597, nominated a vicar general as chaplain-­in-­ chief.18 By this time, however, Farnese had turned for help to the Society of Jesus and to the Franciscans, who placed a number of chaplains with the rank and file. Anyone looking for published narratives of this first phase of pastoral care directed at the tercios will be disappointed, however, as no day-­to-­day war reportage can be gleaned from the catechisms, which delineate idealized Christian soldiers and chaplains with little connection to the real experience of combat.19 The catechism genre is important rather for an insight into the construction of social models of warfare before the establishment of barracks and military academies and the so-­called professionalization of armies, but does not have much to say about actual conflict and battle situations. Furthermore, historiography, from the pioneering studies of Léon van der Essen and his school onwards, has been notably quiet about the work of the first Catholic chaplains in the field, limiting itself to such observations as that the profession of chaplain tended for a long time not to attract the committed clergy, but the more anarchic and venturesome spirits, citing the large number of priests arraigned for purloining the effects of deceased soldiers. I have tracked down the minutes of a long inquiry conducted by the Archbishop of Cambrai Louis de Berlaymont, the papal nuncio Ottavio Mirto Frangipane and by the Franciscan Order into an Italian friar, one Antonio Granata, preacher and supervisor of his brethren serving as chaplain in Belgium, among the papers in the National Library at Naples.20 The Farnese documents kept in the Parma State Archives contain many letters from this chaplain who seems to have had powerful protectors in Spain up until his fall: the friar complains to the General about the persecutions he claims to be subjected to, and accuses the Jesuits of trying to blacken his name in order to replace the Franciscans as sole chaplains to the army at a lower salary.21 In fact, when we read the details of the 1590 preliminary investigation, conducted from the beginning of February in the convent of the Observant Friars Minor in Brussels, we find what may be an explanation for the historians’ reticence and the absence of narrative sources covering the early experiences of priests deployed among the tercios. Granata turns out to be accused not only of theft and a number of acts of violence (like other Friars Minor who served as chaplains),22 not only of carrying arms and dressing as a noble knight, wearing furs and riding on horseback; not only of singing and playing music in public; not only of revealing the sins the faithful had confessed to him; but above all of repeated instances of sodomy: the chaplain had satisfied and attempted to satisfy his ‘abomninable vice’ with servants, with younger friars and with prostitutes.

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The stories committed to paper by his judges are nothing if not vivid (Granata spoke of himself as ‘a child of hell’, maintained that the world was peopled only with sodomites and mocked his critics) and would be worth analysing in greater depth than is possible here (the inquiry would drag on until 1593 and be handed over by the Order’s judges to the Apostolic Commissioner).23 After a first phase when the experiences of the military chaplains were not publicly made known, with the arrival of the Jesuits among the troops as chaplains, things began to change, not only on the level of practical action (as recorded by Geoffrey Parker in his classic study), but also as far as narrations of pastoral experiences at the front are concerned. A mission to the battlefield By 1573, when Eberhard Mercurian became the fourth Superior General of the Society of Jesus following the death of Francis Borgia, there were already numerous Spanish chaplains operating in Flanders under the direction of Miguel Hernández and Juan Fernández, two Jesuit priests valued by Farnese.24 Their presence sat slightly ill with their Flemish brothers as they were thought too close to the Habsburg authorities. The Provincial, Baudouin Delange, favoured terminating their appointment, but Olivier Mannaert, the Flemish Visitor sent from Rome a few years later, took their part. The turning point came in 1588, when two Jesuit chaplains, escaped from the rout of the invencible Armada, Antonio Crespo and Alonso del Pozo, landed in Flanders,25 and Thomas Sailly, who would later be associated with Lipsius, became Farnese’s confessor and an ardent promoter of a Jesuit mission to the army. At that point the Provincial François Coster issued specific instructions, with the approval of General Claudius Acquaviva, despite ongoing fears on the part of the Roman superiors that the move would take too many Jesuits out of the colleges and into contact with a world notorious for violence and lechery, not to mention heresy and blasphemy.26 Sailly, born in 1553, had been Possevino’s secretary during a mission to Poland and Hungary. Returning to Flanders he quickly allied himself with Farnese and adopted his political line, as ready to wield the stick of ‘Holy War’ as to proffer the carrot of ‘compassion’ in order to move on from past errors committed by the Spanish troops. In this spirit, he set up the Society of Jesus’s first missio castrensis: a permanent chaplaincy, dependent on the college at Brussels, suspended during the Twelve Years’ Truce and reactivated in 1620. The mission was initially composed of twenty-­four priests and coadiutori, but from 1600 Sailly was forced, against his will, to accept a halving of that number. From 1623, a parallel missio navalis was introduced, based first at Dunkirk, then Bruges, and finally Ostend.27

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Sailly wrote widely and even penned an epitaph for Farnese, who died in 1592 following an intervention in support of the Catholic League against Henri IV in France, where the chaplaincy service proved a disaster.28 The image of his late master that the Jesuit was keen to promote was one of a devoted warrior who would not let a day go by without attending mass or calling on God’s help before an engagement.29 For the religious instruction of the soldiers themselves, Sailly first made available Spanish and French translations of Possevino’s catechism, alongside the Italian, conscious that largely mercenary armies employed a Babel of languages. He also commissioned litanies and sacred images for distribution among the troops from the Antwerp publishers Plantin-­Moretus,30 and drafted a more sophisticated illustrated text aimed at the chaplains and at officers enrolled in a new confraternity sponsored by Pope Sixtus V.31 His Guidon et practique spirituelle du soldat chrestien (1590) reminded its readers of the assistance provided to the wounded and recorded that the soldiery, before going into battle, had been in the habit of confessing one another without a priest, hoping to get to heaven without the rites of the church, or trusting to spells to protect them from danger. It discussed reservations concerning the harm visited on civilians in besieged cities and acknowledged that abuses had been committed by chaplains in the past over soldiers’ legacies. Actual episodes of war were all but absent among the moralizing formulae on sin, the duties of soldiers, suggested prayers and rituals for men at war and a calendar of military saints including Ignatius of Loyola, an ex-­soldier to be sure, but not yet, in fact, a saint.32 Before dying, Sailly, Senior Chaplain at Spinola’s request, also drafted a long Memorial Testamentaire (1622), which was written partly in the Palatinate, where a number of Jesuits had ended up accompanying the tercios, and partly in Brussels. In this last work, Sailly cited the books of his fellow Jesuit Carolus Scribani, friend of Lipsius and later biographer of Sailly himself;33 lauded Farnese, Archduke Albert and Spinola as model Christian warriors;34 dealt with the issue of tax burdens aggravated by war;35 listed the more pious nobility on the Habsburg side active at the front; and laid down the duties of chaplains, commanders, military judges,36 physicians, nurses, cleaning women and food commissioners.37 But, despite repeatedly claiming that he was an ‘eyewitness’ of the ravages of war, he avoided describing concrete episodes of combat.38 The saintly Sailly lacked his successor Hugo’s relish of narrative detail, but he was capable of realistic writing when engaging with the difficulties attending the burial of soldiers killed in battle,39 or talking about prostitution or when admitting that the merchants supplying the army were often profiteers offloading inferior foodstuffs. He mentions a consignment of mouldy beer that had given the Palatinate expedition dysentery.40 He saw artillery and firearms as powerful instruments of God for the destruction of the wicked;41 he also

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recognized that hunger was a persistent curse that could drive soldiers to pillage.42 But if we go looking for battle descriptions in the texts of Sailly or other compilers of printed catechisms for soldiers, we will be disappointed.43 An image for the first Jesuit century But the Jesuits, as we know, were masters of propaganda and the information technology of the time: one could call them ‘God’s novelists’ for the Roman Church and for Catholic globalization. Their letters home from mission theatres in Europe, Asia and the Americas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, poured out to reach readers curious about the world, sparking an early fashion for things Oriental and the first ventures in comparative ethnography. The circulation of these writings fitted in with the promotional strategies of the Order and of the Church of Rome, but also with a desire to bolster the ‘team spirit’ that was a feature of the Society of Jesus more than of any other Catholic congregation in the early modern ­period – ­to the point of provoking hostility, dark rumours and conspiracy theories about its ‘religious militia’. The public circulation of the letters sent back annually from the Provinces to the Superior General had its origin in the practice of constantly reporting secretly to Rome on what was going on locally, writing specifically to the ­secretary – t­he first being Juan de Polanco. The Jesuit narrative model, which also inspired the first histories of the Order, arose out of this imperative to keep informed, which led in very few years to the formulation of a narrative genre typical of the Society, in which the missionary experience was transfigured through an emphasis on obstacles met with, miraculous interventions that helped to overcome them and successful conversions. The constant moving around of the fathers who wrote from the periphery also favoured imitation and a rapid congealing of stylistic formulae. If, therefore, we want to find documentation containing war-­zone narratives or the stories of Jesuit chaplains during the Eighty Years’ War, we will need to abandon the catechisms and concentrate on correspondence, which circulated not only internally. There are some letters concerning the chaplains in both the Spanish and the Italian Farnese archives (in Parma and Naples)44 and many more in those of the religious orders, notably, of course, of the Society of ­Jesus – i­n Rome, Brussels and Antwerp.45 These letters (those sent annually to the General, and the more honest and realistic accounts sent by colleges or individual priests) provide a day-­to-­day picture of the lives of the chaplains among the troops during the wars in the Low Countries. We find, furthermore, among the chaplains’ papers, soldiers’ wills, marriage licences, instructions, rules for military confraternities, drawings, papal briefs, medical

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prescriptions and even the diary of one priest, Henri Jamblenne, who served with the artillery until his death in 1640.46 A note written after 1633, now preserved in Brussels, also reminds us that following the war was no easy matter for the Jesuit priests assigned to the cavalry, given the meagre pay and lack of their own horses, which made it hard for them to keep up with the rapid movements on active campaign.47 The Brussels literae annuae contain reports from the missio castrensis, which until 1622 were drafted mainly by Sailly himself, who read the war as an ideological confrontation, as well as a fertile field for the harvesting of souls (from 1623 we also have the letters from the missio navalis at Dunkirk).48 They are brimful of ardour and seem intended to convince the Superiors of the excellence of the pastoral care being provided. The concubines, he writes in 1590, have been either sent away or made to marry the soldiers; the number of noblemen joining the confraternities is on the rise and likewise the number of heretic troops converting, mostly English and Irish.49 In 1592 he reports on how the hospital service is going (though a priest has lost his life); God has punished some blasphemers with an abrupt death, but taken Farnese also. Before passing, however, the Duke of Parma, entering a French village just overrun and seeing a mother bewailing two of her daughters carried off by the soldiers, had intervened to help a Jesuit attending the pillaged household to rescue a third daughter from being raped on the spot, returning her safe to her mother and punishing the men. The missio castrensis, then, according to Sailly, was prospering, thanks to the efforts of the chaplains and the piety of the Governor-­General: ‘the fathers have fought hard to prevent thefts which are not to be tolerated even when pay is in arrears and hunger gnaws, and have averted many robberies, murders, the burning of whole ­villages … ­Nor have our efforts been lacking with prisoners and the c­ ondemned … ­and in hearing the c­ onfessions … ­of men who have hardly ever before confessed’.50 In 1598 Sailly praised the endeavours of the priests who incited men to battle with the symbol of the cross, and reported the temptations of the devil rejected by the miraculous presence of God, the Lenten fasting of the soldiers, the numbers forswearing drink and duels avoided through the pacifying intervention of the priests. ‘The mission’, he writes ‘though exposed to constant dangers to life and limb, is bearing excellent and copious fruit […]. It has reconducted monstrous beasts to humanity’.51 Under the command of Archduke Alberto, three Jesuits lost their lives at Nieuwpoort in ­1600 – ­two of them, Fathers Pierre Buzelin and Laurent ­Évrard – ­while stirring the soldiers on to fight and simultaneously imploring clemency for the defeated Calvinists.52 In 1621 Hugo took over from the ageing Sailly as head of mission until he died of the plague at Rheinberg in 1629, before the triumph at Breda had

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become a distant memory. From 1633, the mission was split in two, six fathers being sent to Artois and Picardy, and six to the fortress at Stevensweert on the Meuse under the command of the Marquis of Aytona. Only much later, with the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), was the army mission, now under the Archbishop of Malines, finally wound up, while the naval version continued, despite arousing considerable misgivings due to its having to deal with crews who, by all accounts, differed little from pirate bands without religious feelings of any kind. And yet, if we are to believe an annual letter sent from Dunkirk in 1632, the Jesuits had successfully promoted a cult of Francis Xavier among them, the newly canonized saint’s patronage contributing to a Spanish naval victory over a marauding English squadron, which had cemented the devotion of the crews.53 The same saint had after ­all – ­according to his biographer Orazio ­Torsellini – ­a century earlier himself whipped up the courage of the Portuguese for their campaign against the Islamic sultanates in Indonesia.54 Such stories would not remain in manuscript but were rehearsed at least in part in a printed text, which appeared while the war was still in progress. This was the extraordinary monument to religious propaganda that was the Imago primi saeculi Societatis Iesu a Provincia Flandro-Belgica repraesentata (figure 11), which in 1640, on the centenary of the Society’s founding, celebrated the glories of the military and naval missions under seven splendid emblems.55 Their success, we read, should finally silence those who had accused the chaplains of being only after personal gain. Often the Jesuits had gone about their business at night, in snow and ice, starving or at least insufficiently fed. The priests who had perished in the hospitals or spurring on the soldiery at the battlefront were numerous, but the rewards had been so abundant that one could now claim that true Christian soldiers had been forged at last (‘institui a nobis militem christianum’). Chaplains had a role to play not only in battle, but also during peacetime in the camps, where they could conduct a more effective ministry (‘in campo non de rebus animi, sed de hoste victoriaque cogitandum’). Not that heroism at the front had been lacking, as proven by numerous episodes in the long siege of Breda (with its lack of doctors, its hunger and periods of prostration) or by the death of the priest Guillaume Buvet. ­This – ­we ­read – ­is the life of the military chaplain (‘haec castrensium patrum vita est’). And much the same could be said for the naval mission: before the Jesuits arrived, the ships were receptacles containing wild beasts rather than men (‘ferarum verius quam hominum receptacula’).56 The exalted tones of this text, part history and part propaganda, were intended to transfigure the experience of war and gloss over failures and shortcomings, deploying to best effect the Society’s internal sources. Nonetheless, the Jesuit missions did genuinely contribute to the development of ­disciplinary

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11  Imago primi saeculi Societatis Iesu a Provincia Flandro-Belgica repraesentata (Antwerp, 1640) norms and the establishment of a military justice system (introduced by Farnese). They also became a model held up for admiration in other texts aimed at Catholic soldiers (like that of the papal official Cesare Palazzolo),57 and in one of the first works to engage with theological and canonical doubts concerning the pastoral care for soldiers and the administration of sacraments. The most important of these was by Charles of Mansfelt, Archbishop of Malines and chaplain-­in-­chief, who in a treatise traced the history of such care from antiquity to the Eighty Years’ War, praising the work of the Jesuits.58 Paradoxically, the Society’s missions also inspired a religious provision for Protestant armies, especially among English contingents, where many a fiery

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Calvinist text circulated calling for crusades against papist tyranny. As many historians have observed, the wars in the Low Countries offered the English a schooling in religious militancy.59 This is demonstrated by texts written by the chaplains Simon Harward,60 Thomas Scott,61 Alexander Leighton,62 William Gouge,63 Samuel Bachiler64 and Richard Bernard. This last called on Charles I to intervene on the side of the Protestants in the Thirty Years’ War and to provide the English soldiery with a hierarchical pastoral service similar to that of the military chaplains of the Jesuit missions in Flanders.65 The experience of the chaplains in the Eighty Years’ War, then, would echo beyond confessional boundaries of Europe, notwithstanding the silence of the narrative sources on the effective religious observance of the soldiers and a pronounced reticence concerning the scandals perpetrated by the first priests to serve at the front in the Low Countries, not to mention the abuses committed and the defeats suffered by the Habsburg armies portrayed as instruments of God. Notes

  1 See S.A. Vosters, La rendición de Bredá en la literatura y el arte de España (London: Tamesis, 1973); J.F. Moffit, ‘Diego Velázquez, Andrea Alciati and the Surrender of Breda’, Artibus et Historiae, 5 (1982), 75–90; J. Brown, Velázquez: Painter and Courtier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); A. Bailey, Velázquez and the Surrender of Breda. The Making of a Masterpiece (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2011).   2 More generally, on the ideological aspects of the surrender of Breda and its glorification by the Habsburg party, see Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567–1659 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp.  103–4; Erik Swart, ‘Defeat, honour and the news. The case of the fall of Breda’, European History Quarterly, 46 (2016), 6–26.   3 The title-­page of the Obsidio has been shown to be by Rubens: S. Zurawski, ‘New sources for Jacques Callot’s map of the Siege of Breda’, The Art Bulletin, 70 (1988), 621–39 (625, 630–2). For the links between the painter and the Plantin-­Moretus circle, see M. Morford, Stoics and Neostoics. Rubens and the Circle of Lipsius (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).  4 On H. Hugo, Pia Desideria (Antwerp: Hendrick Aertssens, 1624), frequently republished, see G.D. Rödter, ‘Via piae animae’. Grundlagenuntersuchung zur emblematischen Verknüpfung von Bild und Wort in den ‘Pia desideria’ (1624) des Hermann Hugo S.J. (1588–1629) (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1992); F. Dietz, ‘Dark images, clear words: Pieter Paets’s illustrated devotional literature from Mission Hollandica’, in K. Enenkel and W.S. Melion (eds), Meditatio. Refashioning the Self (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), pp. 291–320; P. Begheyn, Jesuit Books in the Dutch Republic and its Generality Lands 1567–1773 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), p. 118.  5 H. Hugo, De militia equestri antiqua et nova libri quinque (Antwerp: ex Off. Plantiniana B. Moreti, 1630).   6 D. De Lucca, Jesuits and Fortifications. The Contribution of the Jesuits to Military Architecture in the Baroque Age (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), p. 186.   7 I quote from the Spanish translation: H. Hugo, Sitio de Breda rendida a las armas del Rey Don Phelipe IV a la virtud de la infante doña Isabel, al valor del marques Ambr. Spinola (Antuerpiae: ex Off. Plantiniana B. Moreti, 1627), p. 16: ‘vendiase por las calles la estampa, en que […] buscava su Magestad vna lanterna à Breda, y à su lado el Marques, que con ambas manos se rascava la cabeca; bien Satyricos fueron los versos, con que lo explicavan’. There exists a modern edition by Julio Albi de la Cuesta (Madrid: Balkan, 2001).  8 Hugo, Sitio de Breda, p. 1.

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 9 Ibid., p. 35: ‘Hauian ido con aquellas tropas à Seuenberghe dos Padres de la Compañia de Iesvs, eran de los que assisten en los quarteles, procurando la salud de los soldados, è iuan à moderar la insolencia de los mochileros, y estoruar otras injurias. Fueron de gran seruicio à aquellos moradores, librando assimismo del peligro, en que hauia puesto el atreuimiento de algunos ya irritados, à vn Ministro con su muger y familia, mientras imploraua en vano el fauor de otros: admirandose los que hauian creydo y diuulgado cossas mas asperas de los Padres, ahora preguntauan que como se hauian trocado tanto?’ 10 Hugo, Sitio de Breda, p. 103: ‘el dique lleno de muertos, la tierra y arenas mezcladas en sangre: las piernas, cabeças, manos y pies depedaçados, y destroncados los cuerpos’. 11 Hugo, Sitio de Breda, pp. 124–6: ‘Assi dezian publicamente todos, que las oraciones continuas de su Alteza y de su Corte, y las rogatiuas que mandaua hazer por todos los templos y capillas, recuperaron à Breda, no las armas. Y realmente nadie puede negar, que ayudaron mas los fauores diuinos, que las estratagemas de los hombres.’ 12 See V. Lavenia, Dio in uniforme. Cappellani, catechesi cattolica e soldati in età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2017). For Jesuit production, see G. Civale, ‘La Compagnia di Gesù, la guerra e l’immagine del soldato da Ignazio a Possevino (1546–1569)’, Società e Storia, 140 (2013), 283–317; V. Lavenia, ‘Jesuit catechisms for soldiers (XVII–XIX centuries). Changes and continuities’, Journal of Jesuit Studies, 4 (2017), 599–623. 13 A. Possevino, Il soldato christiano con l’instruttione dei capi dello essercito catolico (Roma: Dorici, 1569). On Possevino and the origins of the Jesuit military missions, G. Brunelli, Soldati del papa. Politica militare e nobiltà nello Stato della Chiesa (1560–1644) (Rome: Carocci, 2003), pp. 11–17; G. Civale, ‘Francesco Borgia e gli esordi della pastorale gesuitica nei confronti dei soldati (1565–1572)’, in E. García Hernán (ed.), Francisco de Borja y su tiempo, 1510–1572. Política, religión y cultura en la Edad Moderna (Rome and Valencia: IHSI, 2012), pp. 207–22; A. Boltanski, ‘Forger le “soldat chrétien”. L’encadrement catholique des troupes pontificales et royales en France en 1568–1569’, Revue Historique, 669 (2014), 51–85. 14 E. García Hernán, ‘Capellanes militares y Reforma Católica’, in E. García Hernán and D. Maffi (eds), Guerra y sociedad en la Monarquía Hispánica. Política, estrategia y cultura en la Europa moderna (1500–1700) (Madrid: Mapfre, 2006), vol. 2, pp. 709–42. 15 See V. Lavenia, ‘In God’s Fields. Military chaplains and soldiers in Flanders during the Eighty Years’ War’, in M. Mondini and M. Rospocher (eds), Narrating War. Early Modern and Contemporary Perspectives (Bologna and Berlin: Il Mulino-­Duncker & Humblot, 2013), pp. 99–112. 16 Judith Pollmann, ‘Countering the Reformation in France and the Netherlands. Clerical leadership and Catholic violence 1560–1585’, Past and Present, 190 (2006), 83–120. 17 The bishop asked Rome, through Duke Farnese’s secretary, for permission to absolve in foro conscientiae even heretics and soldiers who had fought with the rebels and used violence against the clergy: Archivio di Stato di Parma, Carteggio Farnesiano Estero, Paesi Bassi, 113, file of year 1589, ‘Lettere a Cosimo Masi’, letter of June 1589. 18 Léon van der Essen, ‘Documents concernant le vicaire général Francisco de Umara et l’organisation religieuse de l’armée espagnole aux Pays-­Bas pendant les guerres de Flandre (1597–1599)’, Analectes pour Servir a I’Histoire Ecclésiastique de la Belgique, 37 (1911), 263–81; J. Lefèvre, ‘L’aumônerie militaire à l’époque de l’archiduc Albert (1598–1621)’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 7 (1928), 113–29; M. Parrilla Hermida, El hospital militar español de Malinas en los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid: Ministerio del Ejército, 1964), p. 27ff. 19 On this issue see the recent A. Boltanski et al. (eds), La Bataille. Du fait d’armes au combat idéologique XIe–XIXe siècle (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015). 20 The records of the interminable inquiry are in the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, MS XII.B.3. The volume, which almost certainly comes from Farnese’s papers, also contains copies of some of Granata’s letters provided as evidence by his accusers and others in which the chaplain professes his innocence. 21 See for example Archivio di Stato di Parma, Carteggio Farnesiano Estero, Paesi Bassi, 113, file of year 1589, ‘Lettere a Cosimo Masi’ (secretary to Alessandro Farnese), two letters from

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Granata, 13 November and 22 November 1589. A protector of the friar, as is clear from the correspondence, was Philip II’s secretary Mateo Vázquez de Leca, who would die in 1591. It had been Alessandro Farnese himself who asked the Superior of the Friars Minor to send him a suitable Italian chaplain, acceptable to the Spanish soldiers (Granata had lived in the Iberian Peninsula), to function also as apostolic commissioner to keep discipline among the priests accompanying the army: Carteggio Farnesiano Estero, Paesi Bassi, 111, letter of 20 April 1582. Further information on the Granata case in Carteggio Farnesiano Estero, Paesi Bassi, 115 and 116. 22 On 18 April 1588 an officer wrote from Breda to Governor-­General Farnese to inform him of a friar minor named Francesco da Castelnuovo who had stolen a cloak from a soldier, behaved licentiously and blasphemed. The chaplain of Captain Carlo Spinelli’s tercio had ordered his arrest, but the man had reacted violently, being, as the author of the letter put it, ‘one of the worst men of the cloth I have ever come across’. Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Archivio Farnesiano, 1722II, unnumbered pages. Unfortunately, in Naples a large part of the Farnese documentation concerning the chaplains has been lost or is inaccessible due to deterioration. 23 Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, MS XII.B.3. 24 Archivio di Stato di Parma, Carteggio Farnesiano Estero, Paesi Bassi, 110, letters from the General to Cardinal Farnese, to the Duke of Parma Ottavio and to the Jesuit Superior General recommending to them the two departing chaplains, 11 March 1580. Alessandro Farnese suggested the two priests make a trip to Italy and visit the Marian shrine at Loreto, before returning to Spain. 25 A. Poncelet, Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus dans les ançiens Pays-Bas (Brussels: Academie Royale de Belgique, 1927), vol. 2, pp. 410–24; J. Schoonjans, ‘“Castra Dei”. L’organisation religieuse des armées d’Alexandre Farnèse’, in Miscellanea historica in honorem Leonis van der Essen (Brussels and Paris: Éditions Universitaires, 1947), pp. 523–40; F. de Borja de Medina, ‘Jesuitas en la armada contra Inglaterra (1588). Notas para un centenario’, Archivum Historicum Socetatis Iesu, 58 (1989), 3–41. 26 Rome, Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Inst. 117a, fos 517r–518v, ‘Ordinationes pro missione castrensi’. 27 For a biographical sketch, see L. Brouwers, ‘L’“Elogium” du père Thomas Sailly S.I. (1553– 1623) composé par le père Charles Scribani S.I.’, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 48 (1979), 87–124. On Farnese’s aims, backed by Sailly, see Violet Soen, ‘Reconquista and reconciliation in the Dutch Revolt: the campaign of Governor-­General Alexander Farnese’, Journal of Early Modern History, 16 (2012), 1–22. 28 A. Boltanski, ‘A Jesuit “missio castrensis” in France at the end of the sixteenth century. discipline and violence at war’, Journal of Jesuit Studies, 4 (2017), 581–98. 29 T. Sailly, In obitum serenissimi Alexandri Farnesii Parmae, et Placentiae Ducis (Mediolani: apud Franciscum Paganellum, 1595). The short text also appeared in an anthology of funeral eulogies of the general: Epithafia in Serenissimum Alexandrum Farnesium (Coloniae Agrippinae: Arnoldus Mylius, 1598). A letter of condolence from Sailly to the Duke of Parma Ranuccio Farnese, son of Alessandro, in the Archivio di Stato di Parma, Casa e Corte Farnesiana, 19, ‘Alessandro Farnese, Scritture relative alla morte 1592–1593’ (5 December 1592, from Arras). 30 See Correspondance de Christophe Plantin, ed. J. Denucé (Nendel: Kraus Reprint, 1968, 1st edn, 1918), vols. 8–9, p. 426; F. Dietz et al. (eds), Illustrated Religious Texts in the North of Europe, 1500–1800 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), ad indicem. 31 S. Mostaccio, ‘La mission militaire jésuite auprès de l’armée des Flandres pendant la guerre de Trente Ans. Conversions et sacrements’, in B. Forclaz and Ph. Martin (eds), Religion et pieté au défi de la guerre de Trente Ans (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015), pp. 183–202; S. Mostaccio, ‘Genere e guerra. Genere in guerra? Storia e storie intorno all’esercito delle Fiandre. Una proposta’, in M. Caffiero, M.P. Donato and G. Fiume (eds), Donne, potere, religione. Studi per Sara Cabibbo (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2017), pp. 51–66. Further studies by Mostaccio on religious narratives of the Eighty Years’ War have recently gone to press. 32 T. Sailly, Guidon et practique spirituelle du soldat chrestien reveu & augmenté pour l’armee de sa M.tè

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Catholique au Pays-bas (Antwerp: l’Imprimerie Plantinienne, 1590). On the theft of dead soldiers’ goods, see p. 71. 33 On Scribani see L. Brouwers and J.F. Gilmont, Carolus Scribani (Brussels: Bibliotheca Belgica, 1977); R. Bireley, The Counter-Reformation Prince. Anti-Machiavellianism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 162–87; E. de Bom, ‘Carolus Scribani and the Lipsian legacy. The “Politico-­Christianus” and Lipsius’s image of the good prince’, in E. de Bom et al. (eds) (Un)masking the Realities of Power. Justus Lipsius and the Dynamics of Political Writing in Early Modern Europe (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), 281–306; J. Machielsen, ‘Friendship and religion in the Republic of Letters. The return of Justus Lipsius to Catholicism (1591)’, Renaissance Studies, 27 (2011), 161–82. 34 On the conduct of war at that time, I cite only, other than Parker’s book: Léon van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse, prince de Parme, gouverneur général des Pays-Bas, 1545–1592, 5 vols (Brussels: Librairie Nationale d’Art et d’Histoire et al., 1933–37); Fernando González de León, The Road to Rocroi. Class, Culture and Command in the Spanish Army of Flanders, 1567–1659 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009); Luc Duerloo, Dynasty and Piety. Archduke Albert (1598–1621) and Habsburg Political Culture in an Age of Religious Wars (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012); Luis de Carlos Bertrán, Alexander. La extraordinaria historia de Alejandro Farnesio (Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 2018). On Spinola’s image B. de Groof, ‘A noble courtier and a gentleman warrior: Some aspects of the creation of the Spinola image’, in J. Fenoulhet and L. Gilbert (eds), Narratives of Low Countries. Reframing the Past (London: University College of London Press, 2016), pp. 26–34. 35 T. Sailly, Memorial testamentaire composé en faveur des soldats, première partie (Leuven: chez Henri Hastens, 1622), Partie seconde, pp. 43–72; Premiere partie, p. 259. 36 Sailly, Memorial testamentaire, première partie, pp. 47–61. 37 Ibid., pp. 236–57. 38 Ibid., p. 1: ‘je peus donner quelque tesmoignage ayant passé la meilleure, et la plus grande partie de mon aage, non seulement en la milice spirituelle de nostre Institut, mais aussi en guerres’. For an account of Spinola’s exploits in the Palatinate see pp. 154–5. 39 Sailly, Memorial testamentaire, première partie, p. 167. 40 Ibid., p. 256: ‘nous avons veu ceste année au Palatinat des amas de corps morts, et une milliace des soldats griefment malades, pour avoir beu de la bierre mal cuitte, et apportée au champ hors de son temps, ce qui causa une grande dissenterie en l’armée’. 41 Ibid., p. 163. 42 Ibid., p. 166. 43 See F. Antonio, Auisos para soldados y gente de guerra (Madrid: P. Madrigal, 1590). This chaplain was a Portuguese Jesuit, while the author of a theological debate in the form of a dialogue, which cannot really be classified as a catechism, was instead a well-­known Carmelite friar: G. Gracián, El soldado catholico, que prueva con historia, exemplos y razones claras […] que los que no tienen letras, no han de disputar de la fee con los hereges; abomina las heregias de nuestros tiempos, y loa la Yglesia Romana (Brussels: Roger Velpio y Huberto Antonio, 1611). On his activities in Flanders: Werner Thomas, ‘Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios, la corte de Bruselas y la política religiosa en los Países Bajos meridionales, 1607–1614’, in R. Vermeir et al. (eds), Agentes e identidades en movimiento. España y los Países Bajos, siglos XVI–XVII (Madrid: Sílex, 2011), pp. 289–313. 44 See previous notes. 45 The manuscript papers concerning the Jesuit military chaplains in Belgium are catalogued in A. Gaillard (ed.), Inventaire sommaire des archives de la Compagnie de Jésus conservées aux Archives Génélares du Royaume à Bruxelles (Brussels: Archives Générales du Royaume, 1910). H. Callewier (ed.), Inventaris van het archief van de Nederduitse Provincie der Jezuïeten (Provincia Belgica, vervolgens Provincia Flandro-Belgica) en van het archief van het professenhuis te Antwerpen (1388) 1564–1773 (Brussels: Algemeen Rijksarchief, 2006). The most important documentary series are: Rijksarchief Brussels-­Anderlecht, Archives Jésuitiques Gallo-­Belgiques, Collège de Bruxelles, 1963–1972; Rijksarchief Antwerpen-­Beveren, Jezuïeten, Flandro-Belgica, 2006. 46 Rijksarchief Antwerpen-­ Beveren, Jezuïeten, Flandro-­ Belgica: 1, ‘Lettres annuelles du

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P. Provincial des Jésuites des Pays-­Bas au P. Général’, 1588, 1595–97, 1611; 2/1, ‘Lettres annuelles du P. Provincial des Jésuites de la Flandro-­Belgique au P. Général, vol. 2’, 1612–20; 3, ‘Lettres annuelles du P. Provincial des Jésuites de la Flandro-­Belgique au P. Général, vol. 3’, 1621–25 (this registry contains reports of the life and death of Sailly, compiled by Scribani, 1623, and the first litterae from the missio navalis); 4, ‘Lettres annuelles du P. Provincial des Jésuites de la Flandro-­Belgique au P. Général, vol. 4’, 1626–33 (from here on for both the missiones castrenses and navales); 15, fos 1r–32v, 1646–59. On the missio castrensis see also Rijksarchief Brussels-­Anderlecht, Archives Jésuitiques Gallo-­Belgiques, Collège de Bruxelles, 1969, ‘Liber ordinationum et aliarum quae in Missione Societatis Iesu in Castris Regijs observantur’. This is a miscellany which contains an interesting booklet by the Leuven physician Jan Walter Wiringius, suggesting cures suitable for the soldiery: Medicinalia pro Patribus qui in castris versantur, 1587, fos 193r–201r. For the conduct of weddings see Rijksarchief Brussels-­Anderlecht, Archives Jésuitiques Gallo-­Belgiques, Collège de Bruxelles, 1967; on the soldiers’ confraternities, Rijksarchief Brussels-­Anderlecht, Archives Jésuitiques Gallo-­Belgiques, Collège de Bruxelles, 1966; on assistance for widows, Rijksarchief Brussels-­ Anderlecht, Archives Jésuitiques Gallo-­Belgiques, Collège de Bruxelles, 1968; for service at Breda, Rijksarchief Brussels-­Anderlecht, Archives Jésuitiques Gallo-­Belgiques, Collège de Bruxelles, 1965, fasc. 1. Jamblenne’s diary is in Rijksarchief Brussels-­Anderlecht, Archives Jésuitiques Gallo-­Belgiques, Collège de Bruxelles, 1971, ‘Instructio historica pro Sacellano Artilliariae’, 1–98, in part. fos 32r–98r, an account of events occurring between 19 August 1636 and 20 April 1640. Jamblenne died on 9 May 1640. 47 Rijksarchief Brussels-­Anderlecht, Archives Jésuitiques Gallo-­Belgiques, Collège de Bruxelles, 1971, folder on the cavalry, page unnumbered and undated, copy of a Jesuit letter: ‘La cavaleria por ser un campo suelto y compuesto de muchas compañias con toda la diligenccia che pueda hazer el capellan mayor della es impossible que sea bien assistida de los capellanes, tanto por el gran numero de las compañias, como por los pocos capellanos que ay, y non tener medios con que siguir sus compañias quando marchan en campaña. Siendo impossible que un capellan pueda sustener su persona, y un cavallo con doze escudos al mes […], donde resulta que casi todos estan a pie sin cavallos, y la dicha cavaleria […] sin assistencia ninguna espiritual, cosa muy dura para los que desean pelear y morir valerosamente’. A later gloss states that John of Nassau, a cavalry general defected from the Dutch camp, gave orders that the Jesuits be properly paid. 48 See note 45. 49 ‘Concubinae vel eiectae vel uxores factae’; ‘De haeresi triunphatum in multis. In uno Hybernorum et Anglorum ordine plures octoginta eam abiurarunt’. Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Flandro-­Belgica 67, fo. 57r–v. 50 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Flandro-­Belgica 67, fo. 76r–v (‘Laborarunt etiam nostri in impediendis furtis ac latrocinijs, quae etsi propter inediam militum stipendijque defectum non potuerint tollere, multa tamen furta, caedes atque adeo incendia etiam integrorum pagorum impediverunt […]. Damnatis etiam capitis non defuit industria nostra; plerique ex ijs insigni cum animi constantia veraque poenitudine mortem subierunt. Strenue laborarunt etiam in confessionibus audiendis […]; multi enim simulatque sacramentis Ecclesiae refecti fuerunt, etiam corpore melius habuerunt’). 51 Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Flandro-­Belgica 67, fos 188r–189r: ‘castrensis missio laboribus multis ac vitae periculis exposita excellentem ac copiosum laboris fructum colligit. Belluas immanes ad humanitatem revocavit’. 52 This episode is recounted in the Imago primi saeculi. Beveren, Jezuïeten, Flandro-­ Belgica, 4, ‘Lettres annuelles du 53 Rijksarchief Antwerpen-­ P. Provincial des Jésuites de la Flandro-­Belgique au P. Général’, 1626–33. 54 O. Torsellini, Vida de San Francisco Xavier […] traduzida en Romance por el P. Pedro de Guzman (Pamplona: Labàyen, 1620), pp. 104ff, 121–3. 55 For the history and significance of this book, see M. Fumaroli, ‘Baroque et classicisme. L’“Imago Primi Saeculi Societatis Jesu” (1640) et ses adversaries’, in M. Fumaroli, L’école du

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silence. Le sentiment des images au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Flammarion, 1994), pp. 343–65; L. Salviucci Insolera, L’Imago primi saeculi (1640) e il significato dell’immagine allegorica nella Compagnia di Gesù. Genesi e fortuna del libro (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2004); N. Tjoelker, ‘Jesuit image rhetoric in Latin and vernacular. The Latin and Dutch emblems of the “Imago Primi Saeculi”’, Renaessanceforum, 6 (2010), 97–118; J.W. O’Malley (ed.), Art, Controversy and the Jesuits. ‘The Imago Primi Saeculi Societatis Iesu’ (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2015). Johannes Bolland et al., Imago primi saeculi Societatis Iesu a Provincia Flandro-Belgica eiusdem Societatis repraesentata (Antwerp: ex officina Plantiniana Balthasaris Moreti, 1640), pp. 804–6, 910–13 and 941–8. C. Palazzolo, Il soldato di Santa Chiesa per l’institutione alla pietà de i cento mila fanti & de i diece mila soldati a cavallo delle Militie dello Stato Ecclesiastico […] co’l regolamento di dette militie (Rome: appresso Luigi Zanetti, 1606), pp. 25–9. C. de Mansfelt, Castra Dei, sive Parochia, Religio et Disciplina Militum (Brussels: apud Martinum de Bossuyt, 1642). See Th. Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution. English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–1624 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989); J. White, Militant Protestantism and British Identity 1603–1642 (New York: Routledge, 2012); Hugh Dunthorne, Britain and the Dutch Revolt 1560–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). S. Harward, The Solace for the Souldier and Saylor (London: Thomas Orwin for Thomas Wight, 1592). Th. Scott, The Belgick Souldier, or Warre was a Blessing (Dordrecht: s.n., 1624). A. Leighton, Speculum belli sacri. Or The looking-glasse of the holy war wherein is discovered: the evill of war. The good of warr. The guide of war ([Amsterdam]: Giles Thorp. 1624). W. Gouge, The Dignitie of Chivalry, Set forth in a Sermon, preached before the Artillery Company of London, Iune. XIII. 1626. (London: G.M. for Ralph Mab, 1626). S. Bachiler, The Campe Royal, Seth forth in briefe meditations on the words of the Prophet Moses, Deut. 23.9.14. hereunder following, preached in the Army (Amsterdam: R.P., 1629). R. Bernard, The Bible-Battels, or the Sacred Art Military for the rightly wageing of warre according to Holy Writ (London: Edward Blackmore, 1629), pp. 159–60.

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10 ‘Was bis daher gepassiert solt vergessen und vergeben sein’: cross-­border nobleman Sweder Schele’s (1569–1639) accounts of army commanders during the Revolt in the Low Countries and Thirty Years’ War Raingard Esser and Dániel Moerman In one of his earliest recorded memories of the Eighty Years’ War, nobleman Sweder Schele refers to the year 1580, when he was 11 years old and the Spanish army was advancing towards the province of Overijssel. Sweder’s father, Christoffer Schele, who many years earlier had refused to pick a side in the conflict, had already fled from the family estate of Weleveld to avoid capture by the Spanish forces during the 1570s. When the news of the Spanish advance reached the exiled Christoffer in the Holy Roman Empire, he immediately wrote a letter to his wife Judith at Weleveld. She was urgently advised not to await the Spanish arrival, but to pack and seek refuge with the children across the border. Although the Schele family at Weleveld was under the protection of a sauvegarde (safeguard) guaranteed by Ludwig von Langen, an officer in the Dutch army, this was not going to protect them from the Spanish forces. Without hesitation Judith put the children and some valuable belongings in a carriage and drove off towards Rheine in the Prince-­Bishopric of Münster. However, a group of treacherous peasants had informed a band of Spanish cavalrymen about their escape. With their initial aim to capture Christoffer, the cavalrymen pursued the carriage until Judith crossed the border to the town of Gronau in the prince-­bishopric, where she was able to shake them off. Here, a servant of Ludwig von Langen, named Ludolph, came to their rescue. As Judith and the children drove off the following morning, Ludolph rode along with the carriage as decoy. The Spanish cavalrymen, who awaited the carriage, believed that Christoffer was now riding with them. When Ludolph diverted from the carriage, the Spanish cavalrymen pursued him and the Schele family was able to escape safely to Rheine.1 This remarkably detailed narrative of Sweder Schele’s earliest personal memories of the Eighty Years’ War was recorded in the first part of his

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extensive two-­volume chronicle, composed between 1589 and 1637.2 He was born in 1569, a year after the start of the Eighty Years’ War, and raised in the turmoil of warfare. After 1618, a second, and perhaps even more destructive, conflict would affect his life: The Thirty Years’ War. Both of these conflicts created many painful memories for Sweder and his family, which he recorded in a large collection of brief, fragmented narratives. The aim of this chapter is to approach these war narratives through the lens of episodic narrative, focusing on the continuities and discontinuities in his narration with regard to various recurring or singular experiences in his life. Using Schele’s accounts as an example, this chapter discusses the challenges in using episodic narrative analysis when applied to the overall static nature of early modern chronicles. Although chronicles generally showcase a high level of continuity in conveying largely factual messages about the author’s daily life and ideas, nuanced changes can be observed when a specific topic is studied over a longer period of time in relation to the author’s convictions. To narrow down many of the interwoven topics in Sweder’s war narratives, the focus here is directed specifically towards his narratives of army commanders, which played an important role throughout his entire life. Considered as a whole over the course of his life, Sweder’s episodic narratives regarding army commanders show both continuity as well as nuanced changes in his memory, which resonate through his shifting perspective and convictions over time. Because this chapter looks at the episodic narratives of one particular person, the idea of such a narrative is linked to the concept of episodic memory, described by Geoffrey Cubitt as ‘the individual’s conscious memory of events and experiences in which he or she has been personally involved’.3 This rather broad notion of episodic memory entails factual events and the experiences of a certain individual, which become meaningful as a category of (historical) analysis only after a long passage of time when they are put into narration, for example, in a diary, memoir or some other form of testimony. A historical analysis then makes it possible to hold this narration against the light of that individual’s convictions, cultural background and other factors of influence. Such an analysis can lead to the uncovering of the so-­called autonoetic or ‘self-­ knowing’ aspect that characterizes the narration of episodic memory. This involves certain goals, plans or principle convictions in an individual’s life, which were at work during her or his memory formation during a particular life stage. It also connects to earlier recollections of memories or dramatic narrative structures borrowed from epic poetry, mythology or other cultural resources. This process is, however, not static, as the narration of memory can be susceptible to change over periods of time, hence the episodic nature.4 Sweder’s chronicle was initially intended as the typical historical/­ genealogical work, a Stammbuch or Hauschronik, for the didactic purpose of

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safeguarding the memories of noble ancestors and their virtues for posterity.5 This is one of the strongest pillars on which his narratives are based, and can be regarded as a part of an autonoetic awareness in his writing. Throughout his life, Sweder contemplated the duties and virtues of noblemen, especially in times of war, which he recorded alongside various brief, highly factual accounts regarding family matters, such as births, deaths, marriages, prayers, poems and correspondences with other noblemen. He also made extensive notes of his political work as a noble representative in the estates of his province of residence. From 1589 to 1619, Sweder assumed this role for Overijssel, while from 1629 until 1631 he fulfilled a similar function across the border in the Prince-­Bishopric of Münster. This shift occurred because Sweder moved across the border to the manor of Welbergen in the Prince-­Bishopric of Münster around 1624, where, after a period of silence, he chronicled the final years of his life from 1629 onwards.6 His activity on two sides of the border qualifies Sweder as a cross-­border nobleman who perceived and described the war from two different, yet closely related, geographical areas. Considering the rising interest in transregional and early modern border research, it is interesting to investigate how his episodic narratives were affected by his border-­crossing.7 Another major recurring theme throughout Sweder’s life is religion. This was especially the case during the Thirty Years’ War, when Lutheranism, to which Sweder staunchly adhered throughout his life, was under threat in the Holy Roman Empire. This theme dominated the war narratives of his later life, and was personified par excellence in his account of the Lutheran King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus. These three key themes of noble identity, cross-­border activity and religious conviction are all part of Sweder’s narratives of military commanders. Many of the military commanders in the Eighty and Thirty Years’ Wars were noblemen who served in either lower or higher-­ranking positions.8 The lower-­ rank captains, or lieutenants, such as Ludwig von Langen, whom Sweder met as a child, belonged, like Sweder, to the lesser nobility. They were the kind of army commanders he met in his everyday life, and were often distant relatives through a complex web of intermarriage. Yet Sweder also set aside significant room for higher-­ranked generals and marshals like Ambrogio Spinola, Gustavus Adolphus and Johan Tserclaes, the Count of Tilly. The latter are described mostly from a distance, as he kept track of their deeds on the battlefield through newspapers and other reports. The study of personal perception of early modern conflicts through diaries or chronicles is not a new field of research. Numerous studies have already focused on the personal experiences of townsfolk, soldiers and (noble) commanders in the field.9 Yet the experiences of lesser noblemen like Sweder

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Schele, who decided not to enter the war as combatants, remain a rather understudied subject. Although he avoided the battlefield throughout his entire life, Sweder nevertheless saw many of his noble peers take up arms and serve as military commanders, on whose deeds and virtues he commented in his chronicle. The first section of this chapter addresses two interrelated themes: first, Sweder’s ideas about noblemen and their duties; and second, the translation of his noble convictions into practice in accounts of his own actions in wartime. A prominent example of the latter is the justification of his neutrality in the war, which he adopted from his father. Sweder’s self-­awareness, shaped during his early years as an upcoming nobleman, would continue to resonate throughout his later narratives. The two following sections focus on Sweder’s episodic narratives of army commanders, starting with the narratives surrounding family members who served in the Eighty or Thirty Years’ Wars. These low, or sometimes even high-­ranking, commanders were remembered by Sweder for various reasons: kinship, admiration or good services to him and his family in times of distress. In the third section, the focus shifts to two of Sweder’s most prominently remembered commanders: Tilly and Gustavus Adolphus. These two commanders dominated Sweder’s narratives in the later stages of his life in the Prince-­Bishopric of Münster. At that moment, his focus turned more towards the religious issues related to the Thirty Years’ War. The scope of his narration at this stage broadened, and his narratives largely covered important events that would determine the outcome of the war, such as the battles between Gustavus Adolphus and Tilly during the years 1631–32. The confrontation between the two commanders was believed by Sweder to herald the end of the Thirty Years’ War, but when both heroic commanders died and the war continued, the elderly and ‘war-­torn’ Sweder started to believe that peace was further away than ever. Like father, like son: the formation of a nobleman’s war narratives Sweder Schele, like many noblemen of his time, considered himself destined to rule as patron over the people who stood below him, and to defend them whenever it was necessary. Noblemen regarded themselves as virtuous and brave enough to perform these duties, but they were also expected to live up to these standards.10 This aspect is also present in Sweder’s chronicle, as he considered the nobility to be the Wherstand, the warriors elected by God and privileged by monarchs to protect the weak and fight tyrannical lords who misused their power.11 Their role as warriors who fought on behalf of the rest of society was intrinsic to their existence.

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Noblemen were, therefore, omnipresent in the armies that fought during the Eighty and Thirty Years’ Wars.12 The values and virtues that were traditionally associated with the nobility also featured prominently in writings about good and virtuous commanders, which had evolved since the sixteenth century in Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, France, Italy and the Holy Roman Empire. The overlapping feature of the perfect military commander in these works is the display of all noble virtues such as bravery, eloquence, wisdom and fairness. Recent studies of these early modern works have shown that these virtues did not apply only to fighting noblemen. Many reached beyond the sphere of war, as the captain and the prince were expected to adhere to the same virtues.13 Sweder described something similar with regard to a class of noblemen in addition to the fighting Wherstand, the ‘gentlemen and princes who ruled over the people in lands protected by emperors and kings’.14 Since neither Sweder nor his father ever set foot on the battlefield, they must have considered themselves part of the latter category. Regarding the Revolt in the Low Countries, however, Christoffer Schele took a seemingly ambiguous stance, which left a major imprint on the formation of Sweder’s narratives regarding his role and position as a nobleman in the times of war. In the first part of the chronicle, Sweder justified his father’s sympathy for the Dutch rebels, which he described as follows: ‘[when] the Spanish mutinied and behaved like fiends, the Council of State declared itself an enemy and armed the lands against them. And now, anno [15]77 the first union was created against the Spanish, which all provinces signed, including Overijssel’.15 Christoffer Schele, despite his loathing of war in general, supported the first union of the Dutch Provinces. He did so because he believed the Spanish authorities had acted tyrannically, since they had infringed the ancient rights and liberties of nobles. Yet Christoffer also believed that he had no choice but to support the Revolt in the Low Countries. His fatherland was in peril, so as a nobleman he had to stand for its protection. Sweder remarked that his father made very explicit that his noble support for the Revolt did not imply direct alignment with the Dutch rebels. In fact, Christoffer declared himself neutral, emphasizing that his main attention was directed to the preservation of his own estates towards which he maintained his noble duties, instead of choosing a side to fight for.16 This ambiguous stance was not appreciated by either the Spanish or the Dutch rebels, as Christoffer spent a large portion of his life in exile in the Holy Roman Empire to evade capture. Nevertheless, the apologetic Sweder noted that his father was ‘a patriot and enemy of the Spanish’.17 Following in his father’s footsteps by abstaining from any direct involvement in the fighting, Sweder opted for a career in politics that enabled him to uphold his noble responsibility, maintaining the family possessions in the

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countryside while remaining neutral at all times.18 In 1598, at the age of 29, he entered the prestigious organization known as the Ridderschap of Overijssel, in which membership was essential for noblemen who wanted a say in provincial matters.19 Yet the Ridderschap lay dormant between 1585 and 1597, owing to Spanish occupation and wartime chaos. Many noblemen, especially those who preferred neutrality like Sweder and his father, chose to keep a low profile.20 The noblemen in the Ridderschap came back into action after the Dutch Republic reconquered large parts of Overijssel in 1598, and the Estates-­General decided to impose war taxes on the noblemen in the province without their approval. Sweder’s main aim as noble representative was to roll back the General Means, as it was a violation of his and other noblemen’s privileges.21 The battle against the imposition of General Means occupies a large portion of his narratives surrounding his early political career. In 1619, when Sweder became tired of his work and longed for a quieter family life, he retired from his position as noble representative. The definitive end of Sweder’s political involvement in the Dutch Republic came with his forced resignation from the Ridderschap in 1621, for refusing the required conversion to Calvinism.22 Now politically side-­lined in the Dutch Republic, Sweder’s cross-­border background allowed him to carry on his political activities on the other side of the border. Although he continued to travel across the border frequently to inspect his possessions on either side, the Prince-­Bishopric of Münster became his main seat of political influence. Through the Westphalian descent of the Schele dynasty, he was eligible for a membership in the Westphalian Ritterschaft, and qualified to attend Landtag meetings in the prince-­bishopric. Compared to the primarily noble-­centric outlook in Overijssel, Sweder became more focused on preserving the wallfaert (prosperity) of his alterius patriae meae, the Prince-­Bishopric of Münster, which also indicates a slight change in his narratives.23 Sweder had held no particular allegiance to the prince-­bishopric prior to his move to Welbergen. Yet he considered the prince-­bishopric’s neutral status in both the Eighty and Thirty Years’ Wars to be beneficial to all people in the region. The latter is understandable from his perspective, since the area along the border between the Dutch Republic and the Holy Roman Empire had already been heavily destroyed by the armies of Christian of Brunswick and Tilly in 1623. Sweder began to consider himself as a kind of protector of the region, who would safeguard its neutrality at all costs. His narratives from the period 1629–31 indicate that he was rather successful in doing so. Owing to his good relationship and discussions with the provost of Münster, Adolph Heinrich Droste zu Vischering, also described as a ‘loyal patriot’, army movements were successfully diverted and the billeting of troops in the region was prevented.24 But

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Sweder’s ‘neutrality-­politics’ lasted only a few years. After 1632 the Thirty Years’ War escalated into such a large-­scale conflict that it could no longer be kept at a distance.25 Whether Sweder truly was the loyal patriot to his ‘other fatherland’ as he claimed during the later years of his life, or whether he continued to act mainly out of noble self-­interest, as he did in many cases, remains difficult to determine. Yet his early narratives of the Revolt are clearly influenced by an admiration for his father, who played a major role in shaping his ideas about noble privileges and neutrality. By pursuing a political career as noble representative instead of fighting, he justified his responsibility as a nobleman, of which he wrote proudly during his younger years. His autonoetic awareness as a nobleman, conscious of his duties in times of war, is present throughout his narratives. But during the course of his life this underwent some nuanced changes as Sweder came to face different challenges. One of those changes, the crossing of the border after 1624, has already been discussed and features in the next section. Honouring family members and ‘good Samaritans’: Sweder’s varying narratives of military commanders To uphold good acquaintance with officers of war around ­here – t­hough not becoming too f­amiliar – a­ nd also to sometimes being seen with them, is necessary. As a good friend they provide a nobleman in the countryside with respect and security against bands of soldiers.26

This brief passage from 1629 stresses the necessity for a rural nobleman to maintain good relations with army officers. Being on cordial terms with lieutenants and captains could already serve as a sauvegarde against marauding soldiers, who often threatened noblemen living on country estates. The need for safety is, therefore, a recurring theme in Sweder’s narratives, including the army commanders who feature as heroic saviours. Sweder described army commanders in various ways. Often, though not always, the commanders featuring in his chronicle were relatives who were honoured simply because they fulfilled their noble purpose and had died on the battlefields serving in various armies all over Europe. This often concerned members of the Schele family who intermarried with other important noble families in the border region of Overijssel, Drenthe and Gelderland. One example is Herbert van Haren, a nephew of Sweder’s wife, Anna Brawe, who served as cavalry officer in the Swedish army under Gustavus Adolphus. Van Haren is mentioned only once, after losing his arm in battle, an injury to which he later succumbed.27

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This category of brief narratives can be characterized as honourable mentions. They were dedicated to distant serving family members who died either in battle or, very often, due to illness or injuries. Yet some of these narratives go beyond a single entry. One of the more extensive narratives is dedicated to Dodo von Kniphuysen (1583–1636). Von Kniphuysen was married to Sweder’s niece, Anna Schade, and began his military career as a junior officer in the Dutch army. Later he joined the Protestant army of Christian of Brunswick, but after their defeat in the Battle of Stadtlohn in 1623 he was accused of treason. He was exonerated rather quickly and continued to serve as co-­adjutant under another Protestant commander, Ernst von Mansfeldt. Eventually he rose to the rank of general in the army of Gustavus Adolphus.28 Although Sweder outlived Von Kniphuysen by a few years, he did not mention his death in the battle of Haselünne near Meppen in 1636. Despite his retirement in 1634, Von Kniphuysen temporarily retook his position as commander to defend his estate as lord of Meppen and Emsland, siding with the Swedish against the imperial army.29 Perhaps Sweder did not wish Von Kniphuysen’s success story to end in this way. However, the most likely explanation is that he probably did not record it simply because of his own advancing age, or that some other reason kept him from writing. His writing activity decreased significantly after 1634, and he recorded only a few entries during the following years. The narrative of Dodo von Kniphuysen is a heroic tale of a young nobleman climbing the military ladder by achieving fame and glory on the battlefield. Although many noblemen often met unfortunate deaths, Sweder admired their noble virtues and considered their legacy as an important part of his family’s history. These kinds of narratives feature throughout Sweder’s entire chronicle, and are not tied to specific stages of his life. Yet Sweder also recorded the names and actions of noble commanders with whom he had no familial ties at all. These commanders feature prominently during certain episodes of distress in his life. One of these narratives was recorded in September 1622, when Sweder went to visit one of his sisters who had fallen ill. His wife had remained at Weleveld, when suddenly a group of fifty cavalrymen halted near Weleveld during the night. Afraid of what would happen, Anna was relieved to hear that they were noble captains of the Dutch army. One of them, a Scotsman named Paul Redick, visited the frightened Anna and assured her that nothing would happen to her or the children. The noble captains came from Frisia to safeguard the noble estates.30 The arrival of the noble captains must have filled Sweder’s heart with joy, as the necessity of obtaining security through sauvegardes was of major importance. When Sweder, for example, received a sauvegarde from the Imperial general Godfried Huyn van Geleen during a later part of his life in 1634, he mentioned that one can never have too many

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sauvegardes: ‘Et abundans cautela non nocet’.31 Yet one of the most important and memorable sauvegardes that was issued for the Schele family at Weleveld came from Ambrogio Spinola, an Italian general in Habsburg service. Sweder’s narrative surrounding Spinola starts in July 1605, when he conquered the town of Oldenzaal, not far from Weleveld. Sweder noted that he ‘[Spinola] did no harm to the inhabitants of the land, and asked everyone to stay at home’.32 Spinola also issued a number of important sauvegardes to noble houses, including Weleveld, which convinced Christoffer Schele that it was safe enough for him to return to his old ­manor – w ­ here he would die the following year. Sweder praised Spinola’s actions, for ‘he [Spinola] does not come to destroy the land, but to settle peace, and what happened before should be forgiven and forgotten’.33 Sweder would later reaffirm this image of Spinola in an epigram he exchanged with Otto van Egmond in 1621.34 This portrayal of Spinola, as someone respectful of the privileges and helpful with regard to the security of noblemen of the region, stood in contrast to the earlier image Sweder painted of the Spanish forces as ignorant violators of those same rights and privileges. Another similar narrative of a merciful and honourable commander of the Spanish army in times of distress focuses on the actions of Lucas Cayro (1557–1642), a lesser-­known Italian commander who served as military governor of Oldenzaal around 1623. When in July 1623, following Tilly’s victory at the battle of Stadtlohn, soldiers of the armies of both Tilly and Brunswick ravaged the border region, many noble houses were left plundered and damaged.35 According to Sweder, Lucas Cayro came to their rescue in this critical moment, opening the gates of Oldenzaal for the nobles seeking refuge, and riding out heroically with a few cavalrymen to recapture some of the loot that the soldiers had taken from the noble estates. Cayro also issued a number of Spanish soldiers with a sauvegarde at Weleveld, since the imperial sauvegarde issued by Tilly seemed futile. For all of this, Sweder expressed his deep gratitude to the kind Italian governor.36 At later stages in his life, Sweder occasionally recorded brief entries on Cayro, following his military career. In 1629, for example, he mentioned that Cayro left the battlefield wounded as he was shot in his arm. A year later he mentioned Cayro’s promotion to general and governor of Lingen.37 Sweder considered Cayro a good and noble commander, who obeyed the code of chivalry and was a great help to him and his fellow nobles. However, Cayro’s involvement in the sacking and burning of the villages of Winschoten, Heiligerlee, Noordbroek, Scheemda and Slochteren in 1624 received no mention.38 The various military commanders in this section can be distinguished by the different armies they fought for, and whether they were related to Sweder or not. Yet, despite the fact that Spinola and Von Kniphuysen fought for two

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different armies, the former not related to him at all, they both received a prominent spot in his chronicle. They propagated noble virtues, although in different ways: one by climbing the military ranks, the other by providing safety to nobles in distress. The former is an easily discernible pattern, almost a standard formula applied by Sweder throughout his entire life, which rarely undergoes specific change. Fallen relatives deserved to be remembered because they served their noble cause. But Spinola and Lucas Cayro, along with other military commanders, are remembered as heroes because of the safety they provided in times of distress, an important topic throughout Sweder’s entire life. Certain episodes of distress made the need for safety, and therefore the help offered or made available by commanders, even more worthy of remembrance. When heavy fighting occurred in the vicinity of Weleveld or ­Welbergen – ­in most cases the ­former – ­these episodes of distress and the role of army commanders as saviours are an often discernible feature among Sweder’s seemingly calm accounts of everyday life. Sweder had a great distaste for violence, which he never glorified. He rather glorified those who opposed or combatted the use of excessive violence and who sought to restore peace. The ravaging of the border region in 1623 was one of the worst episodes of distress in Sweder’s life, and he produced long descriptions and lamentations of the brutal and unforgiving nature of the violence. Along with declining religious freedom he experienced as a Lutheran in the Calvinizing Dutch Republic, the many violent episodes Sweder noted while living at Weleveld may well have been the prime motivation for moving across the border to Welbergen after 1624. When he resumed his writing there in 1629, his narratives took a slight turn, which was partly due to his changing political allegiance. His outlook on specifically the Thirty Years’ War changed significantly after 1631, which was largely due to a maelstrom of events that would culminate in the confrontation of two generals: Gustavus Adolphus and Tilly. The battle between giants and the lost cause: Sweder’s final accounts It is said, that Johan Zerclaes, lord of Tilly, who has at this moment been appointed (in Regensburg) as chosen commander in the war against Gustavum Adolphum, king of Sweden, as now the two most famous warlords of this time will face each other, and how it will end, time may tell. Tilly is the main commander in chief of the Roman-­Catholic League and the Swede has declared himself protector of the Evangelicals.39

Sweder recorded this passage sometime in September 1630. The King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, and his army had already landed on the shores of

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the Holy Roman Empire in July. Tilly was appointed as the new commander-­ in-­chief of the emperor’s Catholic army in November 1630, succeeding the disgraced and murdered Wallenstein.40 Since Sweder had lived in the Prince-­ Bishopric of Münster for many years at that stage, his concerns had shifted significantly towards the Thirty Years’ War as his main topic of interest. He was particularly concerned with the position of Lutheranism in the Empire, which faced difficult times as the position of the Catholic League strengthened. Between the arrival of the Swedish army in 1630 and the escalation of the Thirty Years’ War to its most destructive stage in 1631, two attempts were made to realign the confessional forces within the Empire to avoid escalation: the Electoral Meeting at Regensburg and the Convention of Protestant Princes at Leipzig, neither of which proved successful in the pursuit of its aims.41 Sweder had set great hopes on the conventions, as he longed and prayed for the return of religious concordance and Lutheran independence throughout the Empire.42 But with the failing of the two conventions, the war would eventually escalate to the head-­on collision between Tilly and Adolphus, on which the outcome of the conflict now largely depended. Sweder was extremely aware of events far away on the battlefields throughout Europe. The contest between Adolphus and Tilly as the Praecipui belli duces, their military endeavours and nearly mythical status, dominated the latter part of Sweder’s narratives. In part III alone there are 21 specific entries referring to Tilly, and a staggering 50 regarding Adolphus. In comparison, there are a mere 13 entries in parts II and III on Christian of Brunswick and Wallenstein combined. In Sweder’s eyes, Tilly and Adolphus were the two primary military leaders during the Thirty Years’ War, as he remarked: ‘In armis sunt Gustavus Adolphus, rex Suaciae ab una, et Johannes Zerclaes Tillius ab altera. Heroes egregrii, magnis virtutis et experientiae, Fortanaeque mirabilis.’43 In early 1629, Sweder composed his first epigram for Tilly, in which he stated: ‘In Tillium / tanta ausus ille / Caesaris auspiciis fere gessit Tillius audax / Insignis belli et faelix mira [arte] magister.’44 Tilly’s reputation as a renowned military commander, who mastered the art of warfare well, is acknowledged by Sweder. This, however, stands in stark contrast to his accounts of the destruction caused by Tilly’s soldiers after his victory at Stadtlohn in 1623. Although Sweder regarded Tilly as an honourable and great military commander, he also mentioned the less positive sides of his commandership, especially the heavy financial burden that his army inflicted on the land and the people. Sweder mentions the case of a fellow nobleman, Nikolaus von Grothaus zum Grone, the steward of the region around the town of Vechta within the Prince-­Bishopric of Münster. He visited Tilly to request a decrease in the billeting and taxation in his region, but Tilly responded bluntly that neither large nor small regions would be spared.45

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Nevertheless, these negative aspects do not tarnish Tilly’s reputation as a competent commander worthy of respect for his experience and cunning decisions in battle. There is, however, another specific reason why Sweder considered Tilly a respectable commander: his admiration of Gustavus Adolphus. On one occasion, Sweder referred to a rumour that Tilly was concerned about facing Adolphus and the Swedish army: ‘They say that Tilly remarked that he has until now dealt with young, often unexperienced soldiers, but now he has to deal with the warriors of the King of Sweden’.46 Elsewhere, Sweder noted: ‘As now at Regensburg the King of Sweden is belittled and regarded as petty, Tilly remarked: One should not consider him [Adolphus] petty, he is a remarkable, brave and cunning commander’.47 Despite his respect for both men, Sweder was clearly and openly praising Gustavus Adolphus and almost everything he achieved or was expected to achieve, without any criticisms regarding his ruthless acts of violence. After Adolphus’s decisive victory over Tilly at the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631, he described the event as a ‘delicious and miraculous victory’ of the evangelical overlord Gustavus Adolphus.48 There are a few specific reasons which might explain Sweder’s praise for Adolphus. One possible reason is Adolphus’s intentions on joining the conflict in the first place. In June 1630 he published his Declaration, a pamphlet that circulated throughout the Empire and beyond in five languages to justify his intervention. Apart from political grievances, such as the Habsburg aspiration to challenge Swedish maritime superiority in the Baltic Sea, the Declaration also referred, although with some reticence, to the oppression of German ­liberties – ­for ­Protestants – ­by the Emperor as one of Adolphus’s motives. However, Adolphus never explicitly stated this to be his aim. The image of Adolphus as the saviour of Lutheranism was mainly the interpretation many Lutherans in the Empire ascribed to the intervention.49 Whether Sweder read the Declaration is not apparent from his narratives. Yet his continuous praise of Adolphus as the saviour of the oppressed Lutherans in the Empire coincides with the common Lutheran narrative at the time. Sweder had high hopes for the actions of the Swedish king. In 1632 he recorded a short story in which Adolphus was called upon by God who said: ‘Gustave, draw your sword and go to Germany, and wipe away the tears of the oppressed Evangelical Christians.’50 The situation of Lutherans in the Empire was indeed becoming less favourable. The Emperor’s Edict of Restitution of 1629, which authorized the Catholic League to reimpose Catholicism in any reconquered land, filled many Lutherans in the Empire with the fear of losing their freedom to adhere to the Augsburg Confession of 1555.51 Around 1631, Sweder wrote an account regarding the state of the European Religionskrig (religious war), referring to both the Eighty and Thirty Years’ Wars. Christianity in Europe was, as he described it, in a miserable and dangerous state. Such

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lamentations and calls for religious peace are ubiquitous throughout Sweder’s chronicle, and increasing significantly throughout the years that followed.52 His hopes were set fully on Adolphus as the protector of Lutheranism. With no shortage of superlatives, Sweder compared Adolphus to historical and biblical figures, such as the prophet Joshua, the Roman emperor Constantine the Great and Charlemagne.53 Sweder even recorded a song of praise for Adolphus to the melody of the Dutch Wilhelmus,54 which praised Adolphus as a protector of God’s Church, who would eventually restore religious peace in Europe.55 The latter, almost messianic, image of Adolphus was something Sweder shared with many fellow Lutherans in the Empire. Contemporary news pamphlets and broadsheets portrayed Adolphus in a similar fashion. The Swedish Progress (1630–32), in a broadsheet from 1632, shows the victorious Adolphus in a chariot pushed by dispossessed Protestant princes, racing towards the Holy Roman Empire to rescue the gagged and bound Protestant Church.56 In 1632, both Tilly and Gustavus Adolphus died in separate battles. In response to their deaths, Sweder composed two epitaphs: a short epitaph for Tilly, honouring the death of the great commander, but a longer and more extensive one for Adolphus.57 Later in 1634, Sweder also remarked that he had a portrait of Adolphus hung at Weleveld, in remembrance of his fallen hero.58 For many Lutherans in the Holy Roman Empire, the death of Adolphus was a highly traumatic event, which was described in Lutheran chronicles as one of the greatest tragedies of the war.59 While Sweder must have been equally devastated by Adolphus’s death, his reaction as noted in his chronicle is far from hysterical. In a short recapitulation of the history of Lutheranism since 1517, he recalled the death of Adolphus, a brave ‘Christian knight and martyr’, as a memorable event in the history of Lutheranism. Sweder believed the world to be full or errors, superstition and impiety, which stood in the way of his long-­desired peace and religious concordance. With Adolphus’s death, Sweder lamented that only the coming of Christ himself could fix the broken world he was living in.60 However, between his brief narratives on the two great commanders of his time, Sweder often lamented that ‘Germany is plagued with terrible changes in Religion and with heavy billeting and contributions’.61 These two memoirs of Sweder about the destruction and the miserable state of the Empire and Christianity in general stand in contrast with his tributes to Gustavus Adolphus as a grand and virtuous noble commander. The emphasis on the costs of warfare, which featured prominently in narratives concerning distressing moments of pillaging, is less prominent in these latter narratives, which focus more on religious struggles. Yet the negative impact of warfare on the lands he inhabited remained very much part of Sweder’s everyday life. Nearing the end of his life, worn out by witnessing many years of continuous warfare and

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struggles regarding religion on both sides of the border, Sweder lost his faith in a peace settlement in the near future. At the end of 1634, he wrote an epigram titled ‘Epigramma in miserabilem seculi vitam’, in which he lamented the sad state of his world.62 In the end, Sweder realized that it was only God who could save him from the troubled life he was caught up in. Conclusion This chapter has discussed the war narratives of the Eighty and Thirty Years’ Wars in the chronicle of Sweder Schele, applying the theory of episodic memory and narrative to the text to discern continuities and nuanced changes in his episodic narratives of army commanders. Throughout the chapter, the continuities and changes in Sweder’s war narratives have been highlighted with regard to his autonoetic awareness as a nobleman in times of war. The focus of this analysis has been directed to the varying ways in which he narrated the lives and deeds of military commanders, with an emphasis on the shift in his narratives after he started to live on the German side of the border. War itself had constituted an important part of Sweder’s life since his early childhood. Throughout his chronicle, Sweder’s war narratives show clear signs of continuity. His noble outlook and neutral stance in the conflicts of his time are always at the forefront of his narration, constituting a fixed part of his identity throughout his life. Noble virtues and rights dominated Sweder’s narratives respecting his fellow nobles on the battlefields and honouring those commanders who helped him during episodes of distress. These latter kinds of narratives show that Sweder was not always in control of what happened around him. As a neutral nobleman he had to worry about the perils of military violence and plundering that were threatening his estate, and the best help in those instances came from noble army commanders of the various sides in the conflicts. After moving to the Prince-­Bishopric of Münster, Sweder’s perspective turned more towards the Thirty Years’ War and the Holy Roman Empire. Despite assuming an active role in politics, his political manoeuvring became less influential after the Thirty Years’ War escalated in the 1630s. This coincided with the clash between Gustavus Adolphus and Tilly, linked to Sweder’s increasing emphasis on the dire state of Lutheranism in the Empire during the final years of his life. If we consider all of Sweder’s brief episodic narratives of army commanders as a whole, we are not presented with a fixed grand narrative in which commanders simply featured either as heroes or villains. Instead, there were multiple ways they could fit into his narratives as heroes of various kinds, from the messianic saviour of Lutheranism, Gustavus Adolphus, to saviours

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in times of distress like Spinola and many others. Although most of these heroes emerged from Sweder’s ideas of what constituted a good nobleman and commander, there were nuanced differences in the way they were presented in his episodic narratives. Sweder’s autonoetic awareness as a nobleman of his day and age was the guiding principle for his life as well as his chronicling. He tried to establish continuity, not only in his chronicle but also in his life which was dominated by warfare. Yet the complexity of conflicts like the Eighty and Thirty Years’ Wars, along with Sweder’s complex situation as a cross-­border nobleman, resulted in the production of episodic narratives which, over a prolonged period of time, are marked both by continuity and change. This chapter has shown that Geoffrey Cubitt’s concept of episodic memory, when applied to narratives, is a useful tool to understand early modern writers’ continuing autonoetic awareness. To understand nuances and changes in a narrator’s state of mind, however, it is important to identify ­sources – s­ uch as Sweder Schele’s ­chronicle – ­which cover a long period of a person’s life. Notes

  1 Sweder Schele, Stambuchs (volume one, part I), ­NLA – S­ taatsarchiv Osnabrück. Dep.  38b. N. 1000, pp. 477, 481–3.   2 The chronicle consists of three parts, recorded in two separate volumes. The first was composed partially by Sweder’s uncle Caspar Schele and finished by Sweder around 1591, while the second part was composed between 1591 and 1623. Parts I and II were recorded in the same volume. A third part was written, after a six-­year hiatus, between 1629 and 1637, which was recorded in a separate, second volume. In 2007 29 separate pages were discovered in the Staatsarchiv Osnabruck, which are believed to be from Sweder’s final year, 1639. This ‘fourth part’ is, however, still under research, as its origins remain unclear. Nowadays, the two volumes are kept in separate archival institutions: Volume one in Staatsarchiv Osnabrück in Germany (Dep.  38b.Nr.1000), Volume two in Historisch Centrum Overijssel (Dep. Huisarchief Almelo. Inv. n. 3680).   3 Geoffrey Cubitt, History and Memory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 68.  4 Cubitt, History, pp. 68–71, 81–2, 88–9, 97, 107–8.  5 Conrad Gietman, Republiek van adel. Eer in de Oost-Nederlandse adelscultuur (1555–1702) (Utrecht: Van Gruting, 2010), pp. 69–75.   6 The manor of Welbergen was bought by Sweder’s sister Anna Schele eight years after the death of her husband Johan Oldenhuisz van Welbergen in 1612. After the death of Anna in 1624, Sweder inherited the manor, and during the final years of his life used it as his main residence. II, p. 803; III, p. 588.   7 The focus on investigating how historical actors experienced and shaped borders as geographical settings, and how ‘crossing the border’ influenced their actions, is part of the developing school of Transregional History. See Violet Soen et al., ‘How to do transregional history. A concept, method and tool for Early Modern border research’, Journal of Early Modern History, 21:6 (2017), pp. 355–6.   8 D.J.B. Trim, ‘Introduction’, in D.J.B. Trim (ed.), The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), p. 16.   9 The study of the Thirty Years War through diaries, chronicles or journals has already been undertaken in German historiography, for example, by Benigna von Krusenstjern, Selbstzeugnisse der Zeit des Dreissigjährigen Krieges. Beschreibendes Verzeichnis (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997);

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Benigna von Krusenstjern and Hans Medick (eds), Zwischen Alltag und Katastrophe. Der Dreißigjährige Krieg aus der Nähe (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999); or in English: Geoff Mortimer, Eyewitness Accounts of the Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 10 Gietman, Republiek, pp. 12–13. 11 Sweder Schele, Huiskroniken offte Stamboecks (volume two, part III), Dep. Huisarchief Almelo. Inv. N. 3680, pp. 8–9. 12 Trim, ‘Introduction’, p. 16. 13 Marco Faini and Maria Elena Severini, ‘Introduction’, in Marco Faini and Maria Elena Severini (eds), Books for Captains and Captains in Books. Shaping the Perfect Military Commander in Early Modern Europe (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2016), pp. 9–14. 14 ‘Hern end fursten, die onder keiser end konige schutzland end luide regieren.’ III, p. 10. 15 ‘Die Spagniër meutenierten und wuteten als unmenschen, verklarte die Rath von Staten selbige vor feind und waffneten die landen dagegen. Und dismhall anno ’77 ward die erste unie gemacht wider die Spagniër, welche alle provintzen unterschrieben, auch die von Overisell.’ I, p. 474. 16 I, p. 478. 17 ‘Ein patriot und den Spagniër feind’, I, p. 486. 18 Sweder Schele, Stambuchs (volume one, part II), N ­ LA – ­Staatsarchiv Osnabrück. Dep. 38b, N. 1000, p. 888. 19 Together with representatives of the Steden (towns), representatives of the Ridderschap gathered at occasional Landdag (representative assembly) meetings to discuss provincial politics and to elect representatives for the Estates-­General in The Hague. 20 A.J. Mensema, J.S. Mooijweer and J.C. Streng, De Ridderschap van Overijssel. Le Métier du Noble (Zwolle: Waanders Uitgeverij, 2000), pp. 24–6. 21 II, pp. 721–79. 22 II, pp. 829, 851–3. 23 III, p. 110. 24 III, pp. 110, 113, 603, 726. 25 III, pp. 800–1. 26 ‘Met krigsofficieren ombher get freund to w ­ esen – a­ verst niet alto f­amiliar – ­is nutzlick end somtides bi sieluiden gesehen te worden. Als guet freund gift een Edelman ten plattelande sittende ansehen end fhelichheit bi partiën van soldaten.’ III, pp. 37–8. 27 III, p. 567. 28 III, pp. 474, 872. 29 Th. Westrin (ed.), Nordisk Familjebok. Konversationslexicon och Realenencyclopedi, Fjortonde Bandet (Stockholm: Nordisk familjeboks förlags, 1911), p. 430. 30 II, p. 872. 31 III, p. 872. 32 ‘that den ingesessen des lands keinen schaden, sagte ein jeder solt daheim bleiben’. II, p. 771. 33 ‘Er kome nit die lande zu beschedigen sondern um friede zu setzen, und was bis daher gepassiert solt vergessen und vergeben sein.’ II, p. 771. 34 II, pp. 849–50. 35 II, pp. 904–5. 36 II, pp. 905–6. 37 III, pp. 93, 337–8. 38 J. van Leeuwen (ed.), It aade Friesche Terp of Kronyk der Geschiedenissen van de Vrye Friesen (Leeuwarden: J. Proost, 1834), p. 219. 39 ‘Het wirdt gesagt, dat dem Johan Zerclaes, her van Tilli, die nu tot een furst des reichs? soll angenommen sijn (in Regensburg) die krig an-­bepholen tegens Gustavum Adolphum, koning van Sweden, wan also werden die twe beromedesten krigs-­hern deser tidt gegen eenander kommen end wo het affgaen sall, mag tidt leeren. Tilli is bestalter averster der

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Romisch Catholischen Liga end die Swed sall sick schriven protector der Evangelischen. ’ III, pp. 449–50. 40 Bodo Nischan, ‘On the edge of the abyss’, in Geoffrey Parker (ed.), The Thirty Years War, 2nd edn (New York and London: Routledge, 1984/1997), pp. 100–8, 100–2; Geoffrey Parker, ‘1630–1632: The intervention of Sweden’, in Geoffrey Parker (ed.), The Thirty Years War, pp. 108–19, 108–9. 41 Nischan, ‘On the edge’, p. 100. 42 III, p. 480, 531. 43 III, p. 451. 44 III, p. 147. 45 III, p. 458. 46 ‘Het wordt gesegt Tilli soll seggen: hie hebbe suslange met junge offte unerfaren leude te doen gehatt, averst nu hebbe hei met krigsluiden te schaffen onder den koning van Sweden.’ III, p. 547. 47 ‘Also nun zu Regensburg den koning von Sweden verkleinert und gering geachtet, soll Tilly gesagt haben: Man soll in nit klein achten, er sei ein gewaltiger, tapfferer, kluger krigsfurst.’ III, p. 556. 48 III, pp. 705–6. 49 Parker, ‘The Intervention’, pp. 108–9. 50 ‘Gustave treck uit den degen end gae in Duitzland end wische daer aff die tranen van de ogen der bedruckten Evangelische Christen.’ III, 785. 51 Peter H. Wilson, The Thirty Years War. Europe’s Tragedy (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 446–7. 52 III, p. 531. 53 III, p. 680. 54 Sweder did not make any reference to the author of the verses, nor did he credit himself with the work. 55 III, pp. 770–1. 56 Parker, The Thirty Years War, see plates 9 and 13. 57 III, pp. 810, 822–3. 58 III, p. 841. 59 Mortimer, Eyewitness Accounts, p. 21. 60 III, pp. 826–7. 61 ‘Teuschland wirdt hefftig geplagt mit swerer inquaertierung und contributio’. III, p. 560. 62 III, pp. 887.

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11 Geoffrey Parker’s Universal Soldier revisited: European military history and human universals Gregory Hanlon Geoffrey Parker’s exploration of the common soldiery in the seventeenth century deepened our understanding of the social profile of men fighting in the various armies, who had a great deal in common. The original narratives expressed in letters and chronicles by people who were ignorant of the outcome of the struggle were later repurposed by Dutch and Spanish scholars who distorted and polarized the complexities of warmaking along largely tribal lines, extolling one’s compatriots while demonizing their adversaries, which is a universal instinct. Such instincts lay at the heart of warfare in the period and are often reflected in the sources. Since the mid-­1980s the anthropology and human ethology of war has taught us that soldiering places men (overwhelmingly) in similar predicaments throughout history. Revisiting the narratives of the Revolt in the Low Countries and its contemporary conflicts enable historians to better delimit the human behavioural repertory as they pertain to warfare and to put into greater relief the distortions introduced by later generations of scholars. The history of the common soldier is not a field with a long pedigree. Invented almost from nothing by André Corvisier at the Sorbonne in the early 1960s as part of the historiographical revolution of the Annales school, its impact on military history in general was almost immediate. Young Geoffrey Parker, with remarkable intellectual maturity, then applied these lessons to one of the epic struggles of the early modern era, exploiting archives in Spanish, Dutch, French and German.1 Almost half a century after its first publication, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, this landmark book has retained all its freshness, the fruit of its exceptional originality. What follows is not meant in any way to diminish the importance of Parker’s work. Rather, I wish to examine the origins of war more closely in order to set modern military

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history into a wider context of human conflict, in which human universals and natural predispositions to behave in certain manners can be discerned in every historical era. The Ecole des Annales and the histoire des comportements which emerged from it enables historians to examine human behaviour in many different facets in the light of what we now know about behaviour in general. This permits us to place the early modern wars in a comparative context. Anthropological first principles War is one of the most significant processes in human evolution. ‘Wars erupt naturally everywhere humans are present’, Michael Ghiglieri observes gloomily. But this makes war an important object of study, well worth the time and trouble taken by its practitioners. We should think of organized violence as a natural condition, tempered by natural ways of ending it or avoiding it.2 We now know that widespread deadly intra-­species violence, usually in competition over resources, is a norm in nature.3 However, we need not assume that war is genetically programmed into human beings. Rather, we have evolved strong tendencies as social animals towards defensive and offensive behaviour, under the impact of an increasing population. Some social scientists decry war as the manifestation of human folly. Humans are not rational creatures, they claim, for we are influenced by a variety of psychological biases and by hormone-­fuelled physiological states of emotion and stress that act as triggers for aggression. These psychological biases are widespread, pervasive and power­ful right across society, from expert decision-­makers to simple executants. Wars erupt over some kind of threat, but many are purely imaginary. People also systematically overvalue their own group’s prowess and underestimate their adversaries. There is no reason to expect that these psychological biases will disappear with time or through education.4 Some anthropologists or paleontologists claim that war was unknown to the earliest humans, but they admit that they likely practised murder, infanticide and capital punishment. The earliest humans had extremely low population densities, removing some of the typical causes for conflict in historical time. The earliest evidence for massacres of groups of people dates from around 12–14,000 years ago.5 For some societies, where anthropologists have found no evidence of warfare, it is not usually an endemic condition. Wars can disappear for hundreds of years (as in Tokugawa Japan) and then break out again with incredible ferocity despite the rarity of individuals who have learned those skills. Its absence in the anthropological record over the last century does not guarantee that the same peoples did not practise it in the more distant past.

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The University of Leiden’s Nobel Prize laureate, Nikko Tinbergen, recommended developing a scientific understanding of human warlike behaviour in order to forestall killing on a massive scale. Man is akin to many species of animals in fighting his own species. War among humans is instrumental, not pathological. In man and animals, aggression rarely occurs in pure form. It is clearly adaptive, designed to foster the survival of the species in its specific locale by defending territory or by seizing resources from others in the face of resistance. Ignoring the questions of war’s survival value and evolution makes it impossible to arrive at an understanding of behavioural problems.6 Aggression is not an irresistible drive, as Konrad Lorenz thought, but it is both innate and optional, a tactic turned on and off in response to situations. John Tooby and Leda Cosmides postulate the view common in evolutionary psychology that our minds were formed deep in the past, in hunter-­gatherer bands whose mindset influences us still. From those times forward, men wage wars over a range of specific pretexts and in view of achieving multiple objectives. It is not just individual aggression writ large, for it requires unusual amounts of cooperation, with mechanisms to encourage reluctant participants and punish defectors. There is at heart a risk contract, whereby participants are rewarded in proportion to their risk and their contribution. Men will engage in war when they are confident of success, when they believe that death will be random and will not likely include themselves.7 People are often ready to fight over rank and status, which gives access to levers of power, resources and reproduction. Human beings are naturally motivated to pursue status, and this affects behaviour of states as much as individuals. Status issues were central to war and peace in every era. The analysis of the causes of war in ancient Greece are still pertinent today, and Napoleon Chagnon’s research on war in prehistoric societies in Amazonia serves as a reminder of the permanence of human motivation.8 Revenge is a common trigger of violence, which is a rational act wherever there is no recognized higher authority to dispense objective justice. Readiness to take revenge is a form of deterrence, and it exists in many social animals. It seems like a non-­rational impulse, but in a context of continuous interaction, it is a rational strategy. War makes sense for rational actors if the costs of war are not overwhelmingly high. Only one side need calculate that the gains outweigh the losses for a war to break out. Warfare may also be rational from the elites’ point of view, for they are often not personally liable to lose their lives. And sometimes war is the most promising choice for one of the belligerents, who is unlikely to gain by turning the other cheek. Men cooperate as warriors not because they are depraved or stupid, but because they have something to gain by winning, or else the consequences of losing in terms of access to territory and food would be catastrophic. Most

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people understand the issues at stake. As social, hunting primates, men were originally organized on the principle of group territories. Cultural evolution would not have cancelled out the necessity of defending these. To better achieve that goal, it was better to put aside differences in order to confront an imminent outside threat. Being tightly knit was a good idea, as was having a clear leader. Finally, humans and other primates also have natural peacemaking abilities that may be a universal feature of early childhood.9 Even in the animal kingdom, there were by 2013 more than 60 studies providing evidence for signs of peacemaking, in close to 40 non-­human species.10 War can be forestalled or avoided by negotiation, if the belligerents are able to abide by their agreements, and humans are also keen to bury the hatchet, so to speak. Few conflicts conclude with the complete elimination of a belligerent society. Most wars end before the physical capacity of the loser to resist is completely destroyed. One side capitulates via negotiations. In many others, hostilities end by some composition at the end of ritual-­filled discussions.11 Human ethology of war Humans display in many realms deep universal behavioural patterns that require no education or apprenticeship and which are very resistant to change. Historians who study war and aggression must situate the deployment of innate behaviours in the specific context of historical time, and be careful not to ascribe to nature practices which only occur in some places or periods. This means that data on how humans fight are important for understanding how fear and empathy are overcome in lethal combat.12 The ethology of Konrad Lorenz, Nikko Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch postulated that in the genome of individuals in each species there are fixed genetic programmes governing behaviour, just as the genome programmes the physical characteristics of each member of the same species. This made behaviour a natural science that embraces humans also.13 Tinbergen recommended studying humans as if they were animals, despite the fact that this repudiates two millenia of humanist traditions, but its principal advantage is that it places the emphasis on what people do, not what they say. The Dutch ethologist complained that animal behaviouralists, or ethologists, often uncritically extrapolated the observations of animal studies to humans, ignoring the fact that no two species behave alike.14 There is an evolutionary history to basic behavioural traits in animals and humans, and it is illuminating to compare them. Humans are not a special animal, but a particular animal, whose behaviour must be assessed through observation, and not analogy. The early work conducted after the Second World War was then carried forward and applied systematically to humans by

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the Austrian ­ethologist Irenaus Eibl-­Eibesfeldt, who underlined how people naturally categorize others into friends and enemies. The neurological mechanisms underpinning these automatismes have been recently explained by Robert Sapolsky in a thick but entertaining tome.15 Animal researchers and primatologists learn that their subjects have distinct personalities not easily attributable to their experience. And so it is with men who fight wars. Almost every young man possesses warrior instincts which can be moulded by programmes of training. Most men are capable of killing enemies they do not know, but some people excel at it. There is such thing as a natural soldier, who derives satisfaction from the comradeship of war, and who craves excitement. Marvin Zuckerman has devoted a career to elucidating the phenomenon of risk-­seeking, following initial work by Hans Eysenck.16 High sensation seekers cannot abide boredom, so they seek intensity of experience as well as novelty. Zuckerman has developed a measurable scale for these traits. Boldness is related to dominance and aggressiveness. Men score higher than women on almost every aspect of risky behaviour. The type of impulsivity it reveals is the ‘non-­planning’ sort, of not thinking ahead to possible complications. Decisions to undergo risk are influenced by the perceived benefits of winning, but peer pressure also seems to be a powerful influence. At some point, however, the anxiety induced by the risk induces avoidance or withdrawal. Zuckerman’s research has obvious importance for understanding why men choose military careers. He notes that many males regard fighting as fun and do not shy away from it. Armies provide careers and gainful employment to the people who join them. But what motivates the men to fight at the risk of their lives? It is difficult to induce most men to kill their adversaries at close range, although they can still kill under compulsion of their leaders and in the defence of their comrades. Most groups will contain some men who wage war enthusiastically, and others who shy away from the risk or who choose not to inflict death on dangerous enemies. This too is universal.17 The first important analysis of this feature of human behaviour was by a remarkable participant-­ observer, Charles Ardant du Picq (1821–70), who from a combination of history reading and participation in combat concluded in the 1860s that ‘les siècles n’ont pas changé la nature humaine’. The questions and problems raised by the French officer are still pertinent today. Most men do not fight for moral reasons, but they prize the solidarity with their brothers-­in-­arms and seek their respect and companionship.18 Ardant du Picq identifies an unchanging reaction of people caught up in combat, where fear and the desire for self-­preservation can overcome their best intentions. Ardant du Picq’s observations have been acknowledged and furthered by two twentieth-­century American military writers, S.L.A. Marshall and Dave

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Grossman. There is a human ethology of c­ ombat – ­general rules of war that cut across time and c­ ulture – t­ hat is observed in prehistoric conflict (filmed by anthropologists) and that hold good to the present day. This begins with the mode of combat, either ambushes or lines of warriors face to face. The two basic patterns go back some 40,000 years, to the origins of war.19 Marshall was a firm believer in the permanence of human nature, which he claimed was generally ignored in training. But training men to fight is not enough. Combat mastery is revealed in combat itself, rather than being the result of training.20 Some men feel a sudden empowerment and come into their element in the tumult, through situation awareness, keeping calm under pressure, handling their weapons well. These men only make up a modest fraction of any army, and they tend to become the primary group warriors and leaders of their peers, who often lionize them. Most soldiers must be coerced into going into battle, with grim enforcement by officers and non-­coms. Reluctant participants may mimic the natural warriors who are in their element in combat. Most men in Marshall’s study had to be coaxed into shooting at the enemy, and those who were not led by their officers or supported by their comrades would naturally shrink from fire and drift to the rear. The sight and presence of comrades increases the confidence of each soldier proportionately, and this confidence is infectious. Effective leaders transmit this confidence to their men, allowing them to overcome their fear. Men will strive to contain their terror among men they know well, for they risk losing status and forfeiting their honour if they do not play their part. Troops display a whole array of natural reactions that emerge from thousands of years of battle descriptions. Grossman notes that combat frightens soldiers such that it shuts down forebrain processing. First, there is a distortion of vision and time awareness. Soldiers who advance and take their objectives initially undergo a wave of relief and elation. But from that very moment there is a parasympathetic backlash and an apathy which renders them almost helpless to a counter-­attack.21 As soon as danger lessens, the men typically lapse into abandoning all security measures. Soldiers in combat experience endless surges of adrenaline and backlashes, burning them out emotionally if they are denied the opportunity to recover. The men also display other natural tendencies under fire, such as aggregating in great flocks of helpless men paralyzed by fear. In the hour of greatest danger, the herd instinct drives men towards their fellows, making the stress more endurable. Green troops are unreliable because they are anxious when they do not know what to expect, and they have not learned to think and act together. A great deal of the apprehension subsides once the men have become accustomed to the friction of battle. Training attempts to bolster the cohesion of the men as a unit, to strengthen their interpersonal relations. And these bonds do tighten

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in anticipation of danger, although how well they respond on the battlefield depends on how much they have identified with each other. Often the blockage lies in the resistance of men to fire on a human target. Historians have always been reluctant to admit the unwillingness of men to kill their enemies face to face. Marshall claims to have ‘discovered’ that fewer than 25 per cent of the men he studied used their weapons. This major problem lurked unexplored throughout the history of warfare, although commanders have noted the surprisingly low level of casualties in firearms exchanges, almost from the origin of such weapons. Some researchers suspect that Marshall simply made up the numbers, which never seem to have been published, or the study properly replicated. Dave Grossman has explored these phenomena of fear and fury in much more depth. With the proper conditioning and proper circumstances, almost anyone can and will kill. Armies now adopt techniques to overcome the natural inhibition towards killing in combat.22 In war, the side with psychological and technological superiority in training and killing is likely to win, even when outnumbered. There are four basic options in combat: fight, flight, posturing and submission. The first two are intuitive, but though little studied, posturing has always been part of combat. It has been known ever since the advent of firearms that soldiers fire more to intimidate their adversary, rather than aiming to kill. According to Grossman only about 2 per cent of men are natural-­born killers. Team weapons like cannon are more lethal, and over time have accounted for an ever-­greater proportion of the victims of battle.23 Soldiers may be convinced to slay enemies who they have been taught to dehumanize, if they are socially or tribally different or distant from them. John Keegan notes how tribalism is at the heart of things military: something shared by both officers and men in the spirit of the regiment. Tribalism is yet another human universal, much stronger than we anticipated.24 Nevertheless, battles throughout history were largely posturing or shoving matches and com­ manders were surprised at the low rate of losses in firefights. Then suddenly the men slink away from the line turn and run. Like dogs, the worst thing you can do during an attack is to run away, notes Grossman. The vast majority of killing is inflicted on a fleeing enemy by the victors who suddenly lose their inhibitions. Soldiers who resist too much may also be killed by the victors for their pains, something rarely prosecuted by martial justice. Such observations run through the accounts of battles by people who observed them directly. Military history after ethology Keegan admitted that traditional military history is not a very good guide to what happens in battle. Dave Grossman is still more lapidary: ‘The conspiracy

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of silence by historians has also been a cultural conspiracy of forgetfulness, distortion and lies that has been going on for thousands of years.’25 The psychological stability of humans plays out against a constantly changing background of institutions and events. Historians tend to place the emphasis on change over time, while neglecting to look closely at stability. But this is beginning to change, as historians explore the behavioural sciences in general. In the 1970s, Geoffrey Parker and André Corvisier were alive to the pertinence of sociology to explain the recruitment patterns and the inefficiencies of early modern armies. Here we will signal some areas in which contemporary historians might improve our explanation of war and combat by scrutinizing early modern accounts in the light of the behavioural sciences. War was the usual state of affairs in early modern Europe, with some political entities fighting more than half the time with their neighbours, exclusive of small colonial wars that unfolded far away, and not counting the ongoing nuisance of Barbary corsairs. The powerful state, however, brought about unprecedented internal peace and cooperation, a paradox first pointed out by the science writer Robert Wright.26 ‘War, by making fates more shared, by manufacturing non-­zero-­sumness, accelerates the evolution of culture toward deeper and vaster social complexity.’ Being tightly knit, and having a leader were clear advantages in conflicts between groups. Over the long term, war and conquest consolidated smaller communities into larger coalitions and higher levels of political organization. Surely the Revolt in the Low Countries, the Disunited Provinces, was a textbook illustration of this process? Larger states in the early modern era united people of similar ethnicity, and if they were sufficiently vast they also became too big to conquer. Even more, the warfare state became an agent of security, by entrusting military training to an ever smaller proportion of the total population. The Pax Hispanica in Iberia and Italy, like the Pax Romana forged from conquest and coalition, inaugurated a long era of peace and increasing public order. The growth of armies was contemporary to the fall of violent crime, the decline of torture and capital punishment. Historians have hardly investigated the connections between these two phenomena, but the strengthening of state institutions clearly brought about both processes. Geoffrey Parker and his contemporaries had little to say on what motivated men to join armies and to risk their lives, but such studies were rare in sociology and anthropology of that era. Historians are beginning to profit from a half-­century of social science study of military organizations with a view to elucidating why men consented to fight for these growing polities in sixteenth and seventeenth-­century Europe. We know now a fair amount about the generals, but the behaviour of soldiers is still a new field. Among the deep structures of human behaviour that we can follow without difficulty in

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the campaigns of northern Italy during the 1630s, the most obvious would be that combat was a male experience, with testosterone governing the incidence of challenge and its natural response. Recruiters were on the lookout for men they considered to be natural soldiers, who were motivated by the lust for adventure, and who easily fit into armies of the period. Instead of being isolated in training camps, men were taught the ropes by older soldiers they messed with. The camerata of about ten men who shared a cooking pot and billets, also constituted the principal reference group that mixed veterans with new recruits. To strengthen the integration of men into this new way of life, French soldiers assigned nicknames or ‘noms de guerre’ to most of their peers that served as their army identity. These same men expressed the superiority of their calling especially when they lived among civilians, continually pestering them for money, food and drink by brandishing their weapons and threatening the local authorities. Soldiers also challenged each other over a multitude of good or trivial reasons, which defrayed the chronicles of the towns where they were posted. Military glory, as a concept, had then and retains even today special resonance among men. It underlined the prestige of martial valour and the durable value of exemplary sacrifice on the field of battle. Here was immortality among peers, remembered throughout the ages in celebratory literature. Some men were thrill-­seekers, a stable part of every population, who were perfectly willing to risk their lives in battle, but these were ever a minority. Assembling the men in arms under the unit banners was simultaneously a technique designed to swell each man with pride and confidence, and intended to displace the natural fear and anxiety onto the enemy who beheld the spectacle of the threatening host. This was a technique, akin to bulking up or hair-­raising in animals, designed to provoke the enemy into retiring or to undermine their will to fight. Troops committed to an attack had to make timeless trade-­offs between their fear of death, which was natural, and the knowledge that advancing together was the surest means of survival. Men who seized their objective were then filled with relief and exhilaration, but as their adrenaline level fell in the immediate aftermath, they fell prey to a parasympathetic backlash that induced apathy and an inability to act together, and made them vulnerable to counter-­attack. Men on the battlefield also expressed a natural fear of being trampled by horses. It required training to learn to stand firm before advancing cavalry bearing down on them in a solid mass. Despite the noise and the gesturing, men engaged in constant battle were only intermittently dangerous to the enemy. Much of the contest involved looking and sounding dangerous, to dissuade the adversary from advancing. Men fired singly or in volleys at ranges they found bearable, but any analysis of ‘hit ratios’ underscores that most of

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them deliberately aimed to miss, even at fairly short distances. At Tornavento in 1636, it required something like 300 shots to kill or wound a single adversary, although soldiers stood packed in great masses only fifty or a hundred metres apart. Officers, at great danger to themselves, did their best to lead the men closer to the enemy, or to prevent them from backing away. It was of the utmost importance not to turn tail and flee in the face of the enemy, for this too triggered an uncontrollable passion for the victors to give chase, and to strike down helpless men as they attempted to distance themselves from the field. This forward panic typically concluded the battle in a general slaughter, such as at White Mountain (1620), Nordlingen (1634) and Wittstock (1636), but the same holds for the battles of Heiligerlee and Jemmingen in 1568, at the very beginning of the Revolt in the Low Countries. Commanders were cognizant of these realities, and Raimondo Montecuccoli warns his readers of them in his pages describing combat. Marco Costa reproduced wholesale the recommendations on war by Raimondo Montecuccoli, which are still entirely pertinent and intelligible after 350 years.27 This turn towards the social and behavioural sciences to explain the conduct of men in combat is beginning to find its way into the historical ­literature. Idan Sherer recommends that we should embrace the social sciences, especially those studying small group dynamics, in order to understand the subjectivity of soldiers.28 Sixteenth-­century sources have little to say on the mental and emotional states of individual soldiers, unfortunately, so our information derives almost exclusively from the the officers’ accounts. Men would have joined armies voluntarily from multiple motives, which is also true of today’s soldiers. Once in the army, posted to a large and highly structured unit, they lived and messed as small groups of comrades because it made life easier. Soldiers possessed individual gifts and specialities they shared with their peers. Combat was only one aspect of a soldier’s experience. The primary groups of squad and platoon helped relieve the stress of war, just as it does for modern soldiers. The image emerging from Ilya Berkovich’s recent study on motivation in eighteenth-­century war is very similar.29 The documentation by then was much more abundant, enabling him to consult the memoires of some 250 members of the common soldiery, including pressed men. We know now that the rank and file of armies was not composed of the dregs of society or of social misfits. Recruiters sought out men who possessed particular character traits of the natural soldier. Motivation is the sum of separate categories, and the good reasons for joining armies do not suffice to explain what kept men there when the trade became dangerous. These troops, both volunteers and pressed men, showed surprising resilience, helped by the personal attachments to their comrades. The soldiers adopted an assertive bearing in small groups and in

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large ones, designed to elicit respect and admiration. The new uniforms were designed to be appealing, to set the recruits off like gentlemen. In combat, soldiers consented to enter into fighting and judged themselves and their peers by its yardstick. These men were also ready to flaunt their boldness, to make display of daring, with the blessing or connivance of the authorities. As yet, few historians lay any stress on the living conditions among the men, the unspeakable filth and the lice and flies that bred disease. Daily conditions in garrison or on campaign were sometimes as harrowing as battle. Lack of food and foul water made men dispirited and ineffective, although cooking and eating together helped tighten the bonds. Only Padraig Lenihan has stressed the exposure of men to excrement and the general lax attitudes towards cleanliness of men who lived in the moment. Soldiers who lived largely apart from civilian society grated on the civilians who viewed them as parasites, and the former were prompt to avenge every trivial slight. Mutiny among unpaid soldiers occurred often in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but it unerringly indicated strong sentiments of reciprocity towards their superiors. Soldiers’ rebelliousness might get out of hand and wreak havoc with the local population, particularly in the Low Countries, but also in Germany, France and Italy. On occasion, pent-­up frustrations spilled over into generalized massacre of defeated soldiers and civilians, something described in the psychological literature as ‘forward panic’. This kind of generalized killing could happen during the storming of towns, with the officers powerless to prevent it. However, it is impossible to determine how many soldiers were involved in the more violent acts, and who exactly and how many the victims were.30 Somebody should attempt to count the specific examples of wholesale slaughter and what the exact context was. They were often famous in the era, precisely because they were out of the ordinary. Paul Vo Ha has charted the alternation of formal surrenders and massacres throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and has concluded that there was little apparent evolution. Soldiers and their officers based their treatment of defeated soldiers and civilians according to their military and financial interest. Throughout the events of war we can follow the rationality of men in their different situations. I wish to emphasize this last point. War is not just the operation of the limbic system governing emotion. There is continuous intervention of rational calculation among the officers and the individual men who are making opportune calculations as to the best path to follow.

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Conclusion A study of the Universal Soldier in the early modern era today therefore places unprecedented emphasis on the human animal in collective danger. We are no longer interested only in modernization, or what has been called the Military Revolution; historians should also try to determine the enduring behavioural repertoire of the human animal in this specific context. Today we need more reliable data, particularly eyewitness accounts, as many as we can get, in order to separate observed behaviour from the intellectual discourses that praised or condemned it. In the past we have usually relied on descriptions rich in rhetorical traditions, which are not easily transformed into something credible that fits the evidence. I wish there existed a database to serve as a repertory of first-­hand accounts of warlike ­violence – o­ r war ­narratives – a­ cross Europe, organized chronologically and by region. The Revolt in the Low Countries would surely comprise an important section of it, even though it unfolded in the era before the advent of mass literacy and cheap postal service. Ilya Berkovich was able to rely on published accounts almost exclusively, but that would be needlessly limiting. As scholars unearth administrative reports, private correspondence, parish register commentary, all in addition to the chronicles and histories, there should be an immense file folder somewhere, with a team of custodians, to receive and classify it all. Of course this project would surpass the time and capacity of single scholars, especially this one. But it is clearly the way to rejuvenate what is probably the oldest genre of historical writing. Notes

  1 André Corvisier, L’Armée française de la fin du XVIIième siècle au ministère de Choiseul. Le soldat (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964); Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972, 2004).   2 Michael P. Ghiglieri, The Dark Side of Man. Tracing the origins of male violence (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 2000), p. 163.   3 Azar Gat, ‘The causes of war in natural and historical evolution’, in Henrik Høgh-­Olesen (ed.), Human Morality and Sociality. Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave and Macmillan, 2010), pp. 160–90.  4 Iain Hardie, Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney, ‘Psychological aspects of war’, in Christopher J. Coyne and Rachel L Mathers (eds), The Handbook on the Political Economy of War (Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011), pp. 72–92.   5 Raymond C. Kelly, Warless Societies and the Origins of War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), p. 124; see also Christopher Boehm, ‘The biocultural evolution of conflict resolution between groups’, in Douglas P. Fry (ed.), War, Peace and Human Nature. The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 315–40.   6 Nikko Tinbergen, ‘On war and peace in animals and man. An ethologist’s approach to the biology of aggression’, Science, 160:3835 (1968), 1411–18.   7 John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, ‘The evolution of war and its cognitive foundations’, Institute for Evolutionary Studies Technical Report, 88:1 (1988), 5–10.

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  8 Napoleon Chagnon, Noble Savages. My Life among two Dangerous Tribes: the Yanomamö and the Anthropologists (New York and London: Simon & Schuster, 2013).   9 Frans de Waal, Peacemaking among Primates (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 10 Peter Verbeek, ‘An ethological perspective on war and peace’, in Douglas P. Fry (ed.), War, Peace and Human Nature. The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 54–77. 11 Stephen Peter Rosen, War and Human Nature (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 99. 12 Peter Verbeek, ‘An ethological perspective’. 13 Angelo Mancarella, Antropologia dello Stato e della Guerra. Tra vecchio e nuovo evoluzionismo (Rome: Laicata, 2004), p. 111. 14 Tinbergen, ‘On war and peace’. 15 Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave. The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst (New York: Penguin Press, 2017). 16 Marvin Zuckerman, Sensation Seeking and Risky Behavior (Washington, DC: American Psychologial Association, 2007; Hans Eysenck, Crime and Personality (St Albans: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964, revised edn, 1977). 17 Ghiglieri, The Dark Side of Man, p. 192. 18 Charles Ardant du Picq, Etudes sur le combat. Combat antique et combat moderne (Paris: Economica, 2004, 4th edn, 1904), p. 80. 19 Keith Otterbein, The Anthropology of War (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2009), p. 14. 20 Rune Henriksen, ‘Warriors in ­combat – ­what makes people actively fight in combat’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 30 (2007), 187–223. 21 Dave Grossman and Loren W. Chistensen, On Combat. The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and Peace (Mascoutah, IL: PPCT Research Publications, 2004), p. 16. 22 The author has generated an important revenue stream by serving as a consultant for this purpose, made known through his website Killology.com. 23 Dave Grossman, On Killing. The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Boston and London: Little, Brown, 1995), p. 50. 24 John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Random House, 1993), pp. xiv–xvi. 25 Grossman, On Killing, p. 36. 26 Robert Wright, Nonzero. The Logic of Human Destiny (New York: Little, Brown, 2000), pp. 54–64. 27 Marco Costa, Psicologia militare. Elementi di psicologia per gli appartenenti alle forze armate (Milan: F. Angeli, 2003), esp. chapter 2, where the author reproduces the Modenese general’s recommendations for waging psychological warfare. 28 Idan Sherer, Warriors for a Living. The Experience of the Spanish infantry in the Italian Wars, 1494–1559 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017), pp. 9–10. 29 Ilya Berkovich, Motivation in War. The Experience of Common Soldiers in Old-Regime Europe (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 30 For a close examination of army recruitment in the seventeenth century, and the socializing aspects of army service, see my book, The Hero of Italy. Odoardo Farnese, Duke of Parma, his Soldiers, and his Subjects in the Thirty Years’ War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). For a close account of these same men in combat and on campaign, see the companion volume, Italy 1636: Cemetery of Armies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

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Index

Index

Aalst, Sack of (1576) 60, 61, 62, 64, 67, 68, 77, 102 Aarschot, Duke of (Philippe III de Croÿ) 57, 59, 60, 65, 69 Acuña, Juan de 20 Aitsinger, Michael 154 Alava, Francés de 20, 21, 31 Alba, Duke of (Fernando Álvarez de Toledo) 2, 3, 18, 20, 21, 23–9, 31, 39, 42, 44, 57, 64, 74, 82, 84, 101–2, 110–11, 113, 115, 117, 150–3, 157–60, 169 Albert of Austria, Archduke 125, 127, 131, 133, 137, 139–40, 157, 170, 172, 174 Alkmaar, siege of (1572) 3 Amsterdam 45 Antunes, Emanuel 103 Antwerp city 18, 44, 57, 65–6, 68, 82, 112, 114, 117–18, 158, 172, 173 citadel of 63, 117–18 Sack of (1576) 11–12, 56, 69, 76, 77–81 see also Spanish Fury siege of (1584–85) 84, 102, 125, 149 Ardant du Picq, Charles 205 Arnade, Peter 2, 56 Assmann, Aleida 147 Augsburg 20–1 Ayala, Martín de 46, 66–8 Bachiler, Samuel 177 Baudartius, Willem 147, 148, 154, 155, 156, 157, 160 Benedict, Philip 153 Bentivoglio, Guido 76–8, 84 Bergen-op-Zoom 24, 115 Bergen, Marquess of (John IV of Glymes) 115, 160–2 Berkovich, Ilya 211–12 Bernard, Richard 177 Black Legend 2, 69, 81, 84, 108, 152, 155 Bocchi, Francesco 79–82, 84–5 Bommel, mutiny of (1589) 106 Bontius, Reinier 36

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Bor, Pieter Christiaansz. 44, 47–50, 74, 76, 114, 117–18, 156, 160 Borja, Juan de 19, 26 Boshuizen 39, 41, 43 Boussu, Count of (Maximilien de Hénin-Liétard) 39 Bouza, Fernando 28, 39 Brabant Duchy of 59–60, 67, 77, 79, 101, 113–14 Estates of 58–60, 64–5 Breda, siege of (1625) 167–8, 175–6 Breen, J.C. 153 Brill 59 Capture of (1572) 18–19, 22, 24, British Isles 5 British soldiers 6, 108 Brouwer, Johan 108 Bruges 125, 171 Brunswick, Christian of 189, 191–2, 194 Brussels 10, 18, 20–2, 25–6, 28, 57, 60–4, 78, 114, 126, 151, 157, 170–4 Buren, Count of (Philip William of Orange) 117 Burghley, Lord 114 Cabrera de Córdoba, Luis 45–6, 50–1 Calderón, Francisco 92 Campana, Cesare 74 Campene, Philip van 151 Carnero, Antonio 91 Cateau-Cambrésis, Peace of (1559) 151 Catholic League 172, 193–5 Cayro, Lucas 192–3 Chagnon, Napoleon 203 Charles I of England 177 Charles IX of France 169 Charles V, Emperor 5, 169 Claramonte, Andrés de 111 Coloma de Saa, Carlos 74–5, 91, 107 Conestaggio, Gerolamo 74–5, 79, 84–5 Cornejo, Pedro 44–5, 81, 91

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240 INDEX Corvisier, André 201, 208 Cosimo I (Grand Duke of Florence) 80–1, 84 Cosmides, Leda 203 Costa, Marco 210 Council of State (in Brussels) 11, 57–66, 69, 169, 188 Council of Troubles 150–1 Council of War 57 Counter-Reformation 149, 157, 161 Covarrubias, Sebastián de 110 Cubitt, Geoffrey 13, 185, 198 Dalheim, Battle of (1568) 38 Dávila, Sancho (castellano of Antwerp) 39, 57–63, 64–5, 69–70, 77 Delft 39, 153 Deventer 108 Diest 109 Drenthe, 190 Droste zu Vischering, Adolph Heinrich 189 Dunkirk 126, 171,174–5 Dutch Republic 4, 77–8, 125, 127–8, 136, 138, 150, 154, 156, 161, 189, 193 Duyvenvoorde, Jan van 136, 140 Egmont, Count of (Lamoral I of Gavere) 150–1, 159 Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Irenaus 205 Empire 114, 195 see also Germany and Holy Roman Empire Emsland 191 England 6, 18, 21–2 English Civil Wars 108 soldiers 119 Erasmus van Rotterdam 169 Eraso, Francisco de 114 Ercilla, Alonso de 92, 98 Erll, Astrid 147 Essen, Léon van der 7, 170 Estates-General 44, 47, 58, 63–5, 67, 77, 108, 136–7, 143, 189 Eysenck, Hans 205 Fadrique de Toledo see Toledo, Fadrique de Farnese, Alexander (Duke of Parma) 82, 84, 102, 112, 114–16, 148, 174 First World War 3, 8 see also Great War Flanders army of 13, 56–7, 69, 76, 89–91, 94, 98, 101–3, 111, 151, 201 Estates of 58, 65, 126 County of 60, 125–6, 136, 138 Florence (Grand Duchy of) 12, 80, 84–5 Flushing 24, 115, 118 France 4, 7,18–22, 25, 136, 172, 187, 211 soldiers 89, 114, 116 French wars of religion 6, 7, 30, 153–5, 205, 209 Franche Comté 24–5 Frisch, Karl von 204 Frisia 191 Fruin, Robert 39–40, 43 Fruytiers, Jan 39–44, 46–50

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Gage, Henry 167 Gascoigne, George 65 Geertruidenberg 94, 95 Gelderland 190 Genoa 20–2. 25, 79–80 Germany 4, 6, 13, 22, 107, 151, 195–6, 211 soldiers 23, 64, 66–9, 82, 108 see also Empire and Holy Roman Empire Ghent 57, 65, 67 Pacification of Ghent (1576) 64, 76, 125 Ghiglieri, Michael 202 Giner, Miguel 102 Giustiniani, Pompeo 74–5 Goes 27 Gorinchem 115 Gouge, William 177 Gramaye, Jean-Baptiste 157 Granata, Antonio 170–1 Granvelle, Cardinal (Antoine Perrenot) 25, 48, 112 Grave 101, 115, 137 Great War 89 see also First World War Grimeston, Edward 128–32, 136 Gronau 183 Grossman, Dave 206–7 Grothaus zum Grone, Nikolaus von 194 Grotius, Hugo 158 Gustavus Adolphus 186–7, 190–1, 193–7 Guzmán de Silva, Diego 11, 18–31 Gysius, Johannes 156, 168 Haarlem 44, 49, 102 siege of (1572–73) 3, 24, 38 Haecht, Godevaert van 151 Haer, Florentius van der 157 Haestens, Henrick van 127–38, 140–3 The Hague 36, 46, 48, 107 Hainaut 38, 60 Estates of Hainaut 58, 65 Hale, John 92, 98 Haraeus, Franciscus 158, 161 Harari,Yuval Noah 8, 9 Harward, Simon 177 Havré, Marquis of (Charles Philippe de Cröy) 63 Heeze 114 Heiligerlee, 192 battle of (1568) 3, 210 Heinsius, Daniel 138 Henri IV of France 172 Hill, Christopher 103 Hobsbawm, Eric 147 Hogenberg, Frans 67, 109, 112, 153–5 Holland County of Holland 2, 18, 26, 39, 41, 64, 136, 161 Estates of Holland 44 Holy League 39 Holy Roman Empire 4, 6, 14, 183, 186, 188–9, 194, 196–7 see also Empire and Germany Hooft, Pieter Corneliszoon 4, 45, 48–50, 109, 111–12 Hoogstraten 112–13 mutiny of (1601) 118, 127–8

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INDEX 241 Hopper, Andrew 108 Hopperus, Joachim 150, 157 Horn, Count of (Philip de Montmorency) 150 Horn, William of (Lord of Heeze) 64 Ibarra, Esteban de 27 Iconoclastic Furies (1566) 149–51, 153, 158, 161, 168 Idiáquez, Alonso de 90 IJsselmonde 59 Inquisition 2, 118, 153 Isabella Clara Eugenia 157–8, 168 Italy 2, 5–6, 12, 14, 20–2, 27–8, 38, 80, 82, 85 Jamblenne, Henri 174 Janssens, Gustaaf 1, 61 Jemmingen, battle of (1568) 3, 10, 210 John of Austria (Don Juan) 63–4, 67 Keegan, John 207 Kittensteyn, Willem Luytsz van 153–5 Kniphuysen, Dodo von 191–2 Kuijpers, Erika 8 La Roche, Count of (Ferdinand de Lannoy) 39, 42–3, 45–50 Lamal, Nina 28, 30 Lanario, Francesco 74–8, 91 Langen, Ludwig von 183, 186 Las Casas, Bartolomé de 13, 155, 160 Leiden 3, 9, 126, 203 siege of (1574) 11, 36–50 Leiderdorp 42, 43 Leighton, Alexander 177 Lenihan, Padraig 211 Lepanto, battle of (1571) 21, 39, 169 Leuven 109, 111 Liège 68 Prince-Bishop of 62, 66 Lier 111–12 Lingen 192 Lipsius, Justus 157, 169, 171–2 Lisbon 38, 79, 113–14 Loevestein 117 London 44, 128 Londoño, Sancho de 38, 94 López, Alonso (of Herentals) 112, 114, 117 Lorenz, Konrad 203–4 Louis XIII of France 136 Luxembourg 4 Lyon 20, 91 Maastricht 57 Sack of (1576) 11, 65–9 siege of (1579) 116 Machiavelli, Niccolò 97, 169 Madrid 2, 18, 20–1, 58, 63, 77, 90–1, 118 Maldonado, Pedro 117–18 Mansfelt, Count of (Pieter Ernst) 60 Marshall, S.L.A 205 Mechelen 23, 153 Sack of 27, 155

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Medici, court of 12, 82 Medina del Campo 114–15 Mendoza, Bernardino de 5, 44–5, 50–1, 91, 107, 118 Mendoza, Francisco de 136 Meteren, Emanuel van 5, 44, 46–7, 49–50, 74, 76, 109, 153–4 Middelburg 56 Milan 20–3, 27–8, 90, 102 Milton, John 99 Mondini, Marco 8 Mondragón, Cristóbal de 27, 57–9, 69, 115 Mons 23, 38 Montecuccoli, Raimondo 210 Montes, Diego 95 Montesdoca, Francisco de 57, 65–9 Montigny, baron of (Floris of Montmorency) 159–61 Montluc, Blaise de 20 Mookerhei, battle of (1574) 39, 41 Moons, Magdalena 36–8, 45, 49–51 Morillon, Maximilien 112, 117–18 Münster, Prince-Bishopric 183, 186–7, 189, 194, 197 Mutiny 41, 47, 59–61, 66, 69, 76–7, 89–90, 92–8, 102–4, 118–19, 127, 135, 211 Naarden 24, 27, 155 Naples 6, 25, 74, 170, 173 Nassau, Count Louis of 39 Nassau, Maurice of 106, 118, 126, 137, 148–9 Nierop, Henk van 1, 2 Nieuwpoort, battle of (1600) 13, 106, 126, 136, 174 Nijmegen 115, 169 Oldenzaal 192 Orange, Prince of (William of) 3, 6, 20, 23–4, 27, 42–3, 47, 60–1, 64–5, 69, 76, 102, 106–7, 109, 111–17, 119, 147, 149, 151–2, 154–5 Orlers, Jan Janszoon 36, 128 Ostend, siege of (1601–04) 12, 125–45 Ottoman Empire 39, 169 Overijssel 183, 186, 188–90 Palazzolo, Cesare 187 Paredes, Francisco 114–15 Paris 20, 23, 31, 114, 127 Parker, Geoffrey 1, 7, 14, 56, 89–90, 107–8, 118–19, 171, 201, 208 Parma, Margaret of 147, 149, 153, 160 Périer, Jérémie 127–32, 136, 142 Perpetual Edict (1577) 44 Perrissin, Jean 153–4 Philip II 2–6, 10, 18–24, 26, 28–31, 39, 58, 59–60, 62–4, 66, 69, 113, 117, 125, 147, 149–53, 158–60, 169 Philip IV of Spain 167–8 Picardy 175 Pieper, Renate 39 Pimentel, Pedro Alfonso 102–3 Plantin 167, 172 Pollmann, Judith 2, 8, 13, 49, 152, 169 Portugal 5, 26, 74, 113 Possevino, Antonio 169, 171–2

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242 INDEX Prado, Miguel de 18–19, 25–9, 31 Putenaus, Erycius 157 Redick, Paul 191 Regensburg 193–5 Requesens y Zúñiga, Luis de 11, 21–2, 23, 25, 31, 39–42, 45, 47, 48, 56–9, 102, 117, 118 Reyd, Everhard van 44, 47–8, 50 Roda, Gerónimo de 57, 59, 61, 63–5, 68, 77 Rodríguez Alva, Cristóbal 12, 89–99, 101–3 Rodríguez Pérez,Yolanda 158 Rodríguez–Salgado, Mía 158 Rome 22, 24, 29, 171, 173 Romero, Julián 9–10, 26, 45–50, 57, 61, 63–4, 77, 115 Rospocher, Massimo 8 Rotterdam 24, 46, 155 Sailly, Thomas 157–8, 161, 171–4 Sande, Álvaro de 27–8 Sandoval, Prudencio de 30 Sapolsky, Robert 205 Schama, Simon 152 Schele Christoffer 188, 192 Sweder 13, 183, 185, 187, 197–8 Schepper, Hugo de 1 Schmidt, Benjamin 152 Scott, Thomas 177 Scribani, Carolus 172 Second World War 7, 146, 204 Sherer, Idan 210 Simoni, Anna 128 Sixtus V 172 Sluis (L’Écluse) 26, 136–8, 143 Smith, Leonard 3 Society of Jesus 13, 167–8, 170–1, 173, 175–6 Jesuits 13, 78, 157–8, 167–77 Soen, Violet 159 Spanish Fury 75–9, 81, 84 see also Antwerp, Sack of Spanish road 101–2, 201 Spinola, Ambrogio 78, 140, 168–9, 172, 186, 192–3, 198 Stensland, Monica 150 Strada, Famiano 36, 78–9 Sueyro, Emanuel 167 Swart, Erik 151 Sweden 114, 186, 193, 195 Tassis, Leonardo 21–2, 26 Tavera, Cardinal 28 Tenth Penny 153 Thirty Years’ War 6, 14, 177, 183, 185–90, 193–4, 197–8 Thomas, Werner 118

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Tilly, Count of (Johan Tserclaes) 186–7, 189, 192–7 Tinbergen, Nikko 203–4 Toledo, Fadrique de 23–4, 26–8, 31, 82, 110, 117 Toledo, Hernando de 67 Tooby, John 203 Torsellini, Orazio 175 Tortorel, Jacques 153–4 Trillo, Antonio 5, 44–6, 50, 118 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph 103 Twelve Years’ Truce 126, 128, 135, 160, 171 Ulloa, Alonso de 81 Utrecht 39, 43–4, 46–7, 114, 158 Valdés, Francisco de 10–11, 36–51, 57–8, 64, 107 Vargas, Alonso de 57, 61, 63–4, 66–8 Vargas, Baltasar de 102 Vázquez, Alonso 12, 91, 108–12, 115–17, 119 Veere 115 Venegas, Alonso de 109–11, 115–16, 119 Venice 11, 18–23, 25, 27–8, 30–1, 79–80 Verdugo, Francisco 6, 91 Verstegan, Richard 161 Villalobos, Diego de 91 Vitelli, Gian Luigi (Chiappino) 80–2 Vivo, Filippo de 30 Vo Ha, Paul 211 Voges, Ramon 153 Vranck, François 158, 161 Walcheren 115 Welbergen 186, 189, 193 Weleveld 183, 191–3, 196 Werff, Pieter Adriaansz. van der 41, 46, 48–9, 51 White, Hayden 4 Williams, Roger 108 Wintringham, Tom H. 89, 103 Wright, Robert 208 Wyck 67–8 Wymans, Gabriel 94 Ximénez de Ayllón, Diego 102 Ydens, Etienne 157 Zayas, Gabriel de 20–1, 26, 28 Zeeland 61, 64, 76, 126, 140, 161 Zierikzee, siege of (1576) 57–9, 66 Zoutleeuw 67 Zuckerman, Marvin 205 Zúñiga, Diego de 22–3 Zúñiga, Juan de 24 Zutphen 108, 154 Sack of 22–3, 26–7

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