Adriaen van Bergen

Last updated
Portrait of Adriaen van Bergen by Philippus Velijn Portret van Adriaen Joosten van Bergen De turfschipper van Breda (titel op object), RP-P-1909-617 (cropped).jpg
Portrait of Adriaen van Bergen by Philippus Velijn
The Turfschip van Breda Turfschip Breda.jpg
The Turfschip van Breda
Cast silver medal by G. van Bijlaar, 1590, on the success of the "Turfschip", set in original "stekelvarkenrand" (hedgehog border) with eyelet. This way the medal proudly could be worn. Engraved initials N and I, maybe for one of the participants in the raid. 1590 Breda.jpg
Cast silver medal by G. van Bijlaar, 1590, on the success of the "Turfschip", set in original "stekelvarkenrand" (hedgehog border) with eyelet. This way the medal proudly could be worn. Engraved initials N and I, maybe for one of the participants in the raid.

A Dutch skipper from Leur, Adriaen van Bergen devised the plot to recapture the city of Breda from the Spanish during the Eighty Years' War. [1] [2] In February 1590, he approached Prince Maurice with a Trojan Horse-type plan.

Contents

In February 1590, during the Capture of Breda a nobleman from Cambrai, Charles de Heraugiere, under orders from Maurice of Nassau, was to make a covert reconnoiter of Breda. Disguised as a fisherman he was hoping to enter Breda and to study its weaknesses, garrison strength, and general conditions. Heraugiere contacted Adriaen van Bergen, loyal to the Dutch by trade who was used to entering and leaving Breda with a barge loaded with peat. Heraugiere went into the city, hidden between the peat of the barge along with a small group of soldiers, and discovered how easy it was as none of the garrison checked the barge. When they were in the heart of Breda they made a hasty exit with enough peat to keep them covered. Heraugiere soon realized a Trojan Horse style attack was too good an opportunity to miss and thus reported it to Maurice as soon as they returned.

Adriaen van Bergen's grandson Adriaen van der Donck played an important role at the colonization of New Netherland. [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Delft</span> City and municipality in South Holland, Netherlands

Delft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam, to the southeast, and The Hague, to the northwest. Together with them, it is part of both the Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan area and the Randstad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Netherland</span> 17th-century Dutch colony in North America

New Netherland was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic located on the east coast of what is now the United States. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva Peninsula to southwestern Cape Cod, while limited settlements were in parts of the U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maurice, Prince of Orange</span> Dutch Republic stadtholder and Prince of Orange (1567–1625)

Maurice of Orange was stadtholder of all the provinces of the Dutch Republic except for Friesland from 1585 at the earliest until his death in 1625. Before he became Prince of Orange upon the death of his eldest half-brother Philip William in 1618, he was known as Maurice of Nassau.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oosterhout</span> Municipality in North Brabant, Netherlands

Oosterhout is a municipality and a city in the southern Netherlands. The municipality had a population of 56,206 in 2021.

Adriaan is the Dutch and Afrikaans spelling of the given name Adrian. Before the 19th century the spelling Adriaen was also common, and people used the spelling interchangeably.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Breda</span> City and municipality in North Brabant, Netherlands

Breda is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from brede Aa and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has 185,072 inhabitants on 13 September 2022 and is part of the Brabantse Stedenrij; it is the ninth largest city/municipality in the country, and the third largest in North Brabant after Eindhoven and Tilburg. It is equidistant between Rotterdam and Antwerp.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adriaen van der Donck</span> Lawyer and landowner in New Netherland (1618–1655)

Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck was a lawyer and landowner in New Netherland after whose honorific Jonkheer the city of Yonkers, New York, is named. Although he was not, as sometimes claimed, the first lawyer in the Dutch colony, Van der Donck was a leader in the political life of New Amsterdam, and an activist for Dutch-style republican government in the Dutch West India Company-run trading post.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of Breda (1624)</span> Siege within the Eighty Years War

The siege of Breda of 1624–25 occurred during the Eighty Years' War. The siege resulted in Breda, a Dutch fortified city, falling into the control of the Army of Flanders.

Colen Donck was a 24,000 acre (97 km2) patroonship in New Netherland along the southern Hudson River in today's Bronx and Yonkers established by Dutch-American lawyer and land developer Adriaen van der Donck.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capture of Breda (1590)</span>

The capture of Breda was a short battle during the Eighty Years' War and Anglo–Spanish War during which a Dutch and English army led by Maurice of Nassau captured the heavily protected city of Breda. Using a clever tactic reminiscent of the Trojan horse, a small assault force hid in a peat barge, entered the city of Breda, and proceeded to take it over resulting in a minimum number of casualties. It was the turning point of the war as the forces under Maurice were able to take the offensive.

Adriaen is a Dutch form of Adrian. Notable people with the name include:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of Jülich (1621–1622)</span>

The siege of Jülich was a major operation in the second phase of the Eighty Years' War that took place from 5 September 1621 to 3 February 1622. A few months after the Twelve Years' Truce between the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Monarchy expired, the Spanish Army of Flanders, led by the Genoese nobleman Ambrogio Spinola, went on the offensive against the Republic and approached the Rhine river to mask its true intentions: laying siege to the town of Jülich, which the Dutch States Army had occupied in 1610 during the War of the Jülich Succession. Although the capture of the town would not allow for a Spanish invasion of the Republic, its location between the Rhine and Meuse rivers rendered it strategically significant for both sides, given that the United Provinces greatly benefited from the river trade with the neighboring neutral states and Spain was pursuing a strategy of blockading the waterways which flowed across the Republic to ruin its economy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of Zutphen (1591)</span>

The siege of Zutphen was an eleven-day siege of the city of Zutphen by Dutch and English troops led by Maurice of Nassau, during the Eighty Years' War and the Anglo–Spanish War. The siege began on 19 May 1591 after a clever ruse by the besiegers. The city was then besieged for eleven days, after which the Spanish garrison surrendered.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of Rheinberg (1597)</span>

The siege of Rheinberg took place from the 9 to 19 August 1597 during the Eighty Years' War and the Anglo–Spanish War by a Dutch and English army led by Maurice of Orange. The siege ended with the capitulation and the withdrawal of the Spanish after much unrest in the garrison. The liberation of the city of Rheinberg was the commencement of Maurice's campaign of 1597, a successful offensive against the Spaniards during the period known as the Ten Glory Years.

Johannes Megapolensis (1603–1670) was a dominie (pastor) of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Dutch colony of New Netherland, beginning in 1642. Serving for several years at Fort Orange on the upper Hudson River, he is credited with being the first Protestant missionary to the Indians in North America. He later served as a minister in Manhattan, staying through the takeover by the English in 1664.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of Hulst (1596)</span>

The siege of Hulst of 1596 took place between mid-July and August 18, 1596, at the city of Hulst, Province of Zeeland, Low Countries, during the Eighty Years' War, the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604). The siege was won by the Spanish forces of the Archduke of Austria. After a short siege, during which Maurice of Orange launched a failed attempt to relieve the city, the garrison of Dutch and English troops fell into Spanish hands on August 18, 1596.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of Steenwijk (1592)</span>

The siege of Steenwijk was a siege that took place between 30 May and 5 July 1592 as part of the Eighty Years' War and the Anglo–Spanish War by a Dutch and English force under Maurice of Orange. By taking Steenwijk the Republic's army would take out one of the two main transport routes overland to the Drenthe capital of Groningen, the other lay at Coevorden. After a failed bombardment, an assault was made in conjunction with the detonation of mines under important bastions, and with two out of three successfully assaulted, the Spanish troops surrendered on 5 July 1592 and handed over the city to the Dutch and English army. This siege was one of the first in history to make use of pioneers as a separate military unit although they were still at the time regarded as soldiers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of Coevorden (1592)</span>

The siege of Coevorden was a siege that took place between 26 July and 2 September 1592 during the Eighty Years' War and the Anglo–Spanish War at the city of Coevorden by a Dutch and English force under overall command of Maurice of Nassau. The city was defended by Frederik van den Bergh who had been commissioned for the defence by King Philip II of Spain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sack of Lier</span> Battle in the Southern Netherlands

The Sack of Lier, also known as the Fury of Lier in the Southern Netherlands, took place on 14 October 1595 when a force of the Dutch States Army led by Charles de Heraugières, governor of Breda, took the town by surprise during the Eighty Years' War. Heraugières, who was known for his daring surprise attacks over Breda in 1590 and Huy in March 1595, had been instructed to capture Lier ahead a small elite force while the bulk of the Spanish Army of Flanders was deployed in northern France and the Lower Rhine. The possession of Lier would have provided the Dutch Republic an advanced base deep inside the Brabant, which would allowed the States troops to cut the communications between Antwerp, Mechelen, Leuven and 's-Hertogenbosch, and to raid as far as Brussels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ten Years (Eighty Years' War)</span>

The Ten Years were a period in the Eighty Years' War spanning the years 1588 to 1598. In this period of ten years, stadtholder Maurice of Nassau, the future prince of Orange and son of William "the Silent" of Orange, and his cousin William Louis, Count of Nassau-Dillenburg and stadtholder of Friesland as well as the English general Francis Vere, were able to turn the tide of the war against the Spanish Empire in favour of the Dutch Republic. They achieved many victories over the Spanish Army of Flanders, conquering large swathes of land in the north and east of the Habsburg Netherlands that were incorporated into the Republic and remained part of the Netherlands into the present. Starting with the important fortification of Bergen op Zoom (1588), Maurice and William Louis subsequently took Breda (1590), Zutphen, Deventer, Delfzijl, and Nijmegen (1591), Steenwijk, Coevorden (1592) Geertruidenberg (1593), Groningen (1594), Grol, Enschede, Ootmarsum, and Oldenzaal (1597)., recovering territories lost in 1580 through the treachery of George de Lalaing. Maurice's most successful years were 1591 and 1597, in which his campaigns resulted in the capture of numerous vital fortified cities, some of which were regarded as "impregnable". His novel military tactics earned him fame amongst the courts of Europe, and the borders of the present-day Netherlands were largely defined by the campaigns of Maurice of Orange during the Ten Years.

References

  1. Murray, Donald S. (2018-04-05). The Dark Stuff: Stories from the Peatlands. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 137–138. ISBN   978-1-4729-4277-7.
  2. Sayres, Shaun (2020). "Adriaen van der Donck: A Dutch Rebel in Seventeenth-Century America by J. van den Hout (review)". New York History. 101 (1): 162–164. doi:10.1353/nyh.2020.0019. ISSN   2328-8132. S2CID   226707847.
  3. Hout, J. van den (2018-01-18). Adriaen van der Donck: A Dutch Rebel in Seventeenth-Century America. State University of New York Press. p. 2. ISBN   978-1-4384-6922-5.

Commons-logo.svg Media related to Adriaen van Bergen at Wikimedia Commons