Year 1577 (MDLXXVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar.
Year 1576 (MDLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar.
The Union of Utrecht was a treaty signed on 23 January 1579 in Utrecht, Netherlands, unifying the northern provinces of the Netherlands, until then under the control of Habsburg Spain.
Beeldenstorm in Dutch and Bildersturm in German are terms used for outbreaks of destruction of religious images that occurred in Europe in the 16th century, known in English as the Great Iconoclasm or Iconoclastic Fury and in French as the Furie iconoclaste. During these spates of iconoclasm, Catholic art and many forms of church fittings and decoration were destroyed in unofficial or mob actions by Calvinist Protestant crowds as part of the Protestant Reformation. Most of the destruction was of art in churches and public places.
The French Wars of Religion were a series of civil wars between French Catholics and Protestants from 1562 to 1598. Between two and four million people died from violence, famine or disease directly caused by the conflict, and it severely damaged the power of the French monarchy. One of its most notorious episodes was the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572. The fighting ended with a compromise in 1598, when Henry of Navarre, who had converted to Catholicism in 1593, was proclaimed King Henry IV of France and issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted substantial rights and freedoms to the Huguenots. However, Catholics continued to disapprove of Protestants and of Henry, and his assassination in 1610 triggered a fresh round of Huguenot rebellions in the 1620s.
Geuzen was a name assumed by the confederacy of Calvinist Dutch nobles, who from 1566 opposed Spanish rule in the Netherlands. The most successful group of them operated at sea, and so were called Watergeuzen. In the Eighty Years' War, the Capture of Brielle by the Watergeuzen in 1572 provided the first foothold on land for the rebels, who would conquer the northern Netherlands and establish an independent Dutch Republic. They can be considered either as privateers or pirates, depending on the circumstances or motivations.
The Eighty Years' War or Dutch Revolt was an armed conflict in the Habsburg Netherlands between disparate groups of rebels and the Spanish government. The causes of the war included the Reformation, centralisation, excessive taxation, and the rights and privileges of the Dutch nobility and cities.
The Act of Abjuration is the declaration of independence by many of the provinces of the Netherlands from their allegiance to Philip II of Spain, during the Dutch Revolt.
The Pacification of Ghent, signed on 8 November 1576, was an alliance between the provinces of the Habsburg Netherlands. The main objectives were to remove Spanish mercenaries who had made themselves hated by all sides due to their plundering, and to promote a formal peace with the rebellious provinces of Holland and Zeeland.
A Christian republic is a government that is both Christian and republican. As of the 21st century, the only countries in the world with a republican form of government and with Christianity as the established religion are Costa Rica, Finland, Greece, Armenia, Samoa, Iceland, and Malta. Some other republics, such as Argentina, Georgia, Peru, Guatemala, Panama, El Salvador, and Paraguay, give some credit or preference to Christianity, but without establishing it as the religion of the state. Others, such as Hungary, and Zambia, describe themselves as Christian countries.
The Battle of Gembloux took place at Gembloux, near Namur, Low Countries, between the Spanish forces led by Don John of Austria, Governor-General of the Spanish Netherlands, and a rebel army composed of Dutch, Flemish, English, Scottish, German, French, and Walloon soldiers under Antoine de Goignies, during the Eighty Years' War. On 31 January 1578 the Spanish cavalry commanded by John's nephew, Don Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, after pushing back the Netherlandish cavalry, attacked the Netherlandish army, causing an enormous panic amongst the rebel troops. The result was a crushing victory for the Spanish forces. The battle hastened the disintegration of the unity of the rebel provinces, and meant the end of the Union of Brussels.
A Joyous Entry is the official name used for the ceremonial royal entry, the first official peaceable visit of a reigning monarch, prince, duke or governor into a city, mainly in the Duchy of Brabant or the County of Flanders and occasionally in France, Luxembourg, Hungary, or Scotland, usually coinciding with recognition by the monarch of the rights or privileges to the city and sometimes accompanied by an extension of them.
A Spanish Fury was a number of violent sackings of cities in the Low Countries or Benelux, mostly by Spanish Habsburg armies, that happened in the years 1572–1579 during the Dutch Revolt. In some cases, the sack did not follow the taking of a city. In others, the sack was ordered, or at least not restrained, by Spanish commanders after the fall of a city.
Protestantism and Islam entered into contact during the early-16th century when the Ottoman Empire, expanding in the Balkans, first encountered Calvinist Protestants in present-day Hungary and Transylvania. As both parties opposed the Austrian Holy Roman Emperor and his Roman Catholic allies, numerous exchanges occurred, exploring religious similarities and the possibility of trade and military alliances.
The siege of Schoonhoven of 1575, also known as the capture of Schoonhoven, was a Spanish victory that took place between 11 and 24 August 1575, at Schoonhoven, Spanish Netherlands, during the Eighty Years' War and the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604). On June 28, 1575, the Spanish forces, between 8,000 and 10,000 soldiers, led by Gilles de Berlaymont, Lord of Hierges, and Stadtholder of Guelders, Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, captured Buren, and on August 7, Oudewater. The Spanish commander continued its successful progress and arrived at Schoonhoven on August 11. After 13 days of siege, and a courageous but futile resistance, the rebel forces led by De La Garde, composed by Dutch, English, Scottish, French and Walloon soldiers, surrendered to the more experienced Spanish troops, on August 24. The population of the town, that were unwilling to help the rebel forces, received Berlaymont with great joy.
The siege of Eindhoven, also known as the capture of Eindhoven of 1583, took place between 7 February and 23 April 1583 at Eindhoven, Duchy of Brabant, Spanish Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War and the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604). On 7 February 1583 a Spanish force sent by Don Alexander Farnese, Governor-General of the Spanish Netherlands, commanded by Karl von Mansfeld and Claude de Berlaymont, laid siege to Eindhoven, an important and strategic city of Brabant held by Dutch, Scottish, and French soldiers under the States' commander Hendrik van Bonnivet. After three months of siege, and the failed attempts by the States-General to assist Bonnivet's forces, the defenders surrendered to the Spaniards on 23 April.
The Battle of Borgerhout was a battle during the Eighty Years' War, of the Spanish Army of Flanders led by Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, upon a fortified camp at the village of Borgerhout, near Antwerp, where several thousand French, English, Scottish, and Walloon soldiers in service of the recently created Union of Utrecht were stationed. It took place during the reconquest by the armies of Philip II of Spain of the Burgundian Netherlands, whose different provinces had united in 1576 under the Pacification of Ghent to drive out the foreign troops and to grant religious liberty to Protestants.
The period between the Pacification of Ghent, and the Unions of Arras and Utrecht constituted a crucial phase of the Eighty Years' War between the Spanish Empire and the rebelling United Provinces, which would become the independent Dutch Republic. Sometimes known as the "general revolt", the period marked the only time of the war where the States–General of all Seventeen Provinces of the Habsburg Netherlands, except Luxemburg, were in joint active political and military rebellion against the Spanish Imperial government through the Pacification of Ghent. The Pacification formulated several agreements amongst the rebellious provinces themselves, and laid down their demands – including the immediate withdrawal of foreign troops from the Netherlands, restitution of old rights and privileges, and self-rule – to king Philip II of Spain.
The years 1579–1588 constituted a phase of the Eighty Years' War between the Spanish Empire and the United Provinces in revolt after most of them concluded the Union of Utrecht on 23 January 1579, and proceeded to carve the independent Dutch Republic out of the Habsburg Netherlands. It followed the 1576–1579 period, in which a temporary alliance of 16 out of the Seventeen Provinces' States–General established the Pacification of Ghent as a joint Catholic–Protestant rebellion against the Spanish government, but internal conflicts as well as military and diplomatic successes of the Spanish Governors-General Don Juan of Austria and Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma split them apart, finally leading the Malcontent County of Artois, County of Hainaut and city of Douai to sign the Union of Arras on 6 January 1579, reverting to Catholicism and loyalty to the Spanish crown. In response, most of the remaining rebel provinces and cities would forge or later accede to the Union of Utrecht, a closer military alliance treaty that would go on to become the most important fundamental law of the United Provinces, who on 26 July 1581 proclaimed the Act of Abjuration, a de facto declaration of independence from Spain. While the nascent polity was struggling to find a new sovereign head of state, including Matthias of Austria, Francis of Anjou, William "the Silent" of Orange and Robert of Leicester, before giving up and deciding to become a republic by passing the Deduction of Vrancken on 12 April 1588, the Duke of Parma continued his successful military and diplomatic offensive, bringing ever more provinces and cities in the southern, eastern and northeastern parts of the Netherlands back into royalist hands. Parma's reconquests more or less stalled after the Fall of Antwerp (1585), and finally came to an end with the failure of the Spanish Armada and Philip II ordered him to intervene in the French Wars of Religion to prevent the Succession of Henry IV and France becoming a Protestant kingdom. These developments gave rise to a new phase, the Ten Years (1588–1598), that saw significant conquests by the Dutch States Army under the leadership of stadtholders Maurice of Nassau and William Louis of Nassau-Dillenburg, and the Dutch Republic's rise as a commercial great power.
The origins of the Eighty Years' War are complicated, and have been a source of disputes amongst historians for centuries.
