The French Revolutionary Wars began on 20 April 1792 when the French Legislative Assembly declared war on Austria. This launched the War of the First Coalition.
The Eighty Years' War or Dutch Revolt (c.1566/1568–1648) 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, taxation, and the rights and privileges of the nobility and cities. After the initial stages, Philip II of Spain, the sovereign of the Netherlands, deployed his armies and regained control over most of the rebel-held territories. However, widespread mutinies in the Spanish army caused a general uprising. Under the leadership of the exiled William the Silent, the Catholic and Protestant-dominated provinces sought to establish religious peace while jointly opposing the king's regime with the Pacification of Ghent, but the general rebellion failed to sustain itself. Despite Governor of Spanish Netherlands and General for Spain, the Duke of Parma's steady military and diplomatic successes, the Union of Utrecht continued their resistance, proclaiming their independence through the 1581 Act of Abjuration, and establishing the Protestant-dominated Dutch Republic in 1588. In the Ten Years thereafter, the Republic made remarkable conquests in the north and east against a struggling Spanish Empire, and received diplomatic recognition from France and England in 1596. The Dutch colonial empire emerged, which began with Dutch attacks on Portugal's overseas territories.
Jan Frans Willems was a Flemish writer and father of the Flemish movement.
The Winkler Prins is a Dutch-language encyclopedia, founded by the Dutch poet and clergyman Anthony Winkler Prins (1817–1908) and published by Elsevier. It has run through nine printed editions; the first, issued in 16 volumes from 1870 to 1882, and the last, numbering 26 volumes, from 1990 to 1993. Winkler Prins has been the most distinguished printed encyclopedia in the Dutch language. Publisher Elsevier collaborated with the Microsoft Corporation to put the 1993 version plus any new additions onto CD-ROM in 1997 as the Dutch-language version of Encarta.
The Brabant Revolution or Brabantine Revolution, sometimes referred to as the Belgian Revolution of 1789–1790 in older writing, was an armed insurrection that occurred in the Austrian Netherlands between October 1789 and December 1790. The revolution, which occurred at the same time as revolutions in France and Liège, led to the brief overthrow of Habsburg rule and the proclamation of a short-lived polity, the United Belgian States.
Michiel de Swaen was a surgeon and a rhetorician from the Southern Netherlands.
Nassau-Orange-Fulda was a short-lived principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1803 to 1806. It was created for William Frederick, the son and heir of William V, Prince of Orange, the ousted stadtholder of the abolished Dutch Republic after the Batavian Revolution of 1795.
The Manifesto of the People of Brabant was a document made public at the start of the Brabant Revolution in 1789 proclaiming the end of the domination of the House of Austria over the Duchy of Brabant. It was first written in French and then printed in French and Dutch.
Republicanism in the Netherlands is a movement that strives to abolish the Dutch monarchy and replace it with a republic. The popularity of the organised republican movement that seeks to abolish the monarchy in its entirety has been suggested to be a minority among the people of the Netherlands, according to opinion polls. On the other hand, there has shown to be political and popular support in the Netherlands for reducing the political powers and the subsidies of the royal house.
The Loevestein faction or the Loevesteiners were a Dutch States Party in the second half of the 17th century in the County of Holland, the dominant province of the Dutch Republic. It claimed to be the party of "true freedom" against the stadtholderate of the House of Orange-Nassau, and sought to establish a purely republican form of government in the Northern Netherlands.
The Battle of Jutphaas, also known as the Battle of the Vaart or the Battle of Vreeswijk, occurred on 9 May 1787 on the banks of the Vaartsche Rijn canal near Jutphaas and Vreeswijk between Orangists and Patriots.
The War of the Brabantian Succession was a war of succession triggered by the death of John III, Duke of Brabant. He had no sons, and as the Duchy of Brabant had a tradition of male (agnatic) primogeniture, his three daughters and their three husbands, namely the dukes of Luxemburg and Guelders and the count of Flanders, claimed the inheritance.
The siege of Nijmegen occurred from 27 October to 8 November 1794 during the Flanders campaign of the War of the First Coalition. It was the last major military confrontation between the forces of the Revolutionary French First Republic and the reactionary First Coalition of European monarchs including William V, Prince of Orange, before the fall of the Dutch Republic in January 1795, which William had ruled as hereditary stadtholder since 1751. As commander-in-chief of the Dutch States Army, his indecision, several changes of mind and lack of coordination with his Anglo-Hanoverian, Hessian, Prussian and Austrian allies contributed to the eventual surrender of Nijmegen to the French revolutionaries.
The aftermath of the Eighty Years' War (c.1568–1648) had far-reaching military, political, socio-economic, religious, and cultural effects on the Low Countries, the Spanish Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, as well as other regions of Europe and European colonies overseas. By the Peace of Münster, the Habsburg Netherlands were split in two, with the northern Protestant-dominated Netherlands becoming the Dutch Republic, independent of the Spanish and Holy Roman Empires, while the southern Catholic-dominated Spanish Netherlands remained under Spanish Habsburg sovereignty. Whereas the Spanish Empire and the Southern Netherlands along with it were financially and demographically ruined, declining politically and economically, the Dutch Republic became a global commercial power and achieved a high level of prosperity for its upper and middle classes known as the Dutch Golden Age, despite continued great socio-economic, geographic and religious inequalities and problems, as well as internal and external political, military and religious conflicts.
The historiography of the Eighty Years' War examines how the Eighty Years' War has been viewed or interpreted throughout the centuries. Some of the main issues of contention between scholars include the name of the war, the periodisation of the war, the origins or causes of the war and thus its nature, the meaning of its historical documents such as the Act of Abjuration, and the role of its central characters such as Philip II of Spain, William "the Silent" of Orange, Margaret of Parma, the Duke of Alba, the Duke of Parma, Maurice of Orange, and Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. It has been theorised that Protestant Reformation propaganda has given rise to the Spanish Black Legend in order to portray the actions of the Spanish Empire, the Army of Flanders and the Catholic Church in an exaggerated extremely negative light, while other scholars maintain that the atrocities committed by the Spanish military in order to preserve the Habsburg Netherlands for the Empire have historically been portrayed fairly accurately. Controversy also rages about the importance of the war for the emergence of the Dutch Republic as the predecessor of the current Kingdom of the Netherlands and the role of the House of Orange's stadtholders in it, as well as the development of Dutch and Belgian national identities as a result of the split of the Northern and Southern Netherlands.
The period between the start of the Beeldenstorm in August 1566 until early 1572 contained the first events of a series that would later be known as the Eighty Years' War between the Spanish Empire and disparate groups of rebels in the Habsburg Netherlands. Some of the first pitched battles and sieges between radical Calvinists and Habsburg governmental forces took place in the years 1566–1567, followed by the arrival and government takeover by Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba with an army of 10,000 Spanish and Italian soldiers. Next, an ill-fated invasion by the most powerful nobleman of the Low Countries, the exiled but still-Catholic William "the Silent" of Orange, failed to inspire a general anti-government revolt. Although the war seemed over before it got underway, in the years 1569–1571, Alba's repression grew severe, and opposition against his regime mounted to new heights and became susceptible to rebellion.
Factionalism in the medieval Low Countries, in Dutch historiography known as partijstrijd or (partij)twisten, comprises several political, military and socio-economic conflicts in the Low Countries during the Middle Ages, especially the Late Middle Ages. The so-called 'parties' usually behaved like factions, which were formed ad hoc, could rapidly change in composition, and usually did not have strong ideological underpinnings. They were not officially organised political parties as would emerge in the 19th century. The parties were normally led by an aristocratic clan, followed by patrician families, and eventually several groups from the bourgeoisie, generally organised by guilds. These groups could often switch allegiances, names and goals, secede or defect, depending on how situations and interests evolved. Usually there were long-term tensions and only brief military confrontations, which either resulted in a new balance of power, or confirmed the status quo. The ruling dynasties or bishops could be dependent on the support from the strongest faction in order to govern, and in case of a war of succession, pretenders were compelled to ally themselves with one party or the other to stand a chance as seizing power. Foreign powers could interfere in factionalist struggles by providing financial or military support, and sometimes take over control of a province with the help of a local party.
