Liever Turks dan Paaps ("Rather Turkish than Popish"), also Liever Turksch dan Paus ("Rather Turkish than Pope"), was a Dutch Christian slogan during the Dutch Revolt of the end of the 16th century. The slogan was used by the Dutch mercenary naval forces (the "Sea Beggars") in their fight against Catholic Spain.
During the Dutch Revolt, the Dutch were under such a desperate situation that they looked for help from many places no matter their religion, and "indeed even a Turk", as wrote the secretary of Jan van Nassau. [1] In 1566, diplomat Joseph Nasi contacted Protestants in Antwerp to discuss an Ottoman offer of assistance against the Spaniards. [2] In 1569, William of Orange sent a secret envoy to Nasi asking the Ottomans to support the Dutch Revolt against their common Spanish enemies. [3] Orange had already sent ambassadors to the Ottoman Empire for help in 1566, and it is speculated that it was in response to William's request that Selim II sent his fleet to attack the Spanish at Tunis in 1574. [1] The Dutch viewed Ottoman successes against the Habsburgs with great interest, and saw Ottoman campaigns in the Mediterranean as an indicator of relief on the Dutch front. William wrote around 1565:
The Turks are very threatening, which will mean, we believe, that the king will not come to the Netherlands this year.
— Letter of William of Orange to his brother, circa 1565. [1]
The English Catholic author William Rainolds (1544–1594) wrote a pamphlet entitled "Calvino-Turcismus" in criticism of these tendencies. [4]
The phrase "Liever Turks dan Paaps" was coined as a way to express that life under the Muslim Ottoman Sultan would have been more desirable than life under the Catholic King of Spain. [5] The Flemish noble D'Esquerdes wrote to this effect that he:
would rather become a tributary to the Turks than live against his conscience and be treated according to those [anti-heresy] edicts.
— Letter of Flemish noble D'Esquerdes. [5]
While the Turks had a reputation for cruelty, they were also known for having religious tolerance within their dominions, [6] whereas king Philip II of Spain did not tolerate Protestant faiths. [5] According to a 1570 letter of encouragement to the "Lutheran group" (Luteran taifesi) in "Flanders and other Spanish provinces", which has been preserved in the archives of Feridun Ahmed Bey, the Ottoman sultan (at this point Selim II) promised the rebels in the Netherlands that he would send them troops whenever they were ready to rise up against Philip II. [7] The sultan claimed that he felt close to them, "since they did not worship idols, believed in one God and fought against the Pope and Emperor". [8] Furthermore, various religious refugees, such as the Huguenots, some Anglicans, Quakers, Anabaptists and even Jesuits and Capuchins were able to find refuge at Constantinople and elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, [9] where they were given rights of residence and worship. [10] Further, the Ottomans supported the Calvinists, not only in their territories of Transylvania and Hungary, but also in France. [11]
The slogan Liever Turks dan Paaps did not mean the Dutch seriously contemplated coming under Ottoman suzerainty, as they were far away from that empire's sphere of influence; rather, it was an expression of their antipathy to the Catholic regime they had been subjected to. [5]
A similar statement, "It would be better to see the turban of the Turks reigning in the center of the City (i.e., Constantinople) than the Latin mitre" (Greek : κρειττότερόν ἐστιν εἰδέναι ἐν μέσῃ τῇ Πόλει φακιόλιον βασιλεῦον Τούρκων, ἢ καλύπτραν λατινικήν) is ascribed by the historian Doukas to the last megas doux of the Byzantine Empire, Loukas Notaras, as an expression of Eastern Orthodox hostility to the Latin Church and the attempts at a union of the Churches. The veracity of the attribution of the quote to Notaras is unlikely, but it does reflect the views of some members of the anti-Unionist party in Constantinople, even at the eve of the Fall of Constantinople. [12]
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Year 1453 (MCDLIII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar, the 1453rd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 453rd year of the 2nd millennium, the 53rd year of the 15th century, and the 4th year of the 1450s decade.
Constantine XI Dragases Palaiologos or DragašPalaeologus was the last Roman (Byzantine) emperor, reigning from 1449 until his death in battle at the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Constantine's death marked the definitive end of the Eastern Roman Empire, which traced its origin to Constantine the Great's foundation of Constantinople as the Roman Empire's new capital in 330.
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.
Habsburg Spain refers to Spain and the Spanish Empire, also known as the Catholic Monarchy, in the period from 1516 to 1700 when it was ruled by kings from the House of Habsburg. It had territories around the world, including modern-day Spain, a piece of south-eastern France, eventually Portugal and many other lands outside the Iberian Peninsula, like in the Americas. Habsburg Spain was a composite monarchy and a personal union. The Habsburg Spanish monarchs of this period are chiefly Charles I, Philip II, Philip III, Philip IV and Charles II. In this period the Spanish empire was at the zenith of its influence and power. Spain, or "the Spains", referring to Spanish territories across different continents in this period, initially covered the entire Iberian peninsula, including the crowns of Castile, Aragon and from 1580 Portugal. It then expanded to include territories over the five continents, consisting of much of Latin America and the West Indies in the Americas, the Low Countries, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italian territories and France in Europe, Portuguese possessions such as small enclaves like Ceuta and Oran in North Africa, and the Philippines and other possessions in Southeast Asia. The period of Spanish history has also been referred to as the "Age of Expansion".
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Joseph Nasi, known in Portuguese as João Miques, was a Portuguese Sephardi diplomat and administrator, member of the House of Mendes/Benveniste, nephew of Dona Gracia Mendes Nasi, and an influential figure in the Ottoman Empire during the rules of both Sultan Suleiman I and his son Selim II. He was a great benefactor of the Jewish people.
Loukas Notaras was a Byzantine Greek statesman who served as the last megas doux or grand Duke and the last mesazon of the Byzantine Empire, under emperors John VIII Palaiologos and Constantine XI Palaiologos.
The foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire were characterized by competition with the Persian Empire to the east, Russia to the north, and Austria to the west. The control over European minorities began to collapse after 1800, with Greece being the first to break free, followed by Serbia. Egypt was lost in 1798–1805. In the early 20th century Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Bulgarian Declaration of Independence soon followed. The Ottomans lost nearly all their European territory in the First Balkan War (1912–1913). The Ottoman Empire allied itself with the Central Powers in the First World War, and lost. The British successfully mobilized Arab nationalism. The Ottoman Empire thereby lost its Arab possessions, and itself soon collapsed in the early 1920s. For the period after 1923 see Foreign relations of Turkey.
The Ottoman–Hungarian Wars were a series of battles between the Ottoman Empire and the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. Following the Byzantine Civil War, the Ottoman capture of Gallipoli, and the decisive Battle of Kosovo, the Ottoman Empire was poised to conquer the entirety of the Balkans and also sought and expressed desire to expand further north into Central Europe beginning with the Hungarian lands.
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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 conquest of Tunis in 1574 marked the conquest of Tunis by the Ottoman Empire over the Spanish Empire, which had seized the place a year earlier. The event virtually determined the supremacy in North Africa vied between both empires in favour of the former, sealing the Ottoman domination over eastern and central Maghreb, with the Ottoman dependencies in Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli ensuingly coming to experience a golden age as corsair states.
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The siege of Famagusta happened in Venetian-controlled Famagusta, the last Christian possession in Cyprus. Famagusta fell to the Ottomans in August 1571 after a siege that lasted nearly a year.
The period between the Capture of Brielle and the Pacification of Ghent was an early stage of the Eighty Years' War between the Spanish Empire and groups of rebels in the Habsburg Netherlands.