Beeldenstorm (August–November 1566) statues in
St. Martin's Cathedral, Utrecht, attacked in
Reformation iconoclasm in the 16th century. The atmosphere in the Netherlands was tense due to preaching of
Calvinist leaders, hunger after the bad harvest of 1565, and economic difficulties due to the
Northern Seven Years' War. The
Compromise of Nobles led to the lesser nobility of the Habsburg Netherlands offering a petition to governor-general
Margaret of Parma on 5 April 1566 to moderate the
placards against heresy which were used for persecuting Protestants. One of her aides supposedly insulted the nobles by calling them
gueux, French for "beggars"; this word evolved to Dutch
geuzen which the nobles and other dissidents would soon
reappropriate as a badge of pride. On 9 April, the duchess decided to temporarily suspend them and await further instructions from king
Philip II of Spain on what to do, but suspension of the
placards emboldened the Protestants. Some returned from exile. Calvinists started to organise open-air sermons (, "hedge-sermons") outside the city walls of many cities. Though these meetings were peaceful, their size alone caused anxiety for the authorities, especially as some of the people attending bore arms. Then, the situation deteriorated rapidly. On 1 August 1566, 2000 armed Calvinists tried to force entry to the walled town of
Veurne, but they failed. They were led by , who was a hatmaker by trade, but turned into a Calvinist preacher. He and other Calvinist weavers from the industrial area around
Ypres such as then started attacking churches and destroying religious statuary in western Flanders. On 10 August 1566, their first target was a monastery church at
Steenvoorde in Flanders (now in Northern France), which was sacked by a mob led by Sebastiaan Matte. This incident was followed by similar riots elsewhere in Flanders, and before long the Netherlands had become the scene of the
Beeldenstorm. This
iconoclastic movement was planned and organised by prominent Calvinists, who supervised the actions of men (who had no property themselves) in storming churches and other religious buildings to desecrate and destroy church art and all kinds of decorative fittings over most of the country. The number of actual statue-breakers appears to have been relatively small, and the exact backgrounds of the movement are debated, but in general local authorities did not rein in the
vandalism. The actions of the iconoclasts drove the nobility into two camps, with Orange and other
grandees opposing the movement and others, notably
Hendrick van Brederode, supporting it. After the parties could not reach a compromise, and Valenciennes refused to accept a royal garrison, the city was declared in a state of rebellion on 14 December 1566. Rebel attempts to relieve Valenciennes were crushed in the
Battle of Wattrelos (27 December 1566) and the
Battle of Lannoy (29 December 1566). For his part as stadtholder of
Holland and
Zeeland,
William of Orange took decisive action to quell the disturbances. Other noblemen attempted a more conciliatory approach. After the Beeldenstorm reached the city of
Tournai on 23 August 1566, the Calvinists (who claimed to constitute three fourths of Tournai's population) demanded their own church buildings. Margaret of Parma dispatched
Philip de Montmorency, Count of Horn to restore order, and he sought to achieve this through a kind of religious peace, including allowing the Calvinists to build their own churches. Margaret of Parma and king Philip resented him for this, and they recalled Horne. In January 1567, Philip of Noircarmes retook Tournai. Over the course of six years, the army grew to 67,000 men. Alba was supposed to act as military captain-general, while Margaret would remain in office as civil governor-general. Alba took harsh measures, and rapidly established a special court (
Raad van Beroerten or
Council of Troubles) on 5 September 1567 to put anyone who opposed the king in some way on trial. The Council conducted a campaign of repression of suspected heretics and people deemed guilty of the (already extinguished) insurrection. The Council used its power to override the civilian authorities in arresting suspects. Alba considered himself the direct representative of Philip in the Netherlands and therefore frequently bypassed
Margaret of Parma, the king's half-sister who had been appointed governor of the Netherlands. Rather than working with Margaret, Alba took over command and Margaret resigned in protest. and
Hoorne. 19th century paiting by
Louis Gallait. Alba thereafter was in sole command. Many high-ranking officials were arrested on various pretexts, among whom the Counts of
Egmont and
Horn. The victims of the repression were found in all social strata. A total of about 9,000 people were eventually convicted by the council, though only 1,000 were actually executed, as many managed to go into exile. One of the latter was Orange, who forfeited his extensive possessions in the Netherlands, like most of the people being
proscribed. The victims were not necessarily only Protestants. For instance, the Counts of Egmont and Horne, executed for treason on 5 June 1568, protested their Catholic orthodoxy on the scaffold. Egmont and Horne were arrested for high treason, condemned, and a year later
beheaded on the
Grand-Place in Brussels. Egmont and Horne had been Catholic nobles, loyal to the King of Spain until their deaths. The reason for their execution was that Alba considered they had been treasonous to the king in their tolerance to Protestantism. Their executions, ordered by a Spanish noble, provoked outrage. More than one thousand people were
executed in the following months. The large number of executions led the court to be nicknamed the "Blood Court" in the Netherlands, and Alba to be called the "Iron Duke". Rather than pacifying the Netherlands, these measures helped to fuel the unrest.
Opposition in exile (April 1567 – April 1568) painted by
Anthonis Mor around 1554 The many exiles found asylum in the few areas in neighboring countries that welcomed Calvinists, like the
Huguenot areas in France, England, and
Emden or
Wesel in Germany. Many were ready to join an armed fight, but the fate of the rebels at Oosterweel had shown that irregular forces did not stand a chance against well-disciplined troops. A better organised effort was needed to lead such an effort, and Orange was uniquely well-placed. As a sovereign prince of the Holy Roman Empire Orange was in a sense the equal of Philip, in his capacity of Count of Holland, for instance. Orange was therefore entirely within his rights to make war on Philip (or, as he for the moment preferred, on Philip's "bad advisor" Alba). This was important in a diplomatic context as it legitimised Orange's efforts to hire mercenaries in the principalities of his German "colleagues," and enabled him to issue
letters of marque to the many Calvinist seamen who had embarked on a career of piracy from economic desperation. Such letters elevated the latter, the so-called
Sea Beggars, to the status of
privateers, which enabled the authorities in neutral countries, like the England of
Elizabeth I, to accommodate them without legal embarrassment. Orange's temporary abode in
Dillenburg therefore became the command center for plans to invade the Netherlands from several directions at once. Orange went into exile in his ancestral castle in Dillenburg, which became the centre for plans to invade the Netherlands. Other nobles decided to stay, but remained critical of the royal government.
Philippe III de Croÿ, the Duke of Aarschot, had been Orange's rival before Alba's 1567 arrival, and he became the
de facto leader of his majesty's loyal opposition in the years thereafter (1567–1576). It was not until the
Spanish Fury that their interests firmly coincided, and Orange and Aarschot became allies in their joint rebellion against the king.
Orange's first invasion (April–November 1568) Louis of Nassau, Orange's brother, crossed into
Groningen from
East Friesland with a mercenary army of
Landsknechten, and defeated a small royalist force at
Heiligerlee on 23 May 1568. Two months later, Louis's mercenary forces were smashed at the
Battle of Jemmingen. Shortly thereafter, a
Sea Beggars naval squadron defeated a royalist fleet in a naval battle on the
Ems. However, a
Huguenot army invading
Artois was pushed back into France and then annihilated by the forces of
Charles IX of France in June. Orange marched into
Brabant, but with money running out he could not maintain his mercenary army and had to retreat.
1569–1571 Philip was suffering from the high cost of his war against the
Ottoman Empire, and ordered Alba to fund his armies from taxes levied in the Netherlands. Alba went against the
States General of the Netherlands by imposing sales taxes by decree on 31 July 1571. Alba commanded local governments to collect the unpopular taxes, which alienated even loyal lower governments from the central government. == Notes ==