Eighty Years' War, 1579–1588
Fourth phase of the Eighty Years' War / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The years 1579–1588 constituted a phase of the Eighty Years' War (c. 1568–1648) 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 (8 November 1576) 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.[1][2][3] In response, most of the remaining rebel provinces and cities would forge or later accede to the Union of Utrecht,[4] a closer military alliance treaty that would go on to become the most important fundamental law of the United Provinces,[5] who on 26 July 1581 proclaimed the Act of Abjuration, a de facto declaration of independence from Spain.[6] 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,[6] before giving up and deciding to become a republic by passing the Deduction of Vrancken on 12 April 1588,[7] 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.[6] Parma's reconquests more or less stalled after the Fall of Antwerp (1585),[8] and finally came to an end with the failure of the Spanish Armada (July–August 1588) and Philip II ordered him to intervene in the French Wars of Religion (September 1589) to prevent the Succession of Henry IV and France becoming a Protestant kingdom.[8] These developments gave rise to a new phase,[8] 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.[9][10]