Texts concerning the Revolt of the Netherlands

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16 Missive from the knights, nobles and towns of Holland to the States of the country, 12 September 1573 ¹

In this document the States of Holland addressed themselves to the States General of the loyal provinces convoked by the duke of Alva in September 1573.

Nevertheless, dear brethren, considering how matters stand at present, you may see that the Lord reaches out His hand and will not let us become objects of plunder or of disgrace. Why do you not gird yourselves up with manly courage and join us at last in shaking off this unjust and unbearable yoke from our necks in concerted action? For if the duke has been able to accomplish so little up till now, although we were set against each other and the greater part of the country helped him, what will he be able to accomplish if in perfect harmony and due obedience to his Royal Majesty, our gracious lord, we co-operate in chasing these foreign tyrants and rulers out of the country and in good earnest together protect our old rights and privileges? And if he has not been able to subdue the small country of Holland with part of Zeeland over such a long time and with all the forces he has raised in Italy, Spain, Germany, France as well as in the Netherlands, what will he be able to accomplish, when Brabant, Flanders, Gelderland, Friesland, Overijssel, Artois, Hainault, Luxemburg and other provinces of the Netherlands or part of them, join Holland and Zeeland and together offer him resistance? We are indeed in no doubt that with the help of God we should soon be masters of the situation and shall restore our oppressed fatherland to its former prosperity. For all things considered, if you would only withdraw your help from him and even if you would never draw your swords against him yourselves, what would he be able to do? For it is clear that his whole activity consists of frightening you by vain threats and icy pride. And by his false and idle pretexts or the subtle intrigues of his instruments or assistants he gets you to hand over your power to him and this allows him to establish his despotism and tyranny, against your advice and undoubtedly also contrary to the king's good intentions. What he propounded to all of you in

1 Sendtbrief der ridderschap, edelen ende steden van Hollandt aen die Staten van den lande van herwaerts overe (Knuttel, no. 210).

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the States in August last year may still be fresh in your memory. His Royal Majesty, he declared, had sent the sum of ten hundred thousand guilders from Spain, and that was the utmost that he could expect from Spain. On the strength of this he made you believe that he had raised 12 regiments of German soldiers, 50 companies of Spaniards, 150 regiments of Walloons and Netherlanders and besides those 10,000 German horsemen and 3,000 horses of the troops² and 2,000 light horses, besides a large number of men of war and the usual garrisons. He made so bold as to promise you positively that he would drive all his enemies from these Netherlands within six weeks or at latest within two months, only asking you to collect money to pay the soldiers afterwards so that they would not stay on indefinitely and eat up and ruin the whole country.³ Whereupon the duke of Medinaceli, who was seated on his left hand side, promised you that for his part he would do all he could to assist the duke of Alva with life and property in order to fulfil his promises etc.⁴

Now you may judge for yourselves whether he has accomplished all that, or if he has ever been able to raise anything like such a number of soldiers. It is clear that not only six weeks but two months have long passed by; in fact, it is more than a year ago that he made this declaration and still he is as far as ever from making good his calculations. From this we can conclude that he is bent only upon extorting money from your people with false pretexts and arguments to drag on the war. Meanwhile he deceives the king completely and puts His Majesty to great expense in waging a harmful and unnecessary war against his own subjects. Yet it is obvious enough that the money he receives is not used at all for paying his soldiers for he owes the Spaniards more than twenty-eight and his German soldiers more than thirteen and fourteen months' pay. So his declaration, at the afore-mentioned meeting of the States, that the king had told him he could not expect any more money from Spain than those ten hundred thousand guilders (which he then said he had received) was not without foundation. And since he is without any help from elsewhere, he sees that you are his last recourse and he has thus ordered you to assemble

2 Troops of ordinance, see Document 6, n. 11.

3 At the meeting of the States General in August 1572 Alva asked for a yearly supply of 2,000,000 florins instead of the tenth penny, which had met with much opposition in 1569 and again in the autumn of 1571 when deputations were sent to the king from the provinces.

4 The duke of Medina Celi had been appointed as Alva's successor in 1571. He had indeed arrived in the Netherlands but in the circumstances never entered upon his duties.

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now to impose on you the sum of 2,000,000 guilders a year, besides all the innumerable and unbearable expenses with which he has taxed the country so far and has squeezed it to the bones nay to the marrow of the bones.⁵

But, dear brethren, be mindful of what you have to do. Consider that one day His Majesty and his Council of Spain or the heirs and descendants of His Majesty will want to thrash out the whole affair and hear a true account of it and will no longer be satisfied with the veiled statements which they now receive from the duke and his followers. And when they then find that this war does not only cost the king and the countries enormous sums of money - at least 20,000,000 guilders so far - but also causes irrevocable damage and great losses of people, towns, villages and hamlets loyal to His Majesty, simply because of the duke's despotic aim to oppress all the king's faithful subjects entirely against all right and reason, do not doubt that this will grieve the king very much and that he will wreak vengeance on the men responsible for the damage done to his hereditary countries or who have supported this policy. If you continue to conspire with the Spanish tyrant against your own compatriots and your own country and to help him with money and other means, one of three things is sure to happen: either this war will remain undecided for a time, as it has now been for more than a year and a half, or God will give us total victory over our enemies, or finally they will gain the victory over us. But in all three cases the war will necessarily ruin and destroy the country.

If things remain as they are now and the grim war continues, business will be ruined, sea-borne trade will be stopped, industry will have to close down. As a result the entire country will become so impoverished and disorderly that famine and dearth will inevitably follow and then we can expect revolts and rebellions, severe diseases and plagues, which will completely destroy the country. Furthermore the provinces of Holland and Zeeland and all surrounding countries will be overrun meanwhile by soldiers and completely ruined. Because of this people in Brabant and Flanders, provinces that have also been squeezed by the troopers and soldiers, will no longer be able to get any butter or cheese or other staple food or salt and will necessarily fall into utter distress and misery. As an aftermath of the domestic war all kinds of plunder and robbery will be committed; even towns, villages and hamlets loyal to His Majesty will be burned down. And the worst danger is that during this war the dykes in

5 The same demand therefore as in August 1572.

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Zeeland or Holland may burst by storms or thunderstorms, or one of the parties may pierce them out of desperation so as not to fall into the enemies' hands.⁶ Many thousands and thousands of men and cattle will then die a miserable death, the country will be irreparably damaged and His Royal Majesty and all his descendants will suffer irredeemable losses.

But in the second case, if God gives us victory over our enemies, this will be accompanied by frightful massacres of innumerable good inhabitants used by the duke of Alva for his purposes, for as long as he can get money and men, he will certainly not stop trying to extirpate and ruin us completely. So that it will not be possible to overthrow him without horrible bloodshed being added to all the other disasters, which, as we have told you, will befall the country during the war.

But if he gets the upper hand (which God in His mercy forbid) then all you can expect is eternal and ignominious slavery as he will consider all of you and all towns to be rebellious and refractory because of your refusal of the tenpenny tax,⁷ which was the principal reason, he believes, for the recent war. He will therefore undoubtedly think that all who refused it, even if they did not openly take up arms against him, are nevertheless his open enemies and rebels responsible for his difficulties. He will therefore punish them with the sword and the stake just as he will punish those of us, who openly resisted him with arms, convinced that the others would have done the same if they had had the courage or the opportunity or the power. We hope, though, that things will not go as smoothly for him as he supposes, for we are firmly resolved, one town after another, to fight to the last man before we surrender to this foreign and cruel tyrant, so that he will never attain his aims without bringing on the country the disasters we have described before.

This clearly shows that if you help him any longer in this war and assist him with money, and do not stop him and do not openly resist his intentions, our poor fatherland cannot escape utter ruin and destruction. If you want to know what he is planning and how he intends to deal with the king's lands and with all of us, you must read his explicit threats in his letters of

6 This actually happened in West Friesland during the siege of Alkmaar early in October 1573.

7 In 1569, when for the first time Alva proposed the tenth penny and other taxes, the towns of the Netherlands in particular offered vigorous resistance to it. The governor was finally satisfied with a yearly supply of 2,000,000 guilders until 1571.

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pardon.⁸ In these he tells us that if we refuse to obey him, he will ruin and destroy this country so that no traces survive, and that what is still intact will be utterly destroyed root and branch, and that he will people this country, so far as any country remains, with foreigners. By these and similar menaces he shows openly that his ultimate purpose is to ruin and raze this country to the ground.

8 These were issued in July 1573, some days after the fall of Haarlem which had been under siege for seven months.