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The Netherlands : also called Holland, a kingdom in north-western Europe, bounded by the North Sea in the north & west, by Belgium in the south, & by Germany in the east. Much of the country lies below sea-level & is protected by dikes. Amsterdam is the constitutional capital. The Hague is the royal residence & the seat of government. The Revolt of the Spanish Netherlands led to the collapse of Spain as a major European power. By 1618 (the start of the Thirty Years War) no Catholic country saw Spain as a useful ally. Sri Aurobindo: “The mistake which despots, benevolent or malevolent, have been making ever since organised states came into existence & which, it seems, they will go on making to the end of the chapter “is that… [a] feeling or a thought, Nationalism, Democracy, the aspiration towards liberty, cannot be estimated in the terms of concrete power; in so many fighting men, so many armed police, so many guns, so many prisons, such & such laws, ukases, & executive powers…. It was a thought that overthrew the despotism of centuries in France & revolutionised Europe. It was a mere sentiment against which the irresistible might of the Spanish armies & the organised cruelty of Spanish repression were shattered in the Netherlands which… loosened the iron grip of Austria on Italy.” [“The Strength of the Idea”, SABCL 1:411] Spanish Netherlands was the collective name of the Imperial States of the Holy Roman Empire in the Low Countries, held by the Spanish Crown (called Habsburg Spain) from 1581 to 1714. This region comprised most of modern Belgium & Luxembourg, as well as parts of northern France & western Germany. The capital, Brussels, was in the Duchy of Brabant. The population of the Spanish Netherlands was 3 million with about 300 cities. There was immense local patriotism in the area which was split by language. There were seventeen provinces. The fourteen Northern provinces spoke Dutch dialects while the three Southern ones spoke Walloon. The nobles spoke French though more so in the South than in the North. A common administration of the provinces, centred in the Duchy of Brabant, already existed under the rule of the Burgundian duke Philip the Good with the first convocation of the States-General of the Netherlands in 1437. His granddaughter Mary had confirmed a number of privileges to the States by the Great Privilege signed in 1477. In 1519, Charles V became the Holy Roman Emperor – he was King of Spain as Charles I from 1516. Though as Duke of Burgundy he spoke Flemish, he nonetheless burdened the region with heavy taxes. In 1522, he concluded a partition treaty with his younger brother Archduke Ferdinand I whereby the House of Habsburg split into an Austrian & a Spanish branch. By the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549, Charles declared the Seventeen Provinces a united & indivisible Habsburg dominion. The division was consummated when he resignedly announced his abdication in 1556. The Seventeen Provinces, de jure still fiefs of the Holy Roman Empire, from that time on de facto were ruled by the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs as part of the Burgundian heritage. While Archduke Ferdinand I succeeded his brother Charles as the Holy Roman Emperor, the Spanish branch was inherited by Charles’ only surviving son Philip II of Spain who was neither a Burgundian nor spoke Flemish. Philip needed the region for its wealth. Antwerp was the centre from which bullion from the New World was distributed & its financiers were experts in raising loans – a point not lost on him. His regent in Spanish Netherlands was Margaret of Parma, an illegitimate daughter of Charles V. She was advised by a Council of State which comprised of the great magnates & leading officials within the region. The real power lay with the Council’s president, an Erasmian-influenced Burgundian called Anthony Perrenot, Lord of Granville. In 1559 Philip appointed Granville Cardinal, three new archbishops & fourteen new bishops for Spanish Netherlands including new Low Countries Sees. The bishops were also to sit on the Estates-General which would increase Philip’s power, create an ecclesiastical organisation & a more centralised administration which would take power away from the Stadtholders. Fearful those appointments would lead to greater religious persecution & that the Inquisition would start to assert itself, all three sectors of society were angered – the rich, the merchants & the general population. The three leading magnates, William of Orange, the Count of Egmont, & the Duke of Aerschot, though not consciously revolutionary called for Granville’s dismissal, persuaded the Estates-General to grant Philip a 9-year subsidy if he granted the liberties required by the Spanish Netherlands & pulled out Spanish troops stationed there. This took arrangement place in 1561. By then spread of Calvinism in the Low Countries had taken hold. It found support from the lower classes, lesser nobles & town leaders. In 1566, Calvinism within the region was based in Antwerp. The religion spread rapidly. As a strong Catholic, Philip determined to rid the region of Calvinism. He appointed wealthy & powerful magnates as provincial governors or Stadtholders. William of Orange became Stadtholder of Holland, Utrecht, & Zeeland, while the Count of Egmont took charge of Flanders & Artois. The Stadtholders were to control the Estates-General & rule Spanish Netherlands on Philip’s behalf. This control did not happen. Philip’s despotism & his stern Counter-Reformation measures sparked the revolt of mainly Calvinist Netherlandish provinces, which led to the outbreak of the Eighty Years’ War in 1568. In January 1579 the seven Northern provinces formed the Protestant Union of Utrecht, which declared independence from the so-called Spanish branch of the Habsburgs as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands by the 1581 Act of Abjuration. The Spanish branch of the Habsburgs could only retain the rule over the partly Catholic Southern Netherlands, completed after the Fall of Antwerp in 1585. ― The Habsburg Netherlands passed to the Austrian Habsburgs after the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714. Under Austrian rule, the ten provinces’ defence of their privileges proved as troublesome to the reforming Emperor Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor as it had to his ancestor Philip II two centuries before, leading to a major rebellion in 1789–1790. The Austrian Netherlands were ultimately lost to the French Revolutionary armies, & annexed to France in 1794. Following the war, Austria’s loss of the territories was confirmed, & they were joined with the northern Netherlands as a single kingdom under the House of Orange at the 1815 Congress of Vienna. The south-eastern third of Luxembourg Province was made into the autonomous Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, because it was claimed by both the Netherlands & Prussia. In 1830 the predominantly Roman Catholic southern half became independent as the Kingdom of Belgium (northern half being predominantly Calvinist). In 1839 the final border between the kingdom of the Netherlands & Belgium was determined & the eastern part of Limburg returned to the Netherlands as the province of Limburg. The autonomy of Luxembourg was recognised in 1839, but an instrument to that effect was not signed until 1867. The King of the Netherlands was Grand Duke of Luxembourg until 1890. He was succeeded by his daughter, Wilhelmina but since Luxembourg still followed the Salic law at the time, which forbade a woman to rule in her own right, the union of the Dutch & Luxembourger crowns ended & north-western two-thirds of original Luxembourg remains a province of Belgium.