History UsefulNotes / TheEightyYearsWar

The Netherlands had ended up in Philip's hands after his father UsefulNotes/CharlesV divided his personal domain and restored the separation between the Spanish Empire and the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire. The Netherlands should have gone back to the Holy Roman Empire, its previous domain, but the latter's endemic infighting, increased by the recent triumph of the local German Protestantism, had convinced Charles that the province would be safer as part of Spain, much more capable to control the similar Dutch proneness to turmoil and defend it militarily from France. In general, ItSeemedLikeAGoodIdeaAtTheTime, especially because the Habsburg Netherlands were an incredibly rich land with an enviable position for trade, and aside from it being a great asset for the Spanish Empire and its global trade network, it was a priority to keep under Habsburg control.

By 1566, tensions had only fired up after the Low Countries started suffering economically from the Northern Wars, the inflation caused by American silver, and Philip's own attempts to stamp out Protestantism. In August of the same year, Protestant mobs started attacking and destroying Catholic properties all around the country in an event called the Beeldenstorm ("Iconoclasm"), and although Spanish governor Margaret of Parma managed to control things with the help of the noblemen themselves, Philip heard the alarming reports and basically panicked, believing the Netherlands were spiraling out of control. The king replaced Margaret with the iron-handed [[UsefulNotes/TheDukeOfAlba Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba]], who came with the double mission to control things by any means necessary and centralize and modernize the largely medieval local society in order to refloat things, waiting for Philip himself to come over, endear himself to the Netherlanders and solve the problems.

The event said to have set off the SelfFulfillingProphecy of the revolution is Álvarez's execution of the statesmen Lamoral, Count of Egmont and Philip de Montmorency, Count of Hoorn, on the main square in Brussels on June 5, 1568, after which William of Orange, a understudy of Charles V best known as William the Silent, fled to Germany and became the leader of the rebellion in exile until being killed by a spy. Álvarez crushed the first waves of the revolt and managed to hold most of the country, but even his most positive reforms were too much and too quickly for the moment, and on the other hand, his implacable repression of any rebellious elements ensured even the areas controlled by the crown were only forcefully so. To boot, Philip's original plans to travel to the Netherlands were postponed until being ultimately discarded, leaving the Duke of Alba alone and with a bad case of only having a hammer and seeing everything as a nail.

Álvarez was eventually called back on the sight that the problem would not be solved the same way it was provoked, and Philip now tried luck the soft way by sending a more diplomatic governor, Luis de Requesens, with more concialiatory orders and a general amnesty. It went nowhere, perhaps predictably, and Requesens was forced to resume warfare with his sorely lacking military skills. The Spaniards did snatch a couple decisive victories, after which Requesens and William the Silent entered negotiations by the conciliation of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II, but failure to reach an agreement coincided with a series of savage sackings by mutinied Habsburgian troops, unpaid by Spain's own economic problems, which enraged the local population and sent the war beyond its point of no return. Requesens then died of illness as a final strike of unrest for the country.

The mismanagement of Alba and Requesens had set virtually all of the Low Countries against Habsburg rule, seven of them forming the United Provinces, so Philip sent now his charismatic half-brother UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria, who got some tentative diplomatic success by promising to withdraw with all of his forces - only to return to state of war due to John's erratic political plans, now with the problem of UsefulNotes/ElizabethI of England supporting the Dutch. However, John obtained again a couple of devastating victories, after which infighting exploded between the rebels and an increasing number of them started changing sides. Austria's untimely death passed command to UsefulNotes/AlexanderFarnese, Philip's best general, whose diplomatic and military offensive gradually brought most of the country under Spanish control - only to stop again with the disaster of the [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOfTheSpanishArmada Spanish Armada]] and the diversion of the UsefulNotes/FrenchWarsOfReligion, where Farnese was killed in action.

With the Spanish Empire now being simultanously at war against Dutch, French ''and'' British Protestants, the Dutch turned the tide and re-conquered most of the territory with their own military genius, the late William's son Maurice of Nassau. During more than a decade, unable to focus and depending on Habsburgian governors of dubious abilities to keep the theater running, the Spanish could do little but fight for stalemates, time the Dutch used to organize themselves and reinforce their hopefully independent republic. At this point, a soon-to-be dead Philip decided to change tactics again and, reasoning the Dutch would be more open to accept a Central European ruler, he gave back the Netherlands to the Holy Roman Empire, helped because the latter had been functionally neutral during the whole war in order not to disturb their own Protestant population and due to their engagements with the Ottomans. The inheritor was the Holy Roman Archduke Albert, Philip's son-in-law, but the attempts to reach an agreement failed again due to the whole thing's obvious sketchiness.

The situation reached a balance by the arrival of another imperial wunderchild, UsefulNotes/AmbrogioSpinola, managing to thwart Maurice and making things look promising for King UsefulNotes/PhilipIII, who was still backing economically the war effort even although Albert was the man in charge now. Both sides were utterly exhausted and needing for the negotiations to give out ''something'', so by this point the Twelve Year Truce, ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, was declared in 1609. Albert invested the time in rebuilding the Netherlands under his control and all of its Catholic structure, but the spiritual winner was the Dutch Republic, because the sole fact that the Habsburgs had signed a treaty with them meant they were now being implicitly given recognition as an entity.

The peace lasted until 1619 when the UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar broke out, similarly pitting the Holy Roman Empire against more or less everybody in Europe, and this returned the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Empire to opposition as the Dutch intervened against the Holy Romans. The truce also finished in 1621, point at which both the Archduke Albert and Spinola wanted to negotiate again with Maurice and end the damn war, but the truce had seriously disadvantaged the Spanish Empire in many fields around the world (for instance, weakening their Portuguese subjects in UsefulNotes/TheDutchPortugueseWar) and many voices called for retribution. To further muddle things, Albert died shortly after, returning the Netherlands now to UsefulNotes/PhilipIV, whose big man Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, declared war again.

Despite the Habsburg's ambition, the Spaniards became finally aware that trying to militarily re-conquer the Netherlands had stopped being feasable several decades ago, so they went instead for a policy of economic warfare, planting their forces around Dutch Republic to besiege it and engaging in intense commerce raiding to cut off its wings. The plan was initially successful, and it advanced even more with the death of Maurice of Nassau, but the Republic resisted, and when the Spanish Empire found itself busy with yet a new front, the War of Mantuan Succession, the whole campaign crashed. Full frontal war came again, although Spain returned unexpectedly stronger from Mantua under UsefulNotes/CardinalInfanteFerdinand, to which the Dutch answered by allying with the France of UsefulNotes/CardinalRichelieu.

The dual clash against France and the Dutch Republic started promising due to Ferdinand's strategic talent, but when the man suddenly died in the worst possible moment, the whole things went down for the House of Habsburg, and its two enemies managed to effectively isolate the Netherlands from Spain by land and sea. It only added to two new inner revolts against Philip IV's authority: that of the Portuguese, who had realized years earlier that being in the Habsburg team had basically meant their ruin, and the Catalonians, by vaguely similar reasons. Ironically, at the other side of the war, Frederick Henry of Nassau also found himself in midst of an inter-provincial conflict. At the end, both sides accepted to negotiate for real, an in the 1648 Peace of Munster, the Eighty Year War finally ended, with all Spanish forces abandoning the former Habsburg Netherlands for good.

The Eighty Years War basically brought an end to Iberian supremacy in the Christian world. Portugal, soon free from the control of more Austrian overlords, managed to re-conquer gradually their territories in America and Africa, but most of their control of the Indian Ocean had been lost forever to the now better-called Dutch Empire. The Spaniards were now free from a 80-year nightmare that in hindsight could have been ''both'' avoided and won at several points under better heads, but their ultimate inability to recover the Netherlands was seen as a a massive ShootTheShaggyDog, and the loss of their conjunction with the Portuguese Empire translated into a global loss of influence as well. The Spanish Habsburg branch would die off soon by the hand of UsefulNotes/CharlesIIOfSpain, whose complicated succession ended up placing a French dynasty in its throne and further solidifying France as the next great power in Europe.

For their part, although the lands of the Netherlands had been left quite devastated, sinking the life of everybody that wasn't part of the safer bourgouis middle and high class and/or had a hand in trade, their independent republic only came out of the war stronger, having become one of the lead powers in Europe thanks to the improbable chance of establishing diplomacy with multiple countries, spreading their trade networks around the globe, and capitalizing on the reforming work made by their own enemies back when it seemed to be the solution to keep the country in the empire. Its new prosperity marked the beginning of the Dutch Golden Age, which would replace the similar - and now dying - Spanish Golden Age.

The Eighty Years' War, or the Dutch War of Independence (1568-1648), was a war fought, as the name suggests, over the course of eighty years and for the independence of the [[LaResistance Dutch Republic]] (a precursor to the modern-day Netherlands) from the [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic western Habsburg realm]] led by UsefulNotes/PhilipII of Spain. The leaders of the rebellion cited the strict control of the monarchy over the people as their main incentive to rebel, mainly in terms such as freedom of religion and thought and the matter of taxation. [[RealPolitik More cynically-minded observers generally put the taxes first]], though.

However, relations between Philip and the Low Countries soon soured. The infamously centralist king wanted to re-organize the land and extract taxes proportional to their richness, while the local nobility resisted, accustomed to Charles' more hands-off attitude. Furthermore, while Charles had been born in the very Netherlands and lived all of his life like a Central European, Philip was instead a remote, southern king whom the northerners struggled to accept. As it can be read in William of Orange's ''Apology'', at the time it was popular in Europe to see Spaniards as a race "contaminated" by their contact with Jews and Moors, and Philip's fiscal voraciousness [[GreedyJew only confirmed this impression]]. To make things even worse, it also happened that Philip was an uncompromising Catholic, while at the time the Netherlands had a sizable Protestant population he couldn't just leave be - and it turned out that even the local Catholic majority was unmotivated to hold together with him, as the common threats of France and the Ottoman Empire were removed by way of the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis and geographical distance respectively.

By 1566, tensions had only fired up after the Low Countries started suffering economically from the Northern Wars, the inflation caused by American silver, and Philip's own attempts to stamp out Protestantism. In August of the same year, Protestant mobs started attacking and destroying Catholic properties all around the country in an event called the Beeldenstorm ("Iconoclasm"), and although Spanish governor Margaret of Parma managed to control things with the help of the noblemen themselves, Philip heard the alarming reports and basically panicked, believing the Netherlands were spiraling out of control. The king replaced Margaret with the iron-handed [[UsefulNotes/TheDukeOfAlba Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba]], who came with the double mission to control things by any means necessary and centralize and modernize the largely medieval local society in order to refloat things, hopefully for Philip himself to come over, endear himself to the Netherlanders and solve the problems.

The mismanagement of Alba and Requesens had set virtually all of the Low Countries against Habsburg rule, seven of them forming the United Provinces, so Philip sent now his charismatic half-brother UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria, who got some tentative diplomatic success by promising to withdraw with all of his forces - only to return to state of war due to John's erratic political plans, now with the problem of UsefulNotes/ElizabethI of England supporting the Dutch. However, John obtained again a couple of devastating victories, after which infighting exploded between the rebels and an increasing number of them started changing sides. Austria's untimely death passed command to UsefulNotes/AlexanderFarnese, Philip's best general, whose diplomatic and military offensive gradually brought most of the country under Spanish control - only to stop again with the disaster of the [[UsefulNotes/AngloSpanishWar15851604 Spanish Armada]] and the diversion of the UsefulNotes/FrenchWarsOfReligion, where Farnese was killed in action.

The peace lasted until 1619 when the UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar broke out, similarly pitting the Holy Roman Empire against more or less everybody in Europe, and this returned the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Empire to opposition as the Dutch intervened against the Holy Romans. The truce also finished in 1621, point at which both the Archduke Albert and Spinola wanted to negotiate again with Maurice and end the damn war, but the truce had seriously disadvantaged the Spanish Empire in many fields around the world (for instance, weakening their Portuguese subjects in UsefulNotes/TheDutchPortugueseWar) and many voices called for retribution. To further muddle things, Albert died shortly after, returning the Netherlands now to Philip IV, whose big man Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, declared war again.

The clash against France and the Dutch Republic started looking worse and worse for the House of Habsburg, especially because Ferdinand died of exhaustion and the two countries managed to isolate the Netherlands from Spain by land and sea. It only added to two new inner revolts against Philip IV's authority: that of the Portuguese, who had realized years earlier that being in the Habsburg team had basically meant their ruin, and the Catalonians, by vaguely similar reasons. Ironically, at the other side of the war, Frederick Henry of Nassau also found himself in midst of an inter-provincial conflict. At the end, both sides accepted to negotiate for real, an in the 1648 Peace of Munster, the Eighty Year War finally ended, with all Spanish forces abandoning the former Habsburg Netherlands for good.

The Eighty Years War basically brought an end to Iberian supremacy in the Christian world. Portugal, soon free from the control of more Austrian overlords, managed to re-conquer gradually their territories in America and Africa, but most of their control of the Indian and the Pacific Ocean had been lost forever to the now better-called Dutch Empire. The Spaniards were now free from a 80-year nightmare that in hindsight could have been both avoided and won at several points under better heads, but their ultimate inability to recover the Netherlands was seen as a a massive ShootTheShaggyDog, and the loss of their conjunction with the Portuguese Empire translated into a global loss of influence as well. The Spanish Habsburg branch would die off soon by the hand of UsefulNotes/CharlesIIOfSpain, whose complicated succession ended up placing a French dynasty in its throne and further solidifying France as the next great power in Europe.

Despite the Habsburg's ambition, the Spaniards became finally aware that trying to militarily re-conquer the Netherlands had stopped being feasable several decades ago, so they went instead for a policy of economic warfare, planting their forces around Dutch Republic to besiege it and engaging in intense commerce raiding to cut off its wings. The plan was initially successful, and it advanced even more with the death of Maurice of Nassau, but the Republic resisted, and when the Spanish Empire found itself busy with yet a new front, the War of Mantuan Succession, the whole campaign crashed. Full frontal war came again, although Spain returned unexpectedly stronger from Mantua under the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria, to which the Dutch answered by allying with the France of UsefulNotes/CardinalRichelieu.

By 1566, tensions had only fired up after the Low Countries started suffering economically from the Northern Wars, the inflation caused by American silver, and Philip's own attempts to stamp out Protestantism. In August of the same year, Protestant mobs started attacking and destroying Catholic properties all around the country in an event called the Beeldenstorm ("Iconoclasm"), and although Spanish governor Margaret of Parma managed to control things with the help of the noblemen themselves, Philip heard the alarming reports and basically panicked, believing the Netherlands were spiraling out of control. The king replaced Margaret with the iron-handed UsefulNotes/FernandoAlvarezDeToledoYPimentel, Duke of Alba, who came with the double mission to control things by any means necessary and centralize and modernize the largely medieval local society in order to refloat things, hopefully for Philip himself to come over, endear himself to the Netherlanders and solve the problems.

In many ways, the war went into history as the Spanish equivalent to the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar, leading to the popular idiom ''España mi natura, Italia mi ventura, Flandes mi sepultura'' ("Spain (was) my birthplace, Italy my fortune, Flanders my grave"). The conflict manifested as countless skirmishes, minor battles, foreign interventions and ''incredibly'' long and tedious sieges, many of which went nowhere, which ultimately managed to overwork the previously nigh-undisputed Spanish armies into defeat. The science of warfare would substantially evolve during his course, ending the era of the pike-and-shot and promoting the adoption of linear infantry tactics.

Losing the war greatly dented not only Spanish dominance, but also their reputation, as the war also proved the value of propaganda, skillfully used by the rebel side to convince Europe of Spain's wickedness and the sore need to resist or die against them. It basically codified the Spanish Black Legend for its further expansion by all factions interested for the next centuries.

The Netherlands had ended up in Philip's hands after his father UsefulNotes/CharlesV divided his personal domain and restored the separation between the Spanish Empire and the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire. The Netherlands should have gone back to the Holy Roman Empire, its previous domain, but the latter's endemic infighting, increased by the recent triumph of the local German Protestantism, had convinced Charles that the province would be better as part of Spain, much more capable to control the similar Dutch proneness to turmoil and defend it militarily from France. In general, ItSeemedLikeAGoodIdeaAtTheTime, especially because the Habsburg Netherlands were an incredibly rich land with an enviable position for trade, and aside from it being a great asset for the Spanish Empire and its global trade, it was a priority to keep under Habsburg control.

However, relations between Philip and the Low Countries soon soured. The king wanted to re-organize the land and extract taxes proportional to their richness, while the local nobility resisted, accustomed to Charles' more hands-off attitude. Furthermore, while Charles had been born in the very Netherlands and lived all of his life like a Central European, Philip was instead a remote, southern king whom the northerners struggled to accept. As it can be read in William of Orange's ''Apology'', at the time it was popular in Europe to see Spaniards as a race "contaminated" by their contact with Jews and Moors, and Philip's fiscal voraciousness [[GreedyJew only confirmed this impression]]. To make things even worse, it also happened that Philip was an uncompromising Catholic, while at the time the Netherlands had a sizable Protestant population he couldn't just leave be - and it turned out that even the local Catholic majority was unmotivated to hold together with him, as the common threats of France and the Ottoman Empire were removed by way of the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis and geographical distance respectively.

By 1566, tensions had only fired up after the Low Countries started suffering economically from the Northern Wars, the inflation caused by American silver, and Philip's own attempts to stamp out Protestantism. In August of the same year, Protestant mobs started attacking and destroying Catholic properties all around the country in an event called the Beeldenstorm ("Iconoclasm"), and although Spanish governor Margaret of Parma managed to control things with the help of the noblemen themselves, Philip heard the alarming reports and basically panicked, believing the Netherlands was spiraling out of control. The king replaced Margaret with the iron-handed UsefulNotes/FernandoAlvarezDeToledoYPimentel, Duke of Alba, who came with the double mission to control things by any means necessary and centralize and modernize the largely medieval local society in order to refloat things, hopefully for Philip himself to come over, endear himself to the Netherlanders and solve the problems.

The event said to have set off the SelfFulfillingProphecy of the revolution is Álvarez's execution of the statesmen Lamoral, Count of Egmont and Philip de Montmorency, Count of Hoorn, on the main square in Brussels on June 5, 1568, after which William of Orange, a understudy of Charles V best known as William the Silent, fled to Germany and became the leader of the rebellion in exile until being killed by a spy. Álvarez crushed the first waves of the revolt and managed to hold most of the country, but even his most positive reforms were too much and too quickly for the moment, and his implacable repression of any rebellious elements ensured even the areas controlled by the crown were only forcefully so. To boot, Philip's original plans to travel to the Netherlands were postponed until being ultimately discarded, leaving the Duke of Alba alone and with a bad case of only having a hammer and seeing everything as a nail.

Álvarez was eventually called back on the sight that the problem would not be solved the same way it was provoked, and Philip now tried luck the soft way by sending a more diplomatic governor, Luis de Requesens, with more concialiatory orders and a general amnesty. It went nowhere, perhaps predictably, and Requesens was forced to resume warfare with his sorely lacking military skills. The Spaniards did snatch a couple decisive victories, after which Requesens and William the Silent entered negotiations by the conciliation of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II, but failure to reaching an agreement coincided with a series of savage sackings by mutinied Habsburgian troops, unpaid by Spain's own economic problems, which enraged the local population and sent the war beyond its point of no return. Requesens then died of illness as a final strike of unrest for the country.

The mismanagement of Alba and Requesens had set virtually all of the Low Countries against Habsburg rule, seven of them forming the United Provinces, so Philip sent now his half-brother UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria, who got some tentative diplomatic success by promising to withdraw with his forces - only to return to state of war due to John's erratic political plans, now with the problem of UsefulNotes/ElizabethI of England supporting the Dutch. However, John obtained again a couple of devastating victories, after which infighting exploded between the rebels and an increasing number of them started changing sides. Austria's death passed command to UsefulNotes/AlexanderFarnese, Philip's best general, whose diplomatic and military offensive gradually brought most of the country under Spanish control - only to stop again with the disaster of the [[UsefulNotes/AngloSpanishWar15851604 Spanish Armada]] and the diversion of the UsefulNotes/FrenchWarsOfReligion, where Farnese was killed in action.

With the Spanish Empire now being simultenously at war against Dutch, French ''and'' British Protestants, the Dutch turned the tide and re-conquered most of the territory with their own military genius, the late William's son Maurice of Nassau. During more than a decade, unable to focus and depending on Habsburgian governors of dubious abilities to keep the theater running, the Spanish could do little but fight for stalemates, time the Dutch used to organize themselves and reinforce their hopefully independent republic. At this point, a soon-to-be dead Philip decided to change tactics again and, reasoning the Dutch would be more open to accept a Central European ruler, he gave back the Netherlands to the Holy Roman Empire, helped because the latter had been functionally neutral during the whole war in order not to disturb their own Protestant population and due to their engagements with the Ottomans. The inheritor was the Holy Roman Archduke Albert, Philip's son-in-law, but the attempts to reach an agreement failed again due to the whole thing's obvious sketchiness.

Despite the Habsburg's ambition, the Spaniards became finally aware that trying to militarily re-conquer the Netherlands had stopped being feasable several decades ago, so they went instead for a policy of economic warfare, planting their forces around Dutch Republic to besiege it and engaging in intense commerce raiding to cut off its wings. The plan was initially successful, and it advanced even more with the death of Maurice of Nassau, but the colonial Dutch Empire allowed the Republic to resist, and when the Spanish Empire found itself busy with yet a new front, the War of Mantuan Succession, the whole campaign crashed. Full frontal war came again, although Spain returned unexpectedly stronger from Mantua under the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria, while the Dutch countered by allying with the France of UsefulNotes/CardinalRichelieu.

The clash against France and the Dutch Republic started looking worse and worse for the House of Habsburg, especially because Ferdinand died of exhaustion and the two countries managed to isolate the Netherlands from Spain by land and sea, and it only added to two new inner revolts against Philip IV's authority: that of the Portuguese, who had realized years earlier that being in the Habsburg team had basically meant their ruin, and the Catalonians, by vaguely similar reasons. Ironically, at the other side of the war, Frederick Henry of Nassau also found himself in midst of an inter-provincial conflict. At the end, both sides accepted to negotiate for real, an in the 1648 Peace of Munster, the Eighty Year War finally ended, with all Spanish forces abandoning the former Habsburg Netherlands for good.

The Eighty Years War basically brought an end to Iberian supremacy in the Christian world. Portugal, soon free from the control of more Austrian overlords, managed to re-conquer gradually their territories in America and Africa, but most of their control of the Indian and the Pacific Ocean had been lost forever to the now better-called Dutch Empire. The Spaniards were now safe of a 80-year nightmare that in hindsight was never even remotely worthy the effort, but their ultimate inability to recover the Netherlands was seen as a a massive ShootTheShaggyDog, and the loss of their conjunction with the Portuguese Empire translated into a global loss of influence as well. The Spanish Habsburg branch would die off soon by the hand of UsefulNotes/CharlesIIOfSpain, whose complicated succession ended up placing a French dynasty in its throne and further solidifying France as the next great power in Europe.

The situation reached a balance by the arrival of another imperial wunderchild, UsefulNotes/AmbrogioSpinola, managing to thwart Maurice and making things look promising for King Philip III, who was still backing economically the war effort even although Albert was the man in charge now. Both sides were utterly exhausted and needing for the negotiations to give out ''something'', so by this point the Twelve Year Truce, ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, was declared in 1609. Albert invested the time in rebuilding the Netherlands under his control and all of its Catholic structure, but the spiritual winner was the Dutch Republic, because the sole fact that the Habsburgs had signed a treaty with them meant they were now being implicitly given recognition as an entity.

The Eighty Years War basically brought an end to Iberian supremacy in the Christian world. Portugal, soon free from the control of more Austrian overlords, managed to re-conquer gradually their territories in America and Africa, but most of their control of the Indian and the Pacific Ocean had been lost forever to the now better-called Dutch Empire. The Spaniards were now safe of a 80-year nightmare that in hindsight was never even remotely worthy the effort, but their ultimate inability to recover the Netherlands left their reputation with a huge black eye, and the loss of their conjunction with the Portuguese Empire translated into a global loss of influence as well. The Spanish Habsburg branch would die off soon by the hand of UsefulNotes/CharlesIIOfSpain, whose complicated succession ended up placing a French dynasty in its throne and further solidifying France as the next great power in Europe.

The event said to have set off the SelfFulfilledProphecy of the revolution is Álvarez's execution of the statesmen Lamoral, Count of Egmont and Philip de Montmorency, Count of Hoorn, on the main square in Brussels on June 5, 1568, after which William of Orange, a understudy of Charles V best known as William the Silent, fled to Germany and became the leader of the rebellion in exile until being killed by a spy. Álvarez crushed the first waves of the revolt and managed to hold most of the country, but even his most positive reforms were too much and too quickly for the moment, and his implacable repression of any rebellious elements ensured even the areas controlled by the crown were only forcefully so. To boot, Philip's original plans to travel to the Netherlands were postponed until being ultimately discarded, leaving the Duke of Alba alone and with a bad case of only having a hammer and seeing everything as a nail.

As fitting for a war spanning almost a century, the Eighty Years War was a dramatically evolving conflict. What had started essentially as a police action within the Spanish Empire ended up spiraling into an international engagement that pitted Philip and his clan against all the other European powers at the time, resulting in an endless back and forth that eventually ended with Philip's grandson throwing the towel and letting part of Netherlands be an independent nation.

In many ways, the war went into history as the Spanish equivalent to the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar, leading to the popular idiom ''España mi natura, Italia mi ventura, Flandes mi sepultura'' ("Spain (was) my birthplace, Italy my fortune, Flanders my grave"). Being the loser of the war greatly dented not only their dominance, but also their reputation, as the Dutch war propaganda basically codified the Spanish Black Legend for its further expansion and development by all factions interested for the next centuries.

The Netherlands had ended up in Philip's hands after his father UsefulNotes/CharlesV divided his personal domain and restored the separation between the Spanish Empire and the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire. The Netherlands should have gone back to the Holy Roman Empire, its previous domain, but the latter's endemic infighting, increased by the recent triumph of the local German Protestantism, had convinced Charles that the province would be better as part of Spain, much more capable to control its similar proneness to turmoil and defend it militarily from France. ItSeemedLikeAGoodIdeaAtTheTime, especially because the Habsburg Netherlands were an incredibly rich land with an enviable position for trade, and aside from it being a great asset for the Spanish Empire and its global trade, it was a priority to keep under Habsburg control.

However, relations between Philip and the Netherlands soon soured. The former wanted to extract taxes proportional to the richness of the land, while the latter resisted to this, both for obvious reasons and because they struggled to accept a remote, unknown southern European king as their ruler. Furthermore, as it can be read in William of Orange's ''Apology'', at the time it was popular in Europe to see Spaniards as a race "contaminated" by their contact with Jews and Moors, and Philip's fiscal voraciousness [[GreedyJew only confirmed this impression]]. To make things even worse, while Philip was an uncompromising Catholic, at the time the Netherlands had a sizable Protestant population he couldn't just leave be, and even the local Catholics were unmotivated to hold together with Philip because the common threat of the Ottoman Empire, which the Holy Roman Empire also struggled to contain, was still very faraway.

When friction between Philip and the local nobility started going up, Spanish governor of the Netherlands, Margaret of Parma, opted to show conciliation, siding with the locals against the founding of a [[UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition Spanish-style]] Dutch Inquisition that would probably be used to [[RealPolitik weed out opponents of the monarchy]]. However, the resistance didn't die out as she expected, and tensions only fired up when the Dutch nobility started suffering economically from the Second Northern War and the inflation caused by American silver. In response, Philip hardened his stance and replaced Margaret with the iron-handed UsefulNotes/FernandoAlvarezDeToledoYPimentel, Duke of Alba, who came with the double mission to control things by any means necessary and modernize and centralize the largely medieval local economy in order to refloat things. However, Álvarez's interventions were too much and too quickly at the moment, and his implacable repression of the rebellious elements only worsened things.

The event that is said to have set off the revolution is the public execution of the statesmen Lamoral, Count of Egmont and Philip de Montmorency, Count of Hoorn, on the main square in Brussels on June 5, 1568, after which William of Orange, best known as William the Silent became the leader of the rebellion, remaining as such for years thanks to his charisma and political intelligence until being murdered by a spy. Although the Duke of Alba answered crushing the first wave of the rebellion, he was eventually called back on the sight that the problem would not be solved the same way it was provoked. Philip tried luck the soft way by sending a diplomatic governor, Luis de Requesens, but failed negotiations coincided with a series of savage sackings by mutinied Habsburgian troops, unpaid by Spain's own economic problems, which enraged the local population and sent the war beyond its point of no return.

The War of Flanders had started, a bloody, multi-decade conflict that would manifest as multiple skirmishes, minor battles, and ''incredibly'' long and tedious sieges — many of which went nowhere.

The mismanagement of Alba and Requesens had set virtually all of the Netherlands against Habsburg rule, seven of them forming the United Provinces, so Philip sent now his half-brother UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria, who got some tentative diplomatic success by promising to withdraw with his forces - only to return to state of war due to John's erratic political plans, now with the problem of UsefulNotes/ElizabethI of England supporting the Dutch. However, John snatched a couple of devastating victories, after which infighting exploded between the rebels and an increasing number of them started changing sides. Austria's death passed command to UsefulNotes/AlexanderFarnese, Duke of Parma and Philip's best general, whose diplomatic and military offensive gradually brought most of the country under Spanish control - only to stop again with the disaster of the [[UsefulNotes/AngloSpanishWar15851604 Spanish Armada]] and the diversion of the UsefulNotes/FrenchWarsOfReligion, where Farnese was killed in action.

With the Spanish Empire now being simultenously at war against Dutch, French ''and'' British Protestants, the Dutch turned the tide and re-conquered most of the territory with their own military genius, William's son Maurice of Nassau. During more than a decade, unable to focus and depending on Habsburg governors of dubious abilities to keep the theater running, the Spanish could do little but fight for stalemates, time the Dutch used to organize themselves and reinforce their hopefully independent republic. At this point, a soon-to-be dead Philip decided to change tactics again and, reasoning the Dutch would be more open to accept a Central European ruler, he gave back the Netherlands to the Holy Roman Empire, helped because the latter had been functionally neutral during the whole war in order not to disturb their own Protestant population and due to his engagements with the Ottomans. The inheritor was the Holy Roman Archduke Albert, Philip's son-in-law, but the attempts to reach an agreement failed again due to the whole thing's obvious sketchiness.

Despite the Habsburg's ambition, the Spaniards became finally aware that trying to militarily re-conquer the Netherlands had stopped being feasable several decades ago, so they went instead for a policy of economic warfare, planting their forces around Dutch Republic to besiege it and engaging in intense commerce raiding to cut off its wings. The plan was initially successful, and it advanced even more with the death of Maurice of Nassau, but the colonial Dutch Empire allowed the Republic to resist, and when the Spanish Empire found itself busy with yet a new front, the War of Mantuan Succession, the campaign crashed. Full frontal war came again, with Spain returning unexpectedly stronger from Mantua under the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria, and the Dutch countering by allying with the France of UsefulNotes/CardinalRichelieu.

The clash against France and the Dutch Repubic started looking worse and worse for the House of Habsburg, especially because the two countries had managed to isolate the Netherlands from Spain by land and sea, and it only added to two new inner revolts against Philip IV's authority: that of the Portuguese, who had realized years earlier that being in the Habsburg team had basically been their ruin, and the Catalonians, by vaguely similar reasons. Ironically, at the other side of the war, Frederick Henry of Nassau also found himself in midst of an inter-provincial conflict. At the end, both sides accepted to negotiate for real, an in the 1648 Peace of Munster, the Eighty Year War finally ended, with all Spanish forces abandoning the former Habsburg Netherlands for good.

The Peace of Munster divided the Netherlands into two, the southern part belonging to Spain and the northern part belonging to the Dutch Republic, which would later become respectively the modern countries of Belgium and Netherlands. The fortunes of war, however, were unequal.

The Eighty Years War basically brought an end to Iberian supremacy in the Christian world. Portugal, soon free from the control of more Austrian overlords, managed to re-conquer gradually their territories in America and Africa, but most of their control of the Indian and the Pacific Ocean had been stolen by the now better-called Dutch Empire. The Spaniards were now safe of a 80-year nightmare that in hindsight was never even remotely worthy the effort, but their ultimate inability to recover the Netherlands left their reputation with a huge black eye, and the loss of their conjunction with the Portuguese Empire meant a global loss of influence as well. The Spanish Habsburg branch would die off soon by the hand of UsefulNotes/CharlesIIOfSpain, whose complicated succession ended up placing a French dynasty in its throne and further solidifying France as the next great power in Europe.

The Netherlands had ended up in Philip's hands after his father UsefulNotes/CharlesV divided his personal domain and restored the separation between the Spanish Empire and the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire. The Netherlands had been traditionally part of the Holy Roman Empire, but the latter's endemic infighting, increased by the recent triumph of the local German Protestantism, had convinced Charles that the province would be better as part of Spain, much more capable to control its similar proneness to turmoil and defend it militarily from France. ItSeemedLikeAGoodIdeaAtTheTime, especially because the Habsburg Netherlands were an incredibly rich land with an enviable position for trade, and aside from it being a great asset for the Spanish Empire and its global network, it was a priority to keep under Habsburg control.

However, relations between Philip and the Netherlands soon soured. The former wanted to extract taxes proportional to the richness of the land, while the latter resisted to this, both for obvious reasons and because they struggled to accept a remote, unknown southern European king as their ruler. Furthermore, as it can be read in William of Orange's ''Apology'', at the time it was popular in Europe to see Spaniards as a race "contaminated" by their contact with Jews and Moors, and Philip's fiscal voraciousness only confirmed this impression. To make things even worse, while Philip was an uncompromising Catholic, at the time the Netherlands had a sizable Protestant population he couldn't just leave be, and even the local Catholics were unmotivated to hold together with Philip because the common threat of the Ottoman Empire, which the Holy Roman Empire also struggled to contain, was still very faraway.

When friction between Philip and the local nobility started going up, Spanish governor of the Netherlands, Margaret of Parma, opted to show conciliation, siding with them against the founding of a [[UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition Spanish-style]] Dutch Inquisition that would probably be used to [[RealPolitik weed out opponents of the monarchy]]. However, the resistance didn't die out as she expected, and tensions only fired up when the Dutch nobility started suffering economically from the Second Northern War and the inflation caused by American silver. In response, Philip hardened his stance and replaced Margaret with the iron-handed UsefulNotes/FernandoAlvarezDeToledoYPimentel, Duke of Alba, who came with the double mission to control things by any means necessary and modernize and centralize the largely medieval local economy in order to refloat things. However, Álvarez's interventions were too much and too quickly at the moment, and his implacable repression of the rebellious elements only worsened things.

With the Spanish Empire now being simultenously at war against Dutch, French ''and'' British Protestants, the Dutch turned the tide and re-conquered most of the territory with their own military genius, William's son Maurice of Nassau. During more than a decade, unable to focus and depending on Habsburg governors of dubious abilities to keep the theater running, the Spanish could do little but fight for stalemates, time the Dutch used to organize themselves and reinforce their hopefully independent republic. At this point, although the Holy Roman Empire had been functionally neutral during the whole war in order not to disturb their own Protestant population and due to his engagements with the Ottomans, a soon-to-be-dead Philip II ceded them officially the Netherlands in order for those to be someyone else's problem. The Holy Roman Archduke Albert was much more open to make concessions the Dutch Republic than Philip had ever been, but this time the Dutch weren't, and for a change, the war continued.

The situation reached a balance by the arrival of another Spanish wunderchild, UsefulNotes/AmbrogioSpinola, managing to thwart Maurice and making things look promising for King Philip III, who was still backing economically the war effort even although Albert was technically the manin charge now. Both sides were utterly exhausted and needing for the negotiations to give out ''something'', so by this point the Twelve Year Truce, ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, was declared. Despite the respite, this would be an enormous achievement by the Dutch Republic, because the sole fact that the Habsburgs were signing a treaty with them meant they were now being implicitly given recognition as an entity.

Despite the Habsburg's ambition, the Spaniards became finally aware that trying to militarily re-conquer the Netherlands had stopped being feasable several decades ago, so they went instead for a policy of economic warfare, planting their forces around Dutch Republic to besiege it and engaging in intense commerce raiding to cut off its wings. The plan was initially successful, and it advanced even more with the death of Maurice of Nassau, but the colonial Dutch Empire allowed the Republic to resist, and when the Spanish Empire found itself busy with yet a new front, the War of Mantuan Succession, the campaign crashed. Full frontal war came again, with Spain returning unexpectedly stronger from Mantua under the BadassPreacher Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria, and the Dutch countering by allying with the France of UsefulNotes/CardinalRichelieu.

The clash against France and the Dutch Repubic started looking worse and worse for the House of Habsburg, especially because the two countries had managed to isolate the Netherlands from Spain by land and sea, and it only added to two new inner revolts against Philip IV: that of the Portuguese, who had realized that being in the Habsburg team had basically been their ruin, and the Catalonians, by vaguely similar reasons. Ironically, at the other side of the war, Frederick Henry of Nassau also found himself in midst of an inter-provincial conflict. At the end, both sides accepted to negotiate for real, an in the 1648 Peace of Munster, the Eighty Year War finally ended, with all Spanish forces abandoning the former Habsburg Netherlands for good.

The Peace of Munster divided the Netherlands into two, the part belonging to Spain and the part belonging to the Dutch Republic, which would roughly become respectively the modern countries of Belgium and Netherlands. The fortunes of war, however, were unequal.

The Eighty Years War basically brought an end to Iberian supremacy in the Christian world. Portugal, soon free from the control of more Austrian overlords, managed to re-conquer gradually their territories in America and Africa, but most of their control of the Indian and the Pacific Ocean had been stolen by the now better-called Dutch Empire. The Spaniards were now safe of a 80-year nightmare that in hindsight was never even remotely worthy the effort, but their ultimate inability to recover the Netherlands left their reputation with a huge black eye, and the loss of their conjuction with the Portuguese Empire meant a global loss of influence as well. The Spanish Habsburg branch would die off soon by the hand of UsefulNotes/CharlesIIOfSpain, whose complicated succession would solidify France as the next great power.

For their part, although the lands of the Netherlands had been left consistently devastated, sinking the life of everybody that wasn't part of the safer bourgouis middle and high class and/or had a hand in trade, their independent republic only came out of the war stronger, having become one of the lead powers in Europe thanks to the improbable chance to form alliances with multiple countries and spread their trade networks around the globe. Its prosperity marked the beginning of the Dutch Golden Age, replacing the similar - and dying - Spanish Golden Age.

In many ways, the war went into history as the Spanish Empire's equivalent to the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar, leading to the popular idiom ''España mi natura, Italia mi ventura, Flandes mi sepultura'' ("Spain (was) my birthplace, Italy my fortune, Flanders my grave"). Being the loser of the war greatly dented not only their dominance, but also their reputation, as the Dutch war propaganda basically codified the Spanish Black Legend for its further expansion and development by all factions interested for the next centuries.

However, relations between Philip and the Netherlands soon soured. The former wanted to extract taxes proportional to the richness of the land, while the latter resisted to this, both for obvious reasons and because they struggled to accept a remote, unknown southern European king as their ruler (at the time it was popular in Europe to see Spaniards as a race contaminated by their contact with Jews and Moors, an impression which Philip's fiscal voraciousness only confirmed). To make things even worse, while Philip was an uncompromising Catholic, at the time the Netherlands had a sizable Protestant population, and even the local Catholics were unmotivated to hold together with Philip because the common threat of the Ottoman Empire, which the Holy Roman Empire also struggled to contain, was still very faraway.

The Spanish governor of the Netherlands, Margaret of Parma, showed conciliation to the Protestants, siding with them against the founding of a [[UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition Spanish-style]] Dutch Inquisition that would probably be used to [[RealPolitik weed out opponents of the monarchy]], but the resistance didn't die out as she expected, and tensions only fired up when the local nobility started suffering economically from the Second Northern War and the inflation caused by American silver. In response, Philip hardened his stance and replaced Margaret with the iron-handed UsefulNotes/FernandoAlvarezDeToledoYPimentel, Duke of Alba, who came with the double mission to control things by any means necessary and modernize and centralize the local economy to refloat things. However, Álvarez's interventions were too much and too quickly at the moment, and his implacable repression of the nobility only worsened things.

The event that is said to have set off the revolution is the public execution of the statesmen Lamoral, Count of Egmont and Philip de Montmorency, Count of Hoorn, on the main square in Brussels on June 5, 1568, after which William the Silent became the leader of the rebellion, remaining as such for years thanks to his charisma and political intelligence until being murdered by a spy. Although the Duke of Alba answered crushing the first wave of rebels, he was eventually called back on the sight that the problem would not be solved the same way it was provoked. Philip tried luck the soft way by sending a diplomatic governor, Luis de Requesens, but failed negotiations coincided with a series of savage sackings by mutinied Spanish troops, unpaid by their own kingdom's economic problems, which sent the war beyond its point of no return.

The mismanagement of Alba and Requesens had set virtually all of the Netherlands against Habsburg rule, seven of them forming the United Provinces, so Philip sent now his half-brother UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria, who got some tentative diplomatic success by promising to withdraw with his forces - only to return to state of war due to John's erratic political plans, now with the problem of UsefulNotes/ElizabethI of England supporting the Dutch. However, John snatched a couple of devastating victories, after which infighting exploded between the rebels and an increasing number of them started changing sides. Austria's death gave command to UsefulNotes/AlexanderFarnese, Philip's best general, whose diplomatic and military offensive gradually brought most of the country under Spanish control - which again stopped with the disaster of the [[UsefulNotes/AngloSpanishWar15851604 Spanish Armada]] and the diversion of the UsefulNotes/FrenchWarsOfReligion, where Farnese was killed in action.

With the Spanish Empire now being simultenously at war against Dutch, French ''and'' British Protestants, the Dutch turned the tide and re-conquered most of the territory with their own military genius, William's son Maurice of Orange. During more than a decade, unable to focus and depending on Habsburg governors of dubious abilities to keep the theater running, the Spanish could do little but fight for stalemates, time the Dutch used to organize themselves and reinforce their independent republic. At this point, although the Holy Roman Empire had been functionally neutral during the whole war in order not to disturb their own Protestant population and due to his engagements with the Ottomans, a soon-to-be-dead Philip II ceded them officially the Netherlands in order for those to be anyone else's problem. The Holy Roman Archduke Albert was much more open to make concessions the Dutch Republic than Philip had ever been, but the Dutch weren't, and for a change, the war continued.

The situation reached a balance by the arrival of another Spanish wunderchild, UsefulNotes/AmbrogioSpinola, managing to thwart Maurice and making things look promising for King Philip III, who was still backing economically the war effort. Both sides were utterly exhausted and needing for the negotiations to give out ''something'', so by this point the Twelve Year Truce, ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, was declared. Despite the respite, this would be an enormous achievement by the Dutch Republic, because they were now being implicitly given recognition

The peace lasted until 1619 when the UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar broke out, pitting the Holy Roman Empire against more or less everybody in Europe, and this returned the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Empire to opposition as the Dutch intervened against the Holy Romans. The truce also finished in 1621, point at which both the Archduke Albert and Spinola wanted to negotiate again with Maurice and end the damn war, but the truce had seriously disadvantaged the Spanish Empire in many fields around the world (for instance, weakening their Portuguese subjects in UsefulNotes/TheDutchPortugueseWar) and many voices called for retribution. To further muddle things, Albert died shortly after, returning the Netherlands now to Philip IV, whose big man the Count-Duke of Olivares declared war again.

Despite the Habsburg's ambition, the Spaniards became finally aware that trying to militarily re-conquer the Netherlands had stopped being feasable several decades ago, so they went instead for a policy of economic warfare, planting their forces around Dutch Republic to besiege it and engaging in intense commerce raiding to cut off its wings. The plan was initially successful, and it advanced even more with the death of Maurice of Nassau, but the colonial Dutch Empire allowed the Republic to resist, and when the Spanish Empire found itself busy with yet a new front, the War of Mantuan Succession, it came to nothing. Full frontal war came again, with Spain returning stronger from Mantua under the BadassPreacher Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria, and the Dutch countering by allying with the France of UsefulNotes/CardinalRichelieu.

The clash aainst France and the Dutch Repubic started looking worse and worse for the Habsburg, especially because the two countries managed to isolate the Netherlands from Spain by land and sea, and it only added to two new inner revolts against Philip IV: that of the Portuguese, who had realized that being in the team of the Habsburg had basically been their ruin, and the Catalonians, by vaguely similar reasons. Ironically, at the other side of the war, Frederick Henry of Nassau also found himself in midst of an inter-provincial conflict. At the end, both sides accepted to negotiate for real, an in the 1648 Peace of Munster, the Eighty Year War finally ended, with all Spanish forces abandoning the former Habsburg Netherlands for good.

The Eighty Years War basically brought an end to Iberian supremacy in the Christian world. Portugal, soon free from the control of more Austrian overlords, managed to re-conquer gradually their territories in America and Africa, but most of their control of the Indian and the Pacific Ocean had been stolen by the now better-called Dutch Empire. The Spaniards were now safe of a 80-year nightmare that in hindsight was never even remotely worthy the effort, but their ultimate inability to recover the Netherlands left their reputation with a huge black eye, and the loss of their conjuction with the Portuguese Empire meant a global loss of influence as well. The Spanish Habsburg branch would die off soon by the hand of UsefulNotes/CharlesIIOfSpain.

Website/TheOtherWiki has a incredibly extensive and more specific article on the Eighty Years War. See also the UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar and UsefulNotes/TheDutchPortugueseWar.

The Netherlands had ended up in Philip's hands after his father UsefulNotes/CharlesV divided his personal domain and restored the separation between the Spanish Empire and the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire. The Netherlands had been traditionally part of the Holy Roman Empire, but the latter's endemic infighting, increased by the recent triumph of the local German Protestantism, had convinced Charles that the province would be better as part of Spain, much more capacited to control its inner turmoil and defend it militarily from France. ItSeemedLikeAGoodIdeaAtTheTime, especially because the Habsburg Netherlands were an incredibly rich land with an enviable position for trade, and aside from it being a great asset for the Spanish Empire and its global network, it was a priority to defend and keep under Habsburg control.

The event that is said to have set off the revolution is the public execution of the statesmen Lamoral, Count of Egmont and Philip de Montmorency, Count of Hoorn, on the main square in Brussels on June 5, 1568, after which William the Silent became the leader of the rebellion, remaining as such for years thanks to his charisma and political intelligence until being murdered by a spy. Although the Duke of Alba answered crushing the first wave of rebels, he was eventually called back on the sight that he would solve nothing. Philip tried luck the soft way by sending a diplomatic governor, Luis de Requesens, but failed negotiations coincided with a series of savage sackings by mutinied Spanish troops, unpaid by their own kingdom's economic state, which sent the war beyond its point of no return.

The situation reached a balance by the arrival of another Spanish wunderchild, UsefulNotes/AmbrogioDeSpinola, managing to thwart Maurice and making things look promising for King Philip III, who was still backing economically the war effort. Both sides were utterly exhausted and needing for the negotiations to give out ''something'', so by this point the Twelve Year Truce, ExactlyWhatItSaysInTheTin, was declared. Despite the respite, this would be an enormous achievement by the Dutch Republic, because they were now being implicitly given recognition

!!Restart of the war and end
The peace lasted until 1619 when the UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar broke out, returning the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Empire to opposition as the Dutch intervened. With the resolution of the Thirty Years' War, the Dutch gained French allies who aided them in a defense against the Spanish. With the Spanish forces spread far and thin they eventually were cut off from home. Peace negotiations began January 1646 which eventually lead to a peace agreement.

The war was followed by a slight upheaval of the Dutch Republic's political system. The Spanish Empire's reputation was greatly hurt by the loss, but persevered nonetheless. The war also had little effect on the Spanish-Portuguese war.

The Eighty Years' War, or the Dutch War of Independence (1568-1648), was a war fought, as the name suggests, over the course of eighty years and for the independence of the [[LaResistance Dutch Republic]] (a precursor to the modern-day Netherlands) against the [[TheEmpire the western/'Spanish' Habsburg realms]] led mainly by UsefulNotes/PhilipII. The leaders of the rebellion cited the strict control of the monarchy over the people as their main incentive to rebel, mainly in terms such as freedom of religion and thought and the matter of taxation. [[RealPolitik More cynically-minded observers generally put the taxes first]].

The event that is said to have set off the revolution is the public execution of the statesmen Lamoral, Count of Egmont and Philip de Montmorency, Count of Hoorn, on the main square in Brussels on June 5, 1568. The two were executed for their resistence to the founding of [[UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition a Castilian-style Dutch Inquisition]] that would probably [[RealPolitik be used to weed out opponents of the monarchy]] much as in Castile and Aragon. William the Silent then became the leader of the rebellion and managed to escape execution using charisma and political intelligence until he could go into hiding, though he was later assassinated by a spy.

Subsequently, the Dutch revolt would break out in 1567 leading to the rise of William of Orange. Under his command hostilities between the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Habsburg realms. The conflict would manifest as multiple skirmishes, minor battles, and ''incredibly'' long and tedious sieges — many of which went nowhere.

The Dutch Republic was finally given some recognition when the two belligerents contracted the Twelve Years' Truce in 1609. The peace lasted until 1619 when the UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar broke out, returning the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Empire to opposition as the Dutch intervened. With the resolution of the Thirty Years' War, the Dutch gained French allies who aided them in a defense against the Spanish. With the Spanish forces spread far and thin they eventually were cut off from home. Peace negotiations began January 1646 which eventually lead to a peace agreement.

The war was followed by a slight upheaval of the Dutch Republic's political system. The Spanish Empire's reputation was greatly hurt by the loss, but persevered nonetheless. The war also had little effect on the Spanish-Portuguese war.

Wiki/TheOtherWiki has a incredibly extensive and more specific article on the Eighty Years War. See also the UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar and UsefulNotes/TheDutchPortugueseWar.

The Eighty Years' War, or the Dutch War of Independence (1568-1648), was a war fought, as the name suggests, over the course of eighty years and for the independence of the [[LaResistance Dutch Republic]] (a precursor to the modern-day Netherlands) against the [[TheEmpire the western/'Spanish' Habsburg realms]]. The leaders of the rebellion cited the strict control of the monarchy over the people as their main incentive to rebel, mainly in terms such as freedom of religion and thought and the matter of taxation. [[RealPolitik More cynically-minded observers generally put the taxes first]].

Subsequently, the Dutch revolt would break out in 1567 leading to the rise of William of Orange. Under his command hostilities between the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Habsburg realms. The conflict would manifest as multiple skirmishes, minor battles, and ''incredibly'' long and tedious sieges — most of which went nowhere.

* The setting of ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresIII'' includes this period and has the Spanish and Dutch as playable factions, although it is mostlycentered around the conquest and colonization of the Americas.

* The titular character in ''Literature/{{Alatriste}}'' is a Spanish veteran of the 80 Years War. The war is brought to the centerfront in the third book of the series, ''The Sun over Breda''.

The Eighty Years' War or the Dutch War of Independence (1568-1648), was a war fought as the name suggests, over the course of eighty years and for the independence of the [[LaResistance Dutch Republic]] (a precursor to modern day Netherlands) against the [[TheEmpire the western/'Spanish' Habsburg realms]]. The leaders of the rebellion cited the strict control of the monarchy over the people as their main incentive to rebel, mainly in terms such as freedom of religion, thought and the matter of taxation. [[RealPolitik More cynically-minded observers generally put the taxes first]].

Subsequently, the Dutch revolt would break out in 1567 leading to the rise of William of Orange. Under his command hostilities between the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Habsburg realms. The conflict would manifest as multiple skirmishes, minor battles, ''incredibly'' long and tedious sieges - most of which went nowhere.

The Dutch Republic was finally given some recognition when the two belligerents contracted the Twelve Years' Truce in 1609. The peace lasted until 1619 when the UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar broke out, returning the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Empire to opposition as the Dutch intervened. With the resolution of the Thirty Years' War, the Dutch gained French allies who aided them in a defense against the Spanish. With the Spanish forces spread far and thin they eventually were cut off from the Dutch. Peace negotiations began January 1646 which eventually lead to a peace agreement.