Why Did The Dutch Rebel Against The Spanish In 1567?? High taxation unemployment and Calvinist fears of Catholic persecution aroused dangerous opposition which the Duke of Alba came to crush (1567) with a reign of terror and punitive taxation. Open revolt led by William I (the Silent) followed.
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DUTCH REVOLT (1568 – 1648) DUTCH REVOLT (1568–1648). The revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish rule, also known as the Eighty Years' War, is traditionally said to have begun in June 1568, when the Spanish executed Counts Egmont and Horne in Brussels. The tensions that led to open revolt, however, had much earlier origins.
Margaret's troops had been successfully besieging Calvinist strongholds and on 13 March 1567 defeated the rebel troops at the Battle of Oosterweel. By May 1567 the Netherlands were back under the control of the regent. The next month Philip sent his Spanish army, under the leadership of the duke of Alba, to the Netherlands.
The Spanish successfully captured rebel cities such as Haarlem and Brill in 1573. The rebels were only able to hold out by flooding large areas in advance of the Spanish army. The floods kept the Spanish at bay, foiling their siege of Leiden in 1574. The costs of this protracted war in the Netherlands were astronomical.
The revolt itself is best viewed as a series of related uprisings and wars that, taken together, constitute the Dutch Revolt. The eventual outcome of the revolt was decided for the most part by 1609, when the combatants agreed to the Twelve Years' Truce, but the war between the United Provinces of the Netherlands...
The various provinces of the Low Countries (Netherlands) were never really united into a distinct country prior to the late sixteenth century. They were slowly and loosely brought under the control of the dukes of Burgundy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries but were never more than a collection of counties and duchies.
Charles V's son Philip II of Spain (ruled 1556 – 1598) continued his father's policies, in particular suppressing heresy, but whereas the Ghent -born Charles V was a fairly popular figure, the Netherlanders always viewed the Spanish-born Philip as a foreigner.
By 1569, it seemed that revolt in the Netherlands had been snuffed out and had little chance of reigniting. Alba set about instituting Philip's plans and policies for the Netherlands, including the ecclesiastical reforms.
The Spanish troop mutinies of 1576, more than anything else, brought the various provinces of the Low Countries together in common cause. When mutinous troops sacked the royalist town of Aalst, even Catholics loyal to Philip looked for some kind of common defensive arrangement.
With William of Orange out of the picture, Parma began his campaign to reconquer the Netherlands. Ghent surrendered to Parma's army on 17 September 1584 and Brussels capitulated on 10 March 1585. The search for foreign help in the face of what was amounting to a Spanish reconquest brought the States-General's gaze, once again, to focus on England.
The Twelve Years' Truce worked more to the advantage of the Dutch than to that of the Spanish. The Dutch, freed of the need to fight an expensive war with Spain, were able to build up a powerful economy.
Darby, Graham, ed. The Origins and Development of the Dutch Revolt. London, 2001.