Religious Persecution Begins
FanWiki
The Beeldenstorm-"The Wonder Year": 1566
1566 saw the convergence of a number of slumbering tensions. A broad
resistance against the harshness of the central government’s heresy laws
was joined by the nobility’s and political elites’ profound discontent
with King Philip II’s
centralizing politics. This combination created the unique political and
religious climate that would characterize the Wonderyear.
The traditional starting point is 5 April 1566, when over 200 armed
members of the confederate lesser nobility organized a march on Brussels
and presented governess Margaret of Parma with a petition to abolish
the Inquisition and suspend the edicts against heresy. The overall tone
of the text was moderate and loyal, but the action in itself was
absolutely revolutionary.
---About 5,500 churches and monasteries were attacked, and images and statues of the “saints” were destroyed. In a number of places, the insurgents sacked the houses and castles of the nobility and destroyed records of indebtednesses and lease records.
One of the gangs went to the ‘rich and very powerful Abbey of the Dunes
(…) where they broke the sacrament house made of marble, touchstone and
alabaster, which had been commissioned by the previous abbot [Robert II Leclercq]
The sacrament house that was donated by Andries Seys in Ghent befell the same fate.
Karel van Mander gives many examples of paintings that he ranked among
the most artful creations of the mid-sixteenth century that were
‘smashed’.
Such was the case with a large altarpiece painted by Pieter Aertsen for
a church in Warmenhuizen, near Alkmaar in Holland. Van Mander writes
that a prominent lady from Alkmaar tried to prevent the triptych’s
destruction by offering 100 pounds, but ‘just when it was taken out of
the church to hand it over to her, the peasants furiously threw
themselves on it and annihilated the beautiful art’.
......sermon was delivered on 10 August by Sebastiaan Matte in Steenvoorde
(Flanders). Matte urged the crowd to break the images and other
religious objects in the nearby convent of Saint Lawrence, which was
ritually celebrating its patron saint’s day with a procession.....
in the week following Matte’s sermon, many sacred places in the
Westkwartier in the south-west of the County of Flanders were attacked
by wandering bands of iconoclasts under the guidance of Calvinist
preachers.
Sergiusz Michalski spoke of an ‘iconoclastic psychosis’ in the Low
Countries, emphasizing how exceptional it was from a European point of
view. Shouting ‘the king drinks!’ to a priest consuming the consecrated wine, comparing organ music to pastoral musettes and holding mock trials against images are all clear indications of this.
28 October 1566, Margaret of Parma again sent a letter to Leuven and
sixteen other cities in the Low Countries, which she referred to as villes bonnes, i.e. those who had remained loyal to the King and the Catholic religion during the troubles, as opposed to les villes mauvaises."
Brill
COUNCIL OF BLOOD: Reign of Terror
"Instituted on 9 September 1567 by Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba, 
governor-general of the Habsburg Netherlands on the orders of Philip II of Spain
to punish the ringleaders of the recent political and religious
troubles in the Netherlands. Due to the many death sentences pronounced
by the tribunal, it also became known as the Council of Blood.
A League of Nobles
(mostly members of the lower nobility) protested the severity of the
persecution of heretics with a petition to the Regent, who conceded the
demands temporarily.
Almost nine thousand people, from all levels of society, were convicted of heresy or treason.
The Blood Council's reign of terror saw it condemn thousands of people to death without due process and drive the most powerful Dutchmen (including William of Orange) into exile while seizing their property.
Things got even worse when Alba decided to impose a permanent 10% sales
tax on the already weary Dutch public; the Council of Troubles
imprisoned and tortured local officials who were reluctant to impose the new tax."
wiki
Spanish King's Ban on William of Orange
"The principal reasons assigned for issuing the ban against Orange were faithlessness to
the King,, heresy, and conspiracies to frustrate the King's efforts to reestablish peace
in the country. The preamble of the ban was filled with insulting epithets stigmatizing
Orange as "tyrant," "pest of Christendom," "enemy of the human race," "Cain," and "Judas
Iscariot." After these and similar explosions of rage, followed the ban:
"Orange is declared a traitor. His possessions are forfeited. It shall be thehighest disgrace, and shall involve extreme penalties, for any one to trade with him, have communication with him, speak with him, visit or harbor him, give him food or drink, or assist him even in his direst need. Within a month his honors and rights as a noble, his goods, and his life, shall be forfeited. Every friend and associate shall forsake him. He is proscribed, and every one shall treat him as an outlaw, upon whose head a price has been set. Whoever shall deliver him living or dead, be he stranger or native, and whoever shall slay him will receive, when the deed is accomplished, the sum of twenty-five thousand crowns in gold for himself or for his family, in ready money, or its equivalent in land, as he may choose. If he has committed even the most heinous of crimes at any previous time he shall be pardoned, and if he is not of noble rank, he shall be ennobled as a reward for his courage."
A cry of indignation rang through the Netherlands when this infamous ban was made public.
The provinces openly expressed their detestation of this latest outrage by the King, and
provided Orange with a bodyguard."
HeritageHistory
Assasination of William of Orange [7/10/1584]
"The Prince was visiting in Antwerp, an assault upon his
life was planned by one Caspar 
Anastro, a local merchant who was on the verge of
bankruptcy. Anastro had made a contract with Philip, by the terms of which he was to
receive eight thousand ducats and the cross of Santiago for the assassination. He was too
cowardly to commit the murder himself; and after vainly trying to induce his bookkeeper,
Antonio
di Venero, to do it, they found an easy tool for the accomplishment of the dastardly work
in one John Jauregui, a fanatical Biscayan servant of his. The matter of compensation was
arranged without any difficulty, for Jauregui's fanaticism was a sufficient motive of
itself to urge him to commit the murder. Besides this, Anton Zimmerman, a Dominican friar,
to whom the young man confided his purpose, approved of it. It was with an easy
conscience, therefore, that Jauregui made his preparations. As Orange one day entered the
antechamber after dinner with his guests, Jauregui advanced with a petition in his hand,
which he offered the Prince, and as he did so drew a pistol and fired. The ball pierced
the Prince's neck under the right ear, and passing through the roof of his mouth, came out
through his left cheek."
HeritageHistory
The Sea Beggars
"A group of desperadoes and
pirates known as the
Watergeuzen
("Beggars of the Sea").
The
Watergeuzen: The origin of the name geuzen
(singular geus, from the French gueux
meaning ragged tramp or beggar) is unclear,
---but it is often
attributed to the councillor Charles Berlaymont (c.
1510-1578), who is
reputed
to have made, in French, a sarcastic remark about the
Dutch rebels to
Governess
Margaretha
van Parma in 1566: Vous n'avez pas à avoir peur
d'eux, Madame, ce
ne sont que des gueux (You do not have to be afraid
of them, Milady, they are only ragged
beggars).
---When war broke out, the name geus or
specifically watergeus
referred to a member of irregular Dutch rebel forces.
The Watergeuzen
originally
included adventurers, smugglers, and pirates who
attacked vessels of
almost any
nation as well as fishing boats, villages, and towns
on the southern
coast of
the Dutch Provinces.
---1569
William of Orange
issued
letters of marque to the Watergeuzen,
making official
privateers of
those who until then had been criminal pirates. Under
the command of a
succession of daring and reckless leaders, William of
Orange formed the
Sea
Beggars into an effective and organized fighting force
against Spain.
---On 1 April 1572, six hundred Sea Beggars seized by surprise the small
harbor city of Brill. It turned out to be a turning point in the history
of the Netherlands, the beginning of what
later nationalist historians have coined the "heroic phase of the Dutch Revolt," with its epic sieges of Haarlem, Alkmaar, and Leiden. The Sea Beggars were thus inextricably bound up with the genesis of the Dutch nation.
--- The best
known of Sea
Beggars’ leaders
was the Belgian William II van der Marck,
Baron of Lumey (1542-1578). An anti-Spanish rebel of
the first hour,
Lumey
was
banned and his properties seized in the late 1560s. He
soon returned to
the Low
Countries and became admiral of the Sea Beggars.
Having taken Brielle
on 1 April
1572, he conquered South Holland and took control of
North Holland and
Zeeland.
In June 1572, he was appointed stadhouder
of Holland and consequently Captain General, i.e.
military Commander in
Chief
of the conquered territories. The resentful and
ruthless Lumey was
accused of
more than one atrocity, including the execution,
without trial, in July
1572 of
the so-called "martyrs
of
Gorcum," nineteen Dutch Roman Catholic
monks
and
priests, who eventually secured sainthood.
---In
1576 Lumey's
career
came to an end. Considered too radical, he was banned
from the
Netherlands by
the States of Holland, and went back to his homeland,
the Bishopric of
Liège,
where he died in May 1578.
 |
| Hugo de Groot |
---In 1604 the famous Dutch captain Jakob
van
Heemskerck (1567-1607)
attacked and
plundered the
Portuguese carrack
Santa Catharina,
which allowed the Dutch Republic to
make a tremendous catch, estimated to be three million
florins. To
justify this
act of pure piracy, the cunning and legal-minded Dutch
authorities
turned to
their well-respected and influential jurist, Hugo de
Groot
(1583-1645),
also
known as Grotius. One of the pioneering natural rights
theorists of the
late
16th and early 17th centuries, Grotius
defined natural law as a
perceptive
judgement in which things are good or bad by their own
nature. This was
a break
from Calvinist ideal, in that God was no longer the
only source of
ethical
qualities. These things that were by themselves good
were associated
with the
nature of man."
Pirates&Privateers /Encyclopedia.com
The Dunkirkers
"Dunkirkers or Dunkirk Privateers, were commerce raiders in the service of the Spanish Monarchy. They were also part of the Dunkirk fleet, which consequently was a part of the Spanish Monarchy's Flemish fleet (Armada de Flandes). The Dunkirkers operated from the ports of the Flemish coast: Nieuwpoort, Ostend, and in particular Dunkirk. Throughout the Eighty Years' War, the fleet of the Dutch Republic repeatedly tried to destroy the 
Dunkirkers.
After 1621 the Dunkirkers captured on average 229 merchantmen and fishing
vessels per year from the Dutch. During this period they took about
sixty English vessels each year.
The Dutch declared the Dunkirk privateers pirates in 1587; captains of
Dutch naval vessels had to swear an oath that they would throw or beat
all prisoners from Dunkirk warships into the sea (euphemistically known
as voetenspoelen, "washing the feet").
One of the most successful raiders of this period was Jacob Collaert.
It was not until October 1646, when the French captured Dunkirk with
Dutch naval support, that the danger from the privateers was greatly
reduced. In 1652, Spanish forces recaptured the city and the Dunkirkers
once again became a major threat. The Dunkirkers wiped out English
trade after England resumed hostilities against Spain in 1654, before
Dunkirk was captured by a Franco-English force in 1658."
Fandom
Dutch Sailor "Turned Turk" Pirate
"Jan Janszoon van Haarlem, alias Murat Reis (c. 1570 – c. 1641) was perhaps the most 
notorious of the Barbary pirates....Born in Haarlem, Holland....he appears on the scene as
a privateer, sailing from his home port of Haarlem to harass Spanish
shipping during the Eighty Years’ War.....In 1618, however, shipwrecked in
Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, he found himself captive of
Soliman Reys a fellow Dutchman who had turned to piracy and had risen to
command a vast fleet from the Barbary “capital” of Algiers.
Janszoon “turned Turk”. Converting to
Islam, he adopted the name Murat Reis.... he relocated to Salé, in what is now Morocco, he became a
full-fledged Barbary corsair.
---His fleet became known as the “Sale Rovers” and his corsair compatriots
elected Jan, now known as Murat, as grand admiral of the fleet.
--- Two corsair ships appeared on the horizon of the Dutch coastal town of
Veere, flying the Moroccan flag. The ships received a warm welcome by
the Dutch as part of their 1610 treaty of friendship with Morocco. Instead of convincing him to stay, many young Dutchmen instead
volunteered to join his crew as the corsairs set off to return to the
Maghreb.
---He captured the island of Lundy in
the Bristol Channel in 1627, holding it for five years and using it as a
base for raiding expeditions. He held his prisoners on Lundy before
sending them on to the slave markets of Algiers.
---It was in the spring of 1631, off the
southern coast of Ireland, that Reis seized a ship 
under the command of a
man named John Hackett. In return for his freedom, Hackett would guide
Reis and his ships to Baltimore. There, in the early morning hours of
June 20th, Reis invaded and captured more than 100 men, women and children. Hackett was later hanged for his treachery.
From Sale he raided Spanish, Italian, and French islands in the
Mediterranean, selling slaves and looted merchandise in Tunis where he
befriended the ruler of Algiers. His crew of Dutch, Andalusian, Moorish,
and Turkish corsairs fought the Venetians in Crete and Cyprus until
they met their match in an ambush by the crusader knights of Malta in
1635. After his capture, Murat Reis endured torture in the prisons of Malta
for five long years. But his friends in the Maghreb did not abandon him.
In 1640, a massive corsair fleet appeared off the fortified coast of
Malta and attacked the crusader stronghold. Murat’s corsair compatriots
rescued him.
---Morocco’s sultan appointed him the governor of the coastal town of
Oualidia on the Safi coastline. Later that same year, a Dutch consul
arrived in Morocco, bringing along Murat’s estranged Dutch daughter.
Murat received them after earning the honor of representing the Moroccan
sultan in the diplomatic talks.
---His Moorish-Dutch descendants would carry the name “Van Salee” (of Sale)
for centuries after his passing. Two of his sons emigrated to New
Amsterdam, current-day New York, and are the ancestors of prominent Americans such as the Vanderbilt family, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and Humphrey Bogart."
AlgiersInn/MoroccoWorldNews
