History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce, 1584

The assassination of William the Silent leaves the Dutch rebellion leaderless at its most vulnerable moment. Spanish forces mass for the kill. The Catholic powers of Europe watch hungrily. And into this void steps the dead man's youngest son, Maurice of Nassau, barely twenty-one years old and tasked with saving a nation that may not survive the year. Motley's Pulitzer-winning narrative captures the United Provinces at their existential tipping point: provincial factions squabble while the Inquisition's armies gather, Protestant and Catholic ideologies clash with continent-wide implications, and the dream of Dutch independence hangs by a thread. This is history written as drama, tracing how a scattered collection of coastal territories somehow forged themselves into a nation capable of defying the greatest empire of the age. For readers who understand that the stories of how nations are born matter as much as the nations themselves.