The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 18: 1572
The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 18: 1572
1572 was the year the Dutch rebellion stopped being a series of local protests and became a revolution. In this volume, John Lothrop Motley chronicles the extraordinary moment when cities across Holland and Zeeland rose simultaneously against Spanish rule, renouncing their allegiance to a monarch who had promised them prosperity and delivered only blood. Count Louis of Nassau's capture of Mons in May 1572 ignited a chain reaction: Delft, Gouda, Hoorn, Enkhuizen, and dozens of other municipalities expelled their Spanish garrisons, hoisted the orange banner, and declared for the Prince of William the Silent. The Duke of Alva responded with the terror his name had long promised, but this time the rebels did not scatter. They fought. Motley's narrative pulses with the drama of that annus mirabilis: the desperate appeals for aid sent to foreign courts, the brutal reprisals that only hardened resistance, and the fragile, audacious hope that a handful of small provinces might actually defeat the greatest empire in Europe. This is history written as tragedy and epic, capturing the instant when a people decided that death was preferable to submission.
