The Holland towns and the Dutch-Spanish conflict, 1621-1648

Abstract

Although the province of Holland surpassed by far the other six Dutch provinces in wealth and population during the Golden Age, there were nevertheless major political episodes in which Holland failed to exercise effective leadership or exert decisive influence. Indeed, it could even occur that a clear majority of the voting members of the province of Holland, with Amsterdam, the Republic's richest and largest city taking the lead, could fail to get its way when the other provinces were split three against three. One highly instructive such episode was the prolonged political battle within the Republic that continued through most of the second Dutch-Spanish war of 1621-1648 over whether or not to accept Spanish proposals for a truce or peace. Although this subject is not much discussed or very familiar today, for a quarter of a century during the Golden Age, it loomed as the most important issue in Dutch life second only to the rivalry between the Counter-Remonstrant and Remonstrant factions. Over many years it was referred to in the deliberations of the Dutch provincial assemblies and city administrations simply as the groote saecke or the groote werck to mark it off from the mass of less significant questions. The problem for the historian is that almost all of the relevant secret resolutions of the States of Holland have been lost. To reconstruct the story, he must rely, for the most part, on the records of the various city councils. While Dutch-Spanish negotiations proceeded almost without break in the years 1621-1628, through various intermediaries, it was only in the winter of 1628-1629, that Philip IV fmally dropped his insistence that the Dutch Republic must make a number of concessions before he would accept a truce. In January 1629, the Spanish king signed a secret authorization for the Archduchess Isabella, governess of the Southern Netherlands, empowering her to conclude a truce of long duration, on the lines of that of 1609, without requiring any concession by the Dutch that did not figure in the earlier truce, and in February, he also authorized her, should there be any difficulty in renewing the terms of 1609, to agree to a simple armi-