William the Silent or William the Taciturn (;John Whitehead Historian, Oxford, Oriel College, weblog page about William I Once I was a clever boy 24 April 153310 July 1584), more commonly known in the Netherlands as William of Orange () and in the Dutch national anthem as William of Nassau (), was the leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish Habsburgs that set off the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) and resulted in the formal independence of the United Provinces in 1648. Born into the House of Nassau, he became Prince of Orange in 1544 and is thereby the founder of the Orange-Nassau branch and the ancestor of the monarchy of the Netherlands.
A wealthy nobleman, William originally served the Habsburgs as a member of the court of Margaret of Parma, governor of the Spanish Netherlands. Unhappy with the centralisation of political power away from the local estates and with the Spanish persecution of Dutch Protestants, William joined the Dutch uprising and turned against his former masters. The most influential and politically capable of the rebels, he led the Dutch to several successes in the fight against the Spanish. Declared an outlaw by the Spanish king in 1580, he was assassinated by Balthasar Gérard in Delft in 1584.
In modern Dutch society, William is widely considered a heroic figure and the principal founding father of the Netherlands. He is also known as Father of the Fatherland (Latin: Pater Patriae; Dutch: Vader des Vaderlands).
Early life and education William was born on 24 April 1533 at Dillenburg Castle in the County of Nassau-Dillenburg, in the Holy Roman Empire (now in Hesse, German Federal Republic). He was the eldest son of Count William I of Nassau-Siegen and his second wife, Countess Juliana of Stolberg. William's father had one surviving daughter by his previous marriage to Walburga of Egmont, and his mother had four surviving children by her previous marriage to Philipp II, Count of Hanau-Münzenberg. His parents had twelve children together, of whom William was the eldest; he had four younger brothers and seven younger sisters. The family was religiously devout and William was raised a Lutheran.
In 1544, William's agnatic (patrilineal) first cousin, René of Chalon, Prince of Orange, died in the siege of St Dizier, childless. In his testament, René of Chalon named William the heir to all his estates and titles, including that of Prince of Orange, on the condition that he receive a Roman Catholic education. William's father acquiesced to this condition on behalf of his 11-year-old son, and this was the founding of the House of Orange-Nassau. Besides the Principality of Orange (located today in France) and significant lands in Germany, William also inherited vast estates in the Low Countries (present-day Netherlands and Belgium) from his cousin. Because of William's young age, Emperor Charles V, who was the overlord of most of these estates, served as regent until William was old enough to rule them himself.
William received his Catholic education in the Low Countries, first at his family's estate in Breda and later in Brussels under the supervision of the Emperor's sister Mary of Hungary, governor of the Habsburg Netherlands (Seventeen Provinces). In Brussels, he was taught foreign languages and received a military and diplomatic educationWedgwood (1944) p. 29. under the direction of Jérôme Perrenot de Champagney, brother of Cardinal de Granvelle.
On 6 July 1551, William married Anna, daughter and heir of Maximiliaan van Egmond, an important Dutch nobleman, a match that had been secured by Charles V. Anna's father had died in 1548, and therefore William became Lord of Egmond and Count of Buren upon his wedding day. The marriage was a happy one and produced three children, one of whom died in infancy. Anna died on 24 March 1558, aged 25, leaving William much grieved.
Career
Imperial favourite Being a ward of Charles V and having received his education under the tutelage of the Emperor's sister Mary, William came under the particular attention of the imperial family, and became a favourite. He was appointed captain in the cavalry in 1551 and received rapid promotion thereafter, becoming commander of one of the Emperor's armies at the age of 22. This was in 1555, when Charles sent him to Bayonne with an army of 20,000 to take the city in a siege from the French. William was also made a member of the Council of State, the highest political advisory council in the Netherlands.As of 1549, the Low Countries, also known as the "Seventeen Provinces" comprised the present-day Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of northern France and Western Germany. It was in November of the same year (1555) that the gout-afflicted Emperor Charles leaned on William's shoulder during the ceremony when he abdicated the Low Countries in favour of his son, Philip II of Spain.J. Thorold Rogers, The Story of Nations: Holland. London, 1889; Romein, J., and Romein-Verschoor, A. Erflaters van onze beschaving. Amsterdam 1938–1940, p. 150. (Dutch, at DBNL.org). William was also selected to carry the insignia of the Holy Roman Empire to Charles's brother Ferdinand, when Charles resigned the imperial crown in 1556 and was one of the Spanish signatories for the April 1559 Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis.
In 1559, Philip II appointed William stadtholder (governor) of the provinces of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, thereby greatly increasing his political power.Wedgwood (1944) p. 34. A stadtholdership over Franche-Comté followed in 1561.
From politician to rebel
Although he never directly opposed the Spanish king, William soon became one of the most prominent members of the opposition in the Council of State, together with Philip de Montmorency, Count of Hoorn, and Lamoral, Count of Egmont. They were mainly seeking more political power for themselves against the de facto government of Count Berlaymont, Granvelle and Viglius of Aytta, but also for the Dutch nobility and, ostensibly, for the Estates, and complained that too many Spaniards were involved in governing the Netherlands. William was also dissatisfied with the increasing persecution of Protestants in the Netherlands. Brought up as a Lutheran and later a Catholic, William was very religious but was still a proponent of freedom of religion for all people. The activity of the Inquisition in the Netherlands, directed by Cardinal Granvelle, prime minister to the new governor Margaret of Parma (1522–1583, natural half-sister to Philip II), increased opposition to Spanish rule among the then mostly Catholic population of the Netherlands. Lastly, the opposition wished to see an end to the presence of Spanish troops.
According to the Apology, William's letter of justification, which was published and read to the States General in December 1580, his resolve to expel the Spaniards from the Netherlands had originated when, in the summer of 1559, he and the Duke of Alba had been sent to France as hostages for the proper fulfilment of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis following the Hispano-French war. During his stay in Paris, on a hunting trip to the Bois de Vincennes, King Henry II of France started to discuss with William a secret understanding between Philip II and himself aimed at the violent extermination of Protestantism in France, the Netherlands "and the entire Christian world".See William of Orange, Apologie contre l'édit de proscription publié en 1580 par Philippe II, Roi d'Espagne, ed. A. Lacroix (Brussels, 1858), pp. 87–89 (French version); Apologie, ofte Verantwoordinghe, ed. C. A. Mees (Antwerpen, 1923), pp. 48–50 (Dutch version); Pontus Payen, Mémoires, I, ed. A. Henne (Brussels, 1860), pp. 6–9. The understanding was being negotiated by Alba, and Henry had assumed, incorrectly, that William was aware of it. At the time, William did not contradict the king's assumption, but he had decided for himself that he would not allow the slaughter of "so many honourable people", especially in the Netherlands, for which he felt a strong compassion.Lacroix (1858), p. 89; Mees (1923), p. 50.
On 25 August 1561, William of Orange married for the second time. His new wife, Anna of Saxony, was described by contemporaries as "self-absorbed, weak, assertive, and cruel", and it is generally assumed that William married her to gain more influence in Saxony, Hesse and the Palatinate.Wedgwood (1944) pp. 49–50. The couple had five children. The marriage used Lutheran rites, and marked the beginning of a gradual change in his religious opinions, which was to lead William to revert to Lutheranism and eventually moderate Calvinism. Still, he remained tolerant of other religious opinions.
Up to this time William's life had been marked by lavish display and extravagance. He surrounded himself with a retinue of young noblemen and dependents and kept open house in his magnificent Nassau palace at Brussels. Consequently, the revenue of his vast estates was not sufficient to prevent him being crippled by debt. But after his return from France, a change began to come over William. Philip made him councillor of state, knight of the Golden Fleece, and stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, but there was a latent antagonism between the natures of the two men.
Up to 1564, any criticism of governmental measures voiced by William and the other members of the opposition had ostensibly been directed at Granvelle; however, after the latter's departure early that year, William, who may have found increasing confidence in his alliance with the Protestant princes of Germany following his second marriage,Herman Kaptein, De Beeldenstorm (2002), p. 22. began to openly criticise the King's anti-Protestant politics. In August of that year, Philip issued an order for carrying out the decrees of the anti-Protestant Council of Trent. But, in an iconic speech to the Council of State, William to the shock of his audience justified his conflict with Philip by saying that, even though he had decided for himself to keep to the Catholic faith (at the time), he could not agree that monarchs should rule over the souls of their subjects and take from them their freedom of belief and religion."Et quamquam ipse Catholicae Religioni adhaerere constituerit, non posse tamen ei placere, velle Principes animis hominum imperare, libertatemque Fidei & Religionis ipsis adimere." C. P. Hoynck van Papendrecht, Vita Viglii ab Aytta, in Analecta belgica I, 41–42 (F. Postma, "Prefigurations of the future? The views on the boundaries of Church and State of William of Orange and Viglius van Aytta (1565–1566)", in A. A. McDonald and A. H. Huussen (eds.), Scholarly environments: centres of learning and institutional contexts, 1560–1960 (2004), 15–32, esp. 15).
In early 1566, a large group of lesser noblemen, including William's younger brother Louis, formed the Confederacy of Noblemen. On 5 April, they offered a petition to Margaret of Parma, requesting an end to the persecution of Protestants. From August to October 1566, a wave of iconoclasm (known as the Beeldenstorm) spread through the Low Countries. Calvinists (the major Protestant denomination), Anabaptists, and Mennonites, angered by Catholic oppression and theologically opposed to the Catholic use of images of saints (which in their eyes conflicted with the Second Commandment), destroyed statues in hundreds of churches and monasteries throughout the Netherlands.