There were two
Unions of Brussels, both formed in the end of the 1570s, in the opening stages of the
Eighty Years' War, the war of secession from Spanish control, which lasted from 1568 to 1648.
Brussels was at that time the capital of the
Spanish Netherlands.
First Union of Brussels
A part of the Netherlands, the counties of
Holland and
Zeeland rebelled in 1572, when Calvinists took over control of most of the cities. The Spanish army tried to reconquer them but failed during the
Siege of Leiden in 1574. In 1575
Philip II had to declare bankruptcy. As a result the Spanish soldiers did not receive any payment, and they mutinied, pillaging the countryside of
Brabant and
Flanders and the city of
Antwerp, where 10,000 inhabitants in a city with 100,000 people were killed by the Spanish soldiers, who tried to kill all the local Protestants.
This event discredited the Spanish army enormously. The
Estates-General of the Netherlands, sitting in Brussels, wanted to end the war in 1577. However, some of the fervently Roman Catholic provincial Estates did not want to invite the Calvinists of Holland and Zeeland to join. The Estates-General, without Holland and Zeeland, founded the first Union of Brussels. King
Philip II of Spain agreed with this.
Second Union of Brussels
The leader of the resistance,
Prince William of Orange, went to Brussels in 1577 to try to convince the General Estates to accept the Calvinist provincial Estates of Holland and Zeeland. The population of...
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