Spanish Fury (1576): Mutinous Spanish Troops Sack Antwerp

The Spanish Fury was the sack of Antwerp by mutinous, unpaid Spanish soldiers on 4 November 1576, during the Dutch Revolt against Philip II. Over three days the troops killed thousands of inhabitants, plundered the richest city in northern Europe and set fire to much of its centre, including the new Town Hall. The atrocity shocked the Low Countries and, four days later, drove almost all the provinces to unite against Spain in the Pacification of Ghent.

Background

In the mid-1570s Antwerp was a great centre of trade, banking and printing, home to firms such as the Plantin Press. It was also the site of a massive pentagonal citadel built for the Duke of Alba from 1567 to overawe the city.

Spain was fighting the Dutch Revolt and the Ottoman Empire at the same time, and its finances were exhausted. In September 1575 Philip II suspended payments to his bankers. His Army of Flanders, many of whose soldiers were owed years of wages, could no longer be paid.

When the governor-general, Luis de Requesens, died suddenly on 5 March 1576, the government in Brussels was left without a strong leader. In July, after capturing Zierikzee in Zeeland, Spanish troops mutinied, and on 25 July they seized the town of Aalst in Flanders.

The road to the sack

The provinces saw the mutineers as a threat to everyone. In September 1576 the States of Brabant arrested members of the Council of State in Brussels, and the States General began raising troops to defend the country. Spanish commanders regarded this as rebellion. Mutinous companies across Brabant and Flanders, though in revolt against their own officers, now made common cause against the States’ troops. On 20 October Spanish troops seized Maastricht, and the mutineers then moved on the wealthiest prize in the country.

Antwerp’s citadel was held by Spanish troops under Sancho Dávila. On 3 November troops of the States General, under Frédéric Perrenot de Champagney, entered the city to protect it. Early on 4 November mutineers from Aalst marched to Antwerp and joined the citadel garrison.

The Fury

Around midday on 4 November the Spanish soldiers, joined by German troops, charged out of the citadel into the city. The poorly organised defenders broke within hours. Many soldiers and citizens were cut down in the streets or drowned trying to escape across the Scheldt.

For three days the troops looted houses, churches and warehouses, torturing residents to reveal hidden money. Fire destroyed the Town Hall, completed only in 1565, and hundreds of houses around the market square. The English soldier and poet George Gascoigne, who was in the city, described the horrors in his pamphlet The Spoyle of Antwerpe, published later that year.

Estimates of the dead range widely, from about 2,500 to 8,000 or more; a figure of around 7,000 is often quoted. The plunder was valued at millions of guilders. Many soldiers stayed in the city for months, demanding ransom from merchants. Foreign trading communities, including the English and the Germans, suffered heavy losses.

Consequences

News of the sack hardened opinion across the Netherlands. On 8 November 1576 delegates of the rebel provinces of Holland and Zeeland and of the loyal provinces signed the Pacification of Ghent. They agreed to drive out the Spanish troops, to suspend the heresy laws and to settle religious questions later.

The new governor, Don John of Austria, Philip II’s half-brother, arrived that same month and in February 1577 accepted the Perpetual Edict, which required the Spanish troops to leave. The unity did not last, and the war resumed in late 1577.

The Fury badly damaged Antwerp’s reputation as a safe place for trade. Merchants began to look for alternatives, and some foreign trading houses moved their business elsewhere. The city was later besieged and taken by Alexander Farnese in 1585, after which many of its Protestant merchants and craftsmen moved north, especially to Amsterdam.

Legacy

The Spanish Fury became a central episode in the “Black Legend”, the image of Spanish cruelty spread by Protestant writers and printmakers. Engravings of the sack, such as those by Frans Hogenberg, circulated widely across Europe, and in the nineteenth century Belgian painters returned to it as a national theme.

Timeline

• 1575, 1 September: Philip II suspends payments to his creditors.
• 1576, 5 March: Governor Requesens dies in Brussels.
• 1576, 25 July: Mutinous Spanish troops seize Aalst.
• 1576, 4 September: The Council of State is arrested in Brussels.
• 1576, 4 November: Mutineers storm Antwerp from the citadel.
• 1576, 8 November: The Pacification of Ghent is signed.
• 1577, 12 February: Don John accepts the Perpetual Edict.

Why it matters

The Spanish Fury showed how an unpaid army could destroy the very provinces it was meant to hold. It briefly united the Low Countries against Spain and contributed to Antwerp’s long decline in favour of Amsterdam, a shift that shaped the economic map of Europe for the following century.