Dordrecht Assembly of Estates

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The meeting of the Dutch estates in Dordrecht in 1572 at the beginning of the Dutch struggle for independence against Spain is known as the Dordrecht Assembly .

In the course of the Dutch struggle for independence against Philip II of Spain, the Staten van Holland met on July 19, 1572 in Dordrecht, the oldest city in Holland . There William of Orange was recognized as governor of the Netherlands. The call from Maximilien de Hénin-Liétard , Count von Boussu , the “official” governor of the Habsburg king, to the Estates on July 15, 1572 to appear in The Hague, had been ignored by the delegates of the nobility and the cities. The clergy was not represented as a class in Holland anyway. A double assembly of estates, such as that which had taken place in Languedoc in the 1560s as part of the French wars of religion , did not take place in Holland.

This is a milestone on the way to Dutch independence from Philip II of Spain. At this meeting, however, the important cities such as Amsterdam , Utrecht or Gouda , which only later joined the rebels, were missing . From the files of the Dordrecht meeting of the estates it can be deduced that William of Orange was initially to wage war against Alba de jure suo (until about 1574 , i.e. after Alba's replacement ), ie in his own right. Legally decisive in this phase was his position as sovereign of the Principality of Orange in France; only later was the right of the estates to resist being developed and formulated as a basis.

The Dordrecht meeting of the estates also represented a step towards the development of modern human rights and fundamental rights , since William of Orange made his election dependent on the granting of freedom of religion and assembly . These freedoms were confirmed with the merger of the Dutch provinces in the Ghent Pacific in 1576 and in the Union of Utrecht in 1579.

The Dordrecht Synod was held in the same city from November 1618 to May 1619 .

literature

  • H. Lademacher: The position of the Prince of Orange as governor in the Netherlands from 1572 to 1584 - A contribution to the constitutional history of the Netherlands. (= Rheinisches Archiv. 52). Dissertation . Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn, Bonn 1958.
  • JW Koopmans: De Staten van Holland en de Opstand: de ontwikkeling van hun functies en organisatie in the period 1544-1588 . Dissertation. Rijks Universiteit Groningen, Groningen 1990.
  • JPA Coopmans: De honoring voor Willem van Oranje van 1583. Een nieuwe type gezagsovereenkomst. In: H. Soly, R. Vermeir (ed.): Beleid en bestuur in de oude Nederlanden: Liber amicorum Prof. Dr. M. Baelde. Gent 1993, pp. 49-64.
  • Wolfgang Fikentscher, Achim R. Fochem (Hrsg.): Sources for the emergence of basic rights in Germany. Steiner, Stuttgart 2002, pp. 23-271.
  • W. Alt: Language and power: Spanish in the Netherlands under Philip II until the conquest of Antwerp (1555-1585) . Dissertation. University of Trier, 2005, pp. 358–361. ( dr-wolfgang-alt.de urn: nbn: de: hbz: 385-3268 )