Spanish winter 1598/99
The Spanish winter of 1598/99 was the occupation of Rhenish-Westphalian areas by the Spanish army under Admiral Mendoza in the winter of 1598/99 as part of the Eighty Years' War .
occasion
With the campaign of 1597 , the Dutch under Moritz von Orange succeeded in ousting the Spaniards, who were at war with France at the time, from the Rhine. This situation changed after the Peace of Vervins and the death of Philip II . Archduke Albrecht VII of Austria took over the government of the Spanish Netherlands in Brussels in 1598 on behalf of his fiancée Isabella . He handed over the business of government to Cardinal Andreas of Austria and the command of the Spanish-Dutch army to Admiral Mendoza . This troop was now available for a dispute with the States General . In Brussels it was decided to move to the Lower Rhine before winter. Mendoza was to regain the territories lost the previous year and then penetrate into enemy territory from the southeast. “It wasn't just military calculations that prompted this plan of campaign. The growing financial need of the Spanish government had nurtured the spirit of mutiny among the unpaid troops for nine years, and with each mutiny the obedient provinces were “plagued with looting and violence. “So it seemed necessary to remove these tormentors for a while and, where possible, to feed them free of charge. Accordingly, Mendoza received the ... order: if the establishment on state territory succeeds, he should take winter quarters there; if it fails, he has to billet over the soldiers in the adjoining imperial lands for the winter and raise their maintenance through contributions. "
procedure
On September 7th, the Spanish army, consisting of about 20,000 foot soldiers and 2,000 horsemen, crossed the Meuse near Roermond , on September 8th Orsoy was taken. Parts of the army then crossed the Rhine at Walsum . On October 9th, Mendoza began the siege of the Rheinberg fortress . On October 14th the Dutch occupation forces gave up. The surrounding towns of Moers , Dinslaken , Büderich and Holten have since been occupied. The surrounding villages were looted. On October 5th, on the orders of Mendoza, a force of around 5000 mercenaries moved in front of Broich Castle and began to besiege it. After heavy shelling, the fortress had to surrender the following morning. In spite of the oath of free retreat, the 200 or so castle people including servants, maidservants, women and children were killed at the gates and Count Wirich captured. On October 11, he was knocked down and stabbed to death by two Spanish guards while he was outside the castle. Essen was occupied on December 20, 1598. The area of Essen Abbey and the Abbey are looted. Next it was Wesel's turn. Wesel could only avoid the threatened occupation by paying 100,000 thalers and 100 bushels of grain. Rees was occupied on October 30 and Emmerich on November 2 .
In order to put a stop to the advance of the Spaniards, Moritz von Oranien had Zevenaar occupied in the meantime . Until November 10th, the enemy troops stood inactive between Doesburg and Zevenaar. Then Mendoza decided to retreat with its three times superior army. Autumn was well advanced and the winter quarters had to be prepared. So he had no choice but to take winter quarters in the countries to the rear.
First it was the turn of the bishopric of Münster . Then Vest Recklinghausen in the Electorate of Cologne was occupied. The occupation of the county of Mark began on November 30th with the invasion of the offices of Bochum and Lünen . The reason given was that in the Treaty of Venlo the Duchy of Kleve and thus also the County of Mark were obliged to support the emperor in fighting the Reformation . The Spaniards insisted that the troops be admitted to thirty towns to be named. To do this, they set a 10-day period in which the county drosten should negotiate with Mendoza. The deadline passed and negotiations with Mendoza failed.
The county was forced to give up on December 21st. According to a distribution plan drawn up by the state estates in Wickede , the offices had to take on troops. Even in the southernmost part of the Mark, in the offices of Neustadt, Neuenrade and Schwarzenberg, three Fähnlein farmhands were housed. Sufficient supplies for the occupation troops and strict rules of conduct for the troops and the Märker were agreed. However, the occupiers did not adhere to these agreements. Throughout the long winter, the people and the country suffered from the harsh pressure of this occupation. In April 1599, Mendoza's troops finally withdrew against payment of "Zehrgeld".
The reason for an almost unopposed acceptance of such an occupation regime is likely to be found primarily in the deep divide between religious views. Furthermore, the imperial constitution was so cumbersome that all countermeasures demanded repeatedly failed because the Protestant for the Dutch and the Catholic classes for the Spaniards failed.
Countermeasures
On September 28, 1598, on the day of the deputation of the Lower Rhine-Westphalian Reichskreis in Dortmund, the decision was made to recruit 3000 men and lead them against the Spaniards. However, no advance payment was made from either side, so that the recruitment of the troops ultimately failed. But a complaint about Mendoza was submitted to the emperor. The call of the affected Westphalian estates for a constitutional defense became so strong that at a meeting of the Westphalian and the Kurheinische Reichskreis it was decided to initiate measures on the next common day at the end of March in Koblenz together with the Lower Saxony and Franconian imperial circles .
In the meantime, Brussels promised to withdraw from the occupied countries by the end of March. So no agreement could be reached on this day either. A decision was made to allocate money for the recruitment of troops for a period of nine months. The decision was not supported by the defeated minority. In Braunschweig and Hesse, troops were now independently recruited. The recruited troops were inspected at a military show in Essen on July 13, 1599. In the middle of June the advance of the allied troops began slowly and in individual groups.
Since the goal of the German expeditionary troops was initially the Rheinberg, which was still occupied by the Spaniards, they all traversed the Brandenburg region and the sufferings of the people were repeated again. But by now the Spaniards had evacuated the country for three months. On German soil, the Spaniards only occupied the Electoral Cologne city of Rheinberg, the Klevian cities of Rees, Emmerich, Kalkar , Goch and Gennep , which ruled the Rhine and the Meuse . The liberation of these cities from the Spaniards and the relief of the Schenkenschanze , the cities of Zevenaar, Lobith , Huissen and the fortified IJsseloord from the Dutch troops had to be the aim and task of the German army.
They succeeded in capturing a fortified Rhine island in front of the city of Rheinberg, but then, due to a lack of artillery, they turned away from the crossing over the Rhine and the siege of the city itself and turned northwards. Emmerich was handed over by the citizens without a coup, and the city of Gennep was also taken at a favorable moment when it was barely exposed by Spanish troops, so that apart from Rheinberg only Rees was in the hands of the Spaniards. For four weeks the army remained inactive in a camp near Dornick, as the guns were again missing for the siege of Rees. When the three months for which the soldiers had been recruited had expired on September 11, they no longer wanted to serve and began to mutiny. A happy failure of the besieged then caused the army to break up completely.
consequences
Since Spanish power in the Netherlands was not yet fully consolidated, the advance of 1598/99 was not carried out at full force. It was not until 1605 and 1606 that Ambrosio Spinola attempted to restore Spanish hegemony on the Lower Rhine and in western Westphalia in two campaigns.
The atrocities of the incursion with its pillage, extortion of contributions and attacks against the Protestants made it clear that the imperial circles were only partially capable of seriously defending the empire.
Dutch prints used the mercenary brutality for effective anti-Spanish propaganda. The most important representation of this kind was the Hispanic-Aragonese Mirror of 1599. This contained a summary of the events on about thirty pages and source documents on another hundred pages. The work indicates that the Spaniards not only sought winter quarters in the Rhineland and Westphalia, but also wanted to break the imperial and rural peace and introduce the Inquisition.
Individual evidence
- ^ Moritz Ritter: German history in the age of the Counter Reformation and the Thirty Years' War (1555-1648). 2nd vol. (1586-1608). Stuttgart 1895 (Reprint Elibron Classics series: 2005), p. 136 online version
- ^ Moritz Ritter: German history in the age of the Counter Reformation and the Thirty Years' War (1555-1648). 2nd vol. (1586-1608). Stuttgart 1895 (Reprint Elibron Classics series: 2005) p. 139 ff. Online version
- ^ Israel, Jonathan: The Dutch-Spanish War and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (1568–1648) online version
- ^ Martin Heckel, Joachim Leuschne: Germany in the denominational age. Göttingen 2001, p. 101.
- ↑ Wolfgang Cilleßen: Massacre in the Dutch culture of remembrance. The creation of the black legend. In: Images of Terror: the media staging of massacres since the 16th century. Frankfurt 2006, p. 111 f.
- ↑ Johannes Arndt: The Spanish-Dutch war in German-language journalism. In: War and Culture - The Reception of War and Peace in the Dutch Republic and in the German Empire. 1568-1648. Münster 1998, p. 413.
swell
- " Hispanic Arragonian mirror: In it with good reason the truth depicted about what end and effect, the current Spanish war people (as in the West Phalanx Creiss, on the holy realm of land and ground still remains at present and more then the enemy of Christian behavior ever done, tyrannized around there) his plan actually directed that they ... are planning ... to suppress the ... German nation's welfare and freedom ... with the forcible introduction of the Spanish Inquisition, a new church reformation and imperial constitution in Germany. .. to employ. "( Dutch print from 1599 : digitized version )
literature
- W. Crecelius: News about the invasion of the Spaniards in the Lower Rhine-Westphalian district in 1598 and 1599. In: Journal of the Bergisches Geschichtsverein . No. 23, Bonn 1887, pp. 178-185 ( online ).
- Ferdinand Schmidt: The Spanish winter 1598/99 - A forgotten period of suffering in the county of Mark . In: Süderland. Home page for the southern part of County Mark . Volume 1, Issue 3, 4 and 5. Altena 1923.
- Thomas Nicklas: Power or Law. Early modern politics in the Upper Saxon Empire. Steiner, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-515-07939-4 , p. 155 ff.
- Friedrich von Schiller : History of the fall of the United Netherlands from the Spanish government . tape 4 . Leipzig 1810.