Eighty Years' War · War Crimes & Atrocities
The atrocities of this war divide neatly by cause. Spain's were mostly policy — Alba's Council of Blood and the sack of town after town were a deliberate strategy of terror, intended to make resistance unthinkable — and they failed on their own terms, because a town that cannot trust a surrender must fight to the end. The rest were committed by an army that had not been paid: the Spanish Fury at Antwerp was not ordered by anyone, it was the finest infantry in Europe collecting its own wages from the richest city in the north. The Dutch had their own: the Sea Beggars murdered Catholic priests at Gorinchem and Lumey's men hanged clergy for sport, and the Republic that fought for liberty of conscience beheaded its own founding statesman for backing the wrong side of a theological argument. What follows is a war in which cruelty was tried as a method, measured, and found to be counterproductive — which is not the same as being repented.
1,100+
deaths
Victims: Suspected heretics, rebels, and their sympathisers across the seventeen provinces(Over 1,000 executed and some 9,000 condemned in absentia with property confiscated; Alba himself boasted of 18,600)
19+
deaths
Victims: Nineteen Catholic priests and friars
2,000+
deaths
Victims: The citizens of Mechelen, a wealthy Catholic city(Estimates vary; the city was plundered for three days)
700+
deaths
Victims: The townsmen of Naarden, after surrender(Accounts describe the town's male population being killed almost entirely)
2,000+
deaths
Victims: The surrendered garrison of Haarlem(Around 2,000 soldiers executed after the city capitulated on terms)
6,000+
deaths
Victims: The civilian population of Leiden(Roughly a third of the city died of hunger and plague during the siege)
3,000+
deaths
Victims: The population of a small Holland town(Most of the town's inhabitants were killed or burned; a small remnant survived)
8,000+
deaths
Victims: The citizens of Antwerp — mostly Catholic, mostly loyal(Estimates run from 7,000 to 18,000 killed over three days; around 1,000 buildings burned)
1+
deaths
Victims: The Prince of Orange, shot in his own house
1+
deaths
Victims: The Republic's founding statesman, and the Remonstrant party(Oldenbarnevelt beheaded; Grotius and Hogerbeets imprisoned for life; Remonstrant ministers purged and exiled)