Spanish Fury

A Spanish Fury was a vindictive, rampant bloody pillaging of cities in the Low Countries by mutinous Spanish troops, that occurred in the years 1583–1589 during the Dutch Revolt.

The most famous Spanish Fury was the sack of Antwerp in 1576. Sometimes this singular expression refers to the entire mutinous campaign of 1576, to the city punishments of 1572.

Several requests for relaxation of religious coercion in the Low Countries, including a petition by a covenant of noblemen in the winter of 1565–66, had been rejected. The summer then brought renewed violent outbursts of iconoclasm, in which 'Beeldenstorm' Calvinists defaced statues and decorations of Catholic monasteries and churches. The Battle of Oosterweel in March 1567 was the first Spanish military response to the many riots, and a prelude to or the start of the Eighty Years' War. The Spanish King's captain-general Alba, the Iron Duke, with 10,000 men made the first military use of the Spanish Road. He was granted powers exceeding those of the king's half-sister Margaret of Parma, who had manoeuvred both Granvelle and William the Silent of Orange to the background while trying to reconcile local priorities with Spanish orders. Upon their meeting, judging the duke's inflexibility on extreme positions, the duchess resigned. He replaced her as governor-general of the Seventeen Provinces, and unlawfully instituted the Council of Troubles in September of that same year. This court-martial style tribunal often sentenced political opponents and religious Reformists to death; the more than 1,000 executions caused it being called the 'Council of Blood'.

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