GUEUX. - The name by which the rebels against the Spanish government in the Low Countries were called; later united in a political-religious party, they contributed first to the secession of Flanders
and subsequently to the formation of Holland as an independent State.
The uprising was caused above all by the religious intolerance of Filippo II, who thus continued the action already undertaken by his father Carlo V against the Protestant element of the country, and by the Flemings’ suspicion that the King, through his absolutist policy, aimed at destroying their political and religious liberty.
When every direct request to obtain a mitigation of government had proved fruitless, the Flemings rose up and, assembled on 5 Apr. 1566 in the so-called “Compromise of Breda,” decided to send to the court at Brussels a delegation of three hundred nobles, led by the counts Luigi di Nassau and Enrico di Brederode, which was to request of the regent Margherita d'Austria, duchess of Parma, the abolition of the Inquisition and the moderation of the edicts against Protestants.
From the cry of “vive les G.,” which resounded during a banquet at which the three hundred delegates gathered, appearing as beggars, the party took the name G. (beggars). Others, however, maintain that this appellation originated in the words, “No fear of these beggars,” uttered by the count of Berlaymont during the reception of the delegates, in order to reassure the duchess.
The cohesion of the party, which included both Catholics and Protestants, was in any event to last only a short time, because the Catholics broke away from the Protestants when, on 11 Aug., the latter gave themselves over to the plundering of Catholic churches. To suppress the revolt, Filippo II sent in 1567 against the new iconoclasts of the Low Countries Ferdinando Alvarez di Toledo, second duke of Alba, who, having established in the country a special tribunal known as that “of the disturbances,” which the Flemings subsequently turned into the “tribunal of blood,” began a ruthless repression, during which influential leaders of the movement, such as Lamoral, count of Egmont, and Filippo di Montmorency-Nivelle, count of Hoorn, lost their lives.
In order to escape, the Protestants had either to hide or to flee. Those who took refuge in the woods, continuing their harassment of the Spaniards and Catholics, were called G. des bois, since the term G. had by then become restricted exclusively to the Reformed; those, on the other hand, who sought refuge on the armed ships of the Protestants of Holland and Zeeland were called G. de mer.
Nevertheless, the reaction conducted by the duke of Alba did not achieve the desired effects; indeed, it produced a general insurrection, which broke out between 31 March and 1 Apr. 1572 in the northern provinces of the Low Countries, whereby the G. took possession of the four provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Frisia, and Utrecht, which united under the leadership of Guglielmo I d'Orange-Nassau, the Silent, who had finally declared himself openly in favor of political rebellion and religious reform, and upon whom were conferred the titles of “stadtholder” (governor) and captain general of the army.
With this last action, the G. had exhausted their task, since the war of independence of the Low Countries was now under way.