Geuzen

GEUZEN. - Name by which the rebels against the Spanish government in the Netherlands were called, who, having later united into a party of a politico-religious character, contributed first to the schism of Flanders and subsequently to the formation of Holland as an independent state.

The uprising was caused above all by the religious intolerance of Philip II, who in this way continued the action already carried out by his father Charles V against the Protestant element of the country, and by the suspicion of the Flemings that the King, through his absolutist attitude, aimed at the destruction of their political and religious liberty.

Once every direct request to obtain a mitigation of the government had come to nothing, the Flemings rose up and, assembling on 5 April 1566 in the so-called "Compromise of Breda", resolved to send to the court of Brussels a delegation composed of three hundred nobles, led by the counts Louis of Nassau and Henry of Brederode, which was to request of the regent Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Parma, that the Inquisition be abolished and that the edicts against the Protestants be tempered.

From the cry of "vive les G.", which rang out during a banquet at which the three hundred delegates gathered, having attended it in the guise of beggars, the party took precisely the name of G. (beggars). According to others, however, this appellation is said to have originated from the words "No fear of these beggars", spoken during the reception of the delegates by the count of Berlaymont, to reassure the duchess.

The cohesion of the party, which united within itself both Catholics and Protestants, was in any case to last only a short time, because the Catholics broke away from the Protestants when the latter, on 11 August, abandoned themselves to the sacking of Catholic churches. To quell the revolt Philip II sent in 1567 against the new iconoclasts of the Netherlands Ferdinand Alvarez of Toledo, second duke of Alba, who, having established in the country a special tribunal known as that "of the troubles", which the Flemings subsequently turned into the "tribunal of blood", began a merciless repression, during which influential personages who were leaders of the movement lost their lives, such as Lamoral, count of Egmont, and Philip of Montmorency-Nivelle, count of Hoorn.

To escape, the Protestants had either to hide or to flee. Those who took refuge in the woods, continuing their action of harassment against the Spaniards and the Catholics, were called G. des bois, the word G. having by then come to indicate exclusively the Reformed; those, on the other hand, who took 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 obtain the desired effects; on the contrary, it produced a general insurrection, which broke out between 31 March and 1 April 1572 in the northern provinces of the Netherlands, whereby the G. seized the four provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Friesland and Utrecht, which united under the leadership of William I of Orange-Nassau, the Silent, who had finally openly declared himself in favour of political rebellion and religious reform, and to 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 Netherlands was by then under way.

Niccolò del Re