William I, Prince of Orange, Count of Nassau, known as the Silent

WILLIAM I, Prince of Orange, Count of Nassau, known as the Silent. - Born at Dillenburg (Nassau) on 24 April 1533, killed at Delft on 10 July 1584. The firstborn of William of Nassau-Dillenburg and of Juliana of Stolberg, both Lutherans, at the age of eleven he became the richest lord of the Netherlands through inheritance from his cousin René of Nassau; wherefore Charles V wished him to be raised in Catholicism at Brussels. Sensitive rather to political questions than to strictly religious ones, he had his first clashes with Philip II over the withdrawal of the Spanish troops from the provinces for which he had been appointed stadtholder by the King (Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht) and over the recall of Cardinal Granvelle (1564).

Rather tolerant toward non-Catholics, also through the influence of his second wife, daughter of Maurice of Saxony — an excessive tolerance that provoked a reproach from Pope Pius IV (1565) — the whole action of W. was rather that, political-national, of a lord who wanted to guarantee his territories autonomy, possibly up to independence, within and, if not possible, outside the framework of the Habsburg domains, than that of a religious leader. He was brought to figure also as a religious leader by the circumstances through which the struggle for the independence of the United Provinces came to be identified with a struggle for the freedom of the Calvinists and Protestants. The conflict with Philip II, latent since 1564, became open from 1568, in the presence of the policy of force of the Duke of Alba and then of Alessandro Farnese. Only in 1573 did he pass decisively to Calvinism, while the war had already been raging for 5 years, amid alternating successes and defeats, for W. is not always a general equal to his adversaries. Nevertheless, the entry into Brussels (Sept. 1577) was a resounding success, which earned him election as head of the United Provinces; which did not prevent, once the deposition of Philip II was declared, the States from turning toward Francis, Duke of Anjou. But the skilful policy of W., behind the scenes, stripped the French prince of his authority, and when he died (1584) the value of French aid was already discounted in the eyes of the insurgents. Shortly afterward, however, the Orange too fell victim to a fanatic suborned, it is said, by Farnese.

Ernesto Sestan