MAURICE, Count of Nassau. - Prince of Orange (on the death of his brother in 1618), hereditary stadtholder of the provinces of Holland and Zeeland and then of Utrecht, Overijssel and Guelders, b. 13 Nov. 1567 at Dillenburg (Saxony), second son of William of Orange (the Silent) and of Anna of Saxony, d. unmarried at The Hague on 23 Apr. 1625.
On the assassination of his father (1584), while the firstborn Philip William was in Spain as a hostage, he was placed beside the English earl of Leicester, captain-general, and, when the latter departed, he remained for the war of independence at the head of the army, which he reorganized, recapturing Breda (1590), Zutphen, Nijmegen, Groningen, favored by the absence and then by the death of A. Farnese, who commanded the Spaniards. The peace of Vervins (1598) deprived him of the help of Henry IV and made the defense harder; in 1604 Spinola conquered Ostend. The need for peace and the impatience with military predominance led to the twelve-year truce of 9 Apr. 1609. Once the rivalries between Arminians (moderates) and Gomarists (intransigents) had penetrated the fabric of Dutch Calvinism, M. took the side of the latter, and profiting from the truce he had his comrade in the struggle, Jan van Olden Barneveld, who as "grand pensionary" (advocate) had successfully directed Dutch policy, beheaded as a rebel with the complicity of these same men. When the war resumed in 1621 M. could do little, because he was ill and opposed by the States General. His name is recalled by M. Island, occupied in 1606 by the Dutch in the Indian Ocean.
Bibliography
Luigi Simeoni