Louis of Nassau

Louis of Nassau (born Jan. 10, 1538, Dillenburg, Nassau—died April 14, 1574, Mook, near Nijmegen, Neth.) was a nobleman who provided key military and political leadership in the early phases (1566–74) of the Netherlands’ revolt against Spanish rule and who served as a valued ally of his older brother William, Prince of Orange (William I the Silent).

A Lutheran from birth, Louis lived in Brussels after 1556, where he became active in the opposition movement of lesser noblemen against the Spanish government. In 1566 he wrote the original draft of the noblemen’s petition to the governor-general, Margaret of Parma, for an end to religious persecution, and he began to negotiate for aid from Protestant leaders in France and the Rhineland. After the arrival of Spain’s new captain general, the Duke of Alba, in 1567, Louis went into exile with other Protestant rebels, including the Geuzen (“Beggars”), a party of lesser nobles.

Louis returned in April 1568 to lead an invasion of the northern Netherlands, which is considered the beginning of the Eighty Years’ War, the war of the Netherlands’s independence from Spain. He defeated Spanish troops at Heiligerlee, east of Groningen (May 23), where his brother Adolph was killed, but was decisively beaten by Alba’s forces at Jemgum on the Ems (July 21). After fighting alongside his brother William of Orange in another disastrous campaign in the south, he retreated to France, where he established excellent relations with the Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny and, through him, with the French king Charles IX.

Inspired by Geuzen victories at Brill (Brielle) and Flushing (Vlissingen) in early 1572, Louis launched another invasion of the Netherlands, capturing Mons in Hainaut on May 23, where he was, however, besieged by Spanish troops on June 3. He capitulated on September 19 after the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre (August 24) of Protestants in Paris had ended any prospect of French aid and after a relief effort by William of Orange had been repulsed. Yet while the brothers were engaging Spanish troops in the south, other rebels in the north had been able to reconquer all of Holland except Amsterdam.

To relieve renewed Spanish pressure on Holland in 1574, Louis tried to lead troops he had assembled in Germany across the Meuse. His forces, however, were crushed in April by Sancho de Ávila’s army at Mook, where both Louis and his younger brother Henry were mortally wounded in battle.