Treason In the Northern Quarter (ebook)

Argumento de Treason In the Northern Quarter (ebook)

In the spring of 1575, Holland's Northern Quarter--the waterlogged peninsula stretching from Amsterdam to the North Sea--was threatened with imminent invasion by the Spanish army. Since the outbreak of the Dutch Revolt a few years earlier, the Spanish had repeatedly failed to expel the rebels under William of Orange from this remote region, and now there were rumors that the war-weary population harbored traitors conspiring to help the Spanish invade. In response, rebel leaders arrested a number of vagrants and peasants, put them on the rack, and brutally tortured them until they confessed and named their principals--a witch-hunt that eventually led to a young Catholic lawyer named Jan Jeroenszoon.

Treason in the Northern Quarter tells how Jan Jeroenszoon, through great personal courage and faith in the rule of law, managed to survive gruesome torture and vindicate himself by successfully arguing at trial that the authorities remained subject to the law even in times of war. Henk van Nierop uses Jan Jeroenszoon's exceptional story to give the first account of the Dutch Revolt from the point of view of its ordinary victims--town burghers, fugitive Catholic clergy, peasants, and vagabonds. For them the Dutch Revolt was not a heroic struggle for national liberation but an ordinary dirty war, something to be survived, not won.

An enthralling account of an unsuspected story with surprising modern resonance, Treason in the Northern Quarter presents a new image of the Dutch Revolt, one that will fascinate anyone interested in the nature of revolution and civil war or the fate of law during wartime.

"Readers will appreciate the fact that the lucid writing of the Dutch volume has been preserved in Grayson's excellent translation, making this book an accessible, important source of knowledge about people, environment, and the horrors of war."--Marybeth Carlson, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"Readers in general will find that the book resonates with contemporary concerns about the extralegal power of the state in times of crisis, about reconciliation after civil war and internal conflicts, and about the horrific impact of war on the average person. The level of detail and necessity of background knowledge may make the book too involved to assign in an undergraduate class, but despite its narrow geographic and temporal focus, is an enriching read for historians with a wide range of interests."--Laura Lisy-Wagner, H-Net Reviews

"Treason in the Northern Quarter is an impressive study that presents the true nature of the Dutch Revolt and the horror that civil war and revolution bring to ordinary people."--Geoffrey Parker, author of The Thirty Years' War and The Grand Strategy of Philip II

"Van Nierop tells a compelling tale. . . . Van Nierop has thrown light on an important episode in the Dutch Revolt, cast within current historiographical orthodoxy, which tends to depict the bulk of the Dutch population as hapless victims of a war not of their choosing."--Brian G. H. Ditcham, Sixteenth Century Journal0Preface ix
CHAPTER ONE: Introduction 1
CHAPTER TWO: The Northland 12
CHAPTER THREE: Believers 28
CHAPTER FOUR: Revolt 51
CHAPTER FIVE: War 72
CHAPTER SIX: Treason 93
CHAPTER SEVEN: Vagabonds 121
CHAPTER EIGHT: Peasants 136
CHAPTER NINE: Citizens 165
CHAPTER TEN: Law against Terror 186
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Jan Jeroenszoon Again 222
CHAPTER TWELVE: Historiography and Propaganda 239
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Conclusion 259
Abbreviations 265
Bibliography 267
Index of Persons 285
Index of Places 293