The Rise of the Dutch Republic

John Lothrop Motley was an American diplomat who spent years in Dutch and Belgian archives, and in 1856 he turned the revolt of the Netherlands into a story English readers could actually follow. It runs from the image breaking of 1566 through Alva’s arrival and his Council of Blood, the sieges of Haarlem and Leiden, and the emergence of William of Orange as the improbable center of a country that did not yet exist. Motley is a Protestant partisan and never pretends otherwise, which makes him unfair to Philip II and electric on nearly everything else. Historians have long since moved past his verdicts, and they still borrow his scenes. Free here in PDF and EPUB.