Finden Sie anschließend einen historischen Artikel des Gastautors Renger E. de Bruin von der Universität Utrecht.
Der Beitrag ist nur in englischer Sprache verfügbar.
Habsburg, Utrecht and the Netherlands
The most visible link between the city of Utrecht and the House of Habsburg is a statue of Charles V in the garden of the hotel-restaurant named after the emperor. It is so named because Charles V conducted a session of the Order of the Golden Fleece here in 1546. At that time, the building was the land commandery of the Bailiwick of Utrecht, part of the Teutonic Order. By the province of Utrecht, it was used for grand receptions. It remained the Teutonic House until its expropriation in 1808 by Louis Napoleon, the brother of the French emperor, who was king of Holland. The complex then became a military hospital. When this hospital moved to the university campus in the late 1980s, the Order was allowed to buy it back, but did so only very partially. Most of it was bought by a property developer, who established a luxury hotel in it with a restaurant, which has acquired a Michelin star. The name chosen was that of the Habsburg ruler, who stayed here centuries ago: ‘Karel V’ (Charles V).
The relationship between Utrecht and Habsburg goes back much further, to the reign of Rudolf I, who was King of the Romans or Roman-German King, that is ruler of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, between 1273 and 1291. These kings were elected by the seven Kurfürsten (Electors) and then crowned emperor by the pope. The latter did not always happen, including in Rudolf’s case. Nor did his son and successor Albrecht get the honour. Unlike his father, this Albrecht interfered with the prince-bishopric of Utrecht and the county of Holland, which belonged to the Empire. Like his colleagues in Münster and Osnabrück, among others, the Utrecht bishop was also secular lord over an area of the Empire.
Because the kings were elected, there was no obvious succession by a son. It could happen, as in the case of Albrecht von Habsburg, but it did not have to. In fact, it took more than a century before another Habsburg came along: Frederick III, who reigned for a very long time: from 1440 (since 1452 as emperor) until 1493. From then on, almost all emperors came from this dynasty. The imperial coronation also became more or less automatic.
During Frederick’s reign, a new power emerged in the border area between the Holy Roman Empire and France: the Burgundian dukes. Starting as an offshoot of the French royal house in the region around Dijon, they acquired more and more territories in the basin of the rivers Scheldt, Meuse and Rhine. These were partly in the Kingdom of France, such as Burgundy or Flanders, but also partly in the Holy Roman Empire, such as Brabant or Holland. The most important Burgundian was the third duke, Philip the Good. He tried to forge the loose territories more into a unity. In doing so, he managed to create a much greater degree of security in the previously war-torn regions. Consequently, he enjoyed great support among the merchants in the cities of Flanders and Holland.
To bind the nobility to him, he founded the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1430, of which he himself became the Grand Master. Because of its great prestige, the golden chain with the rams skin was highly coveted. After him, his descendants held this position. Currently, the Grand Masters are Karl von Habsburg and the Spanish king Felipe VI. Indeed, since the early 18th century, there have been two Orders of the Golden Fleece, one in Vienna and one in Madrid.
Philip the Good managed to add many territories to his holdings by becoming count of Holland, duke of Brabant, etc. This did not happen with the ecclesiastical territories in the region, but he managed to get the prince-bishopric of Utrecht into his sphere of influence by putting forward his bastard son David as bishop. David indeed managed to impose the Burgundian political structure on both parts of the prince-bishopric. He greatly reduced the power of the nobility and the guilds.
David’s half-brother, the only legitimate son of Philip the Good, called Charles the Bold, continued the Burgundian expansion policy, but much less cautiously than his father. He tried to get done with Frederick III to crown him king, but the emperor declined at the last minute. When Charles fell at Nancy in early 1477, the Burgundian land complex was in acute crisis. Charles had no son, but only a 19-year-old daughter, Mary. Charles‘ enemies had been waiting for this moment. The French king Louis XI invaded the Duchy of Burgundy and discontented subjects in the territories acquired later rebelled. The Utrecht nobles rose against Bishop David of Burgundy. Mary was rescued from her plight by the emperor’s son Maximilian of Austria. He married her and managed to defeat her enemies one by one. In 1483, he besieged and took the city of Utrecht, after which he restored his uncle David to the episcopal seat, but made him dependent.
Ten years later, he succeeded his father as ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. His wife Mary had died by then, after falling off her horse while hunting. Their minor son Philip inherited the Burgundian lands, initially under Maximilian’s regency. This Philip the Fair married a Spanish princess, who would go down in history as Joanna the Mad because of her mental problems. When Philip died at a young age in 1506, his eldest son Charles was heir. In this way, Charles acquired the Burgundian lands and both parts of Spain (Castile and Aragon). After grandfather Maximilian’s death, he also became emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, as Charles V.
To his Burgundian legacy, Charles added a number of territories, which he tried to unify and loosen from the Holy Roman Empire, following the example of his great-great-grandfather Philip the Good. These Habsburg Netherlands included Utrecht from 1528 onwards. From then on, the bishop had only a clerical function. For Utrecht, the annexation marked the end of a series of bloody conflicts. This security through unity was emphatically welcomed by part of the population, especially the big merchants. One of them had a statue of the emperor placed in the facade of his house on Oudegracht. Charles V visited Utrecht twice, in 1540 and in 1546. On that second visit, he led the aforementioned meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The knights were mainly from the Southern Netherlands, but two of them came from the Utrecht region, Maximiliaan van Egmond and Reinoud van Brederode.
Not everyone was happy with Utrecht’s incorporation into the Burgundian-Habsburg land complex. Especially among the guilds, which had had great political influence before 1528, existed great resistance. To suppress any revolt immediately, Charles V had a huge citadel, Vredenburg (Security Castle), built on the western side of the city. This would prove its usefulness during the reign of Charles‘ son Philip II, who succeeded in 1555 as king of Spain and ruler of the Netherlands. The imperial crown and Austria went to Charles‘ brother Ferdinand, creating two lines in the House of Habsburg.
Philip II vigorously pursued his father’s policy of centralisation. He was particularly attached to religious unity, in the form of the Catholic faith. After leaving the Netherlands, he ruled from Spain. This distance contributed to opposition against the unity drive, which was accompanied by religious persecutions. Resistance to this policy grew, led by the stadholder (=deputy to the king) in the provinces of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, William Prince of Orange, the son-in-law of the aforementioned Maximilian of Egmond. The diplomatic nobleman was nicknamed William the Silent.
Resistance culminated in 1566 in an Iconoclasm, after which Philip II had any opposition brutally suppressed by a trusted general, Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva. The latter ran a reign of terror for several years, but from 1572 onwards, the rebellious movement led by William the Silent increasingly gained a foothold. After the Spaniards were driven out of Vredenburg Castle in 1577, Utrecht also joined the Revolt. At first, the rebels insisted that they were not fighting the king, but his evil advisers, such as Alva. That increasingly became a fiction and in 1581, Philip II was formally renounced as sovereign. After attempts to find a new sovereign failed, the rebellious territory became a republic, the Republic of the United Netherlands (or Dutch Republic). That area was initially limited in size, as Spanish troops were successful for a time, but they were beaten back. On the other hand, the Dutch failed to liberate areas in the south. The front line became fixed roughly along today’s Belgian-Dutch border. This also became the border at the Peace of Munster, part of the Westphalian Peace, in which King Philip IV recognised the independence of the Dutch Republic and this new state was detached from the Holy Roman Empire. The political link between Utrecht and Habsburg was thereby permanently severed.
Habsburg was now no longer the enemy and would even become an ally when the French king Louis XIV attacked the Dutch Republic in 1672, with the French occupying Utrecht, among other places. Emperor Leopold I and King Charles II of Spain feared the French expansion of power. The Dutch leader, stadholder William III, great-grandson of William the Silent, cleverly played on these fears. From 1689, he was also king of England and led a coalition against France, always using the argument that Louis XIV wanted to bring all of Europe under his rule, the universal monarchy.
With the Peace of Ryswick in 1697, a balance of power seemed to have been achieved, but the shadow of the Spanish succession to the throne hung over the continent. Charles II was sickly and had no offspring. The question was who would inherit the immense Spanish empire (in addition to Spain, parts of Italy, the Southern Netherlands and the colonies in the Americas, Africa and Asia). Because the French Bourbons and the Viennese Habsburgs had made marriages to Spanish princesses in a few generations, both Leopold I and Louis XIV could claim that inheritance. After the death of a compromise candidate, partition was decided, but on his death in November 1700, Charles II was found to have made Louis XIV’s second grandson, Philip of Anjou, the universal heir. The French king accepted that decision, in violation of the partition treaty.
Leopold I pushed forward his second son Charles, with the support of William III, who again formed a European coalition. The War of the Spanish Succession broke out, which initially went badly for the French, but they recovered and during the peace negotiations held in Utrecht in the years 1712-1713, they managed to get a lot out of it. They were able to keep many of the conquests from 1667-1697 and got Philip (V) recognised as king of Spain. His rival, now Emperor Charles VI, got the Southern Netherlands and Italian territories as compensation. For the imperial envoys, who were housed in a large building in Utrecht, this was initially not enough and they refused to sign the Treaty of Utrecht, but Charles VI agreed after all in 1714. Now that he had not become king of Spain and the Bourbon Philip V led the Order of the Golden Fleece, Charles VI decided on a Vienna line of the Order.
The Treaty of Utrecht marked the beginning of an unprecedentedly long period of security in Europe. Not until 1740 did another major war break out because the succession of Charles VI, who had no son, by his daughter Maria Theresa was not recognised by France and Prussia. Britain and the Dutch Republic supported Maria Theresa, although the province of Utrecht preferred to remain neutral. A compromise was reached with the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748: renunciation of territory in exchange for recognition. Maria Theresa’s husband French of Lorraine (Lothringen) became emperor (Francis I), the beginning of the House of Habsburg-Lothringen.
Once more the Dutch were allied with Habsburg, in the 1793-1795 war against revolutionary France, in which the Dutch Republic fell. The country came under French influence and even became part of Napoleon’s empire in 1810. The restoration of independence in 1813 was made possible by an allied coalition that included Austria. The constellation subsequently created at the Vienna Congress essentially lasted until 1914. At that time, the Netherlands adopted a neutrality course and also managed not to get involved during the First World War.
There were no longer any ties with Habsburg. The relationship from the past could only occasionally be seen in Utrecht in re-enactments by students, who portrayed historical episodes such as the visit of the later Philip II to Utrecht in 1549 or the appearance of Archduke Matthias of Austria in so-called masquerades. These masquerades were strongly nationalist in the discourse of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and thus anti-Habsburg.
In this view, the Dutch Revolt against Philip II was a heroic struggle for independence. This view has since given way to a more nuanced approach, highlighting the element of civil war. At the time, a substantial part of the population was loyal to the king or took a neutral position. Many wanted security above all, whether it came from Habsburg unity or the consolidation of the Dutch Republic. It became the latter option. The relationship between Utrecht and Habsburg was recalled on 8 and 9 September 2023 by the visit of the Order of St George to the building where Charles V led the session of the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1546.