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alternatehistory.com
Okay, this is my first attempt at doing an actual timeline. It's based on two PoDs around the same time- one, that Alexander Parnese dies at the battle of Lepanto, and two, that Mary, Queen of Scots, gives in to pressure from everybody everywhere and signs the Treaty of Edinburgh, and is released from English incarceration. I won't be posting a TL with everything going on at once, but instead focusing on one region at a time. I've got the Netherlands sorted out until the mid-1580s, the Iberian peninsula roughly figured out to the mid-1580s, and I'm currently tinkering with the British Isles and France up to 1590.
Please don't hurt me too much.
The Netherlands
1556- Charles V dies. Control of the Netherlands passes on to his son, King Philip II of Spain. While Charles V was familiar with the region and spoke French and Dutch, Philip spoke neither of those languages and rarely visited the area. Calvinist extremists preach violence and rebellion.
1565- A bad harvest in the Netherlands that year leads to food shortages. Riots break out in several major cities.
1566- Iconoclastic mobs, mainly led by Calvinists, storm many churches over the following year, destroying pictures and depictions of Catholic saints and other Church iconography.
1567- Philip II, believing force to be the only remaining option to placate the Dutch, sends the Duke of Alba to Brussels at the head of a ten thousand-man army. He quickly establishes a ‘Council of Upheavals’ outside of traditional Spanish and Dutch law to specifically prosecute those he sees as treasonous to the Spanish Crown. Numerous high officials and nobles are executed, fueling the Dutch Rebellion even more.
1568- William of Orange, a disgruntled Dutch nobleman, coordinates four rebel armies coming from differing directions towards Brussels in an attempt to dispose the Duke of Alba. He runs short on money, and the campaign fails.
1570- The Duke of Alba proposes a new tax on the region: a ten-percent levy on non-property sales. The Dutch States-General, an assembly of delegates of the various provinces and states of the Netherlands, reject the tax as being too harsh, and Alba compromises on the issue.
1571- The Duke of Alba institutes a ten-percent levy tax on all non-property sales. Rebellion flares up again in the region.
April 1, 1572- Dutch rebels at sea capture the undefended city of Brielle. Support for the rebellion continues to grow, especially in the Protestant northern provinces.
The Following Months, 1572- Most cities in the Holland and Zeeland provinces declare independence.
1573- William of Orange converts to Calvinism, mainly for political reasons.
1573- Spain replaces the Duke of Alba with Luis Requeseens as governor of the Netherlands.
1576- Luis Requeseens dies. Alvaro de Bazan, previously head of the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Lepanto and a respected naval commander, is the next to fill the post.
1578-1580s- Bazan is a capable governor, but his time fighting against the Ottomans in the Mediterranean and elsewhere has led him to be a much stronger believer in the Catholic faith and much more reactionary to other religious and political views. While at first the Catholics of the Lowlands respect him as a war hero and are more inclined to obey his law, Bazan’s harsh stances against both the Dutch Protestants and moderates within the Catholic faith slowly jade the people’s opinion of him.
February 1580- The States-General of the Netherlands offers Queen Elizabeth I of England the position of sovereign ruler of the Lowlands. Elizabeth declines, but Spain is still provoked by the action.
July 1580- The States-General next turns to France, and offers the throne to the Duc D’Anjou. D’Anjou demands the Netherlands formally declare themselves independent of Spain before he accepts. On July 4th, 1580, all attending members of the States-General of the Netherlands sign the Affirmation of Abjuration, which listed the claimed injustices and failures of responsibility that King Philip II of Spain had inflicted on the people of the Netherlands, and was therefore no longer recognized as rightful king of the Lowlands. From that point onwards, the United States of the Netherlands is generally recognized by historians today as being de facto independent.
March 3rd, 1581- First written letter to King Philip II from Alvaro de Bazan suggesting an invasion of England. Bazan is prompted to write this letter by his observations of Dutch rebels, raiders, and pirates based in the British Isles. Arguing in the letter that the only way to totally destroy all the embers of the Dutch Rebellion is to destroy all of its remaining strongholds, Bazan advocates in this first letter sending a vast contingent of Spanish troops to the British Isles to eradicate “the foreign holdouts of the Lowlanders who refuse to obey the law of Your Majesty [Philip II].” Very little is said of what to do with the English, although it is likely that Bazan at that point did not consider outright occupation to be needed.
1581- Spain attempts to rally her remaining holdings in the Netherlands by forming a “Union of Lille.” However, this political union quickly falls apart when the commander of Spanish forces in Lille is killed by an angry mob that fall.
May 10th, 1582- Alvaro de Bazan again sends a letter to Philip II advocating an invasion of England, declaring “if the scourge of Protestantism, both Dutch and English, is not soon put out, it may soon spread deeper [into Europe], gaining even more power in France and the Germanies.”
February 16th, 1583- D’Anjou turns out to be incredibly disliked in the Netherlands. Zeeland, Friesland, and Holland refuse to recognize his rule from the outset. D’Anjou resorts to using force to back his rule. After entering Brussels with a small company on men on the 15th of February, the townsfolk quickly close all the entrances to the city, trapping him inside. In the following skirmish that night, D’Anjou is shot in the Adam’s Apple. He is declared dead the next day. The States-General rules the Netherlands as a republic after his death.
Attached is a rough map of the Netherlands in 1584.