What turned out to be the permanent halt to Spanish advance in the Low Countries after 1585 was chiefly the result of the increasing consolidation and resilience of the Dutch rebel state based on the provinces of Holland, its rapidly growing economic strength, and not least the increasingly formidable ring of sophisticated fortifications which the new Dutch regime, following the assassination of William of Orange by a Catholic fanatic in 1584, constructed in order to seal off the infant rebel state from Spanish-held territory to the south and east. This massive defensive ring ran from Sluis on the Scheldt estuary, in the south, via the great rivers and the IJssel line to Coevorden, in Drenthe and then on the Delfzij on the Ems estuary.

The English began by taking control of the English Channel with a smashing naval victory off Sluis in the Netherlands and then freely attacked northern France. The first major encounter on land took place near the channel coast at Crécy-en-Ponthieu in 1346 and was a thorough victory for the English. The English subsequently undertook an exhaustive siege of Calais, which capitulated after two years.

In 1337, England and France went to war after English king Edward III issued a claim on the French throne. The war, which became known as the Hundred Years' War, lasted from 1337 to 1453. The Hundred Years War started with the English defeating a French fleet off the coast of the Netherlands, at the Battle of Sluis, and then landing in France itself. The first major land battle took place at Crecy-en-Ponthieu in 1346 - and was again won by the English, who then launched a two year long siege of Calais, which finally fell in 1348.

The fall of Brussels was deferred till March, and that of Mechlin (19th July, 1585) and of Antwerp (19th August, 1585), till Midsummer of the following year; but, the surrender of Ghent (10th March 1585) foreshadowed the fate of Flanders and Brabant. Ostend and Sluys, however, were still in the hands of the patriots, and with them the control of the whole Flemish coast. The command of the sea was destined to remain for centuries with the new republic.

History of Antwerp

Gallo Roman period

Excavations have shown that there was certainly habitation on the bend in the river as long ago as the Gallo-Roman period (2nd or 3rd century A.D.). Like many Flemish cities Antwerp grew up around two settlements : the ‘aanwerp’ or ‘alluvial mound’ from which the city probably derives its name, and Caloes, 500 meters further south. A fortification was built on the mound around the seventh century. Christianization also began in that period. In the ninth century, when Antwerp became part of Lorraine, that ‘castellum’ was destroyed by the Norman's. 

The present-day Steen still comprises remains of its tenth-century replacement. At the end of the tenth century Antwerp became a margraviate (a border province) of the Holy Roman Empire. The border was the River Scheldt. The County of Flanders lay on the other side. In the twelfth century Saint Norbertus founded St. Michael’s Abbey on Caloes. The canons of the little church that had stood there then moved to the northern nucleus and founded a new parish there around a Chapel of Our Lady - the first forerunner of the Cathedral.

The city, which was now part of the Duchy of Brabant, continued to expand in concentric circles with successive bulwarks which are still identifiable in the street pattern. A first economic boom followed in the first half of the fourteenth century. Antwerp became the most important trading and financial centre in Western Europe; its reputation was based largely on its seaport and wool market.

In 1356 the city was annexed to the County of Flanders and lost very many privileges, partly to Bruges’ advantage. Fifty years later the political and economic tide turned again and the run-up to the Golden Age began, when Antwerp became a metropolis of world class at every level : a kind of sixteenth-century Manhattan. It was this centre of trade and culture which Florentijn Lodovico Guicciardini described as ‘the loveliest city in the world’. The most famous names from that age are : the painters Quinten Metsys and Bruegel, the printer Plantijn, the humanists and scientists Lipsius, Mercator, Dodoens and Ortelius.

After 1585

However, in the second half of that century the city was the focus of the politico-religious struggle between the Protestant North and Catholic Spain and as such it was stricken by a series of calamitous events: the iconoclasm (1566), the Spanish Fury (1576) and finally the Fall of Antwerp (1585). After the Fall the city again came under the rule of Philip II and the Northern Netherlands closed off the Scheldt. From an economic point of view this was a disaster. To make matters worse, it was not only the Protestants who fled the city but also the commercial and intellectual elite. Of the city’s 100.000 inhabitants in 1570, by 1590 no more than about 40.000 remained.
Yet the city continued to flourish culturally until the mid-seventeenth century with painters like Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens and Teniers, the sculptor families Quellin and Verbrugghen, printers like Moretus, the famous Antwerp harpsichord builders, etc., etc.

There is little of cheer to recount about Antwerp between 1650 and the nineteenth century. The Scheldt remained closed to traffic and the metropolis became a provincial town. Under Austrian rule (1715-1792) Joseph II tried to free the river by military force, but the plan misfired. In 1795, under French occupation, it succeeded but this time the ships encountered an English blockade. This was hardly surprising since Napoleon regarded the Port of Antwerp as ‘a pistol pointed at the heart of England’. Whilst it is true that Antwerp owes the beginnings of a modern port to that French period (1792-1815), at the same time the city’s cultural heritage fell prey to art plundering and destruction on a scale rarely seen before. There were even plans to pull down the Cathedral.


After the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo (1815), there followed a short-lived reunification with the Northern Netherlands and an equally short period of prosperity which ended with the Belgian Revolution (1830) and once again the closure of the Scheldt. It was reopened, this time definitively, in 1863. Then Antwerp’s third great hey-day could begin. Apart from interruptions during the two world wars, Antwerp has experienced steady economic growth in the twentieth century. This gave rise to a new cultural high point and international prestige in 1993 when Antwerp was nominated Cultural Capital of Europe : the recognition of historical and modern-day riches in which you too can share.

Antwerp Today

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