Eighty Years' War

The Siege of Maastricht was a battle of the Eighty Years' War it lasted from March 12 - July 1, 1579. The Spanish were victorious. In 1579 the city... of Maastricht was in the hands of the Dutch rebels. On March 12, 1579 the Spanish General Alexander Farnese started to lay siege to the city with his army consisting of 20,000 men. The Dutch garrison consisted of 2,000 soldiers and some city militia. The Spanish commander ordered his troops to sap the walls. The inhabitants of Maastricht too were digging to reach the Spanish tunnels. Deep under ground the fighting continued, hundreds of Spanish soldiers died as boiling water was poured into their tunnels. Others died because of a lack of oxygen when the Dutch defenders ignited fires within them. Another 500 Spanish soldiers died when a mine, which they planned to use to blow up the wall, exploded prematurely. In the night of 29 June Farnese managed to get into the city while the exhausted defenders were fast asleep. The Spanish looted the city for 3 days.
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The Battle on the Zuiderzee was a naval battle during the Eighty Years' War in which a Dutch fleet destroyed a larger and better-equipped Spanish... fleet on the Zuiderzee. For the years prior to the Battle of the Zuiderzee, one of the largest Dutch cities, Amsterdam, had been occupied by the Spanish. Because supply routes for cities in the area controlled by both the Spanish and the Dutch almost exclusively went through the Zuiderzee, Dutch rebels attempted to disturb this route as much as possible in small skirmishes and raids against Spanish ports. In 1573 the Spanish Governor Maximilian de Henin Count of Bossu sent a fleet consisting of about 30 ships with a crew of over 1,300 persons with the prerogative to halt the attacks and destroy the enemy force. This fleet also included his flagship, the Inquisition. Weighing in at just over 250 tons, the Inquisition had reinforced sides consisting of armored plating. Opposing Henin's fleet were a small fleet the Gueux managed to assemble. This fleet of 24 much smaller and lightly armed ships. Altogether, this fleet consisted of around 700 men.
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The Battle of Dahlen was fought on April 23, 1568, between a Dutch rebel army led by Joost de Soete, Lord of Villers, and a Spanish army commanded by... Sancho Dávila y Daza. As a part of William of Orange's planned invasion, the Dutch rebels were trying to conquer the town of Roermond when the arrival of the Spanish force compelled them to withdraw. Dávila pursued the retreating force and inflicted a defeat upon Villers near the small town of Dahlen . The survivors of this encounter sought refuge under the walls of Dahlen, where the Spanish infantry finally defeated them. This battle is sometimes considered the official start of the Eighty Years' War. In 1568, William I of Orange, stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, and other noblemen dissatisfied with the Spanish rule in the Netherlands, the Geuzen, were determined to expel Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba, and his Spanish troops from the country. William, based in Dillenburg, designed a triple attack upon the Netherlands by his rebel followers and foreign mercenary forces.
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The Siege of Breda is the name for two major sieges of the Eighty Years' War and Thirty Years' War. The Dutch fortress city of Breda fell to a... Spanish army under Ambrogio Spinola in 1625; it was retaken by Frederick Henry of Orange in the 1637 Siege of Breda. Under Spinola's orders, the Spanish laid siege to Breda in August 1624, contrary to the wishes of their King. The city was heavily fortified and defended by a garrison of 7,000. Spinola rapidly invested its defences and hurled back a Dutch relief army under Maurice of Nassau attempting to cut his supplies. The defenders held. In February 1625, a second relief force, consisting of 7,000 Englishmen under Horace Vere and Ernst von Mansfeld, was also driven off. When Justin of Nassau surrendered Breda in June 1625 after a costly eleven-month siege, only 3,500 Dutchmen and less than 600 Englishmen had survived. The Siege of Breda was Spinola's greatest success and one of Spain's last major victories in the Eighty Years' War. It was part of a plan to isolate the Republic from its Hinterland. Spain's efforts in the Netherlands continued thereafter though political infighting hindered Spinola's freedom of movement.
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