Duke of Alva

(click to enlarge)
Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd duke de Alba, oil painting by Sir Antony More, 1549; in the … (credit: Courtesy of the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels)

(born Oct. 29, 1507, Piedrahita, Old Castile, Spain — died Dec. 11, 1582, Lisbon) Spanish soldier. He commanded Charles V's imperial armies to defeat the Schmalkaldic League in 1547, and he served as viceroy of Naples (1556 – 59). As a chief minister to Philip II, Alba became notorious for his tyranny as governor-general of the Netherlands (1567 – 73), where he instituted the Council of Troubles. That court set aside local laws and condemned some 12,000 people for rebellion. Recalled to Spain in 1573, Alba later conducted a brilliant campaign against Portugal (1580) but never regained Philip's favor.

For more information on Fernando Álvarez de Toledo (y Pimentel), 3rd duke de Alba, visit Britannica.com.

Alba, Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of (1507-82), Spanish general, military innovator, and overseer of brutal repression in the Netherlands from 1567 to 1573. Alba began military service under Emperor Charles V, aged 16, was made a general at 25, and commanded an army at 30. Although a fanatical Catholic, he fought against Pope Paul IV for Spain in 1556-7, as well as against German Protestants in 1546-8. He already enjoyed a distinguished military reputation when in 1566 he was ordered to put down the revolt in the Spanish Netherlands, now predominantly Protestant. Alba's careful study of military affairs had been as much theoretical as practical. He conducted more sieges than any general since Roman times, and avoided battle whenever the outcome looked uncertain. But, as Motley, the fiercely Protestant historian of the Dutch republic, observed, his ‘thrift of human (his own troops') life was not derived from any love of his kind’.

In summer 1567 he arrived in the Netherlands at the head of a small but perfectly balanced army, comprising 10, 000 picked veterans, each accoutred like a captain, 1, 200 cavalry, and, to maintain the force's physical, rather than spiritual, health, 2, 000 ‘courtezanes à cheval, belles et braves comme princesses’ (courtesans on horseback, beautiful and courageous like princesses). On 22 August he was met by Count Egmont, a distinguished soldier and national champion of the Dutch Protestants. Alba began a scheme to entrap Egmont and his colleague Horn, who were tried and executed in June 1568. They need not have been a threat to Alba: their execution made them martyrs. Meanwhile, the papacy had passed the first judicial act of genocide of modern times. On 16 February 1568 the entire population of the Netherlands—three million—was condemned to death as heretics apart from a few named exceptions. Ten days later, the Spanish King Philip II ordered Alba to carry out the sentence. In the terror which followed, the wealth of the prosperous merchants made them a particular target, and axe, rope, and fire consumed the natural leaders of Dutch society. Alba wrote to Philip coolly estimating the number to be executed after Holy Week 1568 ‘at eight hundred heads’. Alba is said to have admitted to personal responsibility for 18, 600 executions during his six-year tenure—a plausible figure, but the additional number massacred with increasing barbarity by his troops is incalculable.

Faced with this reign of terror, the population had nothing to lose by armed resistance. In 1572 there was a general revolt in the northern provinces, the beginnings of the Netherlands revolt, led by William ‘the Silent’, Alba's greais crimes against humanity and demanding his removal. The bitter fighting in the Netherlands led to military changes which helped shape the appearance of modern professional armies in the next centuries. Alba replaced the hand-held firearm of the time, the arquebus, which still faced competition from the crossbow and longbow, with a bigger, heavier, longer-barrelled firearm which needed a supporting rest but which fired a massive ball of around an inch in calibre and would smash through body armour, flesh, and bone as never before. It was the Spanish mosquete—the original musket. The greater power and range of this weapon enabled infantry to deploy more thinly, beginning a process which would lead to the adoption of linear tactics in the next century.

On 18 December 1573 Alba left the Netherlands, never to return. On his return to Spain he was disgraced and imprisoned and only released, still under sentence, when an experienced general was needed to conquer Portugal in 1580. He died on 12 December 1582, not regretting his harshness in the Netherlands, but complaining of his royal master's ingratitude.

— Christopher Bellamy

Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba (1507-1582), or Alva, was a Spanish general and statesman. Known as the Iron Duke because of his ruthlessness, he almost succeeded in putting down the rising in the Low Countries against Spain.

Fernando Álvarez de Toledo was born at Piedrahita on Oct. 29, 1507, into one of the oldest and most distinguished noble families of Spain. His father died when Fernando was young, and he was reared by a stern grandfather to be a strict Roman Catholic, a loyal servant of the king, and a disciplined soldier. By the age of 14 he was serving as an officer in the campaigns of Emperor Charles V against the French.

From 1531 Alba played a leading role in operations against the Turks, was promoted to general in 1533, and distinguished himself during the siege of Tunis in 1535. After defending Perpignan against a French assault in 1542, he was appointed by Charles V to serve Prince Philip as military adviser during the Emperor's absence from Spain. Alba joined Charles V in Germany in 1546 with the outbreak of the Schmalkaldic War and commanded the cavalry, which contributed heavily to the imperial victory at Mühlberg in 1547. In 1552 he took over general command of the Spanish forces in Italy, but when Maurice of Saxony rose unexpectedly and successfully against the Emperor and won the alliance of Henry II of France, Charles recalled Alba to Germany to lead the resistance to the French armies. However, Alba could not prevent the defeat of the imperial forces, which led to the Emperor's abdication in 1556.

Philip II, on becoming king of Spain, named Alba governor of Milan and commander in Italy. There Alba waged a war against the papal army of Paul IV, a French ally. Avoiding a direct attack upon Rome lest there be a repetition of the sack of 1527, Alba compelled the Pope to accept a peace in 1557, which consolidated Spanish domination of Italy for more than a century. Returning to the Low Countries, Alba participated in the negotiations which resulted in the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559).

Rioting by Calvinist mobs in the Netherlands in 1566 led to Philip II's decision to send Alba to the Low Countries to crush them, root out Protestantism, and replace the ancient institutions of local and provincial government by ruling organs responsible only to Philip. Alba entered Brussels on Aug. 22, 1567, took over as governor general, and set up the Council of Troubles (called the Council of Blood by the people) to put down heresy and rebellion. The council operated with harsh rigor; even two of the most important noblemen in the country, the counts of Egmont and Hoorn, were arrested, tried, and beheaded; and over 1,000 men of all ranks were similarly punished (it was originally believed that the victims numbered about 6,000). Thousands fled abroad for safety.

Alba defeated the rebel armies of William the Silent and his brother, Louis of Nassau, in their forays into the Netherlands. He introduced a system of taxation into the Low Countries based primarily on the Spanish system of a sales tax of 10 percent on each transfer of goods; although the provinces bought their way out for the moment by lumpsum payments, there was profound anxiety that the prosperity of the Low Countries was being undermined. In 1572, the rebellion led by William the Silent shifted to the northern Netherlands. The next year Alba asked Philip II to allow him to return to Spain, and he sailed away from the Netherlands, still torn by rebellion, on Dec. 18, 1573.

On his return to Spain, Alba found himself in the King's disfavor. Nonetheless, in 1580 Philip entrusted the conquest of Portugal to him. Alba died in Lisbon on Dec. 11, 1582.

Further Reading

A brief account of Alba's career was written by the Duke of Berwick and Alba, The Great Duke of Alba as a Public Servant (1947). For background see Roger Bigelow Merriman, The Rise of the Spanish Empire in the Old World and in the New, vol. 4 (1918); William Thomas Walsh, Philip II (1937); Sir Charles Petrie, Philip II of Spain (1963); and John Lynch, Spain under the Hapsburgs, vol. 1 (1964). Alba's role in the Netherlands is detailed in Pieter Geyl, The Revolt of the Netherlands, 1555-1609 (1932; rev. ed. 1958); Cecil John Cadoux, Philip of Spain and the Netherlands (1969); and Edward Grierson, The Fatal Inheritance: Philip II and the Spanish Netherlands (1969). Also useful is C.V. Wedgwood, William the Silent (1944).

Additional Sources

Maltby, William S., Alba: a biography of Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, third duke of Alba, 1507-1582, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

Alba, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of (also Alva; 1507–1582), Spanish general and statesman. Fernando Álvarez de Toledo was born 29 October 1507 at Piedrahita, one of his family's estates. Three years later his father died fighting the Muslims in North Africa, and he was raised by his grandfather, Fadrique, second Duke of Alba, who gave him a military education. His tutors included Juan Boscán, who translated Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier (1528) into Castilian, and the poet Garcilaso de la Vega. At sixteen Fernando fought at the siege of Fuenterrabía against French forces. After inheriting his grandfather's title in 1531, he served the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (ruled 1519–1558; king of Spain, ruled 1516–1556 as Charles I) in the campaigns of Vienna, Tunis, Provence, and Algiers. With the beginning of the emperor's wars against the Protestant German Schmalkaldic League in 1546, Alba became the emperor's chief military advisor and played a major role in the victory at Mühlberg in 1547.

Alba returned to Spain in 1548 as Prince Philip's chief of household. He used this position to create a court faction based upon his own extended family and a group of royal secretaries associated with the imperial secretary, Francisco de los Cobos. The royal chamberlain, Ruy Gómez de Silva, developed a rival faction based on his wife's Mendoza relatives and the group of royal secretaries loyal to Cardinal Espinosa (the Inquisitor-General).

As chief of household, Alba went to England with Philip II (ruled 1556–1598) in 1554. When Charles V abdicated, Alba served Philip briefly as viceroy of Milan and then of Naples, where, in 1556–1557, he conducted a successful war against Pope Paul IV and the duke of Guise. When the Habsburg-Valois struggle ended in 1559, Alba helped negotiate the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis before returning to Spain as a member of the Council of State. There, his sharp tongue and haughty disposition made him unpopular, but Philip relied upon his military expertise and trusted his religious orthodoxy to the point of consulting him on ecclesiastical appointments.

After 1562, Alba's glorified ideas of royal authority and hatred of heresy made him the court's leading opponent of compromise with the Netherlanders, who were growing restive under Spanish rule. Both he and the king regarded the rioting and iconoclasm of 1566 as rebellion. Philip, with the duke's knowledge, devised a strategy that would send Alba to the Netherlands to crush the opposition. Philip would then claim that his captain-general had exceeded his instructions, go to the Netherlands in person, and mollify its inhabitants with a general pardon. The plan was supported by Alba's enemies, who hoped to discredit him while he was out of the country.

In 1567, the duke led an army of Spanish veterans to the Low Countries, where he established a political court, known as the Council of Troubles, to prosecute dissidents. The Council declared the counts of Egmont and Hoorn guilty of high treason, as presumed leaders of the revolt, and executed them. These harsh measures caused William of Orange and other leaders of the Gueux (a sixteenth-century revolutionary party) to flee to foreign countries. When William of Orange then invaded the Netherlands with an army of German mercenaries, Alba easily defeated him, and by 1568 had pacified the entire country. It was time for the king to come, but the death of his heir, Don Carlos, and the revolt of the Moriscos in southern Spain prevented him from doing so.

Alba remained in the Netherlands for four more years in the face of growing resentment. He used his time to complete ecclesiastical reforms that had been halted since 1560 and to install fourteen new bishops. He also promulgated the first uniform criminal code in Netherlandish history, but, when he attempted in 1572 to impose the Tenth Penny, a sales tax based on the Spanish alcabala, the towns rose in revolt. Although Alba's campaign against them was at first successful, his policy of reprisals led to prolonged sieges at Haarlem and Alkmaar, and the king finally recalled him to Spain in 1573. Though Alba retained his seat on the Council of State, his position at court was now far weaker than it had been before he was sent to the Netherlands. Philip imprisoned him briefly in 1579, over the unauthorized marriage of his son Fadrique, but released him in the following year to lead Spain's army in the annexation of Portugal. Here his touch was more subtle and successful than it had been in the Netherlands. He died at Tomar in Portugal in 1582.

Contemporaries thought Alba the greatest soldier of his age. His ideas on warfare were popularized by a school of military writers who had served under his command, and they continued to influence Spanish military practice until the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). He was capable of successful diplomacy, but as Philip II's governor in the Netherlands he failed. The duke's harshness and insensitivity to local conditions provoked a full-scale insurrection, and he bears much responsibility for Spain's eventual loss of the northern Netherlands.

Bibliography

Epistolario del III Duque de Alba, 3v., edited by J. M. del P.C.M.S. Fitz James Stuart y Falco, Tenth Duke of Berwick y Alba. Madrid, 1952.

Maltby, William S. Alba: A Biography of Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Third Duke of Alba, 1507–1582. Berkeley, 1983.

—WILLIAM S. MALTBY