Low Countries in revolt against king of Spain

From British web log Lenin’s Tomb, a long article on sixteenth-seventeenth century Low Countries history:

Arguably, the Dutch revolt was the first modern national liberation war.

It was also, quite possibly, the first time the word ‘quagmire‘ came to be used to describe a floundering military invasion, as when (during the second wave of revolt in the 1570s), an English commentator described Holland as “The great Bog of Europe … an universall Quag-mire

… Indeed it is the buttock of the World, full of veines and bloud, but no bones in’t.” (Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt, Penguin, 1990: 156). …

I suppose it helps to know where to start, because historians don’t agree on this.

It could be anything from 1566 and that year’s “iconoclastic furies” to 1581 and the abjuration of [King] Philip [II of Spain].

Iconoclasm and Protestantism: here.

See also The Dutch Revolt: a social analysis, by Pepijn Brandon: here.

Related articles

• Students revolt across Spain (euronews.com)
• Prisoners are revolting: inmates’ anger at watery custard (telegraph.co.uk)
• Historically Speaking: Guy Fawkes Day, Then and Now (hackcollege.com)