Necessity
The conflict between the Spanish King Philip II and the Dutch rebels in the Spanish-ruled Habsburg Netherlands, culminating in the Eighty Years' War, symbolized the prominent European power struggle of the 16th century between Catholics and Protestants. In 1550, the wars had stretched Spain's finances thin. 1566 was known as the "Year of Hunger" or "Year of Wonders". When social, political and religious unrest culminated in the Compromise of Nobles and the Beeldenstorm, apparently endangering the government of Philip's Regent in Brussels, Margaret of Parma, Spanish troops under the Duke of Alba were dispatched to restore order and punish the perceived insurrectionists. Those troops could at the time not be transported by sea and Philip was therefore forced to find a route to move troops from his garrisons in Spanish Italy overland to his Netherlands domains, crossing neutral territory. The Spanish Road was surveyed and mapped out in 1566, and Alba used it in July 1567.
Read more about this topic: Spanish Road
Famous quotes containing the word necessity:
“Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.”
—Baruch (Benedict)
“The desire to serve the common good must without fail be a requisite of the soul, a necessity for personal happiness; if it issues not from there, but from theoretical or other considerations, it is not at all the same thing.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)