Pacification of Ghent - Aftermath

Aftermath

The problem with the Pacification was that the provinces agreed on little, other than the need to confront the marauding mutineers. Once that problem had been solved by the withdrawal of the Spanish tercios to Italy in April 1577, the provinces started to diverge again.

Don Juan signed the Pacification on February 12, 1577, thereby apparently giving royal assent to it. He took care, however, to stress the clauses about maintaining the Catholic religion outside the provinces of Holland and Zeeland, that the States General had attempted to "fudge." The States General then accepted him as the legitimate governor-general, and even agreed to pay the arrears of the royal troops (the refusal of which had arguably been the cause of the problems with the mutineers). This agreement was enshrined in the Edict of 1577. However, that Edict seemed to provide for a return to the status quo ante in which the States General would not be permanently in session. Holland and Zeeland protested against this arrangement and refused to submit to it. Neither would they give up the fortresses they had occupied, as provided for in the Pacification. The relations between the new governor-general and the States General also soon deteriorated. The States General even appointed their own governor-general, the Archduke Matthias.

In 1579, Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma, became royalist Governor General of the Netherlands and he immediately offered the southern Catholic nobles their original privileges back. With the Spanish army under control and their local liberties returned, the Walloon nobles and Southern provinces no longer had any reason to rebel. However, the Northern, Calvinist-controlled provinces were as unwilling to give up their religion as Philip II was to allow them to practice it. The French-speaking provinces thereupon concluded the Union of Arras, which the other provinces immediately answered with their own Union of Utrecht. The Habsburg Netherlands split up.