Johan van Oldenbarnevelt

Dutch statesman and diplomat

• Born: September 14, 1547
• Birthplace: Amersfoort, Bishopric of Utrecht (now in the Netherlands)
• Died: May 13, 1619
• Place of death: The Hague, United Provinces (now in the Netherlands)

Oldenbarnevelt was the founder-lawgiver of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, whose statesmanship set the constitutional libertarian course that the modern Netherlands has followed. He was one of the greatest statesmen and diplomats in early modern Europe and in all Dutch history.

Early Life

Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (YOH-hahn fahn ahl-dehn-BAHR-neh-vehlt) given the name Johan Gerrit Reyerszoon van Oldenbarnevelt, was born in the bishopric of Utrecht, one of seventeen Netherlandic provinces in the possession of the Habsburg Dynasty; thus, he was born a subject of Emperor Charles V.

Johan belonged to the regent class, the burgher-oligarchy and provincial nobility of the Netherlands who governed locally by hereditary right on town councils and provincial representative assemblies that were called the states, or estates. The regent class was jealous of its position and privileges, and defended them against both the general populace and the Habsburgs and their lieutenants, called stadtholders.

Johan inherited the traditions of both his father’s family and his mother’s, the Weedes, traditions of burgher-oligarchy and provincial nobility, but he would not proceed directly to eminence. His father appears to have suffered mental incapacitation, and therefore he never served on the Amersfoort town council let alone on a council of the states of Utrecht, Holland, and Zealand, which were in very close political relations, or for the States-General of the Netherlands, the representative assembly of all the provinces. Because of this family crisis, Johan did not go directly from the Amersfoort Latin school to university studies or on the customary grand tour of France, Germany, and Italy. Instead, in 1563, Johan served a sort of apprenticeship with a lawyer in The Hague. Between 1566 and 1570, Johan combined university study and grand tour and traveled through Louvain, Bourges, Cologne, Heidelberg, Italy, and perhaps Padua, studying arts and the law.

When Oldenbarnevelt returned to The Hague in 1570, the duke of Alva for the Spanish Habsburgs tyrannized the Netherlands, which had begun the Dutch Wars of Independence in 1568. Oldenbarnevelt established law practice in the courts at The Hague, where he specialized in feudal law and law concerning dikes, drainage, and land reclamation. Because much of the Netherlands, the polders, had been reclaimed from the sea, and questions about title, responsibility for maintaining dikes, and similar matters were many, Oldenbarnevelt’s practice grew quickly and soon became very lucrative. The Revolt of the Netherlands swept up Oldenbarnevelt. Though he had become a moderate Calvinist while a university student in Heidelberg, in The Hague he became a partisan of William the Silent .

War interrupted Oldenbarnevelt’s legal practice and brought him onto the battlefield in the cause of Netherlandic independence. He saw action as a soldier in the disastrous attempt to relieve the Siege of Haarlem in 1573 and as supervisor of breaching the dikes in order to flood the polders for the celebrated relief of the Siege of Leiden in 1574. He also served William the Silent and his family in a legal capacity.

In 1575, Oldenbarnevelt was married to Maria van Utrecht, the illegitimate daughter of a noble family, who had become a wealthy heiress when Oldenbarnevelt’s legal shrewdness secured her legitimation. His courtship of Maria seems not to have been entirely mercenary, for they remained happily married for forty-three years, until his execution, and had two daughters, two sons, and grandchildren. Meanwhile, Oldenbarnevelt had regained his rightful place in the regent class, demonstrated considerable legal ability, gained a fortune by his law practice and marriage, and made important friends in the House of Orange.

Life’s Work

In 1576, Oldenbarnevelt became pensionary of Rotterdam, the legal representative and political secretary of the town, and entered the politics of Holland. Because Holland was the leading province, he thus became prominent in Netherlandic politics. Oldenbarnevelt promoted the Union of Utrecht of 1579 and the Act of Abjuration of 1581, which together became the declaration of independence and the constitution of the seven United Provinces of the Netherlands. Tensions between centralism and particularism remained, and at first the States-General thought to confer the sovereignty, which Spain had forfeited by its bloody tyranny, on the duke of Anjou and then the earl of Leicester, an action that would have made the United Provinces a satellite of France or England. Oldenbarnevelt led the states of Holland in opposition to such centralizing policies and in 1585 secured the appointment of Maurice of Nassau, son of William the Silent, who had been assassinated in 1584, as stadtholder and captain general. So long as the war against Spain continued, the advocate and the stadtholder collaborated in harmony Oldenbarnevelt strengthened the United Provinces politically and diplomatically, and supported Maurice with revenue and political cooperation, and Maurice won military victories.

Oldenbarnevelt led the United Provinces during the celebrated Ten Years (1588-1598), when the provinces achieved full self-government, balancing centralism among the States-General, the stadtholder and captain-general, and the councils, with particularism in the provincial states and the town councils, thus transforming the loose defensive alliance of seven sovereign provinces into the United Provinces of the Netherlands. It was in this that Oldenbarnevelt’s leadership proved decisive. He scored the diplomatic triumph of the Triple Alliance in 1596 with France and England against Spain and thus gained international recognition of the independent United Provinces.

In 1598, France made peace with Spain, and in 1604, England did the same, so in 1605, Oldenbarnevelt decided to make peace. Spain was exhausted and wanted peace, and Oldenbarnevelt knew that a peace treaty would mean at least de facto recognition by Spain and the Spanish Netherlands (the ten provinces not part of the Union of Utrecht) of the independence of the United Provinces. Oldenbarnevelt’s peace policy was opposed by Maurice and by his war party, which distrusted Spain’s intentions, by the orthodox Calvinists who saw the war in apocalyptic terms, and by commercial interests who wanted economically to penetrate the West Indies. Oldenbarnevelt himself had an energetic commercial policy. He had in 1602 chartered the Dutch East India Company, but he was reluctant to charter a Dutch West India Company, which would jeopardize the peace with Spain. In the face of such opposition to make peace with Spain, Oldenbarnevelt characteristically compromised and negotiated the Twelve Years’ Truce.

Yet the truce was disturbed by religious conflict within the United Provinces. This conflict had originated in an academic theological debate between two professors at the University of Leiden, the strict Calvinist Franciscus Gomarus and the revisionist Jacobus Arminius, over the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. The orthodox Calvinist Gomarists regarded the moderate Arminians, whom Oldenbarnevelt favored, as religious traitors worse than papists.

In 1617, Maurice declared for the Gomarists and rallied all parties that opposed Oldenbarnevelt over the Twelve Years’ Truce. Oldenbarnevelt responded with the Sharp Resolution of August 4, 1617, which attempted to remove the military in Holland from the stadtholder and captain-general and to place it under control of the states of Holland and towns of the province. Maurice mobilized the other six provinces in the union against Holland and moved quickly and decisively. On August 28, 1618, the States-General conferred dictatorial powers on Maurice, and on August 29, 1618, Maurice ordered the arrest of Oldenbarnevelt and a few of his followers. In February, 1619, the States-General created an extraordinary tribunal to try Oldenbarnevelt and three codefendants, who included his protégé the great jurist and political philosopher Hugo Grotius .

Oldenbarnevelt’s trial lasted from November, 1618, to May, 1619, but he was given neither writing materials nor access to books, documents, witnesses, or counsel. Yet he conducted an eloquent and dignified defense. The judges that were picked were his personal and political enemies, and the tribunal found Oldenbarnevelt guilty of vaguely defined capital crimes, despite his age and long service to the United Provinces. From the scaffold on May 13, 1619, Oldenbarnevelt addressed the crowd, “Men, do not think me a traitor; I have acted honestly and religiously, like a good patriot, and as such I die.” After the headsman had done his work, the crowd pressed forward and, for relics of the martyred Oldenbarnevelt, dipped handkerchiefs in his blood.

Significance

Oldenbarnevelt founded the United Provinces of the Netherlands and its traditions of constitutionalism and libertarianism. While William the Silent and his sons won Dutch independence on the battlefields of the Eighty Years’ War against Spain, Oldenbarnevelt preserved independence through lawgiving, statesmanship, and diplomacy. He spent his long life serving his country, and he died an old man beheaded in 1619 by a Dutch special tribunal, a martyr for his vision of Dutch republican liberty.

As pensionary of Rotterdam and advocate of Holland, Oldenbarnevelt was architect of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, which lasted until 1795, and the Dutch libertarianism that has thrived since. His leadership fostered moderation, freedom, enterprise, toleration, peace, and prosperity, and began the great cultural florescence of the United Provinces during the seventeenth century. The United Provinces became a refuge for intellectual freedom in an age of persecution.

Oldenbarnevelt’s diplomatic triumphs were the Triple Alliance with France and England in 1596 and the Twelve Years’ Truce with Spain and the Spanish Netherlands, which gave the new United Provinces both a respite from war and international recognition. Ironically, it was Oldenbarnevelt’s peace policy and religious moderation that led to his fall in 1618, and in 1619, his Dutch political enemies sentenced him to execution on very vague and unfounded charges of official misconduct and treason.

Oldenbarnevelt was a moderate in religion and politics, a believer in liberty of conscience, and a constitutionalist who saw the necessity of balancing particularism and centralism in order to secure freedoms. He shared William the Silent’s vision of an independent, united Netherlands. On the scaffold at The Hague, the venerable statesman died as he had lived brave and proud for the cause of liberty.

Bibliography

Darby, Graham, ed. The Origins and Development of the Dutch Revolt. New York: Routledge, 2001. Anthology of scholarship on the causes and consequences of the sixteenth century Dutch rebellion against Spanish rule. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Geyl, Pieter. History of the Low Countries: Episodes and Problems. London: Macmillan, 1964. An important collection of essays, several of which supply very useful background on Oldenbarnevelt; contentious in tone.

Geyl, Pieter. The Revolt of the Netherlands, 1555-1609. Reprint. London: Cassell, 1988. An admirably clear and cogent narrative, somewhat tendentious about the historical contingency of the divided Netherlands and hence inevitably ambivalent about Oldenbarnevelt’s founding of the United Provinces.

Koenigsberger, H. G. Monarchies, States Generals, and Parliaments: The Netherlands in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. History of the States-General of the Netherlands, its internal and external strife, and its division into the United Provinces and the Spanish Netherlands. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic refernces, index.

Motley, John Lothrop. The Life and Death of John of Barneveld. 2 vols. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1874. A classic history, with a strong Protestant and liberal bias, that is still well worth reading for its drama, eloquence, and insights into Oldenbarnevelt.

Rowen, Herbert H., ed. The Low Countries in Early Modern Times. New York: Walker, 1972. Includes well-selected key documents that are edited, translated, and commented on judiciously. Sections 4 and 6 present such texts as the Union of Utrecht, the Act of Abjuration, the Treaty of the Twelve Years’ Truce, and several of Oldenbarnevelt’s letters.

Swart, K. W. William of Orange and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1572-1584. Edited by R. P. Fagel, M. E. H. N. Mout, and H. F. K. van Nierop. Translated by J. C. Grayson. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003. Authoritative, comprehensive biography of William, the first stadtholder of the United Provinces. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Tex, Jan den. Oldenbarnevelt. Translated by R. B. Powell. 2 vols. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1973. The standard scholarly biography, this work is appreciative of the great statesman but not uncritically so. Better on his public life than on his private life. The book makes a peculiar defense of the special court that condemned Oldenbarnevelt.