Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange

Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange (1567-1625), Dutch military commander and political leader prominent in the Dutch Wars of Independence. Maurice of Nassau was born in Dollingen, Germany, the son of the Dutch rebel leader William the Silent and his second wife Anna of Saxony. He was brought up by his father’s German relatives, while William returned to lead the revolt against the Spanish from 1572 onward, but was studying at Leiden University (which his father had founded in 1574) when William was assassinated in 1584.

Maurice was appointed Stadtholder of the provinces of Holland and Zeeland in 1585, Captain-General of the Netherlands in 1588, and Stadtholder of Gelderland, Utrecht, and Overijssel in 1591. As joint commanders, Maurice and his cousin William Louis of Nassau, Stadtholder of Friesland, Groningen, and Drenthe, devised new battle formations, improved the recruitment and training of troops, and, during the 1590s, reconquered Groningen, most of Overijssel and Gelderland, and the area now known as Zeeland Flanders, expelling the last Spanish troops from what is now the Netherlands in 1597.

In 1609 a 12-year truce with Spain was negotiated by Jan van Olden Barneveldt, the grand pensionary (chief executive) of Holland, against Maurice’s wishes. From 1612 Maurice took up the orthodox Calvinist cause against the unorthodox Remonstrants and helped to turn the religious controversy into a political crisis over Barneveldt’s policy of toleration in Holland. Maurice, who had become Prince of Orange on the death of his elder half-brother Philip William in 1618, arranged to have Barneveldt tried for treason and executed in 1619. When the truce ended in 1621 Maurice again led the Dutch forces against the Spanish, but there was no decisive victory or defeat before his death on April 23, 1625. He was buried beside his father in Delft and was succeeded as military commander and as Prince of Orange by his brother Frederick Henry.