Philip Sidney died of a leg wound and became famous at his funeral
The Anglo-Spanish cold war turns hot, and Philip Sidney finally gets his chance at glory on the battlefields of the Low Countries — only to die of a leg wound that need not have killed him. What made him a hero of Protestant Europe was the funeral, not the fighting.
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The courtier the Queen trusted least was the perfect courtier
At the 1581 tilt, Philip Sidney was the star of the show: born into England's top-tier network of connections, and a poet and courtier famous across Europe, with ‘Astrophil and Stella’ regarded as the sonnet sequence second only to Shakespeare's. But Elizabeth did not really trust him. She resented that his connections were too strong, that he was too independent, too militantly Protestant; keeping him at court to entertain the French marriage embassy looked more like a humiliation. In a quarrel on the tennis court that same year, the Earl of Oxford called him a puppy, and the Queen personally rebuked him for forgetting the difference in rank. He was not knighted until 1583, at 29 — and for a ‘perfect courtier’ like this, the lateness was itself a mark of coldness.
The border between the Netherlands and Belgium was drawn by this war
Around 1585, Parma had already recovered most of the southern Low Countries for Spanish control; Ghent fell, then Brussels, and the rebel camp looked as though it was about to collapse. Four great rivers formed a natural dividing line: the northern provinces held Spain off in the end and became the Dutch Republic of seventeenth-century Protestantism, capitalism and Rembrandt; the south returned to the Habsburgs and Catholicism, and two and a half centuries later became Belgium. This shadow war between England and Spain also, along the way, decided where the borders of the Low Countries sit on the map of Europe today.
Drake and Sidney were both waiting for the war they knew was coming
Back from his circumnavigation, Drake bought four mansions, sat as an MP, served as mayor of Plymouth, and even legislated to regulate the cod trade — and was bored out of his mind. Sidney served from 1583 as Master of the Ordnance, responsible for England's defensive preparations. Both were like Churchill in the 1930s, convinced that a war to the death with Spain was closing in, and both held to a militant Protestantism. Their mutual admiration was no accident: one wanted a real war, the other wanted a fellow traveller. By 1585 the war had actually arrived.
Orange's death very nearly brought the Dutch revolt down with him
On 10 July 1584, William of Orange was assassinated in Delft, crying out as he died ‘God have mercy on me and on my poor people’. He was the symbol of the Dutch revolt and its spiritual and military leader; with his death the rebels nearly collapsed. Facing them was the most formidable general in Europe, Parma — governor of the Netherlands and commander of the army at once, able to do diplomacy and able to fight. When he took over in 1578 the Spanish army was close to collapse; by 1584 he had taken back almost the entire south. France, meanwhile, was paralysed by the War of the Three Henrys, and Philip II finally had his hands free.
Antwerp did not fall to an army, it fell to a bridge
Antwerp was the largest, richest and most strongly Protestant city in the Low Countries. Parma laid siege from June 1584, and the heart of the operation was building a pontoon bridge nearly half a mile long to cut the Scheldt. The Dutch floated fireships packed with explosives down at the bridge; one did blow out a section and killed 800 Spanish soldiers, but Parma repaired the bridge before the gap could be exploited. In May the rebels attacked again, and the tide carried their own fireships back into their own lines. The siege lasted 13 months; Antwerp fell on 17 August 1585, and more than half of its inhabitants left.
Elizabeth sent troops for trade, not for the Protestant cause
Three days after Antwerp fell, Elizabeth signed the Treaty of Nonsuch with the Dutch rebels, sending 6,350 infantry and 1,000 cavalry and, unusually for her, agreeing to subsidise the costs. This was not a sudden appetite for war: Philip II had already imposed an embargo on English shipping in May 1585, and if Antwerp passed into Spanish hands the whole trading artery of the Low Countries could be squeezed shut. She demanded three ports as cautionary towns, to be garrisoned by English troops, to make sure she could control the mouth of the Scheldt. Sensitivity about money moved this queen more than enthusiasm for the Protestant cause.
Wrecking your enemy's credit is deadlier than seizing his silver
Sidney was originally to sail with Drake's fleet to the West Indies, but the Queen recalled him and sent him to Flushing instead. Drake stormed Vigo, San Domingo and Cartagena in turn, dismantling cities to extort ransoms; he intercepted no treasure ship, but he exposed the fragility of Spain's American empire to the financial world of Europe. The Pope and the dukes of Florence and Savoy refused to lend Philip II any more money, and a bank in Seville failed. Burghley remarked with satisfaction that Drake was the man the King of Spain feared most. The genuinely valuable idea in this episode is that strategists in the sixteenth century already understood that attacking an opponent's credit is more lethal than robbing him of gold and silver.
Sidney's standing as a hero was manufactured by his funeral
Sidney charged three times at the battle of Zutphen; as he turned on the third, a shot hit him above the left knee and shattered the bone. Surgery to extract the bullet brought on gangrene, and he died on 17 October, aged only 31. At the end he sighed over a life of ‘vanity of vanities’. What actually turned him into a hero was the funeral: the coffin carried from Arnhem to London, fourteen pallbearers at St Paul's, the Lord Mayor in attendance, 300 armed Londoners, and his warhorse dragging a broken lance. In death he received the adoration of all Protestant Europe that he had sought in vain while alive. The myth of the hero was made at the funeral.
In their own words · checked verbatim
They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts.
And so that's why Philip is named after Philip of Spain. So, you know, even when he's a little baby. Philip Sydney is meeting very famous people.
So that's maybe a third of the population end up leaving Ghent and heading to Holland.
Probably around 60,000 people.Out of it.Total population of 100000.So more than half.
And this is to consist of 6350 infantry.And 1000 cavalry.
whilst his riches of the Indies continue.He thinketh he will be able with them to weary out all other prince s.Those taken away himself, will quickly fall.
And so in death.Sydney becomes what he had yearned to be all his life.A hero.To every English Protestant and indeed, to every Protestant.
Figures
| Protestants who left Ghent after it fell | About 15,000 people, roughly a third of the city | 30:00 |
| Length of Parma's pontoon bridge | About half a mile, twice the length of Caesar's Rhine bridge | 32:13 |
| Spanish soldiers killed by the fireship | 800 men | 32:13 |
| Length of the siege of Antwerp | 13 months | 40:00 |
| English force under the Treaty of Nonsuch | 6,350 infantry + 1,000 cavalry | 41:51 |
| Size of Drake's West Indies fleet | About 20 ships, 2 of them provided by Elizabeth | 45:00 |
| Spanish relief force at Zutphen | 5,000 men | 54:14 |
Glossary
- cautionary towns
- The three ports the Dutch handed to English garrisons under the Treaty of Nonsuch, held as security for English aid.
- fireships / hell-burners
- Attack craft packed with explosives and floated downstream at an enemy bridge or fleet; the Dutch used them against Parma's pontoon bridge.
- Politiques
- The moderate Protestants in the Low Countries revolt who argued for toleration rather than radical Calvinisation, and who clashed with Leicester's hard line.
- War of the Three Henrys
- The war among three Henrys in France from 1585, which paralysed France and gave Spain room to move.
How to listen
Listeners who want to understand Elizabethan court politics, how the Anglo-Spanish cold war turned hot, and where the Dutch-Belgian border came from; especially suited to anyone who likes big history told through the fate of one person.
The first roughly 7 minutes are sponsor reads and poetry readings and can be skipped; listeners already following the series should start at 11:38.