The assassination of William the Silent in 1584 combined with the military brilliance of the Prince of Parma brought the Dutch revolt to the brink of collapse, with key cities falling one after another.

24:20going on in the low countries? Because that really has been the cockpit of um Europe's wars of religion for the last few years. Well, what's happened there is that the the most dynamic and significant leader of the Dutch rebels has been eliminated, William of Orange, William the Silent, and he had been assassinated the previous summer on the 10th of July 1584. He'd been shot um on a staircase in his kind of very modest

24:47quarters in Delft. Um, William of Orange had once been one of the richest men in Europe, but he has spent all his money on keeping the Dutch revolt afloat. So, he's now basically bankrupt. Um, and the assassin had been um inspired to murder the Prince of Orange by two factors. Firstly, his own devout Catholicism, but secondly, by a bounty that Philip had placed on William's head in 1580. And as

25:14William dies, his last thoughts are of, you know, his fellow rebels in in Holland and the northern provinces. And he cries out, "My God, have mercy on me and on my poor people." But has God been listening to this prayer? Um, in the wake of William's assassination, >> it seems not because in the months that follow William's assassination, the rebel provinces in the low countries are brought almost to the point of collapse.

25:43And in part, I think this is due to the loss of Williams leadership, but it is also due to the brilliance of the captain they were facing on the battlefield. Remember, we said the Spanish in the low countries are led by the greatest general of the age. And this is a guy called Alexander Fesei, the prince of Palmer. And he is a completely terrifying adversary. So he's

26:07an Italian, isn't he? Or Italian born. He's the son of the Duke of Palmer. But the key thing is that his mother who'd been born in Fllanders. Yeah. And and she has I mean we love to do these when we're doing the first world war. We like to draw attention to the mustaches of the leading generals. And I mean we're not going to be talking about Alexander

26:27Farese the Prince of Palmer's mustache. I mean he has a good mustache. >> He has a good mustache but but it's not as striking as his mother's mustache. Is that fair or is that ungallant? >> It's a bit ungallant but I think fair. Uh she she is well known for her mustache. She is Philip II's halfsister and Philip had appointed her to serve as the governor of the low countries in the

26:46um in the 1560s. Uh and it's her period running the low countries that had resulted in the the revolt breaking out. So she doesn't have a great track record but Palmer is as we've said an incredibly formidable man. and he's been serving as both the governor general of the Netherlands and the captain general of the army of Flanders since 1578. So he combines both the civil and the

27:12military responsibilities in his single person and he's been doing an amazing job. So just to give um the summary of Jeffrey Parker, the great historian of the Dutch revolt and Spain more generally in the 16th century, Palmer was able and resourceful, rich and cultivated, subtle and shrewd. He excelled in both diplomacy and war. And the measure of his achievement is that back in 1578 when he'd first been