The Eighty Years War follows the history of how the mightiest European power of the sixteenth century was finally brought to defeat. In 1648 the Spanish empire agreed to a peace treaty that ended decades of fighting and resulted in the division of the Low Countries and the creation of the Dutch Republic. From the outset, the conflict between the Dutch insurgents and their Spanish sovereign lord captured the imagination. Through eighty years of warfare, the provincial states and the Calvinists gained the upper hand in the north and the Spanish rulers and the Catholic church rose in the south. Against all expectations, Philip II and his successors failed to win a conclusive victory over their rebellious Dutch subjects, and Spain was compelled to admit military defeat at the negotiating table in M nster and recognize the breakaway Dutch provinces as a sovereign state. The birth of the new state was to no small degree determined by the balance of military power on land and at sea, and
