William of Orange in France and the Transnationality of the Sixteenth-Century Wars of Religion

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Introduction 1
In the autumn of 1569 William of Orange, the leader of the nascent Dutch Revolt, found himself, disguised as a peasant and accompanied only by a small band of loyal followers, deep in the countryside of the French interior. Almost a year earlier the prince had launched his ill-fated invasion of Brabant. Despite his best efforts, this ambitious enterprise had failed to dislodge the Duke of Alba, Philip ii's royal governor, from the Low Countries. Unable to achieve anything of military significance in the Low Countries, the prince briefly took the remnants of his army into Northern France, partly because his route back to Germany was blocked and partly in the hope to be of service to his 6 In this particular context, the term transnational is preferred over the term transregional since Orange and his correspondents continuously used the language of nations to discuss the wars of religion, but also pointed to forces that transcend the boundaries of France, the Low Countries, and the Holy Roman Empire (see section 'transnational networks' below). The term 'international' is not applicable here since it implies a relationship between states.

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Though the prince was initially apprehensive about this undoubtedly expensive responsibility, it put him at the heart of the political developments of the following years. 14 As Marshal of France and confidant of the king, Saint- This personal approach to diplomacy reflects the early modern understanding that a successful negotiation was achieved not only through a carefully structured process of formal deliberations, but also by putting trusted representatives in one place together for a prolonged period of time.
Even before the main negotiations commenced at Le Cateau-Cambrésis, the plenipotentiaries spent much of September and October 1558 in Lille and the Somme valley (Authie, Auxi-le-Château, and the Abbey of Cerkamp).
A detailed body of correspondence between Philip and his representatives shows that much of the progress was made at chance meetings: over dinner, in church, and at late-night sessions in the quarters of one of the negotiators. One of William's letters addressed to Philip ii, clearly written after the day's business was wrapped up, illustrates the informal character of the negotiations: 'Sire, after writing the above, we found the Cardinal of Lorraine in the quarters of madame the Duchesse of Lorraine. We, the Duke

The principality of Orange
The peace negotiations at Le Cateau-Cambrésis underscore the complexity of the relationship between monarchs and their leading nobles. Though

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Orange represented his monarch, he also took part as a sovereign prince. 27 The sovereign status of the principality of Orange, however, did by no means ensure that the prince was able to independently govern the territory. The strategically located enclave on the banks of the Rhône, sandwiched between papal Avignon and the Dauphiné -a Protestant hotbed -was also of interest to the French crown and the papacy. In wartime, the remote principality was an easy prey. At Le Cateau-Cambrésis, the prince was not only handed back control of Orange and its revenues, but also of his many lordships scattered throughout the Rhône Valley and Dauphiné. 28 Though regaining control of Orange was a triumph -the small principality was the cornerstone of his international prestige -it was also an administrative nightmare. Years of severed ties between the prince and his principality meant that its governance had been seriously neglected.
Moreover, the Rhône valley, downstream from Geneva, was extremely volatile, leading to vicious religious disputes in Orange. But the principality's remoteness meant that it was impractical to resolve these issues face-toface. Everything instead had to be managed through correspondence or the sending of representatives, who lacked the personal clout of the prince.
Moreover, some cases that needed resolving forced the prince to go through the French judicial system. The ink on the peace had barely dried when Orange was forced to engage in a legal dispute with Dauphiné nobleman Jean

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The return of the principality of Orange in 1559 had two major consequences for the prince. First, William was now forced to liaise with different French authorities, regional and national, and with its aristocracy about all sorts of matters, ranging from estate management to religious policy. 33 Secondly, since tensions in Orange in many ways resembled France's predicament in microcosm, William could never again afford to take his eyes off developments in France. After 1559 he was dragged into the increasingly complex and volatile confessional conflicts that plagued France and especially the Midi. In order to supress religious tensions, the prince first outlawed 'heresy' in July 1561, only to change his mind and introduce a policy of tolerance two years later. 34 Since the unrest continued despite his best efforts, the outbreak of open warfare in France a year later could hardly have come as a surprise. In the years between the first and second Wars of Religion Orange also kept a close eye on France, expecting that a new unrest might arise soon that is 'much worse than that which came before'. 35 Though the campaign of 1569 was not directly intended to resolve the troubles in the principality, the prince's responsibilities in Orange drew him into the endemic religious conflict that afflicted the Kingdom of France and the Midi in particular. Since his tiny sovereign enclave could never be isolated from the violence that swept through the region, Orange was forced to engage deeply with the Wars of Religion in France. This insistence by his biographers to separate Orange's German and French interests, however, is easily explained as his correspondents also frequently made this distinction. German networks were formed at Imperial Diets and meetings of the Reichskreisen, conversations were largely conducted in German, and Orange's German correspondents saw themselves as a distinct group: 'the princes of the Augsburg confession'.

Transnational networks
French networks, by contrast, centred more on the monarchy or on important regional powerbrokers. 45 Yet, these German and French networks were connected by the manifold ties that transcended the Franco-Imperial frontier. As we shall see below, it was Orange who, as a member of a German aristocratic house and an important player in the politics of France, acted as a node for the transfer of information from one network to the other.
Such networks are testament to the permeability of early modern borders. Much like transnational Calvinist networks, Orange's social ties criss-crossed the boundaries of the Low Countries, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. Yet despite these cross-border ties, some sense of nationhood, though much more fluid than its nineteenth-and twentieth-century equivalent, can be detected. Orange and his correspondents regularly used terms such as 'Germany', 'France', 'the German princes', or 'the French Christians', indicating that national categories were used to structure their own experiences and their perception of the world around them. This sense of belonging, however, was flexible -Orange at different times referred to the Holy Roman Empire, the Low Countries as a whole, or Brabant as 'my beloved fatherland '. 46 The fact that he professed to love different polities, however, does not mean that the sentiment was not real. As lord of Herrschaften, heerlijkheden, and seigneuries in the Empire, the Low Countries, and France, Orange's outlook, like that of many of his peers, was shaped by a number of overlapping and interconnected identities. It was precisely because of this rootedness in multiple polities that the prince was so aware of the similarities, linkages, and shared causes that connected the conflicts. That is also why the term 'transnational', a term that implies the presence of the concept of the nation but also the importance of forces that transcend it, accurately describes his network. 52 Most of this epistolary traffic is between Orange and the Landgraves of Hesse, but they in turn passed it on to their peers. They also provided summaries and copies of reports that they van tol detailed reports attached, often in different hands and languages. 53 Secrecy is a dominant theme in these texts. Orange monitored the moves of the warring parties carefully, hinting at his intimate knowledge of French affairs without revealing his sources, but also often admitting that it was impossible to say anything concrete about the future course of events. There was a strong sense that much of this information was highly sensitive. Occasionally the princes corresponded in cypher, for instance in 1563 about a possible German campaign in France, or the reader was 'kindly asked to throw [the letter] into the fire after reading it'. 54 On other occasions their thoughts were not committed to paper, but related in person. 55

But what did Orange and his correspondents make of the wars in
France? Of course, information was not just simply passed on, but often accompanied by interpretation and analysis. There were many different interpretations of events, but one dimension of the analysis was shared by virtually everybody on all sides: the violence in France was not simply a domestic affair, but a conflict with transnational causes and ramifications.
A scholarly appreciation of the transnationality of the sixteenth century has long been absent -the historians' understanding of the transnational dimension of the Dutch Revolt has slowly grown over the last decades, and

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A well-known Dutch pamphlet from 1572, for instance, depicts a baby-eating Duke of Alba, who is aided by a three-headed monster wearing cardinals' hats.
The heads represent not only Granvelle, but also the cardinals of Lorraine and Guise, two brothers from the infamous French Guise family. 59 The same Cardinal Granvelle, far from advocating a transnational religious war, warned Philip of the danger that the 'heretics' in the Low Countries could count on aid from their coreligionists in France, 'with whom they share strong ties '. 60 The connection between the troubles in France and the Low Countries was thus widely seen as a terrifying fact of life. Orange, who had experienced the difficulties of containing confessional strife in his small principality, shared this fear of a major religious conflict that transcended borders. In the margins of a remarkable letter to his brother Louis, who was a leading

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Not long before Orange's campaign in France, Hubert Languet spent a fortnight in the Nassau residence at Dillenburg where he discussed the troubles in the Low Countries with the prince. 65 Though Languet was simply expected to convey Orange's rationale for his resort to arms against Alba to the Elector of Saxony, it seems unlikely that the Frenchman stayed silent on the subject of France. Though Languet was markedly more militant in his calls for transnational Protestant cooperation -we should certainly not see Orange as the Protestant hero of nineteenth-century historiography -their fundamental understanding of the interconnectedness of Europe's troubles overlapped.
It is therefore likely that Languet played some part in laying the intellectual foundation for Orange's French campaign.  van tol the two branches of Protestantism could be bridged. Different Lutheran princes held different positions, with some advocating rapprochement and solidarity and others refusing cooperation with the Reformed. This debate, however, is too complex to do justice to here, but I have discussed it in detail elsewhere. 70 There was also great apprehension about the possible political consequences of direct German involvement, but the important thing to note here is that the idea that the domestic affairs of France or the Low Countries were none of the Germans' business was not among the many arguments presented against intervention. 71

Treaties and alliances
The calls for pan-European Protestant alliance-building that were voiced by Friedrich and others were not just empty words. Though a coalition including such diverse participants as the monarchs of England, Sweden, and Denmark as well as the German princes and the Dutch and

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it was argued that an alliance was necessary in order to resist a powerful enemy 'who has the intention to destroy the true religion and also the nobility'. 76 These twin concerns over the suppression of the 'true Christian religion' and the infringements on the rights and prerogatives of the nobility were shared by their German sympathisers. 'The right to resist a monarchical power grab, real or imagined', dominated political discourse 'not only in the Empire and the Netherlands, but also in France', as Olaf Mörke has observed. 77 Themes like the execution of Egmont and Horne and the exclusion of the Bourbon family from the guardianship of France's underaged kings reverberated in princely circles in the Empire. And the narrative of a Catholic conspiracy that was quickly gaining traction among the German Protestant princes also warned of a plan to eject the Protestant aristocracy and replace it with Catholics. 78 Given the force with which these ideas were voiced it is no surprise that support for an intervention in France was growing among Europe's Protestants -Lutheran and Calvinist -after 1567.

The campaign of 1569
William of Orange's French campaign was thus the dramatic climax of a long period during which he became a key figure among those princes whose political playing field was essentially transnational. The campaign itself, by contrast, was not the result of long and careful planning, but of a set of unforeseen circumstances. The prince first moved some forces across the border into France after his 1568 invasion of Brabant had failed because Alba avoided a decisive clash and Orange's forces melted away when his funds ran out. 79 Orange's first foray into France was thus born out of necessity, but it also made strategic sense. The prince's Dutch and French allies had long since put their ideals of cross-border confessional solidarity into practice and were accustomed to slipping across the border when the situation on either side became untenable. 80 It is unlikely that the prince expected to achieve much aside from relieving some of the pressure on the Huguenot forces. He spent a short time in northern France, pillaging and burning, before moving to Strasbourg where he managed, with much difficulty, to disband his remaining troops. He returned to France only four months later as part of a much more substantial and better organised attempt to alter the course of the war.

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It is telling that Orange's road to France, literally and figuratively, ran through Germany. Wolfgang of Zweibrucken's campaign, in contrast with Orange's earlier raid, was long in the making. In 1563 he had been the first Lutheran prince to consider supporting the Huguenots militarily, but this had been prevented by his peers. 81 In 1569 opinion had shifted enough, mainly due to developments in the Low Countries and the fear of a transnational Catholic conspiracy, to ensure that Wolfgang could count on significant Lutheran backing. 82 It seems that Orange's decision to join the German prince was the product of a mix of contributing factors. First, his carefully laid plans for the Revolt in the Low Countries had failed and the prospects for a next move did not look good. Secondly, in 1568 and 1569, the Huguenots stepped up their attempt to rally support abroad. 83 In a letter from February 1569, the Huguenot leadership begged Orange to 'cross the river Loire' and 'to join us in order to make us masters of our enemies' [. . .] 'we pray, my cousin, that you believe that there is no means of achieving this but through a good and advantageous victory'. 84 The Huguenot leadership also promised to reimburse Orange's costs after peace was secured -a vital precondition for the cash-strapped prince. Finally and most importantly, this was the first time that the idea of active intervention in the wars of religion could count on substantial backing in Lutheran circles. It must have seemed like folly to Orange not to capitalise on this new mood. Since the conviction that the wars in France and the Low Countries were essentially the same conflict was growing among German Protestants, it was possible that German involvement in the Low Countries would follow their efforts in France. 85 The prince therefore made sure that his German contacts were fully aware of the reasoning behind his actions in France and he reminded them of the interconnectivity of religious strife. Before setting off, Orange wrote a long letter to the German princes in which he expounded on the tyranny of Alba and the plight of the 'besieged Christians in France' who were already 'attacked by the followers of the Antichrist'. 86 He also spoke of the pleas he had received 'not only from the said the Prince of Condé, van tol but also from the King of Navarre' and their promises 'after the attainment of the hoped for peace in France, to provide for the Low Countries a good ten thousand troops and three thousand horse'. 87 'In this way hopefully not only the poor Christians in France and the Low Countries are relieved from the current tyranny, but also our common fatherland of the German nation [. . .] will be very usefully served'. 88 From Confolens, a small town not far from La Rochelle, Orange wrote another letter to his German peers.
He again spoke of the persecution of 'the poor Christians in France and also in the Low Countries and other countries in which the Word of God has already been planted' and warned of the 'danger, sorrow, and misery for our beloved fatherland of the German nation that might follow from this'.