The expulsion of the Sea Beggars from Dover and other English Channel ports in 1572 was the moment that, against Elizabeth I's intentions, set the Dutch Revolt on its successful course. On 1 March 1572 the queen refused the Dutch privateers, known as the Watergeuzen or Sea Beggars, any further shelter in English harbours. Cut off from the ports they had used as bases for raiding Spanish shipping, they were left cruising the Channel with nowhere to land.
On 1 April 1572 a raiding force of around 25 ships carrying some 600 men, led by William de la Marck, Lord of Lumey, together with Willem Bloys van Treslong and Lenaert Jansz de Graeff, seized the small port of Brielle, also called Den Briel, on the island of Voorne. The town was undefended, its Spanish garrison absent, and it fell by surprise almost without a fight.
Militarily the capture was minor, but its consequences were far-reaching. Brielle gave the rebels their first foothold on land at a moment when the rising against Spanish rule had all but collapsed. Its fall prompted other towns across Holland and Zeeland to declare for the revolt, and it is traditionally regarded as the real beginning of the drive toward Dutch independence.
Denied the shelter of English ports and with no settled plan, the Sea Beggars drifted along the coast and found Brielle open before them, its garrison away. Six hundred men took a town that was meant to be closed to them, and a decision made in England to keep the peace with Spain instead handed the Dutch rebels their first captured town, lighting the fire of a revolt that would end in an independent republic.
not recorded
The raiding force numbered around 25 ships carrying some 600 men.
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