Twelve Years' Truce. The Twelve Years' Truce was the cessation of hostilities between the Habsburg rulers of Spain and the Southern Netherlands and the Dutch Republic as agreed in Antwerp on 9 April 1609. It was a watershed in the Eighty Years' War, marking the point from which the independence of the United Provinces received formal recognition by outside powers. For Spain the Truce was seen as a humiliating defeat as they were forced to make several sacrifices but they scarcely got anything in return. For the time of its duration however the Truce allowed King Philip III and his favorite minister the Duke of Lerma to disengage from the conflict in the Low Countries and devote their energies to the internal problems of the Spanish Monarchy. The Archdukes Albert and Isabella used the years of the Truce to consolidate Habsburg rule and to implement the Counter-Reformation in the territories under their sovereignty. The war in the Low Countries reached a stalemate in the 1590s. After the fall of Antwerp in 1585, Spain's Philip II ordered Alexander Farnese to direct his military actions first towards the failed campaign of the Spanish Armada, then against France to prevent the succession of Henry IV, a Protestant. In the following years the Army of Flanders was entirely on the defensive. Unable to sustain the cost of a war on three fronts, Philip II was forced to declare a suspension of payments in 1596. Spain's predicament was adroitly used by Stadtholder Maurice. In a series of campaigns, the Republic's army surprised Breda in 1590, took Deventer, Hulst and Nijmegen the following year and captured Groningen in 1594. By that stage the Army of Flanders had lost almost all its strategic positions north of the great rivers. After the accession of Philip III in Spain and of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella in the Habsburg Netherlands in 1598, the Army of Flanders tried to regain the offensive against the Dutch Republic. While it met with a tactical defeat in the Battle of Nieuwpoort on 2 July 1600, it did succeed in its strategic goal to repel the Dutch invasion of Flanders. The lengthy siege of Ostend amply demonstrated the balance of power. Both sides poured enormous resources into the besieging or defending a town that was reduced to rubble. Ambrogio Spinola, who had succeeded Archduke Albert as commander in the field, eventually captured the town on 22 September 1604, but only at the price of accepting the loss of Sluis. Meanwhile, Habsburg diplomacy had managed to disengage from two fronts. In 1598 Henry IV and Philip II had ended the Franco-Spanish War with the Peace of Vervins. Six years later, James I, Philip III and the Archdukes concluded the Anglo-Spanish War with the Treaty of London. Together, these treaties allowed the Habsburgs to concentrate their resources on the war against the Dutch in the hope of a knock out blow. The following year, Spinola seized the initiative, bringing the war north of the great rivers for the first time since 1594. Suddenly the Dutch Republic had the enemy threatening its heartland. By 1606, the Spanish army had captured Oldenzaal, Lochem, Lingen, Rijnberk and Groenlo despite the efforts of Maurice of Nassau. They did not, however, keep the Republic's allies from continuing their material support. Moreover, Habsburg successes in the Low Countries came at a heavy price. The Spanish did not deliver their knock out blow they had hoped for. Furthermore in 1605 the Dutch East India Company made serious inroads into the Portuguese spice trade, by setting up bases in the Moluccas. These advances signaled a serious threat that the conflict might spread further in the Spanish overseas empire. On 9 November 1607 Philip III announced a suspension of payments. The balance of power had led to a balance of exhaustion. After decades of war, both sides were finally prepared to open negotiations. The two opposing sides started putting out discrete overtures early in the campaign season of 1606. The contacts were intensified when Albert instructed Father Jan Neyen in March 1607 to seek out the preliminaries that would have to be met for formal negotiations. Raised a Protestant, Neyen had converted to Catholicism and joined the Franciscan Order. The move did not however seem to have cost him his longstanding access to Stadtholder Maurits, a fact that made him a valuable intermediary. Under the guise of visiting his mother in the United Provinces, Neyen travelled between Brussels and The Hague. The States-General of the Republic insisted on a preliminary recognition of their independence, to which Albert consented, be it with significant reservations. On 12 April 1607 the United Provinces and the Habsburg Netherlands agreed to a ceasefire, valid for eight months and taking effect on 4 May.
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