Siege of Breda (1624)

Siege of Breda
	Part of the Eighty Years' War
	; The Surrender of Breda by Diego Velázquez. Oil on canvas, 1635.
Date	August 28, 1624 – June 5, 1625
Location	Breda, Netherlands
Result	Spanish victory
Belligerents
United Provinces; England	Spain
Commanders and leaders
Maurice of Nassau; Horace Vere; Ernst von Mansfeld	Ambrosio Spinola
Strength
14,000	18,000
Casualties and losses
10,000 dead, wounded or captured	4,550 dead, wounded or captured

The Siege of Breda is the name for two major sieges of the Eighty Years' War and Thirty Years' War. The Dutch fortress city of Breda fell to a Spanish army under Ambrosio Spinola in 1625; it was retaken by Frederick Henry of Orange in the 1637 siege of Breda.

The battle

Under Spinola's orders the Spanish laid siege to Breda in August 1624, contrary to the wishes of their king. The city was heavily fortified and defended by a garrison of 7,000. Spinola rapidly invested its defences and hurled back a Dutch army under Maurice of Nassau attempting to cut his supplies. The defenders held. In February 1625 a force of 7,000 Englishmen under Ernst von Mansfeld failed to relieve the city.

Justin of Nassau surrendered Breda in June 1625 after a costly eleven-month siege.

Aftermath

The Siege of Breda was Spinola's greatest victory and one of Spain's last in the Eighty Years' War. It was part of a plan to isolate the Republic from its Hinterland.

In 1629, however, after Piet Heyn's capture of the Treasure fleet, stadtholder Frederick Henry was able to capture the fortress city of 's-Hertogenbosch, breaking the land blockade.

Spain's efforts in the Netherlands continued thereafter though political infighting hindered Spinola's freedom of movement. Yet the siege of 1625 captured the attention of the princes of Europe and, for a while longer, Spanish armies continued to recapture the formidable reputation they had held under Charles V.

This first siege is best known as the subject of Diego Velázquez's 1635 canvas, The Surrender of Breda (illustrated, to the right).

In modern literature

The 1624-1625 siege is the subject of the 1998 novel El sol de Breda (The Sun Over Breda) by the Spanish Arturo Perez-Reverte, part of this author's Captain Alatriste Series. The events of the siege - including both the grueling fighting with Dutch and the infighting among the Spanish, including a major mutiny by unpaid Spanish troops - is depicted from the point of view of a boy serving with the Spanish forces. The realistic depiction of war and soldiers' daily life seems influenced by the writer's own long experience as a war correspondent.

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