Siege of Alkmaar 1573
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Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Year | 1573 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
|---|---|---|
| Era | Early modern (1500–1799) | derived from year |
| Location | Netherlands | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Eighty Years' War | Wikidata P361 |
| Coordinates | 52.6289, 4.7440 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The siege of Alkmaar (1573) was a turning point in the Eighty Years' War.
The burghers of the Dutch city of Alkmaar held off the Spanish (who had set up their camp in Oudorp) between 21 August and 8 October 1573, with boiling tar and burning branches from their renewed city walls. On 23 September William the Silent followed up on a request by Cabeliau dating from the beginning of the siege and ordered the dikes surrounding Alkmaar to be breached, thereby flooding the polders in which the Spanish troops were camped, like the Achtermeer polder. This forced the Spanish commander, Don Fadrique, the son of the hated Alba himself, to retreat and the last Spanish soldiers left on 8 October 1573.
The end of the siege is considered a turning point in the Eighty Years' War as Alkmaar was the first city to overcome a siege by the Spanish army.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Siege of Alkmaar (revision 1370738744), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
Nearby battles
- Battle of Alkmaar (1799) 1799 · 1 km
- Frisian revolt of 28 AD AD 28 · 4 km
- Battle of Bergen (1799) 1799 · 5 km
- Battle of Castricum 1799 · 11 km
- Battle of Krabbendam 1799 · 21 km
- Battle of Callantsoog 1799 · 25 km
Other battles of the Eighty Years' War
- Relief of Goes 1572
- Siege of Haarlem 1572
- Siege of Middelburg (1572–1574) 1572
- Siege of Mons (1572) 1572
- Spanish Fury at Mechelen 1572
- Battle of Delft (1573) 1573
- Battle of Flushing 1573
- Battle on the Zuiderzee 1573
- Capture of Geertruidenberg (1573) 1573
- Battle of the Scheldt (1574) 1574
All 110 battles of the Eighty Years' War →
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