The historical context

The advance of the armies of Alexander Farnese into Flanders from 1580, culminating in the capture of Antwerp in August of 1585 precipitated a period of mass mobility as both rebels and loyalists traveled to avoid the dangers of war and those associated with the Revolt were eventually forced into exile.1

The major towns captured by Farnese are noted in the below table, which uses the gt package.

Table 1
The reconquest of Alexander Farnese
City Year
Kortrijk 1580
Breda 1580
Oudenaarde 1582
Lier 1582
Hulst 1583
Zutphen 1583
Bruges 1584
Ghent 1584
Brussels 1585
Mechelen 1585
Antwerp 1585
Nijmegen 1585

The below map shows the major events in the reconquest of Farnese in the first half of the 1580s. It includes the plotting code used to make the map. Hopefully it is helpful.

ggplot(data = reconquest_sf) +
  geom_spatraster(data = lc_raster, alpha = 0.6,
                  show.legend = FALSE) +
  scale_fill_whitebox_c(palette = "atlas", direction = 1) +
  geom_sf(data = oceans, color = NA, fill = "lightblue") +
  geom_sf(data = lakes, color = NA, fill = "lightblue") +
  geom_sf(data = rivers, color = "lightblue", size = 0.4) +
  geom_sf(aes(color = factor(date)), size = 4) +
  geom_text_repel(aes(x = long, y = lat, label = location),
                  size = 3) +
  scale_color_brewer(palette = "RdPu") + 
  coord_sf(xlim = c(3400000, 3900000),
           ylim = c(2600000, 3000000),
           expand = FALSE, datum = NA) +
  labs(title = "The reconquest of Farnese, 1580–1585",
       color = "Year of conquest") +
  theme_void() +
  theme(plot.title = element_text(size = 18),
        legend.position = "top",
        legend.direction = "horizontal")
A map of the Low Countries showing the reconquest of Farnese with the towns captured between 1580 and 1585.
Figure 1: The reconquest of Farnese, 1580–1585.

Footnotes

  1. Peter Arnade, Beggars, Iconoclasts, and Civic Patriots: The Political Culture of the Dutch Revolt (Cornell University Press, 2008), https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv5rf3pp; Violet Soen, “Reconquista and Reconciliation in the Dutch Revolt: The Campaign of Governor-General Alexander Farnese (1578–1592),” Journal of Early Modern History 16, no. 1 (2012): 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1163/157006512X620627.↩︎