April Fools’ Day: why do we allow fools to rewrite our history?

There are plenty of quotes about having no future if you don’t know your past. So how come the Dutch don’t celebrate the capture of Brielle on 1 April 1572, especially this year, the 450th anniversary??

The capture of the small town of Brielle (aka Den Briel or Brill), SW of Rotterdam, was a turning point in the history of the Netherlands. Its significance is mostly ignored however. Worse, the little attention it did get on national TV and in newspapers - and only because Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned it in his speech to the Dutch Parliament the day before - belittles the event, discredits the main actors, and tries to rewrite history.

BLISSFUL IGNORANCE

An overview of that attention in the leading national newspapers:

• AD spends most words on it, although only as regional news and not really the event itself, but about the annual festivities in the town, the reenactors, and laughing at Dutch Prime Minister Rutte, who has a degree in history, but admitted he didn’t know what Zelenksyy was referring to.
• FD is a newspaper about business affairs so ignores it, except for a short column by ‘general reporter’ Han Dirk Hekking (one way for FD to save money I suppose) who does mention the event, but only to try to show that he knows more than ‘smart dude’ Zelenskyy, by claiming the 80YW was actually a lot shorter (wrong) and that we shouldn’t call Den Briel the ‘rise against tyranny’ (wrong). After that he gets lost in memes.
• NRC prides itself on employing a dedicated ‘historian’, Bart Funnekotter. He misses yet another opportunity to live up to his NRC-title by repeating long disproven but still popular myths: that the main actors weren’t rebels but pirates and poor, hence their French nickname ‘beggars’; that they accidentally stumbled on the unplanned opportunity to take the town; and that they were really evil because some Catholic monks were later murdered there (he even adds contemporary portraits of the victims), an event wholly unrelated to the taking of Brielle. His story is also noticeably similar to Volkskrant’s Waarlo.
• Telegraaf only mentions it as part of Zelenskyy’s speech and does so in the column of its TV-reviewer turned columnist Marcel Peereboom Voller (linked out), but really only to explain why the newspaper is so great (a pat on its own back, perhaps because it relies so much on content copied from English dailies).
• Trouw’ s columnist Hans Goslinga uses Zelenskyy’s mention to show the Dutch don’t care about their own history. He then compares the current trends in Dutch government to what Spain did wrong long ago, which was the reason the Dutch started their long war. This is the only serious story referring to 1 April 1572, but otherwise ignores it.
• Volkskrant spends three articles on the anniversary, like AD. One is a book review about the year itself. One is a short story about the capture, by general reporter Niels Waarlo: it is the exact same story as NRC, but using different words. One wonders who copied whom! ?The third one is by columnist Kustaw Bessems, who starts out along the same lines as Trouw, but then veers off into the popular ‘we should be ashamed of our history’ rant that has become so popular among the voracious omelette eaters who’ve never actually made one, yet know for sure eggs must never be broken.?
• One of the many (many) talkshows on national TV, Khalid & Sophia by BNNVARA, asked ‘an expert’ about the significance of the event: Herman Pleij (linked out), professor emeritus of Medieval Dutch literature at the University of Amsterdam, parroted NRC and called it unimportant (wrong) without any real effect (wrong) and even enthusiastically claimed the main actors were actually terrorists (wrong).

We can’t really blame columnists for choosing to remain ignorant, I suppose. They simply want to have an opinion about everything without the bother of actually knowing something. The blame goes to their editor-in-chief, supposedly an experienced journalist, well aware of the need to verify and double check, who gives these old-media influencers their stage. I was however shocked by the remarks of professor Pleij: a person of learning, a historian no less, who chooses television fame over his scientific integrity, and with so much enthusiasm, terribly sad to watch.

ACTUAL HISTORY

Now let’s right the wrongs above.

The main actors weren’t pirates, beggars or terrorists.

The men were marines and privateers commissioned by the rebel government (since 1569), part of a rebel fleet led by an admiral (since 1570), taking part in large coordinated rebel army-navy operations against Spain. They were known as sea-beggars not because they were poor, but because they chose the name (and its iconography) to show they were prepared to become beggars for their cause.

They weren’t terrorists (i.e. using violence and fear for ideological aims), but rebels who fought to get back their country: all of them had been disowned and banished by Spain, simply for being Protestant, for being pro-religion-choice, or for being anti-authoritarian-rule, whether nobleman, burgher, or fisherman. One day they had a life, the next everything was taken away from them and they had to run for their life (hundreds who stayed or didn’t run far enough were caught and executed).

The landing and capture of Brielle wasn’t unplanned luck.

Already in 1571 the aim was to take the town. In 1572 that plan hadn’t changed (actually the Spanish governor Alba was aware of it). The rebel army would attack the Netherlands in the NW, NE, SW and SE. Brielle was the NW part. The only opportunistic element was the timing: the landing was supposed to happen later, but because of unfavourable winds and the small Spanish garrison, the fleet commanders decided to act. A detailed story of the fight is on 80yw.org.

The size of the force (25 ships landing 1,400 men) and the large number of guns hauled ashore are clear indications that the landing was an important part of a much bigger picture and not some lucky low hanging fruit for a lone pirate. Brielle was a fortified town on a small island where Rhine and Meuse flow into the North Sea. In other words, easily defensible control of sea access of major sea and river ports.

The capture of the town was the exact opposite of meaningless.

After taking the town, the rebels fought off fierce attacks by crack Spanish infantry who’d hurried there to take back the town. The rebels then managed to flood the surrounding land, forcing the Spanish troops to leave the island. By then, most of the rebels had already returned to their ships and sailed for other ports to test the waters there.

The taking of the town - and especially keeping it - rallied the resolve of Dutch citizens. Unlike earlier operations (e.g. 1568), a large part of the country joined the rebellion. By the end of April Antwerp was cut off from the sea, and by mid May towns all along the coast had either been occupied by rebels or had declared for the rebel cause. By then the wider rebel operation had also started, for example with a rebel army taking the city of Mons (Bergen).

In other words, Brielle 1 April 1572 really was a decisive event of the Eighty Years’ War and of the history of The Netherlands. It was the start of the revolution and the fight for independence of today’s Netherlands. As such its significance deserves to be remembered .

WITHOUT A FUTURE?

Somehow it has become mainstream to belittle, ignore and discredit historical facts. The revision of the official canon of Dutch history is perhaps the saddest example. Other sad examples are the growing call these days to stop using the terms “Golden Age” and “Eighty Years’ War”, to muddle up research of that conflict by introducing other start and end dates than the ones used since that Golden Age, and the incorrect interpretation of Brielle’s capture. Yet hardly anyone seems to be bothered by any of it.

When the same happened with corona, everybody was clamouring about fake news and disinformation, accounts were deleted and people cancelled. When a totalitarian regime rewrites history, propaganda gets blamed and media blocked. No such response counters the current trend to rewrite our own history: propaganda, scientists’ self-censorship, and uninformed opinions now decide what our past was.

Of course primary sources remain, research seems to get easier, so future generations will probably look back at us and be LOL. Who knows, someone like Pleij might become famous again, as a prime example of fame-before-integrity. I think the current fashion to belittle our own past will be temporary (the pendulum might even swing the other way), but the fact that our past is being rewritten so easily, even though we live in an age of easy research, does show that most Dutch ignore their history.

Circling back to those quotes, should we thus conclude that The Netherlands has no future anymore? ?And if you aren’t Dutch, is your country suffering a similar fate?