Summary After the Eighty Years War against Spain was ended by the Westphalian Peace treaties, the patrician regents -mainly the city of Amsterdam, which dominated the states (parliament) of predominant Holland, hence the Dutch state general- were no longer prepared to pay for a large permanent army, hence compromised the power base of the house of Orange, the virtual hereditary generals in chief. The stadtholder William II used military force to imprison hostile mayors and even laid siege to the city, however clumsily, to force them to vote a sufficient budget anyhow. After his fatal illness, his widow Mary Stuart and minor son and heir William III were removed from political prominence, the office of stadtholder completely suspended, even their palatial dominance in the Ridderhof in the Hague symbolically overshadowed by the new Holland States offices taking over the top floor.

• Documentary
• History