Battle of Mookerheyde
1574 battle
In the Battle of Mookerheyde, Spanish Tercios defeated Dutch forces composed of German mercenaries, on 14 April 1574, during the Eighty Years' War on the heath (heide in modern Dutch) near the village Mook and the river Meuse, not far from Nijmegen in Gelderland. Two leaders of the Dutch forces, brothers of William the Silent, were killed: Louis of Nassau (born 1538) and Henry of Nassau-Dillenburg (born 1550).
During the winter of 1573/74, Louis and Henry of Nassau raised a mercenary army in Germany of 6500 infantry and 3000 cavalry. They proceeded towards Maastricht to rendezvous with their elder brother William the Silent, Prince of Orange, who led 6000 Dutchmen. They planned to march their combined forces toward Leiden, which had been under siege by a large Spanish force since October 1573.
The strength of Count Louis' forces diminished en route. More than a thousand men deserted and seven hundred were killed by the Spanish in a night attack. The remaining troops were mutinous because the Dutch had been unable to pay them. Louis crossed the Meuse with only 5,500 infantry and 2,600 cavalry. Before Louis could join forces with William, Luis de Requesens temporarily lifted the siege of Leiden so that his 5,000 infantry and 800 cavalry could counter Louis' advance.
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This entry incorporates text from “Battle of Mookerheyde” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.