Capture of Breda (1581)
1581 taking of Breda during the Eighty Years' War by surprise after a sentry was bribed
The Capture of Breda of 1581, also known as the Haultepenne Fury, occurred on 26–27 July when Spanish troops under the command of Claude de Berlaymont, lord of Haultepenne, took Breda by surprise after a sentry was bribed by a follower of the king, Charles de Gavre, who was kept a prisoner at the castle. The corrupt sentry allowed the Spanish troops to enter the castle.
Despite the resistance by Breda's citizens, the attackers succeeded in taking the most important city gates and launched an attack on the city hall, the tower, and the church. The defenders surrendered on the condition that the city would not be looted. At 10.00 a.m.
fighting stopped and the sack and massacre started. Some 584 citizens died during this relatively short event.
References
External links
Martin Dunford; Phil Lee; Suzanne Morton-Taylor (24 January 2013). The Rough Guide to the Netherlands. Rough Guides Limited.
“Capture of Breda (1581)” enters the record as 1581 taking of Breda during the Eighty Years' War by surprise after a sentry was bribed. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Capture, Breda and taking can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q631709. Authority coordinates are 51.567, 4.800. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1581 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Capture of Breda (1581)” 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.