Oudkerk

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oudkerk is a town in the province of North Brabant in the Netherlands.

It had a strategic importance during the Eighty Years War which led to Dutch independence from Spain, especially during the Siege of Breda (1624). Located at the confluence of the Merck and Maas Rivers and the Ooster Canal, Oudkerk was used by the Dutch forces to send supplies to their besieged compatriots in nearby Breda^[1].

The town had strong fortifications and was defended by two companies of regular troops, one of them English, as well as the citizen militia. However, the Spanish succeeded in capturing it by stealth in an early morning surprise assault, some of their troops disguised as local peasants.

The invading Spanish forces resorted to indiscriminate killing in order to terrorise the townspeople and garrison (which greatly outnumbered them) into surrender, and the Town Hall in which English troops made their last stand was burned down. Gaining control of Oudkerk substantially helped the Spanish tighten the noose around Breda, leading to its eventual surrender some months later.

At the time, the sack of Oudkerk was strongly condemned by the Dutch as "a new example of Spanish brutality". The modern Spanish writer Arturo Perez-Reverte, who in the early chapters of the 1998 novel The sun Over Breda describes the capturing of Oudkerk and its subsequent garrisoning by the Spanish, realistically depicts the killing and looting spree by his 17th Century countrymen in Oudkerk, but notes that the Spanish commander Spinola forbade his troops to rape the Dutch women and enforced the ban by hanging two rapists - a restraint not always shown by military commanders at the time.

In 1648 Spain recognised Oudkerk, like Breda and the rest of North Brabant, as Dutch territory.

This Oudkerk (the name means "Old Church") should not be confused with the town of the same name in Friesland, now officially known as Aldtsjerk.

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2007)

Coordinates: 53°16′N 5°53′E / 53.267, 5.883