The Dutch Revolt (c. 1568-1648) led to the establishment of a new state in the northern provinces of the old Habsburg Netherlands. This new polity confronted intense hostility from Habsburg dynastic interests. It sustained itself militarily against these interests, and extended its power globally. In addition it developed a remarkable and wealthy mercantile culture. However configurations of power in the new state differed radically from those within the surrounding monarchies, and its political texts remain problematic. Thus there is no dynamic political theory to match the reality of its might. However, one of the remarkable features of its culture was the unprecedented output of pictorial art, including thousands of political prints. Therefore, this thesis addresses the issue of power in the Republic on the basis of pictorial evidence, using a combination of three routes. First, instead of examining evidence made up of texts, it was decided to use a range of political imagery, largely political prints, to serve as primary sources, inverting the usual practice of alluding to images from an argument based on texts. Second, there is a requirement upon historians for a systematic approach to primary sources, allowing argument to be tightly referenced. However, imagery is not subject to the usual methods (footnoting chapters and pages for example), so a methodology was developed which incorporates digitally modelled representations of the prints. This was based upon work undertaken by Gerhard Jaritz at the Instituts für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit in Austria. Thirdly, prompted by the doubts of several scholars about the utility of conventional political theories in the context of the Dutch Republic, the work of Michel Foucault, in particular his prescription for the study of power, has been adapted and used as an analytical framework in which to discuss the sources. The thesis demonstrates the systematic exploitation of pictorial sources in the context of historical study. It demonstrates the advantages and limitations of digital models and computer analysis. On the basis of these novel methodologies, the thesis summarises a thorough exploration of a range of political imagery. It also highlights the extraordinary success of a particular image of the Revolt, the Tyranny of Alva. On the basis of the evidence examined, it also demonstrates that there was a profound antipathy towards monarchic, 'top down1 power in the early Republic, and argues that power there was more easily diagrammed than textualised.

The Cabinet of Count Charles Cobenzl lies at the heart of the Hermitage Museum, forming the core of the collection of Old Master Drawings. Yet despite perpetual references to him as ‘grand collectionneur’, no study of Cobenzl’s collecting has ever been undertaken. Nor, in the absence of prosopographical studies of art production or collecting in the Austrian Netherlands in the middle of the eighteenth century, or indeed of other individual collectors, has it been possible to set him in a ‘collecting context’. Bringing together the works of art themselves and Cobenzl’s abundant correspondence, this thesis assesses what he owned, how and why he acquired it, the political and intellectual framework for his collecting and how he perceived the objects in his possession. Looking at Cobenzl’s roles as public figure and private collector, it shows how the latter fits into the context of the former, his collecting rooted firmly in his ambition to revive the economy and the arts of the Austrian Netherlands, in his own ambiguous status and his conflicts with the Governor, Charles de Lorraine. The battle for both real and perceived superiority was played out in many different parts of Cobenzl’s professional and private life, and he used display – the adornment of his home and his person and his collecting – as part of a play for social prestige. Cobenzl used objects as a discrete assertion of both intellectual and aesthetic superiority. This thesis proposes that Cobenzl’s transformation into a collector of drawings was an example of his perspicacious identification of emerging trends that could be turned to advantage, economic or prestigious, public or personal. He was drawn by the status of drawings, perceived as accessible only to those of greater refinement and understanding, as something elite, less accessible than the collecting of paintings. The direct and specific stimulus for his emergence as a collector of drawings lay in the provenance of two large groups of works he was offered, which permitted him to assert a very specific link to the past. It suggests that Cobenzl adopted not only the drawings, but also their histories, to negotiate social position and identity, within the context of his pragmatic utilitarianism. This egocentric study also provides the foundation for a preliminary attempt to create a context for Cobenzl’s collecting of drawings, within his circle, in the Austrian Netherlands overall, and, through analysis of his collecting practices, in the wider European context.

The history of the British Army in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars is generally associated with stories of British military victory and the campaigns of the Duke of Wellington. An intrinsic aspect of the historiography is the argument that, following British defeat in the Low Countries in 1795, the Army was transformed by the military reforms of His Royal Highness, Frederick Duke of York. This thesis provides a critical appraisal of the reform process with reference to the organisation, structure, ethos and learning capabilities of the British Army and evaluates the impact of the reforms upon British military performance in the Low Countries, in the period 1793 to 1814, via a series of narrative reconstructions. This thesis directly challenges the transformation argument and provides a re-evaluation of British military competency in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572) and the Sack of Antwerp (1576), two of the most notorious massacres of the 1570s, were of international consequence in a confessionally-divided Europe. This thesis offers a comparative analysis of the Elizabethan political and print responses to both atrocities, evaluating to what extent and in what ways each shaped the increasingly Protestant political character of the period. It compares strands of argument aired by Elizabethan councillors, courtiers, military commanders and clerics, in contrast with the content of contemporary news pamphlets, to establish whether there was any overlap between the parameters of political debate and topical print. It investigates whether, and on what occasions, statesmen or figures associated with the court may have sought to confessionalise public opinion via the production of printed news. Analysing often overlooked printed sources, the thesis focuses on aspects of content and contexts of production. It considers the kinds of comment expressed on the massacres per se and in relation to: the nature of the wars in France and the Low Countries; Elizabeth’s foreign and domestic agendas; the compound significance of her gender, the unresolved succession and her realm's vulnerability to foreign invasion; and providential discourses concerning God’s favour and protection. These lines of enquiry throw up some insights into changing English attitudes towards the Catholic crowns of France and Spain and key figures abroad. Finally, the thesis reaches some broader conclusions regarding the development of an increasingly militant Anglo-Protestant nationalism in the mid-Elizabethan period.