End of the Twelve Years' Truce and Renewal of the Dutch-Spanish War (1621)

Timeline

1. 1620–1621The Hague and Brussels · Low CountriesThe Twelve Years' Truce signed in 1609 was to expire on April 9, 1621; from 1620 the two sides negotiated over religious tolerance, trade rights and the sovereignty of southern territories. Spain demanded the Republic renounce independence and accept Catholicism, while the Dutch insisted on sovereignty and religious freedom; negotiations reached a deadlock and ultimately collapsed.
2. 1621The border of the Low Countries · Low CountriesOn the day the truce expired, the formal state of peace between the Republic and Spain ended; diplomatic relations reverted to a state of war, border outposts returned to combat readiness, and maritime privateering and trade blockades resumed immediately.
3. 1621–1622Dutch Republic and Spanish Netherlands · HollandAfter the truce ended, Spain rebuilt its forces in Flanders while the Netherlands strengthened defenses along its home border and the Rhine estuary; that June the Republic approved the founding of the Dutch West India Company, extending the war to the Atlantic and the Americas, opening the full-scale Dutch-Spanish conflict of the 1620s.