Between Remembrance and Oblivion: Negotiating Civic Identity after the Sacks of Mechelen (1572, 1580)

In 1572 Mechelen was the first city to be sacked during the Dutch Revolt, by an army fighting for Philip II. The Duke of Alba punished its citizens for having opened the gates to rebels. In 1580 the city was sacked again, this time by a rebel army consisting mainly of English Protestants. This article argues that being sacked acutely raised the question of what it meant to be part of a civic community. In both cases, however, political circumstances made it difficult to communicate the memory of the violent takeover. Recollecting the so-called "Spanish Fury" ostensibly meant harking back to a rebellious past. Remembering the "English Fury", in turn, went against the Habsburg authorities' policy of oblivion - requiring reconciled cities to move on and forget the troublesome past. To better understand how atrocity shaped individual and civic identity, this article examines the strategies citizens used to make sense of painful memories in an unstable and divided political landscape.