Qualla: Egmond Castle

Egmond Castle: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown artist, Public domain. On 5 June 1568, in the Grand Place in Brussels, an executioner cut off the head of Lamoral, Count of Egmont. He was 45, a war hero of the Spanish crown he was now dying at the hands of, and the most senior nobleman of the Low Countries. The execution was meant to terrify the restive Dutch into obedience. It did the opposite. Within months, what had been protests against Spanish rule hardened into open rebellion. Five years later, in 1573, the same Prince of Orange who had failed to save Egmont gave the order to burn the count's ancestral seat - Egmond Castle, a few kilometers west of Alkmaar - to deny it to Spanish troops. The castle never recovered. Today the site is a low rectangle of brickwork in a green field, with a bronze statue of Lamoral standing where the great hall used to be. You can walk freely through what is left. There is no entrance fee, and very little to see, and yet something happened here that helped invent a country.

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Image: Unknown artist | Public domain

Egmond Castle: Stewards Who Became Sovereigns

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Globe-trotter, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Egmond family started small. Around 1129 a man named Berwout was appointed steward of lands belonging to nearby Egmond Abbey, which had grown too rich for the abbot to manage alone. Berwout lived in a fortified farm - a hoeve - on a slight rise north of the monastery. His des...

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Image: Globe-trotter | CC BY-SA 3.0

Egmond Castle: The Round Water Castle

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit IDavied, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl. What replaced it was something rare in the Low Countries: a circular stone keep set inside a moat, completed in the early 13th century. The curtain wall ran in a not-quite-perfect circle, about 28 meters across at its widest, less than a meter thick, and rose from the water itsel...

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Image: IDavied | CC BY-SA 3.0 nl

Egmond Castle: John III's Showpiece

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arch, Public domain. By the end of the fifteenth century the Egmonds had become one of the wealthiest noble houses in the Burgundian Netherlands. John III, the first to bear the title Count of Egmont, decided his ancestral seat should look the part. Between roughly 1450 and 1525 the castle was enlarg...

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Image: Arch | Public domain

Egmond Castle: The Beheading That Changed Everything

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andries Schoemaker / Gerrit Schoemaker / Cornelis Pronk / Abraham de Haen, Public domain. Lamoral of Egmont, John III's grandson, was a soldier of formidable reputation - victor at Saint-Quentin and Gravelines, Knight of the Golden Fleece, Stadtholder of Flanders and Artois. He was also a Catholic and a loyalist. When Protestant agitation began to tear the Spanish Net...

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Image: Andries Schoemaker / Gerrit Schoemaker / Cornelis Pronk / Abraham de Haen | Public domain

Egmond Castle: Erasure and Excavation

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul van Galen, CC BY-SA 4.0. The castle outlived its lord by only five years. In 1573 Diederik Sonoy's troops, acting on William of Orange's orders, set fire to both Egmond Castle and the neighboring abbey. The Spanish must not be allowed to use them. The Egmond family sold what was left in 1607 to pay debts...

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Image: Paul van Galen | CC BY-SA 4.0