Beschrijving
Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, 3rd Duke of Alba (29 October 1507 – 11 December 1582), known as the Grand Duke of Alba in Spain and Portugal and as the Iron Duke. or shortly 'Alva' in the Netherlands, was a Spanish nobleman, general and statesman.
He has often been considered the most effective general of his generation, as well as one of the greatest in history. Historian John Lothrop Motley wrote of him ‘no man had studied military science more deeply, or practiced it more constantly’ at his day. He was a royal promoter of military action against France and Protestantism, although he also defended a moral and strategic alliance with England that never realized. Alba achieved notoriety for his role during the Eighty Years' War in the Spanish Netherlands, where his prolonged campaigns and repressive political actions caused his figure to be reviled in European history as a symbol of tyranny.
Portrait in oval. Engraving by Houbraken.
