OLDENBARNEVELT, JOHAN VAN

born Sept. 14, 1547, Amersfoort, Spanish Netherlands [now in The Netherlands] died May 13, 1619, The Hague, Neth. lawyer, statesman, and, after William I the Silent, the second founding father of an independent Netherlands. He mobilized Dutch forces under William's son Maurice and devised the anti-Spanish triple alliance with France and England (1596). In the Twelve Years' Truce (1609) he reaffirmed Holland's dominant role in the Dutch republic. Additional reading J.L. Motley, Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, 2 vol. (1874), although it has enduring literary merits, displays extreme partiality. The book written against Motley by the Dutch historian and politician Groen van Prinsterer, Maurice et Barnevelt (1875), displays an equal but opposite bias. The authoritative biography is Jan den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, 2 vol. (1973; originally published in Dutch, 5 vol., 196072).