- John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen
John Maurice of Nassau (Dutch: "Johan Maurits", German: "Johann Moritz",
17 June 1604 –20 December 1679 ) was count and (from 1674) prince ofNassau-Siegen .He was born in
Dillenburg . His father was John VII of Nassau; his grandfather John VI of Nassau, the oldest brother of Dutchstadtholder William the Silent of Orange.John Maurice joined the Dutch army in 1621, at a very early age. He distinguished himself in the campaigns of his cousin, the stadtholder
Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange . In 1626 he became captain. He was involved in 1629 in the capture ofDen Bosch . In 1636, he conquered a fortress atSchenkenschans .Career as governor of the Dutch possessions in Brazil
He was appointed as the governor of the Dutch possessions in
Brazil in 1637 by theDutch West India Company on recommendation of Frederick Henry. He landed atRecife , the port ofPernambuco and the chief stronghold of the Dutch, in January 1637.By a series of successful expeditions, he gradually extended the Dutch possessions from
Sergipe on the south toSão Luís de Maranhão in the north. He likewise conquered the Portuguese possessions ofSaint George del Mina , Saint Thomas, andLuanda , Angola, on the west coast of Africa. With the assistance of the famous architect,Pieter Post ofHaarlem , he transformed Recife by building a new town adorned with splendid public edifices and gardens, which was called after his name, Mauritsstad.By his statesmanlike policy he brought the colony into a most flourishing condition and succeeded even in reconciling the Portuguese settlers to submit quietly to Dutch rule. His leadership in Brazil inspired two Latin epics from 1647: Caspar Barlaeus' "Rerum per octennium in Brasilia et alibi nuper gestarum sub praefectura" and Franciscus Plante's "Mauritias". The painter
Abraham Willaerts served as a member of John Maurice's entourage.He also established a city council in which Catholics,
Protestant s, andJew s participated together. Besides this tolerance, he also encouraged Recife's growth and imposed a kind of social housing project. His large schemes and lavish expenditure alarmed however the parsimonious directors of the West India company, but John Maurice refused to retain his post unless he was given a free hand, and he returned to Europe in July 1644.Return to Europe
He was shortly afterwards appointed by Frederick Henry to the command of the cavalry in the Dutch army, and he took part in the campaigns of 1645 and 1646. When the war was ended by the
Peace of Münster in January 1648, he accepted from the elector ofBrandenburg the post of governor of Cleves, Mark andRavensberg , and later also of Minden. His success in theRhineland was as great as it had been in Brazil, and he proved himself a most able and wise ruler.At the end of 1652 he was appointed head of the Order of St. John and made a prince of the Empire. In 1664 he came back to
Holland ; when the war broke out withEngland supported by an invasion from thebishop of Münster , he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Dutch forces on land. Though hampered in his command by the restrictions of the states-general, he repelled the invasion, and the bishop,Christoph von Galen , was forced to conclude peace. His campaigning was not yet at an end, for in 1673 he was appointed by the stadtholder William III to command the forces inFriesland and Groningen, and to defend the eastern frontier of the Provinces.In 1675 his health compelled him to give up active military service, and he spent his last years in his beloved
Cleves , where he died in December 1679.The residence he built in
The Hague is now called theMauritshuis , and is now a museum of Dutch paintings.Brazilian
author Paulo Setúbal wrote a historicnovel about John Maurice and the Dutch settlement in Brazil, "O Príncipe de Nassau" ("The Prince of Nassau", translated into Dutch byR. Schreuder andJ. Slauerhoff in 1933 as "Johan Maurits van Nassau").References
*
* [http://www.colonialvoyage.com/brazil.html The Dutch in Brazil]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.