Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, Piacenza and Castro (27 August 1545 – 3 December 1592), best known by the Red Baron of El Rayo de la Guerra ("The Thunderbolt of the War"), was an Italian nobleman and general of the Spanish Empire, grandson to Charles V and favorite nephew to Philip II. Although obscure, he is often regarded by military history as probably the finest land general of his age, credited with re-conquering enough rebel provinces in the Netherlands to almost win the The Eighty Years' War before being fatidically diverted from its theater. To modern readers, he might resound more as a likely inspiration for some elements of Kentaro Miura's not less legendary manga Berserk.
Farnese was raised in the Spanish royal family initially as a hostage, as Farneses and Habsburgs had originally been enemies, almost to the point of war, until a marriage between his parents, Ottavio Farnese and Charles V' illegitimate daughter Margaret, finally eased things a bit. A bona fide product of the European courts, who even as a child impressed Mary Tudor with his knowledge and intelligence, Alexander had the chance to study in the prestigious University of Alcalá along with his best friend and uncle of the same age John of Austria. The two were considered the next big things, but Alexander in particular stood out for being one of those people who seem almost unnaturally good at everything, from the library to the sparring arena to the beds. He was married tothe infanta María de Portugal to expand alliances, but Alexander was nonetheless eager to have his baptism of fire, and became sorely disappointed that he was not called by Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the (in)famous Duke of Alba, to reinforce the Spanish Netherlands during the start of the Dutch Revolt.
His grand debut came finally in the war against the Ottoman Empire throughout the Mediterranean, when John of Austria required his presence in the Catholic League that was about to clash with the Ottomans in the Battle of Lepanto. Farnese finally proved his worth there, helping to hold the multi-national fleet together, aboarding enemy ships with a zweinhander like an One-Man Army, and managing to personally capture the Muslim treasure ship. The subsequent disbanding of the League peace depressed him, though; as Alexander was never really close with his blood family or his wife, it's said he used to entertain himself by going out disguised at night and acting as a street vigilante against the local thugs of Parma. However, his chance to participate in the war in the Netherlands arrived unexpectedly with the death of Alba's successor Luis de Requesens, who was replaced by John of Austria. Initially, he only arrived there to bring reinforcements, but when John himself died shortly after, Farnese, who had played a big role in their victory of Gemloux (and a not less big role saving their troops in the fiasco of Rijmenam), inherited his place as per his will, becoming captain general of the Army of Flanders in a time of sore need.
Farnese initially shared command with his own mother, Philip's half-sister Margaret of Parma, who had already been governor of the Low Countries and part of its high council along with William the Silent, the now rebel ringleader. She had warned Philip that his planned solution of sending heavy military presence would only worsen the rebellion, and while it is debatable if there was any possible solution by this point, his chosen enforcer the Duke of Alba certainly failed at quelling it. Philip put her on the job again to make a balance with Alexander, but mother and son didn't get along on the task, with Alexander even accusing her of conspiring against him, and when it was clear that her presence wouldn't really help, she was allowed to retire.
Margaret's lessons weren't lost, though, as Farnese was a diplomat as much as a military man, exploiting the factionalism of Catholics and Protestants to gain allies and single out his enemies in the Netherlands. Having skillfully attracted the southern rebel provinces to the Habsburg cause again by the 1579 Union of Arras, he initiated a methodical campaign against the still rebellious Union of Utretch, in which he advanced deeply by conquering a city after another in a long series of sieges. An Officer and a Gentleman, he made sure to always offer generous terms for surrender to ease things (although war was still war and lootings happened whenever he wasn't looking). His predilection for complex siege tactics, which he had learned in Italy from his father and their military engineer Francesco de Marchi and often helped to build himself, earned him the joke that he made the tercios work more with spades than pikes. In 1583, he captured the city of Dunkirk, organizing from there the imperial corsairs known as Dunkirkers, and one year later, in a feat so exceptionally difficult that it resounded across Europe, he captured the great port city of Antwerp by a grueling enclosure complete with a massive ditch and a bridge of 32 boats, launching and winning a Lensman Arms Race against the skilled rebel engineers.
For such a calculated strategist, Farnese also became known as a larger-than-life figure for his sheer Refuge in Audacity, being constantly in the frontlines to encourage his soldiers and showing himself fearless to the point of madness. In a scene worthy of an action film, during the siege of Oudenaarde, he once had his lunch blown up by a miraculous cannonball that landed in one of his commensals, to which Alexander answered calmly ordering to tend the wounded and serve food again so he could finish eating. This chutzpah served him well to be a military Escape Artist, being keen to extract his armies quickly from where he might be defeated.
At one point, Farnese was contacted by Balthasar Gérard, the spy that would off William the Silent. The Italian was reportedly reluctant to support the plan, as he had expected to bully the rebels into capitulation some day and believed that assassinating their leader would only make him a martyr, but Philip had given orders about the bounty on William's head and Farnese was forced to participate. Much to Farnese's chagrin, Gérard was successful, after which things went exactly as predicted. The revolt would be very far from its ending, with William being succeeded by his son Maurice of Orange, who showed his own military brilliance by improving greatly the Dutch army through deep reforms. At the time, this change was not enough to offset the Spanish military science, but its importance would be proved later.
When the England of Elizabeth I openly joined the war in 1585 and disembarked troops in the Netherlands, Farnese, now officially Duke of Parma by the death of his father, duly defeated them, after which plans to invade England to unroot the problem were proposed. Farnese proposed to invade England with his most experienced 30,000 men and a daring hop in barques through the English Channel, but Philip judged it too dangerous, and when his grand admiral Álvaro de Bazán, Marquis of Santa Cruz, proposed instead to conquer the British isles with an armada, Philip decided to combine both plans. However, the resultant move would be monumental failure, stopped in its tracks by miscommunication, the incompetence of the admiral appointed after Bazán's untimely death, and unadulterated bad luck - factors that Farnese had attempted to warn about without being listened. The defeat soiled Farnese's relationships with the court, where jealous noblemen slandered him as a traitor who was half-assing things, and he would have to endure next an unexpected failure to conquer Bergen op Zoomnote and an army mutiny. Farnese's plan to reagroup and come for the second round was then cancelled by the appearance of yet another enemy, the aspirant to King of France Henry of Navarre.
The subsequent French campaigns would force the Duke of Parma to balance not two, but three theaters, more than the Spanish Netherlands could chew. Again and again, he had warned that it was ridiculous to look to France now that he was still close to finish the Dutch revolt, but Philip wanted to be absolutely sure that no Protestant ever sat in the French throne (a legitimate concern) and hopefully install his own daughter Isabella Clara Eugenia in said throne (which was wishing just too much). Resigned, the Duke made a Dynamic Entry in the French wars, kicking Henry away from the walls of a half-starved Paris in a bizarre moment of history where Spaniards were cheered in the capital of France, but with his absence from the Low Countries, Maurice of Nassau had enough time to breathe to mount a lightning counteroffensive, forcing Farnese to go Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat! when he returned there. The Duke was eventually ordered back to France even although the whole queen thing had been discarded, and this time, forced to obey absurd orders from the French Catholic League, he ended up trapped in the city of Caudebec. Although he nailed another improbable escape, a previous musquet wound in the arm, received by his classical insistence to personally oversee things, caused him to fall ill to the point he had to direct the operations from his bed.
Farnese died shortly after, overworked and mistreated a bit too much by the Spanish court, without knowing he had been removed from his job by Philip for various slanders and for not following his similarly impossible orders exactly to the letter (a rumor also told about John of Austria is that Philip had Farnese poisoned, but an autopsy of his remnants in 2020 disproved it). The Eighty Years' War, which had never been so close to a Spanish victory and would probably never be again, saw everything returning to the status quo and much of the Spanish advance being undone by the Dutch. The new rebel leader Maurice of Orange turned out to be an excellent general himself with the help of his new battle formations, but the famed Duke of Parma, the only that would have been consistently able to nullify him, was not there anymore. It would not be until more than a decade later that he received a worthy replacement in Ambrogio Spinola, another Italian general that would leave his own mark in an otherwise fruitless war.
His descendants would continue in the service of Spain, with his grand-grandson Alexander also becoming briefly governor of the Netherlands after the war had ended, and would eventually land in the throne of Spain itself in the person of Elisabet Farnese, who would marry Philip V.
In fiction
Literature- He is mentioned in the background of the war in Arturo Pérez-Reverte's Alatriste.
- Farnese is a main character in Emilio Lara's novel La Cofradía de la Armada Invencible.
- He also appears in the prologue of El tesoro de la Hulpe by Manuel López Ramírez.
- He is also featured in Luis Zueco's Rojo amanecer in Lepanto.
