Ambrogio Spinola

Ambrogio Spinola (1569–1630), Marquess of Los Balbases, was a Genoese nobleman and one of the ablest generals in Spanish pay. He entered Spanish service in 1602, raising nine thousand men at his own expense, and forced the garrison of Ostend to surrender. As commander-in-chief in Flanders he seized Rhine towns from Maurice of Nassau, a campaign that ruined him financially.

He overran the Palatinate early in the Thirty Years' War and crowned his career by taking Breda in 1625. Undermined by Olivares, he left Flanders in 1628 and died at the Siege of Casale in 1630.