Bergen op Zoom

Bergen op Zoom grew as a port and market town on the edge of Brabant and Zeeland. Separated from the lordship of Breda in 1287, it became the seat of its own lords, among them the Glymes family. Under Jan II van Glymes in the fifteenth century, great spring and autumn fairs drew merchants from across Europe. Prosperity helped finance an ambitious enlargement of Saint Gertrude's Church, the Nieuw Werck, though the project remained unfinished as trade declined.

Flooding and changes in commercial practice weakened the port in the sixteenth century. Bergen op Zoom acquired a different importance as a stronghold of the Dutch revolt: marshes and floodable polders protected it, while supplies could arrive by sea. Alessandro Farnese failed to take it in 1588, as did Ambrosio Spinola in 1622. Its reputation as an unconquered fortress ended in 1747, when a French army captured and plundered the town after a long siege during the War of the Austrian Succession.