Dutch States Army

The Dutch States Army, in Dutch the Staatse leger, was the army of the Dutch Republic. It took that name because it was formally the army of the States-General of the Netherlands, the sovereign power of the federal republic. It was brought to such a size and state of readiness that it could hold its own against the armies of the major European powers of the seventeenth century, Habsburg Spain and the France of Louis XIV, even though those powers had far larger resources than the Republic. It played a major part in the Eighty Years' War against the Spanish Army of Flanders and in the wars against France after 1672.