Egmont, Count of

(also Lamoral of Egmont). Born Nov. 18,1522, in La Hamaide; died June 5,1568, in Brussels. A leader of the oppositional nobility before and during the Netherlands bourgeois revolution of the 16th century.

Egmont opposed only the extreme elements of Spanish policy in the Netherlands and, after the people’s Iconoclastic Uprising of 1566, sought a reconciliation with the Spanish government. Nevertheless, he was executed together with Philippe de Montmorency, count of Hoorn. Egmont is portrayed in an idealized manner in Goethe’s drama Egmont (1788), incidental music to which was composed by L. van Beethoven in 1810.