page_title: Francisco de Moncada, 3rd Marquis of Aitona
section_title: Government service
hierarchical_section_title: Francisco de Moncada, 3rd Marquis of Aitona / Government service
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of VIII (1583-1638), Count of Nassau-Siegen. Part of the Leeuwarden series, a series of portraits of military officials from the Eighty Years' War as well as members of the House of Orange-Nassau, first documented in 1633 in the Stadhouderlijk Hof (Stadholder's Court) in Leeuwarden (see Object history).
context_page_description: Francisco de Moncada, 3rd Marquis of Aytona, was a Spanish diplomat, soldier and writer of the early 17th century. He was also interim Governor of the Spanish Netherlands.
context_section_description: Moncada served as the Spanish ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor for some time. The Emperor Ferdinand II was very impressed by him.
  He served as a counselor to Princess Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, regent of the Spanish Netherlands. While serving in Brussels he tried to convince King Philip IV of Spain to transfer the general management of affairs in his Netherlands possessions to Brussels and remove any responsibility for such matters from the government in Madrid. His proposals to give the various peoples in the Netherlands, still under Habsburg rule, more say in their governmental affairs were rejected.
  He was made the commander-in-chief of the Spanish navy in the Netherlands in 1630. On 12–13 March 1631, his seamen were defeated at the Battle of the Slaak, the commander being then a Catholic member of the House of Orange-Nassau, namely Count Jan VIII van Nassau-Siegen, (Dillenburg, Germany, 1583 - Count successor 1623 - Siegen, Belgium, 27 September 1623).
  In 1632 he was put in charge of all Spanish forces in the Netherlands. In 1634 he was made interim-governor of the Spanish Netherlands on the death of Spanish Netherlands Governess Isabella Clara Eugenia in December 1633.
  He died of illness in 1635 at the Battle of Goch, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, very near the current Dutch-German border.
caption: Catholic Count Jan VIII van Nassau-Siegen in charge of the Spanish-Flemish Fleet defeated by Dutch, Scots and English mercenaries, September 1631, at the Battle of the Slaak, fighting on behalf of the Spanish Governor Francisco de Moncada, 3rd Marquis of Aitona, (1586 - 1635). Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 30x24.6 cm
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