This history of the States General of the Netherlands and its relations with the monarchy involves the dukes of Burgundy and the Spanish Habsburgs in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. After more than a century of mainly peaceful cooperation, the two sides quarrelled violently about religion, sovereignty and local privileges, and decades of civil war led to a split in the country. The North became a republic and a parliamentary regime, while the South remained attached to the Spanish monarchy and continued without the States General.