Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba

Born in 1507 to a Castilian military house, Alba cut his teeth at the 1535 conquest of Tunis against the Ottomans and proved his command at Mühlberg in 1547, where Charles V's forces broke the German Protestant princes. He led Spanish-Habsburg armies through the Italian War of 1551-1559, serving as governor of Milan and viceroy of Naples. In 1567 Philip II sent him to the Netherlands to kill the rebellion: Alba's Council of Troubles condemned thousands, and though he defeated William of Orange's forces repeatedly in the early Eighty Years' War, the revolt wouldn't die. Recalled in disgrace in 1573, he redeemed himself in the 1580 Portuguese succession crisis and died in Lisbon two years later as viceroy and constable of Portugal.