Carl Frederik von Breda was also a painter, who studied under his father. Breda died in Stockholm in 1818. Breda's great-grandfather Pieter emigrated to Stockholm around the year 1670 from the Netherlands. The "von Breda" family name seems to indicate a connection with the city of Breda. "Von" is not a Dutch preposition, but in the Nordic countries, this originally German preposition has occasionally been used as a part of names of ennobled families of native or foreign, but non-German, origin. Pieter's son Lucas (Carl's grandfather, 1676–1752) was a successful painter. His son Lucas (Carl's father, 1726–1799) was an "arbitrator in cases of shipwreck",
Siege of Breda (1624) thereafter. The siege of 1624 captured the attention of European princes and, along with other battles like White Mountain (1620), played a part in the Spanish army regaining the formidable reputation it had held throughout the previous century. In the latter stages of the combined Eighty and Thirty Years' wars that had greatly strained Spanish resources, Breda was lost to the Dutch under Frederick Henry after a four-month siege. In the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia that ended the Thirty and Eighty Years' wars, it was ceded to the Dutch Republic. There were several motives for Spinola's siege of Breda. Because