DUTCH PAINTING SPEAKS many languages, it tells about the matters of earth and of heaven. It lacks only one thing: the immortalization of the moments of its defeat and glory, the apotheosis of its own history. After all, it was a history abundant in dramatic episodes, insurrections, terror, sieges, struggles with powerful adversaries such as England, Spain, and France.
When Dutch artists painted war it was the war of light and darkness, also the smooth water of the canals with a solitary mill on the shore, an ice rink under the pink sky of sunset, the interior of a pub with shouting drunkards, a girl reading a letter. If other testimony had not been preserved we could think that the inhabitants of this low-lying country led a truly sweet life—they ate richly, drank copiously, and enjoyed cheerful company. In vain do we look for works by prominent painters that transmit to posterity the execution of Hoorn and of Egmont1, the heroic defense of Leyden, or the assassination attempt against the Prince of Orange, William the Silent2.
In his beautiful book The Old Masters Eugène Fromentin draws our attention to an unusual fact. In times pregnant with historical events, “a young man painted a bull on a pasture, another one who wished to please his friend—a physician—painted him in a dissecting room surrounded by his pupils and with a scalpel stuck in the arm of a corpse. These two paintings covered their names, their centuries and the country where they lived with immortal fame. What is it then that wins our gratitude? Is it dignity and truth? No. Is it greatness? Sometimes. And maybe beauty itself? Always beauty.”
This is very nicely said, but it is doubtful that the pacifistic spirit of Dutch painting can be explained in purely aesthetic terms. What, then, is behind this peculiar predilection for scenes from everyday life? Why did the Dutch avoid war subjects that exalt patriotic feelings? It seems the problem is much more profound; we must summon the aid of history, which molded the psychology of this nation.
Let us recall one of the most famous episodes in the Dutch struggles for freedom, the defense of Leyden, as it was described by a chronicler of the times, Emanuel van Materen3.
Six years of the rule of the Duke of Alva4, of terror and violence, did not succeed in breaking the resistance of the Netherlanders. The northern part of the country defended itself with particular fierceness. With the help of mercenaries, the Prince of Orange organized armed expeditions against the Spaniards, and the fighting continued with changing fortunes. After the long, drawn-out, heroic defense of Haarlem, when all means and supplies were exhausted, he capitulated to Alva’s army. But the invaders did not manage to seize Alkmaar; they were compelled to end the siege of the city ingloriously.
The war in the Netherlands did not follow the usual course of events, or the traditional ritual of pitched battles on a large plain ending with only victors and those who beg for pity. Rather it was a general rebellion, a levy en masse of the entire nation—peasants, bourgeois, and nobility—against Spanish violence. It burst out like fire in different spots, died down but not completely, and flared up anew. The powerful army of occupation was constantly taken by surprise, and unable to deal a decisive blow.
In the beginning of the war a Spanish officer, unaware he was challenging fate, called the Dutch insurgents beggars (gueux). These mendicants proved to be dangerous and invincible adversaries. Insurgents from the forest and ocean, especially the latter, whose bravery would be celebrated for centuries in folk song, attacked enemy convoys and even conquered ports, slaughtering the Spanish crews. “The red sun blazes over Holland,” said one of the poets of the times.
Toward the end of 1573, Philip II recalled the Duke of Alva to Spain from his position as Commander in Chief in the Netherlands, the equivalent of disgrace. Always and everywhere the politics of terror proves to be the politics of the blind. His successor, Don Luis de Requesens5, tried to win the rebels over with acts of grace, tax reductions, and amnesty, but he never gave up his intention of forcing the unyielding North to its knees.
In May 1574, the Spanish Army came to Leyden. The fathers of the city unanimously decided to defend themselves, issuing a series of indispensable military and administrative decrees. The question of a just distribution of food was regulated at the beginning; during the first two months of the siege, every inhabitant of Leyden received half a pound of bread and milk (separated milk, as the scrupulous chronicler reports). At the time Leyden was not a large city. It had certain rustic features—for example, large stables and barns with more than 700 cows. The problem of feed for the animals was solved very cleverly; taking advantage of the Spaniards’ inattention the cattle were led to nearby meadows, but as soon as sounds of war and shots were heard the animals galloped back to the city. During the entire siege only one cow and three absentminded calves were put on the list of losses.
The commander of the Spaniards, General Valdez, waited for the city to fall into his hands, captured either by hunger or a stratagem. It seems he trusted diplomacy more than artillery, at least in the initial phase of the clash. He sent letters to the defenders assuring them they could count on his magnanimity and forgiveness, and that the Spanish Army would not remain in the city for long. At the end he perversely argued that the submission of the fortress would not bring shame or loss of honor to anyone, while conquest by force would disgrace the unfortunate defenders.
Vain efforts. The inhabitants of Leyden were resolved to persist in their noble resistance. Valdez received a Latin poem in reply; its translation reads as follows:
The flute of the fowler luringly sings
Until the bird falls into the net’s strings.
In September, after four months of fighting, the situation of the city became more critical each day. Witty poems no longer occurred to anyone. This time the defenders answered the repeated proposal of capitulation with a pathetic letter: “You place all your hope on the fact that we are hungry, and no relief comes to us. You call us eaters of cats and dogs, but as long as the mooing of cows is heard in the city we do not lack food. And when we will lack food, each of us has his left hand; we can cut it off, preserving the right hand to push the tyrant and his bloody horde away from the city walls.”
At Leyden as at Troy there were speeches by leaders, brilliant replies, and deadly insults. All this flowery rhetoric seemed to be destined for the authors of future history textbooks. The truth was prosaic, banal, and gray—to persevere and survive one more month, one more week, one more day.
An acute lack of currency was felt in the city, so they decided to adapt the monetary system to the exceptional situation. Special paper banknotes were issued that would preserve value only during the period of siege. These new means of payment were decorated with slogans intended to comfort the defenders’ hearts: a Latin inscription, Haec libertas ego, a picture of a lion, and a pious sigh, “May the Lord protect Leyden.”
It was evident to everyone, however, that the city could be saved only with help from the outside. Hunger was increasing, there was no more bread. Meat, or rather the skin and bones of emaciated animals, was still rationed at half a pound per person; people hunted dogs, cats, and rats.
To make things worse, a plague broke out. Within a short period it swallowed up six thousand victims, which was half the population of the city. The men were so weakened that they had no strength to keep guard on top of the walls; when they returned home, they often found their wives and children dead.
As if these misfortunes were not enough, rioting broke out in Leyden. The chronicler speaks enigmatically about disagreement, muttering, and disputes. We can easily guess what was concealed beneath these euphemisms. It was simply a rebellion of the city’s poor, the ones who felt the burden of the siege the most painfully. They had only two alternatives—death from hunger, or slavery—and they were choosing the latter.
The mayor called all the population of the city to a public meeting. In a great, pathetic speech he announced that he was ready to offer his body to feed the hungry. Luckily, his statement was taken as it should be, not as a concrete offer but as a rhetorical figure.
The Estates General and William Prince of Orange, Commander in Chief of the Dutch Army quartered in nearby Delft, were aware that the situation in Leyden was fatal. The land army of the Prince of Orange was too weak to relieve the city and wage a battle with the enemy on firm ground. The strongest and most competent part of the armed forces of the Netherlands was the navy, but there was a serious obstacle: Leyden was not a port, it was situated inland. For aid—this rings almost magically—it was necessary to call on the element of water.
A careful plan to break the dikes and dams was worked out. The Dutch system of canals resembled a labyrinth of water, and woe to those who dared cross its frontiers. The decision to drown large tracts of arable fields and pastures was dramatic; consolation was found in folk wisdom, and in an old peasant proverb that said that in such extreme situations it is better to make soil barren than lose it forever.
In the shipyards of Rotterdam and other ports, feverish labor was in full swing. The giddy speed of building ships to take part in the operation of liberating Leyden is worthy of admiration, even for us who live in a technological era. The entire flotilla was composed of two hundred galleys with a shallow draught; moved by the force of the wind or oars, they were equipped with cannons and all the necessary equipment for war.
Everything now depended on one unpredictable factor—the weather. At first an unfavorable Nord was blowing; soon, however, the longed-for southwestern wind began to blow, and, through openings in the dikes, pushed masses of water toward Leyden. The offensive of the element preceded the offensive of the armed forces.
The adversary was completely taken aback. The Spaniards tried to control the situation, hurriedly repairing the broken dikes, but the Dutch galleys stormed through, firing with all their cannons. In places where the water was not sufficiently deep, the crews jumped from the ships and pushed them in the direction of the enemy’s entrenchments. Here was a great subject for a baroque painting: If Rubens had painted this battle he would probably have represented it as a struggle of Neptune with the chthonic deities.
The Spanish Army was unable to take advantage of its numerical superiority or tactical abilities. A land army that stands up to its knees in water fighting against a navy is a pure absurdity. There was only one way out—a quick raising of the siege and inglorious retreat. On the third of September 1574, at eight in the morning, Admiral Louis Boisot, commander of the Dutch soldiers who came with relief, entered the gates of the city to an enthusiastic welcome.
What remains in today’s Leyden of these days of suffering and glory? A statue of the brave mayor, Pieter Adriaansz van der Werff, in the shade of old plane trees. His coat is thrown over his shoulders as if he were on his way to an ordinary city council meeting; only the rapier at his side indicates that the matters decided at the time were of life and death.
In the park there is also an old tower with a huge piece of wall chipped off by Spanish cannons during the last night of siege. A nice house decorated with images of birds recalls those times, and has been preserved. Three brothers lived there, Jan, Ulrich, and Willem, city musicians by profession whose hobby was breeding carrier pigeons. During the siege they happened to play a particularly important role. They almost became an institution, in a dual way—a postal ministry because they maintained the only possible contact with the external world during the siege, and an office of propaganda because the pigeons were tireless ambassadors of hope, promising quick relief to the defenders.
In the Leids Museum there is a large tapestry representing the attack of the Dutch flotilla against the Spanish entrenchments. Seen with the eye of a cartographer it is a huge green plain cut by the blue lines of rivers and canals, people small as insects busily moving between them. History from the perspective of God.
In the same museum we find neither cannons nor enemy standards, neither chipped swords nor cleft helmets. In a word, none of the esteemed bric-a-brac that one finds in other European collections devoted to great events of the past. On the other hand, a peculiar war trophy hangs in the place of honor: a large copper cauldron, used to cook food for soldiers, left by the Spaniards in their flight. A cauldron as a symbol of the return to normalcy, or if someone prefers, a symbol of victory.
DURING THE EIGHTY YEARS of fighting for independence the Dutch gave countless proofs of courage, perseverance, and determination. But this long war was not like any other that took place in Europe. It was a clash of two different ideals of life, two systems of values, and, one might say with a certain exaggeration, two diametrically different civilizations: the military aristocracy of the Spaniards, and the bourgeois-peasant world of the Netherlanders.
It is worthwhile to mention a characteristic detail. The chronicler of the Leyden defense says with evident satisfaction that during the assault, when the dikes in the direct neighborhood of the city were destroyed, only five or six men were killed. Such a negligible number of victims would not have attracted the attention of other European historians.
For the Dutch, war was not a beautiful craft, an adventure of youth, or the crowning of a man’s life. They undertook it without exaltation but also without protest, as one enters a struggle with an element. According to such a code of behavior, there was no room for displays of heroic bravery or spectacular death on the field of glory. On the contrary, what was most important was to save: to protect, to spare, and carry from the storm a sane head and one’s belongings.
The brutal force of the Spanish army of occupation was thus counteracted with intelligence, a strict merchant’s calculation, organizational talents, and finally a stratagem. True, these were not knightly virtues. If the Dutch modeled themselves on the heroes of the great epics, surely Odysseus was closer to them than Achilles.
But there is no need to reach for mythology. The character and structure of Dutch society explain a lot; the men of war in Holland did not form a separate social class surrounded by a nimbus of fame or enjoying special prestige. The nobility, which in the rest of Europe formed an officer corps with centuries-old traditions, did not play a great role in the Republic. A young man who enlisted in the army as a soldier did not carry in his backpack a staff of office (if one may use such an anachronism), but the bitter bread of the poor, with no prospects that fortune would ever smile on him. When sick or wounded, he usually died in a shabby field hospital where epidemics were raging. Veterans begged in the city streets.
Holland did not have a fixed number of soldiers. The army was not a school to mold the spirit of its citizens, as with the Romans; the prestige of the state consisted in something entirely different. Hence a purely functional attitude toward the armed forces: during war the land army numbered a little more than a hundred thousand soldiers; during peace it fell to twenty thousand.
In the army of the Republic most of the land forces were foreign mercenaries; only the navy was “purely” Dutch. The sons of Mars were simply bought. At the siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch, during the decisive phase of the battle for freedom, the army commanded by Vice Regent Frederick Henry was composed of three Dutch regiments (they were not at all volunteers), and fifteen regiments of Fresians, Walloons, Germans, French, Scotch, and English. In addition, this medley did not wear uniforms. A helmet, armor plate, sometimes a sash with the colors of the detachment—all of this was very gray in comparison with the feathered splendor of the French or Italian warriors. There was nothing to paint.
Memories of wars paled quickly. The one who ordered a painting—ship captain, peasant, merchant, or artisan—wanted above all to see himself and the world that surrounded him: the house interior where the family gathered for the occasion of a baptism or wedding, a country road lined with trees and the glow of the afternoon sun falling on them, or a native town on a big plain.
Therefore it was not a very patriotic art, if by the word patriotism we understand the fierce hatred of all old, present, and even potential enemies. The Dutch did not leave us a single painting where a defeated adversary is dragged behind a victor’s chariot in the dust of spite.
Yet they painted sea battles with such delight. The classical example of this genre is the work of Hendrik Vroom6, “Battle at Gibraltar on April 25, 1607.” In the foreground a Dutch warship pierces the hull of a Spanish flagship with its prow. The painting is small, and to speak in a not very tactful way, full of delightful details: red and yellow braids of explosions, people, remnants of masts flying into the air and drowning in the sea, thousands of small touches rendered with a miniature painter’s precision. And all this seen as if through a telescope, from a distant perspective that dissolves horror and passion. A battle changed into a ballet, a colorful spectacle.
In one of his letters to Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant enthusiastically speaks of Holland’s history, so different from that of other European countries: “This brave nation never declared war on its neighbors, never invaded, never devastated or plundered their lands.” (Constant passes in discreet silence over the colonial conquests, he speaks only about neighbors.) This remark of a French writer puts an essential feature of the Dutch character into relief. Someone said: “La Hollande est de religion d’Erasme7.” It would not be a great exaggeration to say that the spirit of the philosopher from Rotterdam, who valued the virtues of moderation and gentleness above everything else, took power over this small nation.
ONE WINTER MORNING DURING a stroll in Berlin’s Grunewald, I dropped by the Hunter’s Castle. I knew for a long time that it housed a collection of Flemish and Dutch paintings. I entered partly out of duty, not expecting any revelations. I felt I would see one more mediocre collection (O the monotony of the second-rate painters of Great Schools!): portraits, hunting scenes, still lifes that hang on the walls of so many aristocratic residences. This is indeed what happened.
But I did not regret the visit, because I discovered what I had sought in so many representative galleries and museums for a long time. The painting was not a masterpiece at all, but its subject drew my attention: “Allegory of the Dutch Republic.” It was painted by Jakob Adriaensz Backer8, and for his work he received the not trifling sum of 300 guldens from the hands of Frederick Henry, Vice Regent of the United Provinces. Therefore, it was something like an official work.
The painting represents a young girl dressed in draperies of intense colors: red, blue, and a luminous pearly white. The model has a country look: the pink cheeks of a shepherdess, round shoulders, monumental legs firmly resting on the ground. Upon this personification of simplicity, freedom, and innocence the artist has imposed the heavy attributes of war: a helmet with a thick black plume, a shield in one hand and an operatic spear in the other. This is precisely what is most attractive in the painting: the contradiction between the elevated subject and its modest expression, as if a historical drama was played by a country troupe at a fair. The heroine of the scene does not resemble at all “Freedom leading people onto the barricades.” Soon she will leave the boring task of posing and go to her everyday, nonpathetic occupations in a stable or on a haystack.
Freedom—so many treatises were written about it that it became a pale, abstract concept. But for the Dutch it was something as simple as breathing, looking, and touching objects. It did not need to be defined or beautified. This is why there is no division in their art between what is great and what is small, what is important and unimportant, elevated and ordinary. They painted apples and the portraits of fabric shopkeepers, pewter plates and tulips, with such patience and such love that the images of other worlds and noisy tales about earthly triumphs fade in comparison.