Forschungsstelle "Westfälischer Friede": Dokumentation

DOCUMENTATION | Exhibitions: 1648 - War and Peace in Europe
Essay Volumes > Tome II: Art and culture

MARIJKE SPIES AND EVERT WISKERKE
Dutch Poets on the Thirty Years' War

It was a raw, grey day in January 1629 when Frederick V, the Elector of the Palatinate and his eldest son, Henry Frederick, set out from The Hague to travel to Amsterdam, where they planned to admire the treasures of the Spanish silver flotilla that had been captured by Admiral Piet Heyn as it was returning from South America. But what began as a festive outing ended in nightmare. Near the village of Sparendam the party took to the water for the last part of the journey. There on the IJ, in thick fog, their vessel was rammed by a fishing boat. A fire broke out, and everyone on board was forced to jump into the icy water. Thanks to the efforts of his manservant, the Winter King was able to scramble to safety aboard the fishing scow. But help came too late for Henry Frederick, and he drowned as his father looked helplessly on.

The tragic accident caused great consternation in the United Provinces. Some of the country's leading poets Jacobus Revius, Joost van den Vondel and Jacob Westerbaen described with horror what they saw as the latest in a series of terrible blows in the lives of Frederick and his wife, the Bohemian monarchs who had been living in exile in The Hague since 1620. [1] But aside from human compassion, their elegies also often reveal their interest in the German war. Vondel, for example, bemoaned the loss of the young prince, who had sworn to avenge his father's honour by leading a campaign in Bavaria. [2] From the outset, indeed, there had been in the Republic a great sense of involvement in the Thirty Years War. Numerous publications pamphlets as well as official documents were translated into Dutch, and gradually the Dutch themselves started to air their views about the war. [3] In 1624 the Dutch Reformed minister in Zutphen, Willem Baudartius (1565-1640), published his Memorien ofte cort verhael der gedenck-weerdichste so kerckelicke als weltlicke gheschiedenissen van Nederland, Vranckrijck, Hooghduytschland, Groot Britannyen, Hispanyen, Italyen, Hungaryen, Savoyen, ende Turkyen, van den jaere 1603. tot in het jaer 1624 (Memoirs or a brief account of the most memorable ecclesiastic and secular histories of the Netherlands, France, High Germany, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Savoy and Turkey from the year 1603 to the year 1624). [4]

As early as 1624, the war in Germany in the years 1622-3 had provided the setting for a love story in one of the first Dutch literary novels, Wonderlicke avontuer van twee goelieven (The wonderful adventure of two lovers). Out of frustration, the principal male character the oddly-named Waterbrandt enrols in Frederick of the Palatinate's army, defects to Tilly and then back to Mansveldt, and his beloved Wintergroen follows him disguised as a man. The descriptions of the horrors of war, particularly the lengthy passages dealing with the sacking of East Friesland, reveal the depth of the impression the whole affair made in the Republic. [5]

For the first ten years it was almost exclusively Calvinist authors who concerned themselves with the subject. This is understandable: it was after all primarily the Calvinists and their political supporters who had agitated for the resumption of the war when the Twelve Year Truce between the Republic and Spain came to an end in 1621. Although they by no means made up the majority of the Dutch population, they had effectively held political power since Prince Maurice's coup in 1618. This position was to remain unchanged until Maurice's death in 1625. [6]

To them, in particular, the war that broke out in 1618 between the Protestant and Catholic rulers in Germany was of a piece with their own war against their former ruler, the Catholic King of Spain, which had been dragging on since 1568 and had broken out again in 1621. This feeling derived from the view expressed as early as 1621 by Ewout Teellinck (c. 1573-1629), one of the pioneers of the pietist movement in Dutch Calvinism, in a pamphlet entitled Een hardt bode, brengende quade tydinge uyt Boëmen (A swift messenger, bringing bad news from Bohemia). As Teellinck saw it, the Bohemians' uprising, led by Frederick of the Palatinate, against their Habsburg ruler, the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, had been entirely justified. Ferdinand, contravening the promises he had made, had wanted to make the country a 'hereditary state', he had abolished the freedom of religion he and his predecessor, his cousin Matthias, had sworn to uphold and was set on stamping out the Reformed faith. [7] By 'freedom of religion', the Calvinists did not mean freedom for all the various religious faiths, but freedom for the only true religion: the Reformed faith as set out in the Heidelberg catechism. [8] The same view is to be found in Baudartius's Memorien [9], while in his Nederlandtsche gedenck-clanck (Dutch memoirs), a chronicle larded with poems, songs and engravings, published in 1626, the Zeeland notary Adriaen Valerius (c. 1575-1625) likewise argued that the Emperor, urged on by the Pope, was bent on eradicating the Reformed faith and instituting 'Papist' doctrine. [10]

It was above all the alliance between the Austrian and the Spanish Habsburgs that linked the German war directly to the war in Holland. The image of a Habsburg dynasty striving for world hegemony under the banner of Catholicism, which Dutch Calvinists should fear as much as their German counterparts, was promulgated in every conceivable way. True, the Deventer minister Jacobus Revius (1586-1658) scoffed that the Emperor, unwilling to lose 'St Peter's legacy', was drawing his sword in order to defend 'a torn net and a leaking boat' a reference to the apostle Peter's fishing net and to the church he founded [11] but this mockery made the fear of Habsburg violence no less real. Samuel Ampzing (1590-1632), a Reformed minister in Haarlem, wrote in his Naszousche lauren-kranze (Nassau laurel wreath), which he had woven in poetic form on the occasion of the capture of 's Hertogenbosch by Frederick Henry in 1629, that Rome had incited the secular rulers of Austria and Spain to destroy the Reformed faith. [12] Similar assertions can be found in Toneel van Europa met hare personagien af-gebeelt (The European stage with an illustration of its characters) by the Harderwijk professor Johannes Isacius Pontanus, which Ampzing had translated from the Latin into "Nederduytschen rijm" (Low German rhyme): the 'House of Austria' was striving for world domination and what Ferdinand wanted, Philip wanted in equal measure. [13]

Several authors with German backgrounds were particularly determined to put their views across forcefully. The minister Bartholomeus Hulsius (c. 1601-before 1642), who was born in Frankfurt am Main but worked in the Republic, wrote that the Emperor would stop at nothing to achieve his purpose, because his heart was set on ruin and destruction. [14] The atrocities committed by his troops proved that this was a ruthless tyrant. And in 1631 Rudolphus Meyer (... - 1631), another German in this case from Westphalia who had already written of the drowning of the young crown prince, depicted the bloody seizure of the Palatinate by the imperial forces in his Heraclites Bohemicus ofte droevighe thranen, over den desolaten staet van Bohemen (Heraclites Bohemicus or bitter tears for the desolate state of Bohemia). [15]

From this perspective, setbacks and defeats were regarded as God's punishment for an improper way of life. In Rudolphus Meyer's view, the fact that the true faith had not been restored in Bohemia was the consequence of such imprecisely defined sins as pride and blasphemous talk. Only if the faithful were to confess and repent their wickedness would God come to their aid and drive out tyranny. [16] These were sentiments aired by Ewout Teellinck as early as 1621 in a pamphlet entitled De creupele bode, brengende seeckere tydinge uyt Boëmen (The lame messenger, bringing certain tidings from Bohemia), which were in line in every respect with his programme for a 'further reformation' through inner faith and a strict regime for living. [17]

In his songs and poetry Valerius, too, interpreted the war as a holy war that could only be won with God's help a war in which losses like the fall of Prague were a punishment meted out by God and intended to bring about true atonement:

The devastation of Magdeburg on 20 May 1631 was evidence of the brutality of the Emperor and his followers, sparing nothing and nobody. One of the most impressive literary testimonies of these events is the dialogue between the Swedish king, Gustav Adolf, and the patroness of Magdeburg, which Jacobus Revius translated from the German into Dutch verse in about 1631. It was the scum of the cannibals who had risen up out of the darkness of hell on wheels of fire to destroy the city, rend her body, flay her and burn her. [19]

It was with good reason that an anonymous poem entitled Een nieuwen gheordonneerden Sweed-dranck (A newly ordered Swedish ??drink) described Tilly as the Alva of the German State. [20] The Duke of Alva had been the governor who in the early years of the Revolt of the Netherlands had tried to restore the Spanish king's authority with an iron fist, and had introduced the 'Council of Blood' that had cost ??many thousands of people their lives. Since that time Alva's name had been synonymous in Holland with every horror perpetrated by an oppressor and so we see here, if anywhere, the emotional identification of the events in Germany with the Netherlands' own struggle for freedom.

The successes achieved by the union of Protestant rulers, thanks to the intervention of the Swedish king, Gustav II Adolf, were also ascribed to the hand of God. Jacobus Revius's translation of the dialogue between Gustav Adolf and the city of Magdeburg in 1631 ends with an expression of total confidence in God's support in the repeated lines: This vision also emerges clearly from Bartholomeus Hulsius's emblem book Den onderganck des Roomschen Arents, door den Noordschen Leeuw (The destruction of the Roman Eagle by the Lion of the North), which is devoted in its entirety to Gustav Adolf. Although the poems were not published until 1642, they were almost certainly written some ten years earlier. Under 'God's guidance' the Swedish king reconquered the areas previously occupied by the Emperor. [22] To show that it was God who granted the victory, Hulsius quotes Psalm 115, verse 1: "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory": the king had led the troops into battle, but the triumph came from God. [23]

When on 17 September 1631, four months after the destruction of Magdeburg, Gustav Adolf inflicted a massive defeat on Tilly at Breitenfeld, to the north of Leipzig, Revius consequently wrote a Danck-liedt des alderdoorluchtichsten conincx voor de heerlicke overwinninge des keyserschen legers voor Leypsich , (Hymn of thanks to the most illustrious king for the magnificent victory over the imperial forces near Leipzig), in which he attributed the triumph to God's just judgement on the arrogant. He ends by addressing his fellow Calvinists, including those in Germany, as the 'chosen people' and adjures them to hope and to believe 'Even when the Lord conceals his countenance'. [24]

The Reformed church was God's church and its members were God's people or God's children 'members of one body, of which Christ is the Head,' says Rudolphus Meyer. [25] These are terms that are encountered frequently in all orthodox Calvinist poets. And as God's people they identified with the Israel of the Old Testament. They constantly drew parallels between their own history and that of the people of Israel as evidence of God's direct involvement in the Dutch and German struggle for freedom.

The comparison with the deliverance of the Jewish people from exile in Egypt, which had been a favourite theme since the earliest days of the Dutch revolt, was also still popular at this time. While in 1601, in his poem Den spieghel van de Spaensche tyrannie (The reflection of the Spanish tyranny), the Amsterdam physician Jacobus Viverius compared the Dutch people with Israel and the Spanish king with Pharaoh [26], in 1631 Rudolphus Meyer was expressing the hope, in his Pietatis Regis Bohemiae, ofte godvruchtigheyt van syn majesteyt van Bhemen (Pietatis Regis Bohemiae, or the piety of His Majesty of Bohemia), that Bohemia would be saved as Israel had been and that the Emperor would suffer the same fate as the Pharaoh. [27]

Other similarities perceived in the sixteenth-century religious conflict proved equally serviceable. The enemies of the German Calvinists were referred to by the names of the Old Testament enemies of Israel. Meyer, in particular, was lavish in his use of references to the Ammonites, Moabites and Philistines. [28] But the most frequently used metaphor for the Catholic enemy came from the Book of Revelations. The Pope, in whose service the Habsburg rulers were believed to be conducting the war, was identified with the Whore of Babylon and the Antichrist. This theme from Revelations was linked to that of the Old Testament account of the worship of Baal, the image traditionally used to symbolize the Catholic veneration of saints. [29] As the Pope was the Antichrist, so the power of the Habsburgs represented the 'Kingdom of the Antichrist' where, as Samuel Ampzing wrote in 1629, the 'Roman God is God's Master' and his 'Baal worship' is the reigning religion. [30] From the same perspective, the princes and generals who served the Reformed cause were portrayed as heroes of the faith. Great play was made of the purity of their faith and their fear of God as proof of the justness of their task. Christian IV of Denmark, wrote Ampzing, fought for God when the Emperor's armies persecuted the 'pious'. [31] But it was above all Frederick V, Gustav Adolf and their own stadholder, Frederick Henry, whom they viewed as the great warriors for the faith.

Rudolphus Meyer depicted Frederick V as a deeply religious man who had devoted his life to the service of his convictions. He likened the Winter King's exile to David's flight from Absalom. 'God', he prayed, 'let Jeroboam not remain upon the throne that rightfully belongs to David's seed, but send a Gideon to liberate your people.' [32] In Bartholomeus Hulsius's view, this Gideon was the Swedish king. He also compared the king with Moses, who led the children of Israel out of Egypt. Gustav Adolf's death in 1632 was therefore not a cause for despair Moses, after all, was succeeded by Joshua, who at last led the Israelites into the promised land. [33]

Such analogies as the comparison of the Pope with the Whore of Babylon were not exclusive to the Calvinists. Around 1629, for example, the Baptist apothecary Jan van der Veen of Deventer (1578-1659) produced a sketch of the Dutch war that many a Calvinist will have agreed with wholeheartedly. In very belligerent tones he too described the war against the Rome-Habsburg coalition, which was endeavouring to achieve its ends by rape and pillage, as a battle between faith and the Babylonian kingdom of the Antichrist. What we do not find in his writings, however, is the notion of his own party as 'God's people'; he uses only the more politically charged term 'our free people'. [34] And it is in precisely this respect, as we shall see later, that he differs essentially from the Reformed poets.

It was no coincidence that a relatively large number of the authors quoted above came from the east of the Netherlands Baudartius from Zutphen, Revius and van der Veen from Deventer. This, after all, was an area where war was still a very present threat. The extent to which the United Provinces and the German Protestant principalities were facing the same enemy became clear in 1629, when imperial forces led by Montecucculi aided Spain in the occupation of large swathes of Dutch territory. The Spanish-German cohorts rapidly swept through the Veluwe, overran the city of Amersfoort and even appeared to be on the point of attacking Amsterdam. However, after States troops captured Wesel, where the Spanish were storing money and arms, the imperial troops were forced to pull back. Once the Emperor had brought all of Germany under his sway, he turned his sights on the Netherlands, wrote Ampzing in his Nieuwe-iaers dank-offer (New Year's thanksgiving) of 1630. [35] And Revius asserted something very similar on the occasion of the appearance of Pappenheim at Maastricht in 1632, making great play of the pun on the name (papen' in Dutch meaning 'papists' and 'heimelijk' meaning 'secret' or 'furtive). But however furtive the attack by the Emperor's supporters, carried out on Frederick Henry's positions under the guise of neutrality may have been, 'our' prince succeeded in putting them to flight. [36]

After Frederick Henry took 's Hertogenbosch in 1629, and increasingly in subsequent years, the Calvinists and hence the Calvinist poets urged the Republic to play an active part in the German war. They generally regarded the Netherlands as the only safe haven for the Reformed faith. A good opportunity presented itself in 1632, when Elector Frederick V moved into Germany in the hope of capturing the Palatinate with Swedish help. Jacobus Revius was among those calling upon the 'Batavians' to join him in crossing the Rhine. [37] In their eyes there could never be peace until the Reformed faith had won a complete victory. Meanwhile, however, political power was gradually slipping away from the Calvinists. Admittedly since 1618 they had been the only 'public' officially recognized church in the Republic, but they were nonetheless not an established church. Other Protestant faiths were tolerated, provided they kept a low profile, and the same applied to the Jews. Even the Catholics, although they were officially banned, were usually able to practise their religion at a price without too many problems. Anything else would actually have been impossible, since around the middle of the century about one-third of the population were Roman Catholics, while a third belonged to the Reformed church and some seven to ten percent were Baptists. [38] Prince Maurice had taken the Calvinist side politically, and while he lived their influence was considerable. But their power waned rapidly after Maurice's death in 1625, and by 1630 the Calvinists no longer had any real influence in affairs of state. They were now opposed by those who wanted peace, among them most of the Amsterdam merchants and regents. In 1632 Spain and the Republic actually embarked on peace negotiations. The talks failed, and for the time being the two sides hawks and doves more or less kept one another in check. But there could be no question of extending the war beyond Holland's eastern borders. [39]

It was during this period that several poets who were not Calvinists started to express their opinions about the German war, first and foremost among them Joost van den Vondel of Amsterdam (1587-1679), the greatest Dutch poet of the seventeenth century. Vondel, who was brought up as a Baptist and later converted to Catholicism, also saw the Dutch and German wars as a single struggle for freedom against a united Habsburg aggressor. To him, however, this was not a holy war but a political one, and its purpose was to protect 'time-honoured' German and Dutch freedom against the tyranny of princes. As early as 1627, in his poem celebrating the taking of Grol, he described Frederick Henry as the protector of the people. [40] The following year, whilst on a visit to Denmark, he sent the poet Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft a letter in rhyme, in which he related an encounter he had had on his travels, somewhere in Lower Saxony, with a 'well-bred Woman'. She proved to be 'German Freedom' who, surrounded by counts and dukes, was fleeing her country to seek refuge in the safety of the Netherlands. There she would stay until Holland had restored her to her former dignity. Although in this poem, too, the Habsburg seizure of power in 1618 was cited as the cause of the German war, it is interesting to note that in Vondel's view it was primarily the power struggle between the two parties that had brought disaster to the country and driven out freedom. [41]

A year later, in 1629, Vondel was pleading for another freedom: the freedom of religion not freedom for the one Calvinist faith, but freedom of religion for all. He argued his case in Zegesang ter eere van Frederick Henrick (Victory anthem in honour of Frederick Henry), written to mark the capture of 's Hertogenbosch the event that had also led so many Calvinists to put pen to paper. In Vondel, however, we find no blanket condemnation of everything Catholic. At the end of the poem, after celebrating the restoration of peace, he suddenly turns in an unexpected direction: 'but what is freedom, what are charters, if all may not enjoy them? let us not suppress conscience'. This freedom of religion for all, including Roman Catholics, would in his view make Holland both an example and a refuge for the whole of Europe. [42] These were words that were to become topical again in the second half of the sixteen-forties, at the time of the negotiations in Münster. [43]

In his poem De Rijnstroom (The River Rhine), written at about the same time, he repeated this theme: 'religious differences and the hatred of Rulers' were an 'infernal Hydra' that was poisoning the sweet banks of the Rhine, and indeed all Germany. [44] Gradually, however, another theme peace started to become more important in his work. From 1632 onwards when peace negotiations were actually going on this became the overriding consideration on which his writings about military operations were based. [45]

It is interesting to see just how closely the poems Vondel wrote during these years parallel those of someone like Revius and yet how different they are in tenor. The poems the two men wrote about the massacre at Magdeburg are perfect illustrations of this. Both viewed Gustav Adolf's victory over Tilly's forces at Leipzig in 1631 as just punishment for the atrocities committed at Magdeburg. For Revius the moral of this was that people should continue to believe in the Lord even in adversity, and he concluded by praying that God would destroy the enemy. [46] In that same year Vondel, on the other hand, was stressing the restoration of political freedom and, above all, the peace that should follow. Not without irony he wrote that Tilly a 'scourge of God' in Calvinist eyes had proved to be a Phaeton: in myth the son of the Sun, who had reached too high and come to grief. At the end of his poem he called on Gustav Adolf to change his second name to that of Augustus, the Roman emperor who had closed the doors of the temple of war and brought peace to his domain. [47] When Gustav Adolf marched on Catholic Cologne the following year, Vondel offered him a poetic "Olyftack" (Olive Branch) 'to move His Majesty to spare Cologne, the city of my birth'. [48]

The ultimate goal of the war should be peace. In this the Swedish monarch stood in stark contrast to Tilly and Pappenheim, who had on their consciences such atrocities as murder and rape which were fit only for 'Turks and Spaniards'. [49] Vondel makes no comparisons with Old Testament heroes. True, the Olyftack is constructed on the parallel between Cologne and the capture of Jerusalem by Alexander the Great, but this is a historical rather than a biblical event. [50] Gustav Adolf is a second Alexander, a Julius Caesar, and finally, it is to be hoped, an Augustus. [51] And Tilly is the alter ego of Atilla the Hun. [52]

We find the same image of the Swedish king in the Sweedsche Zeeg-trompet, Wtblasende de onverwachte verlossinge van Duytschland,..., door den doorl. voorvechter der Christen Vryheyt Gustavus Adolphus , (Swedish victory trumpet, Sounding the unexpected salvation of Germany ... by the illustrious champion of Christian Freedom Gustav Adolf) published in 1631 by the Amsterdam seafarer Elias Herckmans (c. 1596-1644). The Swedish king was a second Alexander who had come to Germany to restore freedom of conscience a concept Herckmans interpreted in the same way as Vondel did. The ultimate objective of his mission was to secure peace, and thus he would prove himself an Augustus. [53]

Again we find the parallel and the contrast with Revius. He too, in his Tranen-vloet (Flood of Tears) lamenting the death of Gustav Adolf in 1632, compared the king with Alexander the Great, but he also likened him to the philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius, to Charlemagne, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire, and to Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Ancient Rome. The Swedish king, as the liberator of Germany and 'God's church', had united in his person the virtues of all these leaders, but the one virtue that would have made him an Augustus, that of peacemaker, was not mentioned by Revius. [54] After Gustav Adolf's death, poetic interest in the German war effectively came to an end in the Republic. Vondel wrote two more poems, in which he examined the German situation from a new angle the resumption of the Turkish threat. In his poem Op de Tweedraght der Christe Princen (On the Discord of Christian Princes) published in 1634, he gave vent to his fears that the European wars would give the Turks the opportunity to overrun Germany and turn Cologne into a stable. [55] And in 1635, in his poem on the Bestand tusschen Polen en Sweden (Truce between Poland and Sweden), he expressed the wish that the Polish king would persist in resisting the Turkish attacks. [56] But that was about the sum of it.

It was not until the peace negotiations in Münster got under way that the situation in Germany again became the focus of attention. Interestingly, the poets whose voices were heard now were almost without exception not Calvinists. The Calvinists were speaking out mainly through pamphlets in which they railed against the Republic's proposed peace with Spain.

In Holland proponents of peace, like the dissident Protestant poet and minister Geeraerdt Brandt (1626-85) and the Catholic director of the theatre in Amsterdam Jan Vos (c. 1610-67), were arguing, as Vondel had done as early as 1629, that there could be no justification for fighting on now that the goal of the war, freedom, had been achieved. [57] This view 'enough is enough' is also found in the poetic commentaries on the German war, but in this case supported by references to the wretched situation in which Germany found itself a situation which, with a very few exceptions in the border regions, had not occurred in the Netherlands since the early years of the seventeenth century.

In a poem entitled Vrede-sucht, door het geheel bedroefde Christen-ryck (The desire for peace throughout all sorrowing Christendom), written in 1647, the anonymous author asks God, in a heart-rending prayer, how much longer it would be before the age of devastation was over. [58] In the same period the Amsterdam innkeeper and Collegiant Jan Zoet (1615-74) called upon his compatriots to show compassion for the German people, ravaged as they had been by the disasters and horrors of the war. [59] And Jan Vos too, in 1648, begged the European rulers to make peace as Holland and Spain had done: 'throw your weapons in the fire,' he wrote, 'and shut Janus's gates of war as they did in the age of Augustus'. [60]

Some poets believed that peace in Germany could only be brought about by Sweden, with Queen Christina in the role of arbitrator. In 1647 both Vondel and the young Baptist poet Reyer Anslo (1626-69) wrote poems on a picture portraying Christina as Pallas Athene, springing from the head of her father Zeus Gustav Adolf. The way they handled this motif reveals just how greatly their approaches differed.

Anslo saw in Christina the Pallas of wisdom in warfare, the warrior goddess. He laid great stress on the seriousness with which she prepared for her sovereignty so that she could rule her country as wisely as her father had done and pursue the struggle in Germany. To him she was the Gothic lioness, the warrior maid who bore Gustav's masculine courage in her maidenly breast. [61] In a poem about her coronation, written in 1650, Anslo depicted her as the person who had settled the German war by force of arms. She had indeed shown herself a worthy successor to her father, who had given his life for the freedoms of the German principalities and for the freedom of religion. Only now that she had crushed the tyranny did she consider his death to have been avenged, and now she made peace with the emperor. [62] In the same year Jan Vos described her in similar terms as one continuing her father's just war and as the person who ultimately brought the conflict to an end. [63]

Although this was all very much of a piece with the poems that Vondel had written about Gustav Adolf in the early sixteen-thirties, he himself was now singing a different tune. Having praised all her chivalrous qualities, in 1647 it was above all the olive branch the symbol of peace that he wished Christina: no ruby could sparkle as magnificently in her crown as that branch dedicated to Pallas Athene. [64] Later, in 1653, he went so far as to portray her as someone who, in her immeasurable wisdom and from a simple longing for peace, had withdrawn her armies from Germany. While her father was the war hero, she emulated him by laying down her arms. [65]

To most Dutch poets the main argument in favour of a German peace was not however the restoration of freedom or the intolerable horrors of war: it was the Turkish threat. Vondel, the early apostle of peace, expressed this view as early as 1634. But after the Turks landed on Crete in 1645, there was a general realization that a war between the European rulers was placing the whole of Christendom in jeopardy. 'While the Christians are squabbling among themselves,' wrote Jan Zoet, 'the Turk is sharpening his sword'. [66]

Here, poets were taking to its ultimate conclusion the view that the war was in part a fight for the freedom of religion. In their eyes differences between the parties were of no consequence when all Christendom was threatened by a religion that did not acknowledge the true God. In 1648 the Baptist painter and poet from Dordrecht, Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-78), ended his allegorical peace drama Vryheit der Vereenighde Nederlanden (Freedom of the United Netherlands) by calling for Mars's thunder of war to sound where 'the Turban and the Hat' bore each other eternal enmity. [67]

The most outspoken of all were those poets who were themselves Roman Catholic or felt an affinity towards the Catholic church. In 1648, in the very long, programmatic poem Vreede tusschen Filippus de Vierde, Koning van Spanje; en de Staaten der Vrye Neederlanden (Peace between Philip the Fourth, King of Spain; and the States of the Free Netherlands), Jan Vos wrote: Lutherans, Calvinists, Catholics: these must in his view become 'forgotten names', so that Danes, Dutchmen, Swedes, Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Frenchmen and Poles could together drive the Turk back across the Bosporus. [68]

To some poets the European war against Turkey for which they were calling even took on the character of a crusade. The author of Vredesucht , for example, hoped that a 'cross-bearing army' under 'Christ's banner' would conquer the Holy Land. [69] In Op de tweedragt der christenen en den Turkschen Oorlog (On the discord among Christians and the Turkish war) a title deliberately echoing Vondel's work of eleven years previously Reyer Anslo, who converted to Catholicism shortly after 1650, referred to the crusades and called upon the European rulers to raise the flag on the Holy Sepulchre. [70]

But it was Vondel himself who went the furthest. He had become a Catholic some time around 1640 and his view of the German war clearly reflected the effects of his conversion. To him, unity among Christians meant unity under Rome, with the Pope as peacemaker between the warring Christians and as the leader in a war to drive out Turks and Tartars. [71] In 1653 he even expressed the view that the Christian countries should join forces under the imperial crown of the Habsburg Ferdinand III in order to ward off the danger: Whereas a quarter of a century earlier Calvinist poets had discerned in the German war a Catholic plot against the true faith of the Heidelberg catechism, now it was being said openly and not by minor figures that the true faith should unite under the banner of Catholicism to fight the real enemies of God. Times had certainly changed!

This war, too, in regions far from the safety of the Netherlands also had romantic powers of attraction, in literature if nowhere else. In 1650 Samuel van Hoogstraten published a love story, Schoone Roselijn (Beautiful Rosalind). In the last chapter a young man named Frederick, who has been disappointed in love, leaves the Republic not, as his predecessor Waterbrandt had done in 1624, to fight in the German war, but to join the troops defending the Polish border against the attacks by Russians and Tartars, and against 'Ottoman, Prince of Romania, who with six hundred Turbans, all brave fighters, had come to the aid of the Cossack...'. [73] In this respect, too, times had changed.




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FOOTNOTES

1. Jacobus Revius, Coninx-clachte op de doot vande prince van Bohemen (Lament of the king on the death of the Prince of Bohemia), in: Revius 1971, II, p. 72; Jacobus Revius, Antwoort des princen (The prince's reply), in: Revius 1971, II, p. 72; Joost van den Vondel, Lijck Traenen. Over het verongelucken van den jongen keurvorst (Mourning Tears. On the death of the young elector), in: Vondel 1927-37, III, pp. 255-6; Jakob Westerbaen, Traenen van de doorluchtighste koninginne Elisabeth... van Bohemen,... over de dood van prins Hendric Frederic,... (Tears of the most illustrious Queen Elisabeth ... of Bohemia, ... on the death of Prince Henry Frederick), in: Westerbaen 1657, pp. 256-8. Further: Meyer 1631.

2. Vondel 1927-37, III, p. 256.

3. See for example Knuttel 1888-1920, I.1 and I.2, Nos. 2497-9, 2813-29, 3021-53, 3133-58, 3291-306.

4. Baudartius 1624.

5. Grootes 1988.

6. See Deursen 1974, pp. 298-309, 356-71.

7. Teellinck 1621, p. 24.

8. On this subject see Spies (awaiting publication).

9. Baudartius 1624, II, book 10, pp. 117-21.

10. Valerius 1943, pp. 218-19.

11. Jacobus Revius, Keyser, in: Revius 1971, I, p. 252.

12. Ampzing 1629, p. 5.

13. Ampzing 1631, p. 18.

14. Hulsius 1642, p. 10; see Lieburg 1996, p. 108.

15. Meyer 1631a; see Lieburg 1996, p. 167.

16. Meyer 1631a, 1 recto, pp. 33-7.

17. Teellinck 1621, pp. 6-9.

18. 'O unhappy Prague! How are you now defiled? / How has the Spanish plague devoured all your people? / What good is all your strength? What good your great powers? / If God is not with you they are all of no avail. /... / O Sinner, it is your due! God will chastise you thus, / To bring you to true redemption through suffering: / Suffer in patience, 'twill not endure for ever, / God will ensure that your cause succeeds.' Valerius 1943, p. 221.

19. (English paraphrase) Jacobus Revius, T'samen-sprekinge des alder doorluchtichsten konincx van Sweden, ende der Maegdenborgsche nymphe (Conversation between the most illustrious King of Sweden and the nymph of Magdeburg), in: Revius 1971, II, pp. 116-22.

20. Sweeddranck 1632, p. B 1 recto. The poem is signed with the motto "Bemint rust" (Love peace).

21. 'The enemy relies on horse and waggon, / But we take our chances in God's name.' Jacobus Revius, T'samen-sprekinge, in: Revius 1971, II, p. 122.

22. Hulsius 1642, pp. 26-9, quotation on p. 27.

23. Hulsius 1642, p. 23.

24. Jacobus Revius, Danck-liedt des alderdoorluchtichsten conincx van Sweden voor de heerlicke overwinninge des keyserschen legers voor Leypsich (Hymn of thanks to the most illustrious king of Sweden for the magnificent victory over the imperial forces near Leipzig), in: Revius 1971, II, pp. 105-7.

25. Meyer 1631a, p. 4 recto.

26. Spies 1994, pp. 141-58, quotation on p. 145.

27. Meyer 1631a, pp. 29-30.

28. Meyer 1631a, p. 41.

29. Spies 1992, pp. 66-74, particularly p. 68.

30. Ampzing 1629, p. 8.

31. Ampzing 1629, p. 23.

32. Rudolphus Meyer, Pietas Regis Bohemiae, ofte godvruchtigheyt van syn majesteyt van Bhemen (Pietatis Regis Bohemiae, or the piety of His Majesty of Bohemia), in: Meyer 1631, pp. 24-32, particularly pp. 25-7. Cf. also Baudartius 1624, I, book 9, pp. 119-20; II, book 13, p. 36.

33. Hulsius 1642, pp. 18, 25, 34-5.

34. Jan van der Veen, Mey-crans. Van verscheyden Cruyden, over de... veroveringhe der stadt 'sHertogen-bos.... (May wreath. Of different Plants, on the ... capture of the city of 's Hertogenbosch) in: Veen 1658, pp. 415-23, quotation on p. 416.

35. Ampzing 1630.

36. Jacobus Revius, Vreugden-rey op den gheseghenden tocht des... prince van Oranjen int lopende jaer M DC XXXII.... (Round dance of joy on the blessed campaign of the ... Prince of Orange in this year M DC XXXII...), in: Revius 1971, II, pp. 127-35, particularly pp. 134-5.

37. Jacobus Revius, Opweckinge aende Bataviers tot den tocht met sijn conincklijcke majesteyt van Bohemen (Call on the Batavians to join the campaign of his sovereign majesty of Bohemia), in: Revius 1971, II, p. 123.

38. Knippenberg 1992, pp. 21-30.

39. Smits-Veldt 1977-8, p. 217-45, particularly pp. 229-31.

40. Joost van den Vondel, Verovering van Grol, door Frederick Henrick, Prince van Oranje (The capture of Grol, by Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange), in: Vondel 1927-37, III, pp. 124-52, particularly pp. 151-2.

41. Joost van den Vondel, Brief aen den Drost van Muyden, spellende de herstellinge der Duytsche Vryheyd (Letter to the Bailiff of Muiden, predicting the restoration of German Freedom), in: Vondel 1927-37, III, pp. 187-91.

42. Joost van den Vondel, Zegesang ter eere van Frederick Henrick, Boschdwinger, Wezelwinner, Prince van Oranje (Victory anthem in honour of Frederick Henry, vanquisher of Den Bosch, victor of the Wesel, Prince of Orange), in: Vondel 1927-37, III, pp. 264-85, particularly pp. 284-5.

43. On this subject see also Spies (awaiting publication).

44. Joost van den Vondel, De Rijnstroom (The River Rhine), in: Vondel 1927-37, III, pp. 289-95, quotation on p. 294.

45. Smits-Veldt 1977-8, pp. 227-39.

46. Jacobus Revius, Danck-liedt... (Hymn of thanks...), in: Revius 1971, II, pp.105-7, particularly p. 107.

47. Joost van den Vondel, Maeghdeburghs lijckoffer ontsteecken op het hoogh autaer, by Leypzigh, door den onverwinnelyken koninglyken held Gustaef Adolf, arm der Duytsche Vryheyd (Magdeburg's sacrifice ignited on the high altar, at Leipzig, by the unconquerable royal hero Gustav Adolf, arm of German Freedom), in: Vondel 1927-37, III, pp. 357-66, particularly verses 76, 127-8, 171-2 and 185-8.

48. Joost van den Vondel, Olyftack aan Gustaaf Adolf, om syne majesteit te bewegen, datse Keulen, mijn geboortestadt, verschone (Olive branch to Gustav Adolf, to move His Majesty to spare Cologne, the city of my birth), in: Vondel 1927-37, III, pp. 377-9.

49. Joost van den Vondel, Maeghdeburghs lijckoffer... (Magdeburg's sacrifice...', in: Vondel 1927-37, III, p. 363, Verse 89.

50. Joost van den Vondel, Olyftack..., in: Vondel 1927-37, III, pp. 377-9, Verses 21-64.

51. Joost van den Vondel, Maeghdeburghs lijckoffer..., in: Vondel 1927-37, III, p. 359 [dedicatory sonnet] and pp. 365-6, Verses 155 and 188.

52. Joost van den Vondel, Olyftack..., in: Vondel 1927-37, III, p. 379, Verse 70.

53. Herckmans 1631.

54. Jacobus Revius, Tranen-vloet op de droeve doot des alderdoorluchtichsten, groot-machtichsten ende groot-dadichsten Gustavi Adolphi... (Flood of Tears on the tragic death of the most illustrious, most powerful and most heroic Gustav Adolf...), in: Revius 1971, II, pp. 143-9, particularly pp. 147-9.

55. Joost van den Vondel, Op de tweedracht der christe princen. Aen Iezus Christus (On the discord of the Christian princes. To Jesus Christ), in: Vondel 1927-37, Bd#, pp. 419-20.

56. Joost van den Vondel, Bestand tusschen Polen en Sweden. Aen Dantzick (Truce between Poland and Sweden. To Danzig), in: Vondel 1927-37, III, pp. 428-30.

57. Spies 1997.

58. Vredesucht 1647.

59. Zoet 1675, pp. 146-8.

60. Jan Vos, Vreede tusschen Filippus de Vierde, Koning van Spanje; en de Staaten der Vrye Nederlanden (Peace between Philip the Fourth, King of Spain; and the States of the Free Netherlands), in: Vos 1662-71, I, pp. 89-122, quotation on p. 122.

61. Reyer Anslo, De Zweedsche Pallas (The Swedish Pallas), in: Anslo 1713, pp. 186-8.

62. Reyer Anslo, De gezegende krooning van de doorluchtigste en magtigste princesse Christina, der Zweden, Gotten en Wandalen koningin;... (The blessed coronation of the most illustrious and most powerful Princess Christina, Queen of the Swedes, Goths and Vandals; ...) in: Anslo 1713, pp. 203-4.

63. Jan Vos, Vertooningen of schilderyen voor de koningin Kristina van Zweeden (Portrayals or paintings for the queen Christina of Sweden), in: Vos 1662-71, II, pp. 186-91.

64. Joost van den Vondel, Afzetsel der koningklycke printe (Descendant of the royal house), in: Vondel 1927-37, V, pp. 354-60.

65. Joost van den Vondel, Afbeeldinge van Christine der Zweden, Gotten en Wenden koninginne, door David Beck, hare majesteits kamerling, uitgeschildert (Portrait of Christina of the Swedes, Goths and Wends, painted by David Beck, Her Majesty's chamberlain) in: Vondel 1927-37, V, pp. 588-94, particularly pp. 591-2.

66. Jan Zoet, De geschoren Hollander (The squabbling Dutchman), in: Zoet 1675, pp. 44-5.

67. Hoogstraten 1648, p. C 2 verso.

68. (We do not want you to hang the weapons on the wall / Of the court; no. they must not rust. / You must go to Suleiman, to lay waste the East, / ...) Jan Vos, Vreede tusschen Filippus de Vierde,...; en de Staaten der Vrye Neederlanden (Peace between Philip the Fourth, King of Spain; and the States of the Free Netherlands), in: Vos 1662-71, I, pp. 108-9.

69. Vredesucht 1647, p. A 4 recto.

70. Reyer Anslo, Op de tweedragt der christenen en den Turkschen oorlog (On the discord among Christians and the Turkish war), in: Anslo 1713, pp. 171-4.

71. Joost van den Vondel, Olyftack van zijne heiligheit Innocent de Tiende (Olive branch from His Holiness Innocent the Tenth), in: Vondel 1927-37, IV, pp. 579-80.

72. (Christendom, like a ship in the raging sea always beset by storms on all sides, and now by Turk and Tartar, and in danger of shipwreck, demands this unanimous obedience to the Empire, to repulse the common enemy of Christ's name, and to safeguard and strengthen the Imperial territory and its borders against the invasion of the barbarians;...) Joost van den Vondel, [Opdracht van het treurspel Lucifer aan] Den onverwinnelijcksten Vorst en Here... Ferdinand den Derden..., ['Dedication of the tragedy Lucifer to] The most indomitable Sovereign and Lord ... Ferdinand the Third ...), in: Vondel 1927-37, V, pp. 604-5, quotation on p. 605.

73. Hoogstraten 1650, p. 147.



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