The Skirmish Between Cuirassiers, 5 February 1600, on the Vughterheide

Entry

This notorious incident took place on the Vughterheide not far from ’s-Hertogenbosch on 5 February 1600.¹¹ It resulted from a challenge by Pierre (or François) de Bréauté (1580-1600), a Norman cavalry officer based in Geertruidenberg, in the service of Prince Maurits of Orange, the Dutch stadholder, offered to Anton Schetz (1564-1640), from 1619 2nd Baron Grobbendonck and from 1598 governor of ’s-Hertogenbosch, which city remained under Spanish suzerainty until 1629.¹² He appointed a native of Brabant from the city, Gerard Abramsz van Houwelingen (c. 1560-1600), his lieutenant, to answer the summons. Houwelingen had an odd nickname, Leckerbeetje, which has had various interpretations; Vander Auwera has recently suggested that the Dutch nickname should mean ‘he who likes tasty things’.¹³

The formalities seem to have followed those of the traditional, medieval tournament.¹⁴ Settled beforehand by the heralds would have been the place and time of the encounter – the Vughterheide between the Vught windmill and the ’s-Hertogenbosch gallows on the 5 February 1600 – and the numbers on each side, twenty-two. The cuirassiers are wearing three-quarter length, heavy armour and are fighting with pistols/bludgeons and armour piercing swords. Houwelingen wears a red sash and his comrades the red armband of the Spanish army (their opponents’ armbands should be green).

The Rijksmuseum picture, which is on an oak support that has not been dated, is a copy of the print, designed by Sebastiaen Vrancx and engraved by Joannes van Doetecum II (by 1587-1630), of which there appear to be no extant examples.¹⁵ It has been suggested that the engraver worked from a painting by Vrancx,¹⁶ but this is unlikely as the latter is described as the ‘inventor’ and this in spite of there being a record of a painting of the skirmish (mêlée) by Vrancx of 1601.¹⁷ The plates, which made up the print, were purchased after Van Doetecum’s death by Claes Jansz Visscher (1587-1652) and republished by him in 1631 as Batalie van Breaute ende Leckerbeetien.XXII.Tegens XXII.

Inscriptions on Visscher’s print identify the town, centre, as ‘shertogenbos’ (’s-Hertogenbosch) and the villages to the left and right as ‘Orten’ (Orthen) and ‘Vucht’ (Vught) respectively. The present copy is not accurate; in particular the gallows in the middle distance, left, was misunderstood and the tower to the left of the windmill differs, as do the buildings along the horizon. There are far fewer spectators in the middle ground. Dendrochronological analysis of the three pieces of oak timber which make up the support might provide a terminus post quem for its execution. Hofstede de Groot suggested that it was the work of Gerrit van Santen (1609/11-1687/1700),¹⁸ but it seems rather to be the work of a not very skilful, journeyman hand active very probably in the Netherlands in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Depicted is the moment after the impact of the first charge, which would have been signalled by each sides’ trumpet-blowing heralds on raised ground to the left and right. At this first encounter, De Bréauté shot Houwelingen dead and his own horse was killed. The former, identified as Lieutenant Lackbeetken (Leckerbeetje), is shown lying prone in the left foreground of the print, while De Bréauté is identified in the print as the cuirassier remounting by his dead charger, to the left of the heralds on the right. Whether these identifications are as Vrancx intended is an open question, but it seems likely.

As is shown in the print (and painted copy), this skirmish was to the death (a mêlée à outrance) and thus fiercely contested.¹⁹ Nineteen of De Bréauté’s companions were killed as were four Brabanters and thirty horses. Among the Brabanters to die were Houwelingen’s brother and brother-in-law. De Bréauté was himself captured and then murdered as he was brought into ’s-Hertogenbosch. An account of the mêlée in Dutch and French is given at the base of Visscher’s print. Although Houwelingen is prominently depicted in the foreground, and De Bréauté is inconspicuous in the middle ground, the accounts are sympathetic to him and condemn his murder in cold blood, after his surrender and disarming, by a cornet, Jan van Mil, acting on the orders of the governor, who had been driven by hatred and revenge (haet en wraeck). This was to be expected as the print was published in the northern Netherlands; the narratives were probably the work of, or commissioned by, Visscher as the governor is referred to by his title, inherited in 1619.

The prototype of the image is one of the few prints engraved by Van Doetecum when he was working independently in Rotterdam (1598-1603).²⁰ Vrancx only became a master in the Antwerp guild in 1600/01; how the two came into contact and whether the design was commissioned by the engraver remains unknown, as do the sources on which Vrancx relied for the design. An earlier depiction of a mêlée à outrance is the print by Lucas Cranach I (1472-1553) of 1506, which was set in a town square.²¹ Vrancx had already supplied a drawing for an engraver when he was in Rome.²²

Both the RKD and the Witt Library have photographs of many other copies after, or derivations from, Visscher’s print – examples are in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp,²³ and Leeds City Art Gallery²⁴ of which none is by Vrancx. And it is perhaps noteworthy in his respect that in the seventeenth-century Antwerp inventories, published by Duverger, only one picture of the ‘Bataille de Lackerbeetje’ by Vrancx is listed; this was the picture owned by Arnold Lunden (d. 1656).²⁵ And further Vander Auwera does not accept any other renderings of the skirmish, which are listed by White, as having once been thought to be autograph, including one (or (?) two) that was owned by King Charles I of Great Britain (1600-1649).²⁶

In the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, also by a follower of Vrancx, is a depiction of the two sides charging each other and Houwelingen falling,²⁷ of which another version was on the Monaco market in 1987.²⁸

Gregory Martin, 2022