French Commanders at the Siege of Rheinberg, 1672

Entry

The ancient, fortified town of Rheinberg in the territory of the archbishop-elector of Cologne, for whom it levied tolls on shipping passing by on the Rhine, had been much fought over in the Eighty Years War.¹² Last captured in 1633 by the Stadholder, Prince Frederik Hendrik (1584-1647), it had had since then a garrison of Dutch troops. The redirection of the course of the Rhine in the eighteenth century saw the town’s decline.

The view in the present painting is from the south-east, from approximately the same place as occupied by Frederik Hendrik’s headquarters in 1633. The siege outworks are shown as more extensive than in the print recording the investment of 1633,¹³ but could well have been inspired by those depicted there. In the right foreground leading to the town is the Nieuwe Grist canal. Within the town, the castle, church, town hall and market place can be made out. The French were to rename the town gates; to the south the Lut Poort became the Porte de Gueldre, to the west, the Cassel Poort the Porte d’Orsoy and Sant Poort the Porte du Rhin.¹⁴

The 1976 museum catalogue attributed SK-A-4662 and SK-A-4663 to Lambert de Hondt II, for the elder De Hondt had died before 1665.¹⁵ As the two paintings are inscribed with the date 1672, recording the year of the military operations they depict, they must therefore have been executed then or later. The attribution can be confirmed by comparison with a signed work by Lambert de Hondt II showing Louis XIV and his army approaching Utrecht – the climax of the French invasion that summer.¹⁶ The stylistic similarities, even when judging from reproductions, are clear and allow for the fact that the artist had here replaced the formula perfected by Peeter Snayers (1592-1667) for such events with the lower viewpoint recently introduced by Adam Frans van der Meulen (1631/32-1690). There is also a clear resemblance in handling. Louis XIV’s face is rendered in the same way and the physiognomy of at least one of his attendants recur in SK-A-4662.

The present painting and SK-A-4662 were probably not painted as pendants as the main figures both move to the right; they could have been executed simply as a set of two, or more likely as part of a larger series. The action before Utrecht mentioned above is larger, but of much the same size is the Surrender of the Keys of Utrecht, which was on the London market in 2017/18 and whose attribution to De Hondt was confirmed by Klinge.¹⁷ This last is closely comparable to the Rijksmuseum paintings but for the inscribed cartouche bottom centre. The cartouche could have been introduced to distinguish the work as the climax of the campaign, other aspects of which being illustrated in unadorned paintings such as the Rijksmuseum works; or of course it could signify that is was executed independently. At all events no other paintings by De Hondt of the campaign appear to be extant.

Only one dated picture of 1681 by De Hondt is known¹⁸ – in whose handling the influence of his likely master David Teniers II (1610-1690) is still discernible. The foreground figures in the two Rijksmuseum paintings are executed in a manner very similar to that of Teniers, which suggests that their working relationship was still close. In fact, their association continued until the end of the 1670s.¹⁹ Possibly the four depictions of the French campaign of 1672 were executed well before 1678 when De Hondt became a master in the Brussels guild. Indeed they may date from circa 1675 when Teniers, through his son, was trying to obtain French patronage via the Oudenaarde weaver and merchant Pieter van Verren²⁰ as their subject matter would have been likely to appeal chiefly to this market. Such access to French court patronage held good from the time of Oudenaarde’s annexation by King Louis XIV at the Peace of Aachen in 1668 until its return to the Spanish crown at the Peace of Nijmegen ten years later.²¹

The foreground figures in the present paintings are delicately executed in contrast to the landscape and skirmishing soldiers. The possibility can be entertained that the latter were the work of another less gifted member of Teniers’s studio in Brussels.

SK-A-4662 and SK-A-4663 depict – as is to be inferred from above – Louis XIV of France and officers of the French army during the summer of 1672, at the opening of the Franco-Dutch War (1672-78). The quick capture of Rheinberg and Schenkenschans and other forts and fortified towns in the south-east of the United Provinces with the consequent advance of the French army to Utrecht on 23 June resulted in the year 1672 becoming known to the Dutch as the notorious rampjaar (disaster year). These events saw the active military initiation of the twenty-two-year-old Prince Willem of Orange (1650-1702) as captain-general of the Dutch army.

The well-sourced biography of one of the main French protagonists, the Vicomte de Turenne (1611-1675), Marshal of France, gives an account of the campaign that was characterized by quick and successful sieges.²² Rheinberg, taken by Louis XIV in command of a detachment of the army, was one of four strongholds on the Rhine, and the earliest to fall – between 3 and 6 June – war having been declared by the king on 6 April. Schenkenschans was taken by Turenne on 19 June following his capture of Arnhem and Nijmegen.²³ The surrender of the four nearby strongholds, of which Rheinberg was one, had opened the way for the French army into the territory of the United Provinces, that of Schenkenschans, further down-stream, gave control of river traffic entering the Netherlands.

The Dutch government in The Hague had not anticipated that the four fortresses on the Rhine would withstand the French army; it had been reported on 2 June that ‘because … the burghers … are not only fearful and miscontented, but some are fleeing others remain and yet others are expected to cause harm, so those poor garrisons are in an awful situation, expecting an attack from without and destruction from within’.²⁴ In fact, the French believed that Rheinberg could sustain a long siege, and, indeed, unlike their neighbours at Wesel, the burghers ‘displayed a great zeal and readiness to defend the town to the utmost’.²⁵ But the commanding officer, Daniël d’Ossory, instead negotiated a sum to be paid for surrender, and this took place without the firing of a single cannon. D’Ossory was allowed to make his way with his troops to the Dutch lines to the disgust of the townsfolk, and was later beheaded on the order of Prince Willem after a court martial.²⁶

Thus the extensive military engagements depicted outside the fortifications in the middle-ground of the present picture are fantasy, based either on the artist’s imagination or on misinformation. Further, although Louis XIV was in command of the assailing troops, he is notably absent from the foreground, where a cavalry commander, who has not been identified, is mounting his horse intent on joining his squadrons. The officers were reserved as a group and individually.

The French believed that Schenkenschans would also be difficult to capture. But its twenty-year old garrison-commander, Hendrik ten Hove, had warned The Hague on 13 June that ‘he would be able to maintain the defence for but a short time’ because the majority of the garrison was in a weak state.²⁷ In the action Turenne, with an infantry corps and a few squadrons (a squadron consisted of 150 men) of cavalry, travelled east from Nijmegen and then south towards the rear of the fort preparing for the siege immediately on his arrival at night. Ten Hove surrendered the next day having been prevailed upon, according to Turenne’s biographer, ‘by the tears of several women who took refuge in the fort’ (par les pleurs de quelques femmes qui s’etaient réfugiées dans le fort).²⁸ Ten Hove’s conduct was criticized by Turenne’s biographer. Dutch indignation at the fall of the fort²⁹ may have influenced such sentiments, but the commander seems not to have been singled out for punishment by Prince Willem.

The aerial view of the fort illustrated in Turenne’s biography shows that a gun emplacement was set up some 350 metres to the rear of the fort;³⁰ the approach from the west and the numerous actions recorded all round the fort in the present picture are most likely inventions by the artist, as was the river-crossing. A crossing of the Rhine achieved by Louis XIV’s army earlier in the campaign not far away at Tolhuijs (Lobith) was considered a daring venture and resulted in some deaths by drowning;³¹ it would thus have probably not been essayed at Schenkenschans. A more egregious error was to show the king himself at the siege when he was in reality encamped at Doesburg some twenty kilometres further north.³² He returned to France not long after and the French army withdrew two years later.

Gregory Martin, 2022