The Siege of Jülich, 1621-22

Entry

Following the war of the Jülich (Gulick) succession and the siege of the town in 1609-14, the next investment of Jülich, a strategically important centre some 25 kilometres north-east of Aachen, lasted some five months during the exceptionally cold winter of 1621/22.¹⁰ From the viewpoint of the Eighty Years’ War, it was the first major event following the end of the Twelve Years Truce in April 1621.¹¹ The town was garrisoned by the army of Wolfgang Ernst I (1560-1633), Count of Isenburg, made up of 4000 soldiers and eight cannon, and commanded by the Dutch military governor, Lieutenant-Colonel Frederik Pithan. The town was invested by Hendrik (1573-1638), Count van den Bergh, on orders from Ambrogio Spinola (1569-1630), commander-in-chief of the Spanish army in the Netherlands, leading some 7000 Spanish infantry and 700 cavalry to be reinforced by further troops.¹² The siege began on 5 September and the town surrendered on 3 February. It remained under Spanish control until 1660.

Although early identified as the 1603 siege of Wassendonk or Wachtendonk, there can be no doubt that the view in the present picture is of Jülich taken from the west. It shows a snow-covered landscape with the frozen river Roer or Ruhr. Beyond is the town with the two round towers of the Hexenturm and, nearby, the spire of the parish church, Maria Himmelfahrt. To the left is the citadel – the palazzo in fortezza designed by Alessandro Pasqualini, responsible for the lay-out of Jülich as an ideal Renaissance town from 1548¹³ – with its towers incorrectly configured. To the left is the village of Broich, and beyond what was described in contemporary prints as ‘Das erste Principal Quartier’ of the Spanish army.¹⁴ Before the citadel is a cavalry skirmish, perhaps that which took place on 21 October,¹⁵ near the Cologne road. In the near middle ground is the line of the besiegers’ fortified outworks. Two Spanish cavalry patrols at some distance approach each other. That to the left has two trumpeters in the van, which might well indicate that its commander, thus suitably escorted and wearing a red plume to his helmet and red sash, was intended to be identified as van den Bergh himself (he wears the Spanish army commander’s red armband in Anthony van Dyck’s portrait in the Museo Nacional del Prado).¹⁶

The Amsterdam picture was given to the museum as the work of Sebastiaen Vrancx, an attribution which was early changed to his pupil, Peeter Snayers (1592-1667), and has been accepted as such ever since. In fact, Snayers did depict the siege from a similar, but higher, viewpoint.¹⁷ However, the figures in the Snayers are quite differently handled and Vander Auwera agrees that those in the museum picture should be returned to Vrancx.¹⁸ As he points out, Vrancx painted another view of the siege, probably in the mid-1620s;¹⁹ this has a lower viewpoint and was taken from a position further from the redoubts. In all three works the configuration of the outworks and cottages is similar, but not the same.

Judging only from a digital image Vander Auwera believes that the landscape in the present picture is also by Vrancx working in the 1630s. The state of the paint surface and discoloured varnish makes assessment of it difficult. While it might be thought that the fieldworks, buildings and defences round the town and citadel are too crude to be his work, he points out that in the 1630s Vrancx’s manner of execution is ‘somewhat less finished and weaker as to definition of form’.²⁰ Against this are the pentiments, seemingly incoherent, in the foreground redoubts, buildings and walls betraying an uncertainty not easily explained if his, as Vrancx had painted the view before. In one instance – the cottage in the right foreground – a pentiment in the roof makes it accord with that in his earlier picture. A further complication is that the design of the outworks is more like those devised by Snayers. Such being the case it seems wisest at this stage to attribute the painting as a whole to Vrancx, without ruling out the possibility that the landscape is the work of a lesser hand to which Vrancx added figures.

Dautzenberg is the last to repeat that the star-shaped redoubts (in the Snayers) are probably imagined.²¹ However, contemporary prints of the siege, published by Neumann, show similar field-works.²² These were aerial views mostly taken from the north, which would have provided sufficient information for Vrancx and Snayers to execute their seemingly more realistic formulations of the event as seen from the east.

Gregory Martin, 2022