The Battle of Fleurus, 1622

…; collection Franz Graf, Frankfurt-am-Main; from whom, fl. 1,000, to the museum, 1891, as probably Sebastiaen Vrancx;¹¹NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 171, no. 126 (19 September 1891); NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 171, no. 136 (10 October 1891); NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 171, no. 146 (28 October 1891); NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 171, no. 159 (17 November 1891); NHA, ARS, Kop, inv. 289, pp. 334-35, no. 762 (21 November 1891); NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 171, no. 177 (9 December 1891); NHA, ARS, Kop, inv. 289, p. 339, no. 773 (11 December 1891); NHA, ARS, Kop, inv. 289, p. 340, no. 774 (14 December 1891); NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 171, no. 184 (30 December 1891, no. 2738); NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 172, no. 44 (29 March 1892). on loan to the office of the Chief of the General Staff, the Ministry of Defence, The Hague, 1933-(?)43

ObjectNumber: SK-A-1555

Although acquired as the work of Sebastiaen Vrancx (1573-1647),¹²¹²Letter from Obreen to the Ministry of Internal Affairs 21 November 1891, RMAAS, no. 289, Kop, pp. 334-35, no. 762, transcript by Elinoor Bergvelt; and the museum inventory book. the present painting was catalogued by the museum in 1903 as by Peeter Snayers and there is no reason to doubt this attribution. The formations of troops in the middle ground and beyond were reserved. The soldiers and horses at least in the right foreground were first outlined in black paint; a sketch of a falling horse, which was not taken any further, now shows up light, as do the contours of a horse’s legs nearby.

The present work was acquired as depicting the battle of Nieuwpoort, 2 July 1600; but this took place among the dunes. More recently Danielsson has proposed the battle of Wimpfen, 6 May 1622, in which Count Tilly (1559-1632) defeated the Protestant Margrave of Baden-Durlach (1573-1638).¹³¹³Letter from Arne Danielsson, 1 February 1977 in the museum archive; for an account of the battle, see W.P. Guthrie, Battles of the Thirty Years War from White Mountain to Nordlingen, 1618-35, Westport (Conn.) 2002, pp. 87-92. However, a near contemporary record shows Baden-Durlach’s cavalry attacking from the left; it did not rout Tilly’s mounted troops, which were not ambushed. Nor does Snayers show the long line of battle wagons, drawn up in the centre of the Protestant echelon.¹⁴¹⁴N. Bellus (M.C. Lundorp), Laurea Austriaca, hoc est, commentarium de statu Reipublicae nostri temporis, sive de bello Germanico eiusq …, Frankfurt 1627, between pp. 524-25 for an engraving reproducing the battle dispositions. This battle was the subject of Sebastiaen Vrancx’s painting in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.¹⁵¹⁵N. Gritsay and N. Babina, State Hermitage Museum Catalogue: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Flemish Painting, St Petersburg 2008, p. 423, no. 518.

Recently Sennewald and Hrncirík have identified the engagement as that which took place at Fluery in the province of Henegouwen (Hainaut) some fifteen kilometres east of Charleroi on 29 August 1622, in which Protestant and Imperialist forces clashed in a five hour bloodbath.¹⁶¹⁶For accounts of the battle, see R. Sennewald and P. Hrncirík, Pieter Snayers 1592-1667: Battle Painter of the Seventeenth Century, Berlin 2018, p. 142-50, and W.P. Guthrie, Battles of the Thirty Years War from White Mountain to Nordlingen, 1618-35, Westport (Conn.) 2002, pp. 100-01. The date in August was given by Guthrie. Of the first there were some 5000 casualties out of 7-8000 infantry and 6000 horse; while the smaller Imperialist army of some 6000 foot and 2000 horse lost 300 dead and suffered 900 wounded (all the figues are no doubt approximate). But the Protestant formation led by Count von Mansfeld (c. 1580-1626) and Christian von Brunswick (1599-1626) (the Mad Halberstadter), although badly mauled, broke through Gonsalvo de Cordova’s (1585-1635) Imperialists, to progress further into the Netherlands towards Bergen-op-Zoom, and proved to be a factor in Ambrogio Spinola’s (1569-1630) lifting of its siege in the following year.

The key identifying the lettered formations which must have been attached to, or accompanied the present painting, is not extant.¹⁷¹⁷An example of Snayers using this methodology is the Museo Nacional del Prado Spinola at the Siege of Breda, recorded at the Alcázar in 1636, see M. Díaz Padrón, Museo del Prado: Catálogo de pinturas, 1: Escuela flamenca siglo XVII, 2 vols., Madrid 1975, I, no. 1748, and II, pl. 232. Two anonymous prints with different systems of lettering and with aerial views taken from behind the Protestant lines¹⁸¹⁸Examples are in the Rijksmuseum: 1. RP-P-OB-80.993, headed Eigentliche Vorbildung des Harten Treffens so zwischen den Mansfeldische und Spanischen auf den Brabantischen Grentzen vorgangen Anno 1622 …; 2. RP-P-OB-80.994, headed Disposition de la Tournée de S. Amand … laquelle Plusieurs ont appellée la Tournée de Fleuru …. allow an approximate reading of Snayers’s account of the battle, which according to Sennewald and Hrncirík was of its early phase.

In the foreground is the farmstead, Chassart, before which are Walloon musqueteers with a rondtartschier in the red uniform and plume of the Spanish army.¹⁹¹⁹Described by R. Sennewald and P. Hrncirík, Pieter Snayers 1592-1667: Battle Painter of the Seventeenth Century, Berlin 2018, p. 43, as a ‘soldier chiefly employed in close-quarter fighting’, whose deployment was soon to become obsolete. Also obsolete, according to W.P. Guthrie, Battles of the Thirty Years War from White Mountain to Nordlingen, 1618-35, Westport (Conn.) 2002, p. 44, note 2, was the formation of battalions with four equal blocks of shot at each corner as shown in the present painting. They have ambushed Mansfeld’s cavalry, commanded by Christian von Brunswick (who received wounds which resulted in the amputation of his lower left arm); the squadron is depicted in retreat having charged Cordova’s cavalry manoeuvring in a caracole.²⁰²⁰W.P. Guthrie, Battles of the Thirty Years War from White Mountain to Nordlingen, 1618-35, Westport (Conn.) 2002, p. 12, describes the four types of ‘the battle tactic called the Caracole’, still practised in the 1630s. The first is depicted in the bottom left of the Rijksmuseum painting, the fourth in the centre middle ground. It was an attack by cavalry using pistols and had been long adopted in place of the cavalry charge. Beyond on the left are Imperialist infantry battalions, including the marquis of Capolattaro’s Italians and Colonel Fugger’s Germans, opposite are Mansfeld’s battalions of foot including that of (?) Colonel Friedrich von Saxe-Weimar. In the middle distance an extended caracole is undertaken by Protestant cavalry.

Paintings at Neuburg-an-der-Donau²¹²¹Oil on canvas, 198 x 268 cm, see R. Sennewald and P. Hrncirík, Pieter Snayers 1592-1667: Battle Painter of the Seventeenth Century, Berlin 2018, pp. 146-47, and K. Renger and N. Schleif, Flämische Barockmalerei: Staatsgalerie Neuburg an der Donau, Munich 2005, no. 2315, pp. 262-63, where the engagement is unidentified. and in the Pinacoteka, Siena,²²²²Signed, oil on canvas, 62 x 112.5 cm, see R. Sennewald and P. Hrncirík, Pieter Snayers 1592-1667: Battle Painter of the Seventeenth Century, Berlin 2018, pp. 148-49 and p. 151 and P. Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siene, I: Dipinti del XV al XVIII secoli, Siena 1978, no. 472, pp. 294-98 (the battle unidentified). of differing sizes show further phases of the encounter, also related is a painting by Sebastiaen Vrancx in Seville.²³²³Oil on canvas, 122 x 177 cm. Seville, Museo de Bellas Artes, inv. no. 463; published by Valdivieso 1977, p. 500 and fig. I; information kindly made available by Joost Vander Auwera, who dates the work 1630-40. This was one of a pair, the other depicting the Battle of the Dunes, 1600. Another phase of the battle of Fleurus, depicted by Vrancx, can be identified in one of a pair of battle scenes, 120.5 x 202.5 cm, offered at Sotheby’s, London, 7 July 2005, no. 123. This last has been dated circa 1630-40, which decade may also have seen the execution of the Rijksmuseum painting, and the others, which because of their differing sizes should not be seen as a series.

Gregory Martin, 2022

R. Hennewald and P. Hrnčiřík, Pieter Snayers 1592-1667: Battle Painter of the Seventeenth Century, Berlin 2018, pp. 136-37

1903, p. 247, no. 2206; 1976, p. 516, no. A 1555

G. Martin, 2022, 'Peeter Snayers, The Battle of Fleurus, 1622, 1630 - 1640', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5466