The Uprising of the Batavi in the Years 69/70 AD

Around 50 BC the Germanic tribe of the Batavi settled at the Rhine delta in the Roman province of Belgica. Under their chieftain Gaius Julius Civilis (known as Claudius Civilis in Germany), who had been a Roman army officer for many years, they revolted against Roman rule in the year 69 AD.

The rebellion, which was soon joined by a number of Germanic tribes across the Rhine to the East and finally gripped the whole of northeastern Gaul, was subdued a year later. But Civilis was able to negotiate a favourable truce.

After the humanist Cornelis Aurelius had declared the Batavi to be the direct ancestors of the Netherlanders in the 16th century, the Batavi myth served only a few decades later to justify the uprising of the young Netherlands republic against the Spanish king Philip II. At the same time the »freedom fighter« Civilis was compared with William of Orange. Nineteenth century historians also fell back on the Batavian chieftain in an attempt to prove that the Netherlanders had always been a freedom-loving people who fought for their liberty and had gone through a logical development from Civilis to the insurrection against Spain and on through the establishment of the nation-state in the 19th century.

Barend Wijnveld’s painting of 1854 shows the election of Civilis to chieftain of the Batavi. Upright and with an imperious gesture he stands at the centre of activity, dramatically highlighted by an invisible source of light. Wijnfeld’s painting was part of the collection of Jacob de Vos, who commissioned 263 works of art on the history of the Netherlands in the middle of the 19th century.

Freedom

The Defence of Leyden, 1574

The Murder of Prince William of Orange, 1584

In 1555 Emperor Charles V entrusted his son and successor to the throne of Spain, Philip II, with the rule of the Netherlands. It came to an open conflict between Philip and the States-General when, on the one hand, the Spanish king attempted to increase his power and, on the other, the United Provinces, fearing for their independence and religious freedom, revolted.

The Duke of Alba, who had been sent to the Netherlands in 1567 by the king, had attacked the Dutch cities with relentless severity. He besieged and took one town after the other. The city of Leyden in southern Holland was only able to avoid this fate because Burgomaster Pieter Adriaansz van der Werff succeeded in inspiring the starving inhabitants during the two-year siege to take heart and hold out. In his painting »The Self-Sacrifice of Burgomaster van der Werff« from 1829 Gustaf Wappers therefore does not depict the burgomaster as a glorious hero, but instead as a man marked by the siege and yet ready to sacrifice everything for the freedom of his native city. The town was saved in 1574 when William of Orange decided to flood the land in order to drive out the Spanish forces.

Prince William of Orange was the leader of the rebel forces from 1567 until he was assassinated in 1584. The prince personifies the revolt against Spanish rule. Since the middle of the 19th century in particular he came to be seen as the symbol of national unity in the Netherlands. He entered the memory of the nation as the dying »father of the fatherland« - as he was painted for example by Wouter Mol. Mol’s picture also shows the above-mentioned burgomaster of Leyden van der Werff, himself a celebrated national hero, motioning toward the dying prince with a grand gesture, although it is doubtful that he was actually there.

Faith and War

The Heroic Sacrifice of Jan van Speyk, 1831

Jan van Speyk, a sublieutenant in the Dutch navy, is one of the »futile« heroes. On 5th February 1831 he blew himself up in a gunboat in order to prevent the flag of the Netherlands from falling into the hands of the Belgians. His sacrifice during the Revolution of 1830/31 could not prevent the separation of Belgium from the Netherlands, which was seen by the Dutch as a disgrace. But from this time on van Speyk was celebrated as a hero who had tried to save the dignity of his country. Like the Swiss hero Winkelried and Lord Nelson in Britain, van Speyk symbolises the honourable death of the soldier for his country.

A picture by Jacobus Schoemaker-Doijer shows van Speyk at the very moment in which he ignites the gunpowder and takes a number of the enemy with him to death. The almost sacral adoration of the naval sublieunenant found expression in the fact that the remains of his uniform and ship were made into various patriotic devotional articles.