My weird Artbook

Rampjaar / 1672 / Year of Disaster

I am back, but this time, I wont bring you some boring reference sheets with way too complicated designs, NO!-

IT'S HISTORY TIME

And this time, it's for once not English history-
(I'm sorry, my addiction just can't seem to be cured)
-But Dutch, because why not :)

I mean, I have a pretty biased opinion on the Dutch,... which actually isn't a bad one, I like them, they're really nice and friendly people... BUT they can be reeeaaaaalllyyyyy weird. Like, insanely weird. Settling on land that is below the sea level is already weird enough, but no, they have to make it even worse.

AND SO, WITH THAT AWKWARD RAMBLE OUT OF THE WAY, I PRESENT TO YOU:

E     D     G     I     N     E     S     S

Alright, as for the history behind it...
(Congratulations if you knew about the event already btw)

The picture represents the the events of 1672, aswell as the events that led up it.

Prior to 1672, Johan de Witt, a Dutch statesman and major political figure (could be compared to a prime minister) who was in charge of the country at the time, formed an alliance as a response to the French claim and invasion of the Spanish Netherlands and Franche-Comté. The alliance, called The Triple Alliance, was signed by the Dutch Republic, the Kingdom of England and the Swedish Empire.
(Hence the presence of the Treaty and England and Sweden in the background.)
Even without the Treaty, de Witt was a great leader, leading the country into its Golden Age. As a Republican (not the American kind I should mention, it just means that he was pro-republic, and not pro-monarchy) he opposed the royal House of the Netherlands, the House of Orange-Nassau.

Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about 1672

In 1672, in the Netherlands also known as "Rampjaar" (Year of Disaster), France, alongside England (although England did so just for a start and basically switched sides as soon as they could) and a few German States of the Holy Roman Empire, notably, and also shown in the picture, the states Cologne/Köln (bottom left flag), Munster/Münster (bottom middle flag) and Bavaria/Bayern (bottom right flag), invaded the Dutch Republic.

The country broke into chaos, and with the rise of support for the monarchy under William of Orange, Johan de Witt and his brother were blamed for the disaster.
De Witt's brother was imprisoned in The Hague and tortured there on trumped up charges of treason. Johan decided to visit his brother there, which turned out to be the worst decision of his life. And also his last.

When he was in the prison, a mob of raging pro-monarchist were about to storm it, but before that could happen, they were both attacked by The Hague's civic militia and shot on the spot, who left their dead bodies for the mob. Their naked, mutilated bodies were strung up on a public gibbet, were the people began to eat from the bodies, in classic cannibalistic fashion :)

Yes you heard me right-

The Dutch once ate their prime minister.

I told you they are weird ._.

Now, you have to excuse the scenery of the picture, the mob obviously didn't sit at a nice clean table while eating him. But the scene had been stuck in my head since I first heard of the story, and me being blissfully unaware of how the events actually took pictured it like this. And I wanted to keep it that way. The picture is truly full of irony btw, you may notice some of it-

For example the quote "a mockery?". I find that the entirety of the picture is a mockery to the event, from the personification of the Netherlands themselves eating the flesh of one of their people, to merly two hands reaching for it (the hands belong to France btw, maybe you can see the golden fleur-de-lis), to the background being lit up with an orange light-
Maybe I'm just putting way too many details into these that none will notice so I have to explain them :,)

All of their designs are based on actual people involved in the conflict, the Netherlands are based on Johan de Witt (aH tHe IrOnY >:DDDDD), England is based on Sir William Temple who was the English negotiator for the the signing of the Triple Alliance, but Sweden's a bit more complicated. I wanted to base her off of Count Dohna, the Swedish negotiator and a field marshal, but sadly, there is no record on how he looked. So I improvised and just looked at the clothes of some field marshals of the Swedish Empire at the time, and created whatever this is.
I am truly the master of improvisation :)

Anyways, I'm done now, if you have any more question, feel free to ask and I'll explain to the best of my abilities ^^ :D

I hope you liked this little history... lesson?... or whatever you want to call it-
No chicken squad today tho I'm afraid 😔