The Valley of Faeton: A Patriot Defeat Commemorated

This Dutch engraving mocks the Patriot movement's military failure of September 1787 on the anniversary of their rout. The print employs the tradition of Northern European political satire—a form refined by Hogarth and continued through Gillray and Rowlandson—to ridicule an internal Dutch political conflict. Figures on the ground gesture upward as fantastical airborne characters descend from clouds in a wagon labeled with Dutch cities. The engraver uses narrative exaggeration and the Netherlandish woodcut-engraving technique to transform recent political trauma into public spectacle. The accompanying text preserves contemporary references to named Patriots and their humiliation. This work documents how satirical prints functioned as instruments of political propaganda and popular commentary in the 1780s—direct ancestors to the illustrated narrative traditions of modern comics.