De moedige Batavieren (The Brave Batavians)

This etched satire mocks Dutch military leadership during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. Two officers strut in the foreground while their soldiers cower and suffer in the background—a visual inversion that exposes cowardice masquerading as courage. The print employs the sharp social observation and grotesque exaggeration characteristic of 17th-century Dutch satirical prints, a tradition that would flow through Hogarth and Gillray into modern cartooning. The composition, hatching technique, and marginal verses (in Dutch and French) address multiple audiences. Such prints circulated as cheap, accessible political commentary, establishing the popular print as a weapon against authority—a role comics and cartoons would inherit.