The Dutch Lion Chases Away the French Rooster

This engraving depicts the Dutch Lion—crowned and armed with sword and arrows—routing the French Rooster in a landscape dominated by the city of Campen. The print celebrates Dutch military resistance during the Third Anglo-Dutch War and French invasion of the Dutch Republic (1672–1674).

Executed in the fine-line engraving technique, the work belongs to the rich Northern European tradition of political beast-fables, where national symbols clash in satirical combat. Animals embodied rival states: the lion for Dutch courage and sovereignty, the rooster for French pretension. This vocabulary of personified national character would echo through centuries of print satire, from Hogarth and Gillray to Nast's Civil War-era cartoons, ultimately influencing modern editorial cartooning and comic art.