Monday 20 May 2013

I need more walls!

Since last month I am the lucky owner of three large, historical posters. They're from a series of widely known school posters, used for history lessons in the old days (the first ones were printed over a century ago). They show episodes in the (military) history of the Netherlands that were considered important at the time..




The first I won in a quiz. It is a complicated story, but it all comes down to the question not being related to the event depicted on the poster. Thanks anyway, Peter. The poster is in fact of the relief of Leiden in 1574. This is probably around the current Lammenschans (ie redoubt). In the distance you can see the main churches.



The other posters I got from my old house mate and friend Mat. The first depicts the crossing of the frozen River Lek by the French Revolutionary forces in January 1795. This broke the defense of the regime of the house of Orange and gave way to the Batavian Republic, a French client state, but also the unitarian ancestor of the later Kingdom of the Netherlands.




The last poster deals with an equally cold episode from the Napoleonic Wars, as the Dutch infantry defends the crossings of the Berezina during the retreat from Moscow in 1812. by J.Hoynck van Papendrecht.

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