‘Sacrificed to the madness of the bloodthirsty sabre’

Abstract

This chapter discusses a selection of the many prints on the Great Turkish War (1683–99) produced by the famous Dutch printmaker Romeyn de Hooghe. Through the analysis of three different types of prints – news prints, triumphalia, and satirical prints – the chapter dissects the role of unrestrained violence in De Hooghe’s imagination of Europe’s borderlands. It shows that De Hooghe’s portrayal of the battle against ‘the Turk’ cultivated an ambiguous view of south-east Europe as a distant and distinctly violent place beset by ruthless Christian soldiers and warlike border peoples. In doing so, De Hooghe approached unrestrained violence as a theme that went well beyond simple anti-Turkish propaganda. Instead, De Hooghe positioned violence as an inherent characteristic of a vaguely defined European borderland where all parties, not least the Christian ones, succumbed to gruesome behaviour.