ABSTRACT
As the previous sources have shown, the advent of the printing press in early modern Europe helped to facilitate the dissemination not only of religious and literary texts but also of polemical images. As parts of Europe were torn apart by religious and political conflicts, images of massacres were produced and circulated widely by propagandists to provoke terror and inspire anger. The 1562 massacre of French Protestant worshippers at Wassy in eastern France; the slaughter of the Dutch inhabitant of Naarden by Spanish troops in 1572 and the sack of Antwerp by Spanish/Habsburg troops in 1576 are three of the most salient examples of such atrocities, engraved here by Frans Hogenberg (1535–1590). Moreover, similar images of massacres were included among the engravings produced by the Protestants artist Joos van Winghe (1544–1603) and engraver Theodor de Bry (1528–1598) for their translation of Las Casas’ A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552) (see chapter 27).
