ABSTRACT
In January 1686 the French ambassador to The Hague, count D’Avaux, got his hands on a newsprint by the famous Dutch engraver Romeyn de Hooghe (1645–1708). Under the ominous title Tyrannies against the Protestants in France, the poster-format print offered viewers a chilling digest of the recent persecutions. De Hooghe depicted the destruction of Huguenot churches, Protestant families weeping in despair, and drew the dragonnades as a scene of utter terror: men and women tied up, exposed to seething flames, while soldiers are murdering their babies and raping young girls in the streets. Huguenots arrested on their flight from France, finally, can be seen chained like slaves, dragged away to serve on the galleys, while those who succumb en route are left to the vultures. Not surprisingly, D’Avaux warned Louis XIV that such broadsheets were extremely dangerous: as he sent along a complimentary copy of De Hooghe’s newsprint to Versailles, the ambassador noted that ‘these sorts of images are used to animate the common people’. 1 Stories and images of suffering, in other words, could inflame public opinion and push Dutch Protestants to identify with the fate of their brethren in France.
