Het Committé van Bondgenootschap

This is the seventeenth plate of a twenty plate series, Hollandia Regenerata, etched by Gillray based on drawings by the Swiss soldier, painter, and caricaturist, David Hess. For more about David Hess, and the political and artistic context of the series satirizing the newly-created and French-supported Batavian Republic, see my Introduction.

The title can be translated as "The Alliance, or Confederation, Committee." Like the committees described in the previous three plates, this is a Committee invented by Hess for consistency with other titles in the series and for his own satiric purposes. And satiric it is! For what the print shows is an assembly of men, far from bonding together in a productive confederation, engaged in an all out fight using fists, fingers, a bottle, an arrow, and a chair.

As Joost Rosendaal suggests, the seven men represent the seven provinces that made up the original United Provinces of the Netherland. Those provinces included:

• Duchy of Guelders
• County of Holland
• County of Zeeland
• Lordship of Utrecht
• Lordship of Overijssel
• Lordship of Frisia
• Lordship of Groningen

The United Provinces coat of arms featured a strong and warlike lion wielding a sword with one paw while grasping seven arrows, symbolizing the provinces, in the other.

In Hess's rendition, the arrows are broken or used as a weapon, and the defiant lion has shrunk into a bewildered house cat, picking at the remains of the bond or ribbon that once held the arrows together.

As Simon Schama describes in detail in his book Patriots and Liberators, "A cursory sketch of political conditions in the Batavian Republic in the first half of 1795 reveals an image of almost complete chaos." (223) For though the revolutionaries of the new Batavian Republic had been united in their desire to rid themselves of the Stadtholder Prince of Orange, they now agreed on very little else. And for the next year and a half, they argued bitterly among themselves about the degree of unification they wanted, the extent of democratic suffrage, the breadth of religious freedom, and other key issues.

As with all the plates in the series, the corresponding page to the image contains one or more appropriately ironic Biblical quotations in Dutch and English and a satiric "Explanation" in French. The Biblical quotation is, as usual, more trenchant in its asessment:

St. Matthew, xii. 25. "Every empire divided against itself, is brought to desolation."

The "Explanation" describes the situation with understated irony. But beneath the apparent positive spin, Hess is no doubt skeptical that anything good will come of this dysfunction.

L'harmonie n'est pas encore parfaite dans ce committé. Mais comment pourrait-on être toujours du même avis ? Cette discussion un peu vive finira par un accord general. C'est domage que dans la chaleur des gestes rhétoriques, ces citoyens ont marché sur les sept flêches. Ils ont fait sauter le cordon qui les liait. Mais au fond, quel mal y a-t-il?—Laissez le chat s'amuser avec ces babioles. La Convention réunira toutes les Provinces en une seule famille de frêres, et ce simbole deviendra inutile.

And here is my free English translation.

Harmony is not yet perfect in this committee. How can one always be of the same mind? But this discussion, though a tad lively, will end in general agreement. It is a shame that in the heat of their rhetorical gesticulations, these citizens trampled on the seven arrows and broke the tie that bound them. But deep down, what harm is there? Let the cat amuse herself with these trifles. The Convention will bring together all seven Provinces into a single family of brothers, and this symbol will become irrelevant.

Like most of the plates of Hollandia Regenerata, Gillray followed Hess's drawing closely, probably tracing the general outline of the figures at the start. But after that, he clearly sharpened every line and greatly improved the shading, giving a depth and solidity to the foreground and especially to the seven figures and their expressions that is missing from the original drawing.

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Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on Het Committé van Bondgenootschap.
• "Dutch Republic," Wikipedia
• "Batavian Republic," Wikipedia
• "Provisional Representatives of the People of Holland," Wikipedia
• "David Hess (painter)," Wikipedia
• "David Hess," SIKART Dictionary
• David Hess, Hollandia Regenerata (1797), Nawoord by Joost Rosendahl, Uitgeverij Vantilt, 2007
• Simon Schama, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780 - 1813, London, 1992

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