Satires on Foreign Subjects

This chapter examines seven of De Hooghe’s eighteen satires on the events surrounding William III’s invasion of England and associated diplomatic and military campaigns. These satires, which were produced between the autumn of 1688 and summer of 1690, followed the events of the Glorious Revolution as they unfolded and represent not only key political-historical events but also the development of De Hooghe’s satirical strategies. William III is featured as the sober and valiant defender of Protestantism against the Catholic kings, James II and Louis XIV, who appear as a darkly comic duo, misguided adherents of a primitive religion committed only to their own aggrandizement. This discussion examines the iconography of the foreign satires, providing detailed interpretive analysis and translation of many of the texts into English for the first time. It will be demonstrated that De Hooghe responded almost immediately to the rapid unfolding of events that constituted the Glorious Revolution, highlighting the need to consider them in terms of the speed with which they were produced and their serial nature. It is often possible to determine the month in which a satire was made and, in certain cases, the timeframe can be narrowed to weeks. This dramatic imbrication in a particular historical moment is characteristic of political satire to this day.