Cornelis de Witt Attacks the Island of Chatham

This engraving depicts a 1667 naval raid during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, when Dutch commander Cornelis de Witt's fleet attacked English fortifications at Chatham and destroyed the royal magazine at Sheerness. The print shows the assault from the Dutch perspective: warships under full sail, soldiers storming the shore, smoke rising from burning structures and powder stores. Rendered in fine-line engraving, the composition celebrates Dutch military prowess through dynamic movement and vivid incident. Such topical prints circulated widely as news and propaganda, establishing visual conventions—dramatic perspective, crowded action, patriotic narrative—that would structure printed comics for centuries. This Dutch tradition of political and military imagery fed the broader European caricature and satirical print tradition from which the modern comic strip ultimately descended.