Failed Expedition of Louis XIV and the Duke of Anjou

This Dutch engraving satirizes a military disaster during the War of Spanish Succession. Multiple scenes stack vertically: courtly deliberations above, a chaotic aerial battle in the clouds, religious ceremonies, and below, a grand pavilion where French and Spanish forces meet their humiliation before gathered crowds. The print exemplifies Northern European political satire—crude, densely annotated, and didactic—in the tradition preceding Hogarth. Engravings like this circulated widely as cheap propaganda, combining woodcut-style vigor with etched detail. The composition mocks dynastic ambition through crowded, theatrical scenes. Such popular prints established visual mockery of power as a vernacular medium, a direct ancestor to comic broadsheets and later sequential art.