Hollar’s satire of the English Civil War

Hollar's satirical comparison of the civil war raging in England and the Thirty Years' War affecting his home country of Bohemia . The main part of the plate is divided between a map of the British Isles with vignette battle scenes on the left, and the Battle of White Mountain (1620) outside Prague on the right. Each has half of a Habsburg eagle on the edge. Around these are sixteen insets containing important events of the two wars, with the key made up of rhyming couplets. These include Charles I trying to arrest the five members of Parliament and the Defenestration of Prague in 1618. A roundel in the centre of the key depicts a cow kicking over a milk-pail, a symbol of the waste of civil war. Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-77) left Bohemia after the sacking of Prague in 1620, arriving in England in 1637. A Royalist, Hollar was captured at the Siege of Basing House in 1645, but managed to escape, living in Antwerp 1646-1652, when he returned to England/