Visiting the Theatre of War: Fortresses, battlefields, and the bellicose past of the southern Low Countries (1697-1750)

Visitando il teatro della guerra. Fortezze, campi di battaglia, e memorie di guerra nei Paesi Bassi meridionali (1697-1750) Dagli ultimissimi anni del Seicento in poi, la zona sud-orientale dei Paesi Bassi meridionali, con citta quali Liegi e Namur, diventava meta di viaggiatori e turisti curiosi di visitare i luoghi che solo alcuni anni prima erano stati devastati nelle campagne militari di Luigi XIV. A cominciare dalla guida di Jean-Baptiste II Christyn,  Les Delices des Pais-Bas  (1697), una produzione corografica chiaramente modellata su esempi precedenti relativi soprattutto ai Paesi Bassi settentrionali cominciava a stimolare tale nuovo fenomeno di ‘turismo dei campi di battaglia’, presentando la regione in una veste militare appositamente accentuata per soddisfare questo nuovo mercato turistico. Verhoeven dimostra il successo di questo tentativo di ‘region branding’, illustrando non solo il crescente flusso di viaggiatori a questa regione prima solo raramente visitata, ma anche l’impatto preciso di alcuni testi corografici, la cui impronta e chiaramente riconoscibile negli appunti di alcuni viaggiatori e perfino nei percorsi turistici offerti sul luogo a questi visitatori.

came in a handy size (8° or 12°) and was illustrated with some well-chosen engravings. Even though the Spanoghe edition of 1769 claimed that the book had been 'revue, corrigée & considérablement augmentée de remarques curieuses & interéssantes', the body of the text remained unaltered, except for some minor changes. Later editions also recycled the original engravings designed by Jacobus Harrewijn and Pieter Pilsen. 9 Jean-Baptiste Christyn established his intentions in the introduction. His chorography would not only present an overall picture of the towns worth visiting and of other places of interest in the Low Countries, including monumental palaces, baroque churches, guildhalls, belfries, chapels, nunneries; it would also devote considerable attention to the region's past, with military history receiving especially thorough assessment. Pitched battles, bombardments, sieges, and other dark episodes would even serve as unique selling points for promoting the southern Low Countries as a fascinating destination for foreign and native travellers: Comme il y a peu de Pais dans le monde qui ont plus de part à l'histoire des derniers siècles & particulièrement à celle du siècle présent que les XVII. Provinces des Pais-Bas […] Mais ce qui surprendra agréablement le lecteur, ce sera de voir que des Provinces, qui ont été si longtemps & qui sont encore aujourd'hui le principal théâtre où le dieu Mars représente les plus sanglants spectacles, aient pû conserver tant de beautéz parmi les horreurs de la guerre & posséder l'affluence des délices au milieu du tumulte des armes. C'est ce qui attire en ces lieux de jour en jour tant d'étrangers. 10 In portraying the Low Countries as a tumultuous playground of Mars, Jean-Baptiste Christyn veered away from the conventional rules of the genre. Chorographies, guidebooks, and urban topographies usually emphasized more positive features, ranging from expositions about population, trade and industry, crops and livestock to details about the fertility of the land and the quality of the air. 11 Jan ten Hoorn, for example, branded the Dutch Republic as Europe's commercial hub: a densely populated and prosperous country, thanks to the fishing and shipping trades, the beer and textile industries, and other sectors, and a region abundant with healthy livestock, milk, vegetables and other such essentials. Glorious events from the past were incorporated into Ten Hoorn's laudation, yet the positive image of a modern nation prevailed. 12 Christyn, in contrast, created a brand of a tormented realm with an extensive martial past. Hence, the Délices des Païs-Bas therefore delves deep into local history. Readers were informed about the Roman settlements in Maastricht, Katwijk, and Tongeren; the epic battles between Caesar's legions and the ancient Belgians are discussed at length. 13 References to medieval history were also ubiquitous, with tribute paid to the counts of Flanders and Holland and to other illustrious feudal lords and their war campaigns. Philip the Good, Charles the Bold and the other dukes of Burgundy were introduced, 14 and the most notorious incidents from the wars of religion were evoked in a lively manner. 15 The Délices were hardly unique in their inclination towards historical expostulation; long digressions about a glorious past had been a standard feature of surveys, travel guides, and urban topographies since the late sixteenth century. 16 A more pioneering element about this work, however, was its predilection for contemporary history. Jean-Baptiste Christyn's attentions were focused primarily on the last chapter in the long, war-ridden history of the Low Countries. Louis XIV's wars of conquest were given acute consideration, with excessive information devoted to the siege of Namur (1692), the pitched battle of Landen (1693), and the bombardment of Brussels (1695). In the edition of 1711, inquisitive readers were encouraged to visit the battleground of Ramillies, where the French legions had suffered bitter defeat against the Great Alliance. 17 The following years saw widespread diffusion of the cliché of the southern Low Countries as Europe's principal theatre of war. Gilbert Le Roy, author of the Groot wereldlyck toneel des hertogdoms van Brabant (Brussels, 1730), a chorography of Brabant, echoed the introduction of the Délices des Païs-Bas in labelling the Southern Netherlands as the playground of Mars. Protracted passages on martial history also appeared in Bossu's Histoire de Mons (1725), Marne's Histoire du comté de Namur (Liège, 1754), and Pierre de Sauméry's Délices du Païs de Liège (Liège, 1764). 18 In evoking the siege of Namur De Sauméry channelled a most theatrical style: Ces deux sièges des plus mémorables dont il soit mention dans l'histoires, firent éprouver à cette ville & au païs qui en dépend, les suites ruineuses de la plus cruelle guerre qui ait été faite dans les Païs-Bas, dont la plûpart des territoires ont été les théâtres d'un grand nombre de batailles ou le sang humain a été répandu sans ménagement. 19 Drawing upon the recent wartime past, these chorographies addressed a topical matter, one that had stirred the imaginations of people throughout Europe. For decades, news publications like the Amsterdamsche Courant, the Daily Courant, and the Gazette [de France] had related details of the various military campaigns in Flanders and Hainaut, troop movements of the Grand Alliance and the French armies, the innumerable bloody battles and endless sieges, and similar events. 20 Lampoons and broadsheets had pilloried Louis XIV as a warmonger, 21 even as his victories were lauded and glorified in French sources ranging from history books and the battle scenes painted by Adam Frans van der Meulen to commemorative medals, panegyrics, triumphal arches, and tapestries. 22 The image of Louis XIV was unambiguously contingent on the audience in question. The French king was depicted, often clad in Roman armour, as heroic, perseverant, and invincible by his supporters; pamphleteers and other critics besmirched his repute and derided him as Louis Devastator, an aggressor whose legions did not flinch at slaughtering innocent men, women, and children. 23 Such polemical portraits were honed into less starkly controversial images in the Délices des Païs-Bas and other guidebooks, yet these works nonetheless capitalised on the widespread public interest in these recent military campaigns.

Creating memorial grounds
The Reis-boek door de Vereenigde Nederlandsche Provincien (Amsterdam 1700) was not particularly attentive towards the southern Low Countries, with few pages devoted to the Spanish Netherlands (16%), and fewer still to French Flanders (2,8%) and the Prince Bishopric of Liège (0,7%). The northern Netherlands, in contrast, were discussed throughout most of the book (80,5%). Much ink is given over to protracted descriptions of town halls, churches, orphanages, shooting ranges, and other such places considered worth visiting in Leiden, The Hague and Amsterdam. Jan ten Hoorn's pioneering guidebook thus gave short shrift to earlier chorographies, such as Lodovico Guicciardini's famous Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi (Antwerp, 1567), which had waxed lyrical over Brabant, Flanders, and other southern provinces, and usually covered the north in just a few pages. 24 By shifting this rhetorical balance, Ten Hoorn voiced the idea that the political, economic, and cultural core zone of the Low Countries had moved northwards. However, the equilibrium was somewhat restored in the Délices des Païs-Bas (Brussels, 1711) [ Fig. 2]. The work devoted the largest proportion of its pages to the Dutch Republic (43%), yet this was counterbalanced by the numbers of pages on the Southern Netherlands (39,1%), French Flanders (11,3%), and the Prince Bishopric of Liège (5,8%). Brussels, Antwerp, Bruges, and certain other traditional destinations played an important role in the revaluation of the south. Lengthy descriptions of the archducal palace in Brussels, the Renaissance town hall in Antwerp, the university in Louvain, and the Gothic Hallen in Bruges were intended to entice foreign travellers into visiting the southern Netherlands. 25 Martial histories functioned to enhance the allure of these towns. For example, native and foreign travellers to Ghent were encouraged to commemorate the siege of the city in 1678, when the Flemish metropolis had surrendered barely six days after the French had opened their trenches. 26 Yet, warfare of the past proved more central to the city branding of Brussels. With a sense of tragedy, Jean-Baptiste II Christyn recounted the bombardment of 1695, when, during the summer, French troops had laid siege to Brussels; mortars and other heavy artillery had opened fire, reducing the town to cinders. It was said that more than four thousand houses and fourteen churches were destroyed. In an attempt to provoke intense memories, readers were spurred to visit the Grote Markt (the main square), which had been obliterated during the conflict. 27 The tale of Brussels' destruction at the hands of French forces became a staple of Netherlandish guidebooks. Louis de Wainne's Déscription du Pays-Bas (Paris, 1720) offered a compelling narrative in which all of Brussels was set ablaze; the story was detailed even further in Nicolaas ten Hoorn's Reisboek (Amsterdam, 1729), a reworking of his father's guidebook through the Netherlands. 28 It could easily be argued, of course, that this labelling of Brussels as a casualty of war was not actually vital to the city's branding and that wartime histories, at best, simply added value to the attraction of the archducal palace, the gothic town hall, 24 Verbaan, De woonplaats, cit., pp. 61-63. 25  the baroque churches, chapels, and monasteries, lawns and gardens, the Munt opera, and myriad other entertainments to be enjoyed in Brussels. 29 However, tragic tales about bombardments, sieges, and battlefields were far more important in the depictions of several smaller towns in the southern Low Countries. The Délices des Païs-Bas present a series of memorial grounds linked to the wars of Louis XIV, ranging from Cambrai in the west to Maastricht in the east. Christyn's portrayal of Namur included only a few lines about the old cathedral and the baroque Jesuit church, yet the author's attention was focused foremost on the unassailable citadel and the town's outer defences. Bastions, half-moon batteries, ravelins, dry ditches, and covered roads are described with gusto, while the tales of the two sieges (1692 and 1695) are related in great detail [ Fig. 3]. Christyn elaborates upon the stiff resistance of the Dutch engineer Menno Coehoorn and his troops, who surrendered their fortress, but only after exhausting all their ammunition, food, and hope. 30 Wartime histories also prevailed in the descriptions of Valenciennes, Charleroi, Liège and smaller towns like Huy, Dinant, and Montmédy. 31 Pierre de Sauméry employed a similar technique in his Délices du Païs de Liège (Liège, 1764) so as to draw foreign travellers to the Prince Bishopric, and a series of other chorographies and urban topographies followed suit. 32 Martial history was not only a crucial element in the place branding of Charleroi, Liège, Namur, Valenciennes, and various smaller towns; it also proved essential in the regional branding of the provinces of Namur, Hainaut, Cambrésis, French Flanders and the Prince Bishopric of Liège. Jan ten Hoorn afforded just a few lines to these southern Low Countries, but the Délices and its epigones radically changed tack and deliberately portrayed the region as having been Mars' playground. Wainne, Saumery, and Christyn thereby endorsed the idea that the southern provinces could not compete with Flanders, Holland, Brabant, and other traditional destinations in terms of monumental palaces, churches, town halls, and other spectacular sights; instead, these authors opted to capitalise on the region's enthralling (if not sensational) wartime past and its remnants to brand the south as vaut-le-voyage.

Dramatizing history
Fortresses, battlefields, and other memorial grounds did not necessarily stir the imaginations of foreign and native travellers. Newspapers, broadsheets, and history books had ranked the Battle of Malplaquet (1709) among the most crucial stages in the Wars of Spanish Succession, yet the site itself, in Hainaut, was far from impressive. Visitors gazed upon an uninspiring scene of ridges, woodland, and open fields. Dramatic tales of bravery, loss, and endurance needed to be projected onto the landscape to arouse any interest. 33 Jean-Baptiste II Christyn used this stratagem to brand Malplaquet as a place worth visiting. Enhancing the tale with a sense of tragedy, the Brussels lawyer spiritedly described the clash between the French and the allied forces in the autumn of 1709. The outnumbered French troops, led by field marshal De Villars, had taken up a strategic position between the wooded hills of La 29 Christijn, Les délices, cit., pp. I: 70-95. 30 Christijn, Les délices, cit., pp. II: 131-136. 31 34 Dramatic figures and tales also helped to spur interest in other memorial grounds. Namur, for example, was a most impressive fortress, yet its portrayal as a setting of abandoned bastions, casemates, powder magazines, and underground hospitals stirred imaginations ever further, especially when coupled with tragic scenes from the wartime past. Describing the siege of Namur of 1695, the Délices des Païs-Bas detailed the decimation of the French garrison, emphasizing such details as the fact that less than a quarter of the initial 16.000 French soldiers departed the battleground unharmed after the citadel had surrendered to the troops of William III. 35 Similarly dramatic figures seasoned presentations of the massacre of Seneffe (1674), the siege of Maastricht (1676), and the gruesome bombardment of Brussels (1695). 36 Nicolaas ten Hoorn adopted the same strategy, replete with a barrage of tragic numbers: 'zynde na gissing, omtrent drie duizend bomben, en over de twaalf hondert gloeyende kogels, in de stad geschooten. Zeventien zo parochie-kerken, kloosters als kapellen, en niet veel minder dan vyf duizend huizen, waren hier door vernield'. 37 Both factual and not-so-factual stories of heavy bombardments, razed cities, heaps of wounded and dead soldiers, and the like helped to strengthen the brand of the southern Low Countries as having been Europe's theatre of war, as did legends about heroes and villains. Cassel, a small town in French Flanders, is portrayed in the Délices as a provincial backwater, devoid of remarkable monuments and notable sights, yet a site laden with significant wartime history. Here, French armies had routed the Dutch troops in 1677, capturing more than 2.000 Dutch infantrymen and almost every banner. Christyn focused on the petite histoire: for example, according to legend, the Prince of Orange had, in a blind fury, gashed the face of one of his leading officers for having acted with cowardice. 38 Heroes were also fêted in the Délices, with tribute paid to Don Francisco del Castillo y Fajardo, Marquis of Villadrarias and commander of Charleroi, who had fiercely defended the fortress in 1693 against the superior numbers of Field Marshal Luxembourg. Castillo refused to surrender, and declared a cease-fire only after the west wall had been breached. 39 Focusing on such heroic deeds, the Délices des Païs-Bas labelled the small, fortified town of Charleroi, which had been entirely overlooked in earlier guidebooks, as vautle-détour. Montmédy where, in 1657, the Spanish commander Jean d'Allamont had offered fierce resistance to the French besiegers, until being struck by a cannonball received similar assessment. 40 Compelling tales about heroes and villains, blood-soaked battlefields, and endless sieges were also standard elements in local history books and chronicles.
Drawing on the wartime past, works such as Bossu's Histoire de Mons (1725) and Marne's Histoire du comté de Namur (Liège, 1754) exhaustively mined the heroic tales of the Duke of Marlborough, Prince Eugène de Savoye, William of Orange, and various other 'minor' heroes, all the while reviling the roguery of Villeroy, Luxembourg and De Villars. 41 Jean-Baptiste II Christyn simply used these gripping tales to brand a new series of destinations for foreign and native travellers. Hence, the attendant prestige of having recently been Mars' playground not only clung to impressive fortresses, desolate battlefields, and other memorial grounds, but was also painstakingly forged through the dissemination and popularisation of aweinspiring histories, legends, and tall tales of the wartime past. 42

Luring visitors
In portraying the Low Countries as Europe's theatre of war, Jean-Baptiste II Christyn created a most powerful brand, which, in theory, aided Namur, Charleroi, and other provincial towns to attract more foreign and native visitors. However, the link between early modern travel behaviour and place branding remains ambiguous. How successful was this branding of Mars' playground, and did it in fact draw more English, French, German, and Netherlandish travellers to the Low Countries? Unfortunately, these questions still await answers, for most research has focused on the composition and development of early modern guidebooks and chorographies; the appropriation of these genres by actual readers remains hardly scrutinised. Furthermore, contemporary research argues that place branding is not always successful. Even carefully designed place brands fail on occasion, resulting in travellers favouring other towns, regions or destinations. 43 We sought to resolve this issue via drawing upon a small sample of Netherlandish travel books. Hence, we gathered travel diaries, stories and memoires in manuscript, all written between 1640 and 1750 by Flemish, Dutch, and Brabantine burghers on their respective journeys through the Low Countries. 44 Literature on English, French, and German travel behaviour was also scrutinised so as to assess the effects of the Délices des Païs-Bas (Brussels 1711) on a broader scale. 45 During the late seventeenth century, the northern and southern Netherlands were a popular destination for foreign and native travellers [ Fig. 5]. Noblemen from England, France, and the Holy Roman Empire had long crossed through the Low Countries on their Grand Tours to Italy; now, however, the provinces of Flanders, Holland, and Brabant had gradually evolved into fully constituted travel destinations in their own right. Usually, cosmopolitan visitors combined their tours through the Low Countries with brief excursions to London or Paris, or a modish cours pittoresque along the Rhine. 46 'Divertissante somertogjes' (pleasurable summer trips) became the latest vogue among Netherlandish travellers. For example, Balthasar Bekker, a minister in Franeker, embarked on a roundtrip to London, Paris, and the Spanish Netherlands in the summer of 1683. Like most travellers, he wrote favourably about the baroque churches of Antwerp and the monumental palaces of Brussels, and enthusiastically described the sights of Leuven, Ghent, Bruges and Ostend. Mons, Valenciennes and Cambrai, however, garnered just a few lines. 47 Bekker's focus was in fact fairly standard. In the late seventeenth century Flanders and Brabant remained at centre stage in the regional arena, and most travellers spilled little if any ink on the southern provinces of Namur, Hainaut, Cambrésis, and the Prince Bishopric of Liège.
However, Netherlandish travellers broke new ground in the early eighteenth century, by gradually mapping the southern Low Countries as a region worth visiting. Liège, Valenciennes, and Maastricht were even the subject of highly positive portrayals, in which they easily measured up against Brussels, Antwerp, and other traditional destinations. Mons, Namur, Cambrai, and a series of smaller towns were similarly branded as vaut-le-détour [ Fig 6]. English, French, and German noblemen followed suit and in the eighteenth century began travelling in increasing numbers to the Low Countries. French Flanders, the Prince Bishopric of Liège, and the southern provinces of Namur, Hainaut, and Maastricht were gradually integrated into these itineraries. 48 Foreign and native travellers were drawn to the southern Low Countries for various reasons. In the early eighteenth century, the small Ardennes town of Spa reaped international fame as a health resort. Jan Carel van Eck, burgomaster of Wageningen, sipped from the healing waters of the Pouhon source and enjoyed the medicinal baths of Chaudfontaine during his journey through the Austrian Netherlands in the autumn of 1742. 49 Like most eighteenth-century travellers who visited the region, he waxed lyrical over the sublime landscapes and natural scenery of the southern Low Countries. Depictions of crests and towering rock faces, of small cascades and vast woodlands, and of picturesque castle ruins transformed the meandering Meuse River into a tourist hotspot. 50 Yet, travellers were most spellbound by the fortresses, battlefields, and other memorial grounds linked to the War of the Spanish Succession. In Namur, Eck exhaustively explored the citadel's bastions, gun emplacements, pillboxes, and myriad other defences; his guided tour through the keep lasted more than four hours. 51 The region's recent martial history clearly intrigued Eck, and his visits (a few days earlier) to Mons, Valenciennes, Cambrai, and other towns had been spent largely in undertaking extended walks over embankments, bulwarks, covered roads, ravelins, and half-moon batteries. He even rode to the desolate battlefield of Malplaquet, to view the spot where the legions of the Grand Alliance had crushed the French armies in 1709; while walking through the site, he discovered some broken cannon and other remnants. 52 One could argue that Eck's lively interest in recent military history was exceptional due to the rationale underlying his trip. The burgomaster was hardly roaming the Austrian Netherlands for sheer pleasure; in fact, he had been dispatched as a representative of the States General to review the garrisons in the barrier towns. The entire regiment of Namur, Mons and Valenciennes stood at attention upon his arrival. The region's wartime past similarly piqued the imaginations of other Netherlandish travellers, who visited its fortresses, battlefields, and other memorial grounds. Pieter van Dorp, a lawyer from Leiden, called at Namur during his 'divertissant somertogje' through the Austrian Netherlands in the summer of 1732. The town made little impression on him, but Van Dorp was awestruck by the citadel and roamed for hours through its pitch-dark caverns, pillboxes, powder magazines, underground hospital, chapel, and dormitories, where officers had slept as the town was besieged. 53 In 1726, an anonymous traveller from Limbourg (near Aachen) enthused similarly about Namur. This traveller's written record portrayed the town's spectacular defences in extensive detail and evoked the two historic sieges, the latter of which, in 1695, had seen more than 16.000 French soldiers captured. During his trip through the Austrian Netherlands, the anonymous author visited famous battlegrounds of the Wars of Succession, including Fleurus (1690) and Steenkerque (1692), where the Allied armies had been massacred by French troops. In Brussels, he commemorated the dreadful bombardment of 1695. 54 During the early eighteenth century, the pioneering, martial-themed branding clearly succeeded with Netherlandish travellers. Having been tagged as Europe's principal theatre of war by the Délices des Païs-Bas and other chorographies, French Flanders, Hainaut, Namur, and the Prince Bishopric of Liège had now emerged as popular travel destinations [ Fig. 6].
This also held true for English, French, and German travellers, who were keen to visit the region's unassailable fortresses, battlefields, and other famous memorial grounds during their time in the Low Countries. 55 Pierre Gaudron, a senior official from Paris, embarked in the summer of 1715 on a round trip through Northern France, the Low Countries, and England. War-related histories figured prominently in his travel diary. He presented Valenciennes, for instance, as a tormented town that had endured a dreadful siege in 1677, and evocatively detailed the bombardment of Mons in 1691. Gaudron's discussion of Mons takes a bitter turn with the lost battle of 1678, when, according to legend, the French Field Marshal François Henri de Luxembourg had still been dining when the troops of William of Orange took the 51 Van Eck, Journaal, cit., pp. 59-60. 52 Van Eck, Journaal, cit., pp. 47-52. 53 Dorp, Kort verhaal, cit., pp. 75v-76v. 54  French armies by surprise. 56 Prince Henry of Prussia, who travelled through the Austrian Netherlands in 1768, also contemplated the southern provinces as being the playground of Mars. The prince meticulously described Mons, Namur, Liège, Maastricht, and a series of other fortresses, and also visited various historic battlefields, including Ramilies (1706), Oudenaarde (1708), Malplaquet (1709), Steenkerque (1692) and Neerwinden (1693). 57

Place Branding at Work
Foreign and native travellers to the Austrian Netherlands clearly acknowledged the nation's historical status as Europe's theatre of war, yet the question remains as to how the Délices des Païs-Bas (Brussels, 1697) and its subsequent editions moulded this innovative branding. The work's influence was sometimes direct and explicit. Prince Henry of Prussia, for instance, bought a newly released edition of Jean-Baptiste Christyn's chorography upon returning to Brandenburg. 58 Pierre Gaudron penned a series of excerpts from his pristine copy of the work before boarding the coach from Paris to Brussels. Most likely, Gaudron's subsequent overview of the seemingly endless sieges of Valenciennes, Cambrai, and Mons were cribbed from Christyn's chorography, though Gaudron also relied on other useful works, including Baudran's Dictionnarie géographique (Utrecht, 1712) and the Atlas historique (Amsterdam, 1709), in elaborating his travel diary. 59 Thanks to its handy size (12°), travellers could easily bring the Délices with them. For example, the anonymous traveller from Limbourg used Christyn's work to guide him through the Austrian Netherlands; he copied his account of the tragic bombardment of Brussels from Christyn, and the earlier work served the unidentified author well when he visited Namur, Charleroi, Dinant, Luxemburg, and other fortresses. Likewise, his descriptions of the historic battlefields of Fleurus (1690) and Steenkerque (1692) and his dramatic accounts of related bravery, endurance, and suffering were also borrowed from the Délices des Païs-Bas. 60 Despite suffering such plagiarism, Christyn's pioneering chorography succeeded in becoming standard if not requisite reading material for English and French visitors to the Low Countries. 61 These cases firmly substantiate the hypothesis that the martial-based branding of the region as Mars' playground inspired readers of the Délices des Païs-Bas and influenced their travel behaviour. However, the link between early modern travel and place branding was, in most cases, less straightforward. Numerous foreign and native visitors journeyed to the southern Low Countries to behold Europe's principal theatre of war without having encountered the Délices. An illustrative example is Jan Carel van Eck, who roamed the Austrian Netherlands in 1742. Even though the Guelders nobleman eagerly portrayed the southern provinces as Mars' playground, there is no indication that he ever read the Délices des Païs-Bas. 62 As concerns Eck, it is entirely plausible not least since works of history and geography were popular reading matter in the eighteenth century that he had earlier perused a copy of Christyn's work, perhaps just prior to his departure or years before. Urban topographies, surveys, and chorographies abounded in the private libraries of Dutch and Flemish elites. 63 This hypothesis holds true for other Netherlandish travellers, but it is not fully plausible in Jan Carel van Eck's case. The catalogue of his private library offers no mention of Christyn's chorography, though the collection included myriad guidebooks on France, England, Italy, and the Low Countries. 64 However, Jan Carel van Eck did own a version of the Atlas des XVL plans des villes, sièges & batailles de Flandre et de Brabant, an oversized volume of prints and maps concerning the most famous fortresses and battles in the southern Low Countries [Fig. 7]. 65 Maps detailing wartime history were popular and would surely have been a valuable source of information for foreign and native travellers. Prince Henri of Prussia made effective use of such plans, charts, and prints during his trip through the Austrian Netherlands. 66 Local guides were another resource that strengthened the branding of the Low Countries as Europe's principal theatre of war. Jan Carel van Eck was guided through the bastions, pillboxes, powder magazines, and underground hospital of Namur by a certain Colonel Randwijk; his local guides in Valenciennes, Douai, Lille, and Dunkirk included a lieutenant, a sergeant and various other soldiers. 67 This was a standard arrangement. It was common for English, French, and Netherlandish travellers, while touring the fortresses, barrier towns, and citadels in the southern provinces, to be assisted by local guides who enlivened their tours by relating spectacular wartime histories and related tales. 68 Pieter van Dorp even hired a professional guide for his trip through the Austrian Netherlands, who, together with the local guide, transformed the tour through the gloomy caverns of Namur's citadel into a thrilling adventure. 69

Conclusion
Place branding is a modern concept that often seems at odds with the nature of early modern guidebooks. According to textbook wisdom, this passive and unreceptive genre was unable to anticipate or respond effectively to evolutions in early modern travel behaviour. Drawing upon the Délices des Païs-Bas (Brussels, 1711) and its epigones, some important revisions to this general assumption can be listed. First and foremost, Christyn's chorography created a powerfully effective and innovative brand. In labelling the southern provinces as Mars' playground, he portrayed his homeland as a region well worth visiting. Dramatic tales about heroes and villains, bombardments, endless sieges, and bloody battlefields reinforced this war-related branding. Earlier preconceptions about the Southern Netherlands being a dull and unremarkable region began to recede into oblivion. Moreover, the Délices des Païs-Bas opened up a whole range of new destinations. Drawing upon the region's wartime history, Jean-Baptiste II Christyn succeeded both in classifying Namur, Liège, Valenciennes, and a series of smaller towns as vaut-le-voyage and in transforming battlefields like Malplaquet, Steenkerque, and Fleurus into sites of interest. In light of how importantly these war-related histories figure throughout the Délices, it seems likely that the Brussels lawyer had fully intended his work to brand the southern Netherlands as Europe's theatre of war.
Moreover, this article has endeavoured to administer a litmus test of sorts to the efficiency of early modern place branding, an assessment that has rarely been undertaken in historiography. In looking more closely at foreign and native visitors to the Low Countries it becomes evident that the branding of the region as Mars' playground was quite successful. Not only did numerous English, French, German, and Netherlandish travellers gradually begin to make their way to the southern provinces of Namur, Hainaut, Cambrésis, French Flanders and the Prince Bishopric of Liège, but the written accounts of their journeys reiterated the same body of tragic tales (the massacre at Malplaquet, the endless siege of Namur, the devastation of Brussels, etc.). Frequently, there were direct links between Christyn's place branding and subsequent travel behaviour. Indeed, some travellers visited the Low Countries with their copies of the Délices des Païs-Bas within reach. However, the relation was not always entirely straightforward. Maps, prints, and history books were also incorporated into efforts to brand the southern Low Countries as Europe's principal theatre of war, and tall tales and dramatic wartime histories were promulgated by local guides. Moreover, this martial-themed branding, which would bestir a generation of travellers, was also propagated by newspapers, broadsheets, songs, and other popular media. From this point of view, the Délices des Païs-Bas were but one emanation of the collective memory. Dagli ultimissimi anni del Seicento in poi, la zona sud-orientale dei Paesi Bassi meridionali, con città quali Liegi e Namur, diventava meta di viaggiatori e turisti curiosi di visitare i luoghi che solo alcuni anni prima erano stati devastati nelle campagne militari di Luigi XIV. A cominciare dalla guida di Jean-Baptiste II Christyn, Les Délices des Païs-Bas (1697), una produzione corografica chiaramente modellata su esempi precedenti relativi soprattutto ai Paesi Bassi settentrionali cominciava a stimolare tale nuovo fenomeno di 'turismo dei campi di battaglia', presentando la regione in una veste militare appositamente accentuata per soddisfare questo nuovo mercato turistico. Verhoeven dimostra il successo di questo tentativo di 'region branding', illustrando non solo il crescente flusso di viaggiatori a questa regione prima solo raramente visitata, ma anche l'impatto preciso di alcuni testi corografici, la cui impronta è chiaramente riconoscibile negli appunti di alcuni viaggiatori e perfino nei percorsi turistici offerti sul luogo a questi visitatori.