PREVIEW: SELECTIONS FROM THE ISAAC RUDMAN WEST INDIES COLLECTION: 22 NOVEMBER

A silver medal dating to 1630 and struck for a famous Dutch victory during the Eighty Years War is an impressive reminder of the maxim ‘Money talks’.

The medal commemorates the Dutch West India Company’s greatest victory in the Caribbean when its squadron captured a Spanish treasure fleet and a booty equivalent to around £900 million today, without loss of life.

 

The tale begins two years earlier in 1628 when Admiral Piet Hein, who was to die in battle a year later, led his fleet out to attack part of a Spanish treasure fleet that had set out for home from Mexico, loaded with gold and silver and valuable trade goods.

They engaged off the Bay of Matanzas to the west of Havana in Cuba – the gateway to the Atlantic from the Gulf of Mexico – where the Dutch fleet of 21 ships captured 12 of the 21 Spanish vessels, starting with the surprise night-time attack on a Spanish galleon.

Hein, who had served as a Spanish prisoner in 1603, set the Spanish crews free, supplying them with supplies to reach Havana and giving them instructions in their native tongue.

The booty he captured was so vast that it paid for the the Dutch army for eight months, leading to the recapture of s’Hertogenbosch, and provided a cash dividend for Company shareholders of 50% for the year.

Returning to the Netherlands as the conquering hero in 1629, shortly before his death, Hein reputedly told the Mayor of Leiden during the welcoming parade: “Now they praise me because I gained riches without the least danger; but earlier when I risked my life in full combat they didn’t even know I existed.”

The 1630 silver medal by A. van der Wilge, struck to commemorate the famous triumph features Mars and Victory holding a crown over the central bust of Frederik Wilhelm of Nassau-Orange, with a view of s’Hertogenbosch in the cartouche below. The reverse depicts a heraldic Dutch lion and supporters above ornate cartouches of Grol, Wesel, Pernambuco and the capture of the Spanish silver fleet in Matanzas Bay.

The estimate is £4,000-5,000.