On 3 October 2024, it will be 450 years to the day since Leiden was liberated by the Sea Beggars after being under Spanish siege for many months. Since then, 3 October has been a huge day of celebration in the city for this historic event. This year’s special anniversary prompted PostNL to release the stamp sheet The Siege and Relief of Leiden – 450 Years, which commemorates the heroes of the time and the stories surrounding the siege and relief. The stamps each bear a value of 1 for mail up to 20 grams with a destination within the Netherlands. The price for a sheet of 6 stamps is €6.84.
During the Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648), Leiden was besieged by Spanish troops for months at a time in 1573 and 1574. The city in the heart of Holland had joined the revolt against the Spanish King Philip II, Lord of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands. The siege lasted from 30 October 1573 to 3 October 1574, with a two-month break. The Spanish commander Francisco de Valdez closed off the city from the outside world with a ring of forts and entrenchments to starve Leiden out. To drive out the Spanish army, the surrounding land was flooded at the suggestion of William of Orange, the leader of the Dutch rebels. A month after the dykes were breached, a fleet of flatboats carrying Sea Beggars and mercenaries advanced towards the city. En route, they battled with Spanish troops near Zoetermeer, among other places. In the night of 2 to 3 October, the water rose rapidly, leading the Spaniards to abandon their positions. Leiden was relieved and the Sea Beggars entered the city. To commemorate the historic Siege and Relief of Leiden, the city holds celebrations every year on 3 October. The stamp sheet The Siege and Relief of Leiden – 450 Yearspays tribute to eight heroes of Leiden from that period. On the stamps, they are Jan van Hout (city secretary), Jan van der Does (city commander), Louis de Boisot (commander of the Sea Beggar fleet) and William of Orange (leader of the revolt). The tabs next to the stamps feature Pieter Adriaanszoon van der Werff (mayor), Dirk van Bronkhorst (military governor), Magdalena Moons (lover of the Spanish commander) and Willem Corneliszoon van Duyvenbode (pigeon keeper).
The Siege and Relief of Leiden – 450 Years stamp sheet has six stamps in two different designs. Both designs feature an etching as the central image, framed by flying carrier pigeons. The stamps on the left are dedicated to the siege, and the ones on the right to the relief. The etching on the left shows the starving population of Leiden, while the one on the right shows the fleet that liberated the city and distributed herring and white bread to the population. The corners of the stamps and the tabs feature portraits of eight of the main heroes of the Siege and Relief of Leiden. Black and white silhouettes of herring are visible across the perforations of the stamps and the tabs, as well as along the edges of the stamp sheet. The tabs on the left show a historical map from the time of the siege of Leiden in the background. The background of the tabs on the right shows the university building donated to the city as a token of gratitude for the courage of the people of Leiden during the siege. Across both images, a carrier pigeon flies out of the stamp sheet. The lower half of the sheet contains short descriptions of the depicted figures and a commemorative poem from the time containing hidden messages. The sheet edges feature the statement Leiden Ontzet Holland Gered, which is inscribed on the monument in Leiden commemorating the heroes of the Relief.
The text is printed in DTL Albertina font, a typeface designed by Chris Bram (1921-1998) in 1965 and digitised for the Dutch Type Library by Frank Blokland (1959) from Leiden in 1996.
The Siege and Relief of Leiden – 450 Years stamp sheet was designed by studio026 in Velp. In preparation, the graphic designers Anne Schaufeli and Huub de Lang visited Leiden, the city that it is all about. There, they were given a tour by Leiden resident Willem Hogendoorn, a city guide and well-known philatelist. “He told a lot of stories and took us everywhere,” Anne Schaufeli says. “He showed us all the highlights of 1574, the statues, the homes of the main protagonists, the water where the fleet entered the city with herring and white bread, and also the university which was gifted by William of Orange to the people of Leiden as a reward for their heroism.”
The most complete picture possible
Having filled their notebooks, the designers returned to Velp. “That’s when the puzzling began,” says Schaufeli. “We had to express this vast subject in just six stamps in two different designs. Would we focus on a representative part of the whole or did we want to tell everything? We chose the latter. It is such an interconnected set of stories that we wanted to show as complete a picture as possible.”
Sheet layout
While on their tour of Leiden, Schaufeli and De Lang passed the monument on the Geregracht with relief portraits of the heroes of 1574. The monument with the inscription Leiden Ontzet Holland Gered was unveiled in 1924, exactly 100 years ago. Schaufeli: “We realised that those four words gave us a way to divide the stamp sheet. Leiden and Holland on the left stood for the three identical stamps about the siege. And Ontzet and Gered (“relief” and “liberation”) stood for the other three identical stamps about the happy ending. We gave the four main figures on the statue a prominent place. The stamps on the left feature Jan van der Does and Jan van der Hout who played a key defence role during the siege. And the stamps on the right show Louis de Boisot and William of Orange who led the liberation.”
Portraits
Space was made on the tabs for other important characters from 1574, whose stories earned them their own place in the history of the Relief of Leiden. “We wanted to honour them too,” Schaufeli says, “but we needed portraits. That’s why we left off the little boy who found the hutspot, the pot of stew. We have no image of that, but we do have images of the other people selected for the tabs, like the mayor who was willing to offer his body as food to the starving population, the military governor who played a key role in the early stages of the siege, the woman who allegedly tricked the Spanish commander into postponing the attack on the city, and the man who smuggled his carrier pigeons out of Leiden so that the city could receive messages from outside. All this gave the population renewed courage to keep up the resistance.”
The central scene
While searching for historical images for the stamps, the designers came across Rijksstudio, the website of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. In the collection, they discovered a commemorative plaque from 1874 about the Relief of Leiden. Schaufeli: “That print consists of a central scene surrounded by all kinds of ornamentation and smaller scenes in the form of medallion-shaped portraits. We used that structure as an inspiration for the layout of the stamps, making a nod to the commemorative plaque with an etching of the starving people of Leiden on the left and an etching of the fleet with herring and white bread on the right. Both fit the dichotomy of the stamp sheet, with the siege on the left and the relief on the right. The ornaments on our stamps took the form of stylised carrier pigeons embracing the central image with their wings. We really wanted to depict the special story about using pigeons as a means of communication for the besieged city. In the corners of the stamps, outside their wings, we placed the portraits of the main figures on the Geregracht monument in Leiden.”
Herring and white bread
The story of the herring and white bread was also given a place on the stamps. “We wanted it to be just as subtle as the carrier pigeons, where you only recognise them on second viewing,” Schaufeli explains. “That’s why the herring run as black and white shapes across all the perforations, and you can also see them at the edges of the stamp sheet, with an added bonus that the stamps take on a wavy contour as soon as you detach them from the sheet.”
A holistic approach to the tabs
studio026 presented two variants of its design concept to PostNL. In the first, the tabs were left blank, except for the portraits of the ancillary characters. In the second, more stories were added to the tabs. “The latter option was chosen,” says Schaufeli. “That’s why on the tabs on the left you see a map of Leiden with the forts and entrenchments around the city, while in the distance the fleet is already approaching. And on the tabs on the right, you can see the Academiegebouw, the main building of the university that was donated to the city after the relief. The carrier pigeons also reappear on the tabs, flying out of the stamp sheet.”
Historic colours
The blue and green colours chosen for the stamps have a clear relationship to Leiden’s history. Schaufeli and De Lang came across them in an historical study of the colours formerly prescribed for Leiden’s bridges. “With all these elements, we have told as complete a story as possible,” Schaufeli concludes. “On this stamp sheet, all sorts of things come together, so it is important to also have a visual resting point somewhere. In this design, this is provided by the white area on each stamp, at the top centre where the typography is printed. The edge of the sheet has been left as blank as possible, except for the descriptions of the people depicted as well as a poem we came across during our tour of Leiden.”
About the designers
studio026 is a graphic design firm from Velp, consisting of Anne Schaufeli (1987, Warnsveld) and Huub de Lang (1980, Arnhem). Both studied graphic design at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem from 2004 to 2008. Since 2009, the agency has focused on designs with a strong conceptual, editorial and aesthetic basis. The graphic designers believe in conceptual thinking and allow space and time for research, experimentation and innovation. For PostNL, Anne Schaufeli and Huub de Lang have previously designed the stamps: 125 Years of the KNLTB (2024), On Safari in the Netherlands (2024), Prehistoric Animals (2023-2024), 10 Years of King Willem-Alexander (2023), Queen Juliana of the Netherlands (2022), Palace Het Loo (2022), Look at the Netherlands (2022) Historical Motorcycles (2021), Old Postal Routes (2020) and 150 Years of the Red Cross in the Netherlands (2017).
