Anacoana fut pendue sans raison (engraving in Le miroir de la cruelle et horrible tyrannie espagnole)
Book page with a copperplate engraving and a French verse: Spanish soldiers burn a thatched house full of people and throw a child into the flames, while the crowned Taino leader Anacaona hangs from a tree and riders drive off fleeing villagers. The tells: the verse frames the act as the Spaniard's character ('the tyrant man cares not to keep his faith') and the page head reads 'De la Tyrannie aux Indes', a label that ties the New World scene to the book's title tyranny.
- Date
- 1620
- Period
- Pre-1914
- Made by
- Dutch publisher of the 1620 French edition (imprint not shown on this page); engraving after the 1598 Las Casas illustrations
- Region
- Western and Central Europe
- Country
- Dutch Republic
- Medium
- Issuer type
- Mixed
- Regime
- Stadtholderate of Maurice of Nassau
- Leader
- Maurice of Nassau
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Demonize
- Themes
- War and the military, Empire and colonialism
- Event
- Eighty Years War
- Techniques
- Fear appealName-calling
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Internet Archive (scan of the World Digital Library copy), item LeMiroir, retrieved September 29, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (printed 1620); Internet Archive marks the scan Public Domain Mark; Commons cites CC0
Le miroir de la cruelle et horrible tyrannie espagnole (1620), World Digital Library item 515, scan on the Internet Archive (LeMiroir), page 8 of the Las Casas section.
Text on the object
De la Tyrannie aux Indes. 8 L'Appetit du l'argent, par ces peuples diverses Fit les changer la foy, & devenir perverses. L'Espagnol assembla, le peuple par tout doux, Et le brusla bien tost, desloyal en corroux: Car oncques le Renard ne change sa nature, Et de garder sa foy l'homme Tyran n'a cure. Anacoana fut pendue sans raison, Et ruiné par tout la ville & sa maison.
Of the Tyranny in the Indies. 8 The appetite for money, among these various peoples, Made them change their faith and become perverse. The Spaniard gathered the people, all gentle, And soon burned it, disloyal in wrath: For the Fox never changes his nature, And the tyrant man cares not to keep his faith. Anacoana was hanged without cause, And the town and her house ruined throughout.
Early seventeenth-century spelling kept as printed; the long s is rendered as s. The running head 'De la Tyrannie aux Indes' and the page number 8 are at the top of the leaf. Faint text bleeding through from the other side of the leaf, and the partial neighbouring page at the left edge, are not transcribed. Translation is a machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader.
