MARGARET D . CARROLL
64 Rembrandt, The Triumph of
Mordecai, ca. 1642. Etching. Rijksmuseum ,Amsterdam. Bartsch 40.
To b e sure, some of this lapse in martial decorum makes sense: by the late 1630s Amsterdam's militia companies had largely abandoned their military function. 35 They now served in a more purely ceremonial capacity -as for example, when they lined the parade route during the Joyous Entry into Amsterdam of Maria de' Medici in September 1638 (fig. 63), and of Prince Willem II and his wife Maria Henrietta in May 1642. 36 After 1633, there is no record of Amsterdam's militia companies marching out to relieve m ilitary garrisons; and there is no evidence that they resumed the practice of drilling at marching and at weapon handling until the second half of the seventeenth century. 37 But even on ceremonial occasions such as the entries of 1638 and 1642, the city's militiamen were under orders not to shoot unless commanded to d o so by their officers. 38 Given that municipal order, I would guess that for a mem b er of the company to fire his weapon into his own ranks, as shown in Rembrandt's painting, would have been construed by a contemporary militiaman either as an act of insubordination on the part of the man shooting, or of misjudgment on the part of the officer who had given him the order to do so. Put another way, the careless manner in which the men on both sides of Lieutenant van Ruytenburch mishandle their weapons reflects poorly not just on the two individuals, but on the officers having authority over them. We are now in a better position to consider the thematic relation between The Nightwatch and Rembrandt's Triumph of Mordecai, etched around 104