This last weekend was the Monumentendagen in The Netherlands (or maybe it was only in Den Haag...). This is a once yearly event where you can visit most national monuments and museums for free... and in some cases (like the Ridderszaal, the seat of Governance) it is the only day that it is open to the general public. So, after a quick concert in the morning... I met up with my family to poke around... sadly, we missed out on the Ridderzaal, which was the main thing that we wanted to see... however, we did stumble across a whole bunch of dressed up people in the Lange Voorhout in front of the Escher Museum.

It turns out it was also the Historical Days for Den Haag... where there were quite a number of Historical Dutch exhibitions and events all around the town!

When we arrived, there was the medieval horse jousting tournament... this was well before the Golden Era of The Netherlands, but who doesn't like a good joust and watching other people whacking each other with metal swords! There were four knights in the contest... and they took it in turns coming down the lists at each other with wooden lances. I'm not really sure how the scoring system worked... I guess there were points for broken lances... or perhaps for hitting certain parts of the armour? Thankfully, everything was kept pretty safe... and there were no falls. I remember being part of a medieval club (yes yes... I'm a nerd...) when I was at University... some of these events could be quite bruising... I wasn't a melee fighter though, just an archer!

Actually, quite a number of lances were broken... I do wonder if they were made in the same fashion (apart from the blunted tips and plastic guards at the end....) as the originals... I was actually quite surprised that there wasn't a fall as well... They were hitting each other pretty hard, but perhaps it just sounded hard as the lances were snapping and splintering!

There was also a small demonstration of horseback to foot-soldier combat... with the watermelon standing in for someone's head on the dummy... apparently, they are roughly the same! There was a pass with a sword... which sliced cleanly through the watermelon... and a pass with a mace... which splattered watermelon everywhere! I'm really quite thankful I don't live in the medieval age! Sadly, due to the angle of the demonstration, I couldn't quite get a decent camera shot of the action....

There was also a short demonstration of melee combat... with metal swords. In my club days, the melee fighters would have barely padded wooden replicas... and to be honest, I think that was much more dangerous! With the metal swords, it looks nicer... but they have to pull their attacks and really play it safe. With the wooden replicas, it is no-holds barred (except no head shots...).... and people would be seriously whacked around! Still, it made for a nice demonstration... but you could see that they would have to pull their attacks to avoid serious injury....

There were also some bowmen that came out... but they didn't take shots at the melee fighters. I remember that we would have padded tip arrows that we could shoot at the melee fighters.. and they would practice dodging or knocking them aside. It was a pity that they didn't do that... it's always quite exciting to watch! A bit like medieval dodgeball!

From this point, things got a touch confusing... as they tried to inject a bit of a story and narrative to the whole proceedings. There was a women who was dressed as Aletta Jacobs, who was one of the first female physicians in The Netherlands and a strong advocate for the women's right to vote in the 20th century. She came out and was loudly encouraging the public to chant for the right of women to vote... and then there was a parade of historical figures from Dutch history... interspersed with the right to vote chanting?!?!!? To me, this was more than a little confusing... were the medieval knights and Viking raiders opposing the right to vote? Huygens and Van Gogh as well? Why was Aletta Jacobs talking about them... and then shouting for the vote? I think this bit could really have been better thought out...

So, below are a selection of some of the parade form various epochs of the Dutch history... not everything is here as not everything managed to turn out a decent photo... but it is about half of the groups!

Past Kings and Queens and nobility from Dutch History.

The Dutch natural philosopher Huygens.

Characters from the Golden Age era of Dutch paintings.

I missed this bit, but I believe it was a representative of the Dutch Medieval era?

The Dutch Suffragette movement.

There was a finishing parade of all the groups as they did a Tour de France style lap of the Lange Voorhout. It was quite nice, and you could really see that quite a bit of effort had gone into the constuming!

Now... to conclude the event... we had a demonstration of a strange cannon contraption. It was five small bore gunpowder cannons on a little trolley. It took roughly 2 minutes to pack and ready the cannon for firing... but when it went off, it was stunningly load! Oddly enough, I only heard three bangs... but there were a lot of echos!

Now... I understand the need for safety and medical professionals to be on site... but I would seriously question the wisdom of putting the medics downrange of the cannon? I mean, it isn't actually shooting cannonballs... but still...

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Now... my toddler was terrified of the cannon when it first went off... so my wife took her away for when they did an encore! I stayed with my oldest daughter... who just loves fireworks, and so this was pretty cool for her! When we went to find the toddler again... we found her bawling her eyes out... apparently she was scared... but really wanted to see the cannons again! So, they went back... and predictably enough, she was again terrified... kids....