Jacques Callot’s series of eighteen etchings, The Miseries of War (Les Misères de la guerre) is widely regarded as the first “antiwar” statement in the history of European art. Although small in scale, the etchings are compact, powerful indictments of the human propensity for violence, lawlessness, and cruelty. Callot—an innovative printmaker who served under the patronage of Duke Henri II in the court of Lorraine— produced the series in 1633 at the height of the Thirty Years War (1618-48), the calamitous sequence of conflicts in central Europe that resulted in over 8 million deaths. Callot did not depict a specific campaign, but likely drew on personal experience: in 1633 French forces invaded Lorraine, an independent duchy aligned with the Habsburg Empire, occupying and then annexing it to France. The invading army was mostly comprised of hired mercenaries who pillaged the territory, committing crimes ranging from looting to robbery, arson, and torture. Callot answered with etchings that are at once unflinching and refined, disturbing and elegant; they rank among the earliest examples of art as a potent form of protest.