The Battle of Warns and the Red Cliff
By the village of Warns, on the coast of the Frisian Gaasterland, lies the Red Cliff. There in 1345 a battle was fought that Friesland has never forgotten: an attack by the count of Holland ended in a bloody defeat for the invaders, and in a pride that outlasted the centuries.
1 The count who wanted Friesland
Count William IV of Holland believed he had old claims on Friesland and meant to subdue the land. In 1345 he landed with a fleet and an army of knights at the Red Cliff. The Frisians, farmers and free men without noble lords, gathered to defend their land. They knew the marshy ground; the count and his heavily armed knights did not.
2 Rather dead than a slave
The battle became a disaster for the Hollanders. In the harsh coastal country the knights got stuck, were surrounded and beaten; Count William IV himself fell on the field, and his army fled in disorder to the ships. For the Frisians Warns became the emblem of their longing for freedom, of a people that suffered no lord above it. At the Red Cliff today stands a memorial stone with four words that say it all: «Leaver dea as slaef», rather dead than a slave. So a medieval battle remained, into our own time, a sign of Frisian identity.
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