The Leeuwarden Series: Commanders-in-Chief of the Forces of the States-General As lieutenant-admiral of Zeeland between 1601 and 1627, Willem de Zoete de Laeke was in charge of all warships of the States army. He distinguished himself in the Siege of Sluis in 1604 and was decorated by the States-General for his partial destruction in 1605 of a Spanish fleet carrying fresh troops for Spinola’s army in Flanders. He was less successful in his mission to capture Spanish ships returning from the West Indies and to hinder the departure of Portuguese warships for India the following year. During the Twelve Years’ Truce, he commanded a fleet in the Mediterranean charged with restraining the Barbary Coast pirates. After the truce, he commanded a fleet of ships put at the disposal of the King of France by the Dutch Republic to battle the Huguenots at La Rochelle (1625). He was governor of Sluis from 1626 until his death.43 The prototype has not been located. Judging by the sitter’s costume it was probably painted between 1605 and 1615. Jonathan Bikker, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 380.