It is always popping up in our alloysiscanone: the Battle of Ane from 1227. A battle that has always appealed to the imagination. How a group of farmers from Coevorden and the surrounding area cut the knight army of the bishop of Utrecht in the pan. But is it really that simple? For the first time, official scientific research into this battle is being done. What was the exact place and who participated? And was it a local fight or was it about much more? In two years, researchers from the recently established Foundation for the Dust Wars Foundation have to have answers to those questions.
The timing to dive deeper into the history of the Battle of Ane could not be better. In two years it will be exactly 800 years ago that the Burggraaf Rudolf van Coevorden and the bishop of Utrecht, Otto van Lippe, fought in the swampy swamps between Ane and Coevorden. The bishop was at the time the boss in Drenthe and Rudolf took the affairs for him in Drenthe. But Van Coevorden thought he could only finish it and revolted.
On July 28, the armies of both kempans faced each other. The knights of the bishop, equipped with heavy armor and weapons, had not taken into account the marshy surface and sank. So it was an egg for Rudolf and his colleagues to make short work of their opponents.
Incidentally, Rudolf has not been able to enjoy his newly acquired power for long. A few years later he was captured and killed. Drenthe had to set up two monasteries as a punishment: Mariënkamp monastery near Coevorden and Mariënberg near Hasselt, also known as Zwartewaterklooster. In the latter place, the corpses of the 145 were buried in the battle knights. In modern times an attempt has been made to discover the exact location of that cemetery.
That search was the reason for the current, extensive research into the Battle of Ane, explaining quartermasters Mees in Velde (retired rector of the Theological University in Kampen) and amateur historian Bert Finke. In the meantime, the Overstichtse Wars Foundation is a fact, in which a large number of Dutch and German researchers, historians and archaeologists have been hooked up.