CHAPTER X

ASSASSINATION OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE

(July 10, 1584)

It was said by one of the wild revolutionists of France, in extenuation of his incessant demands for the execution of a larger number of the nobility, that the tree of liberty, to grow vigorously, should be watered with plenty of blood. Alas! The history of the republics of the world, not only since the great French Revolution of 1789, but at all times, both ancient and modern, proves the justice of this assertion, but none furnishes a more convincing proof of it than the history of the Dutch Republic in its heroic struggle against the gigantic power of Spain and other monarchical nations. At the very threshold of that history stands the luminous figure of the great Prince of Orange, William the Silent,--warrior, statesman, orator, and patriot; whose assassination, closely following upon the murders of the night of St. Bartholomew, is but the first of the crimes committed against the illustrious men of the Dutch Republic--Olden Barnevelt, the brothers De Witt, and others.

The assassination of William of Orange is of a semi-political and semi-religious character. The revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish rule, of which the Prince of Orange was the principal figure, originated in religious conflicts between the Netherlanders--most of whom were Calvinists or Lutherans--and the bigoted King of Spain, Philip the Second, who was more Catholic than the Pope himself. It was one of the fixed ideas of Philip the Second, a perfect monomania, that in the immense empire over which he ruled, none but faithful believers in the Catholic faith should be tolerated, and that all heretics or dissidents should be exterminated with fire and sword. In the Pyrenean peninsula--for Portugal was at this time annexed to Spain--this idea was most radically carried out, and year after year the Inquisition, which flourished there as the first institution of the state, handed over thousands of victims, convicted or suspected of heresy, to a most cruel death at the stake for the purpose of purifying the spiritual atmosphere of the country. But when an effort was being made on the part of the King to introduce the same system of spiritual purification into the Netherlands, which he had inherited from his father, the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and whose population was mostly of Germanic race, that effort met with a most stubborn and almost insuperable resistance.

Already, under Charles the Fifth, all attempts to smother the Protestant Reformation--which had entered the Netherlands both from Germany and France and which had immediately found many adherents--had failed. The Emperor, himself a Netherlander and familiar with the character of the people, had deemed it prudent to abolish the Inquisition (at least in name) and not to interfere too strongly with those personal rights of the inhabitants which their municipal or provincial statutes guaranteed to them. Moreover the Emperor had a very affable and popular way of dealing with the people, and he could do a great many things which no other ruler might have presumed to do. When Charles the Fifth abdicated in 1555, the grief of the people of the Netherlands was not only general, but sincere; they seemed to feel instinctively that the change which was to occur in the government was full of impending dangers and calamities for them. The personality of the new ruler fully justified these apprehensions. Philip the Second came to the Netherlands from England, where he had resided a short time as consort of Queen Mary, and his reputation for bigotry, fanaticism, and cruelty had preceded his arrival. Many of the acts of bloodshed and cruelty which were committed under that reign were more or less justly imputed to his influence, and his new subjects trembled at the prospects of similar scenes of persecution and despotism. No wonder that on the twenty-fifth of October, 1555, when the act of abdication was consummated at Brussels, and when the infirm Emperor, leaning upon the shoulder of Prince William of Orange, appeared before the representatives and high dignitaries of all the provinces constituting the Netherlands, and ceded the government to his son, who stood on his right side, a shudder passed through the high assembly. Many eyes passed apprehensively from the open and kindly countenance of the Emperor, then bathed in tears, to the sinister and cruel features of King Philip. What a contrast also between the majestic form and noble countenance of William of Orange and the small, feeble, narrow-chested son of Charles, who with distrustful eyes looked down upon this assemblage of nobles as if they were strangers or enemies, and whom not even the glitter of royalty could invest with dignity, although his features showed uncommon pride and haughtiness! The hopes of the people of the Low Countries rested upon the one; their fears were centred on the other.

Unquestionably it had been the Emperor’s intention to place William of Orange by the side of his son as chief adviser and protector; but the characters of the two were so different--the one broad, humane, manly; the other narrow, bigoted, timid--that it soon became manifest that a hearty coöperation of the two men for the welfare of the state was impossible. Moreover the aspirations and tendencies in regard to the government of the provinces which the two men entertained were absolutely conflicting, the Prince being in favor of liberal institutions and scrupulous observance of the guaranteed rights of the provinces, while the King was illiberal and despotic, without regard for the local customs and rights of the Netherlanders, anxious to concentrate all powers in his hands and to subordinate the whole government to his autocratic will.

These conflicting tendencies and these antipathies grew and became intensified as the months and years passed by; consequently, when Philip in 1559 left Brussels for Spain, he did not appoint the Prince of Orange Governor-General of the Netherlands, to which position he was clearly entitled, but conferred that honor with the title of regent upon his half-sister, Margaret, Duchess of Parma, who shared his own fanatical ideas. As her chief adviser he appointed Cardinal Granvella, a man of great sagacity and talent, but filled with animosity against the enemies of the Catholic Church, and in full though secret accord with the King concerning the necessity of wiping out the privileges of the “arrogant burghers of the Low Countries.” William of Orange was appointed Stadtholder of Holland and Zealand, and a member of the Council of State, a sort of cabinet for the Regent Duchess in which Cardinal Granvella was the leading spirit. Several other prominent noblemen of the Dutch provinces, Count Egmont, the conqueror of Gravelines, and Count Hoorn, were also members of the Council of State; but they were in a minority, and the Spanish or Cardinalistic party ruled its decisions absolutely. All of these decisions were hostile to the guaranteed rights of the Provinces; they interfered with freedom of conscience; they reintroduced the Spanish Inquisition under the disguise of creating new episcopal sees and attaching two inquisitors to each; and by establishing Spanish garrisons in the fortified towns they violated the constitutional right of the provinces that no foreign troops should be stationed there. The protests of the Prince of Orange and of Counts Egmont and Hoorn were of no avail, so these three distinguished members refused to attend the sessions of the Council of State.

In the meantime a spirit of public dissatisfaction and disorder manifested itself which showed to the sagacious Regent that the measures enacted and enforced by Cardinal Granvella would lead to a revolt against the Spanish régime. The people of Brussels showed their hatred and contempt for the Cardinal in many ways. In public processions they carried banners with insulting inscriptions or offensive caricatures and cartoons exhibiting him in ridiculous positions. Alarmed at these manifestations of public hostility, the Duchess Regent applied to the King, imploring him to remove Granvella from his post as President of the Council of State. The King reluctantly complied with the request, but Granvella’s removal did not change the spirit of the Council; and it was only too evident that its decisions were emanations from the King’s own mind. When Count Egmont, who had gone to Madrid on a special mission to plead for the personal and political rights of the Netherlanders, urged upon the King to give them greater religious liberty and to annul some of the stringent laws of the Council of State, Philip got into a rage and exclaimed: “No, no, I would rather die a thousand deaths and lose every square foot of my empire than permit the least change in our religion!” And he added that the decrees of the Council of Trent, which had recently been held, and which had affirmed anew the immutable doctrines of the Catholic Church, should be rigidly enforced in all his states. New instructions to that effect were sent to the Netherlands, followed by new convictions and new executions.

It was at this perilous and critical time that William of Orange openly accepted the Lutheran faith. Shortly before, he had been married to Princess Anne of Saxony, a daughter of the famous Maurice, Elector of Saxony, and a fervent Lutheran. William’s conversion to Protestantism has been often ascribed to the influence of his wife, but it should be remembered that William was born a prince of Nassau in Germany and the son of Lutheran parents, and that his Catholicism dated only from the time of his later education at the court of Charles the Fifth, where he was placed as a page at the early age of nine years. William had never forgotten the lessons of Protestantism which he had imbibed in his early childhood, and while professing the Catholic faith in later years, he had retained that respect and that affection for the principles of the Reformation which so peculiarly qualified him to act as umpire and leader in a contest in which religion played so conspicuous a part.

Up to that time the nobility had taken much less interest in the religious quarrels than the lower classes of the people; but the steadily increasing number of convictions and executions for heresy aroused their fears that the Spanish monarch intended to abolish their time-honored privileges and wished to substitute a Spanish autocracy for their liberal self-government. Against this intention they loudly protested, Catholics as well as Protestants, and bound themselves to stand together in their resistance to further acts of aggression. They presented petitions and protests to the Duchess Regent who received them in a conciliatory spirit, and forwarded them to the King, recommending at the same time greater leniency and moderation. But Philip the Second, getting tired of the many complaints and remonstrances reaching him from Brussels, and determined to stamp out heresy at whatever cost, sent the Duke of Alva, the sternest and most cruel of all his commanders, at the head of a considerable army to the Netherlands, with full powers to restore order and to reëstablish the authority of the Catholic Church. From the well-known character of the commander-in-chief it could not be doubted that the King’s severe orders would be carried out in the most cruel and unrelenting spirit, and that neither age nor sex nor rank would be spared. That Alva’s mission would be successful, the King did not doubt for a minute. But it was on his part a case of misplaced judgment, because his narrow mind could not measure the difference between the Jews and Moriscoes, and the Netherlanders: against the former the policy of violence and compulsion had been successful; against the latter that same policy was doomed to ignominious failure. The rumor that he would come as a bloody avenger preceded Alva’s arrival, and filled the hearts of the Netherlanders with terror. A regular panic ensued, and an emigration _en masse_ was organized; it looked as though the northern provinces were to be depopulated entirely by this exodus of men, women and children, mostly belonging to the mercantile and working classes, and taking their merchandise and their household goods with them.

The sending of an army composed entirely of Spaniards and Italians into the Netherlands was so flagrant a violation of the constitutional rights of the provinces, which the King had sworn to maintain, that the Prince of Orange thought the time for open resistance had come, and he conferred with Egmont, Hoorn, and other prominent men concerning its organization. But finding it impossible to organize united resistance against Alva’s army, William of Orange, with his profound insight and with his distrust in the Spanish King’s intentions, deemed it prudent to leave the Netherlands and withdraw to his estates in Germany instead of imperilling his head by remaining at Brussels. It was in vain that he tried to persuade Egmont, to whom he was greatly attached, to accompany him and to place his valuable life beyond the reach of the Spanish “avenger.” Egmont’s openhearted and confiding character refused to believe the sinister forebodings of the penetrating genius of his friend; he relied on his immense popularity among the Netherlanders and on the great services he had rendered, on the battle-field, to the House of Hapsburg. He therefore remained at Brussels, and even welcomed Alva on his arrival at the capital. The Spanish commander conducted himself as the regent _de facto_ without paying much attention to the Duchess, who still held that position nominally. One of his first official acts was the appointment of a special tribunal, which he named the Council of Troubles, composed exclusively of Spaniards, to try charges of heresy and treason. The people, however, found another, and more appropriate name for it. On account of the indecent haste and rapidity with which persons were tried, convicted, and executed by this Council, they named it “The Bloedraad” (The Council of Blood). The number of victims was so great that gallows and scaffolds had to be erected in all the cities and towns of the Netherlands, and that the executioners were kept busy in beheading and quartering the heretics and “traitors.” Counts Egmont and Hoorn had been arrested, soon after Alva’s arrival, on the charge of treason; they were also tried before the Court of Troubles and convicted on trumped-up charges. They were beheaded, together with eighteen members of the nobility, at the public square of Brussels.

This infamous act stirred up William of Orange to immediate action. What he had foreseen and predicted had come to pass. Evidently it was Alva’s intention to kill off the leaders in order to get control of the great mass of the people without much difficulty or resistance. William of Orange himself was charged with treason and summoned to appear before the judges of the Court of Troubles. But since his appearance at Brussels would have been equivalent to his conviction, he refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the court, claiming that as a knight of the Golden Fleece he had the right to be tried by the King personally and by no other judges than his peers. At the same time he published an address to the King in which he defended his public actions in a masterly manner, convincing every unbiased mind not only of his patriotic devotion to his country, but also of his loyalty to his sovereign in all his legitimate and constitutional acts of government. The Duke of Alva took no further notice of this defence; but when the day for William’s appearance at court had passed, he was sentenced to death, and his property, personal and real, was confiscated as that of a rebel and traitor.

In the meantime the Prince of Orange had not been idle in Germany. He had appealed to his co-religionists for assistance, pointing out to the Protestant princes that the cause of Protestantism itself was the issue of the war in the Netherlands, and that the complete victory of the Spanish army over the Netherlanders would be followed by an overthrow of the Protestant churches, both Lutheran and Calvinistic, in Europe. He succeeded in collecting a considerable army, which he divided into two corps, placing the one under the command of his brother Lewis, Count of Nassau, and invading Brabant with the other. The Count of Nassau was defeated in battle and driven out of Frisia with heavy loss, while Alva avoided giving battle to the Prince of Orange. By skilful manœuvres the Spanish general tired out the patience of the German troops, and when the severe cold of winter set in, the Prince, finding himself without means of paying his soldiers and getting no support from the inhabitants (who were overawed by the Spanish authorities), had to disband his army and to return, temporarily, to Germany. Alva triumphed and pompously reported to the Spanish King that both the rebellion and heresy had been stamped out in the Netherlands, and that his presence was hardly required there any longer. In his overweening vanity he went even so far as to order a bronze monument to be erected in his own honor, in which he was represented as a conqueror, standing with one foot on a Dutch nobleman in full armor and with the other on a man of the people, kneeling and with a Lutheran prayer-book in his hands.

It is not my intention to go into the details of the cruel war in the Netherlands,--cruel even beyond human imagination,--to recount the sufferings, the tortures, the atrocities, the martyrdom imposed upon the unfortunate victims of political and religious persecution, conceived by human fiends educated in the school of the Spanish Inquisition and warmly applauded by him whom both his cotemporaries and posterity have justly named “the demon of the South.” Such a war had never been seen between nations claiming to be civilized; and never has patriotic devotion in defence of home and country, of liberty and creed, been carried to a higher degree than by those brave Netherlanders in the sixteenth century. The world should never forget the immense service which they rendered to mankind by victoriously maintaining the principles of religious liberty, which, without their heroic perseverance, would very likely have perished under the incubus of Spanish despotism and the Spanish Inquisition. That they did not succumb and perish must be considered one of the marvellous enigmas of history, in which the finger of God is plainly visible. Immortal glory and renown should be accorded to the gallant leader who, under the most discouraging and desperate circumstances, never lost hope and confidence in the righteousness and final triumph of his cause, and who, undaunted by personal danger and persecution, never wavered in his loyalty to principle, and held high the banner of popular sovereignty and individual liberty, until the pistol shot of a hired assassin interrupted his glorious career.

If to-day, after the lapse of three centuries, we look back upon that career, our admiration for William of Orange grows steadily. We follow him from his first appearance on the public stage of the Netherlands, as a friend and confidant of Charles the Fifth, as a loyal adviser of the Duchess Regent, as a loyal subject pleading with Philip the Second and warning him to respect the rights of citizenship and religion of the Netherlanders,--pleading and warning in vain; we behold him unsheathing his sword for the defence and, when they appeared to be lost, for the recovery of those rights, toiling, struggling, fighting for the people, always subordinating his own interests to those of the nation and to the sublime cause of which he was the acknowledged champion; we recognize him as the first in the field, the first in the council-room, filling his countrymen with an enthusiasm and a confidence which alone could sustain them in undergoing sufferings and hardships unequalled in history. Thus he stands before us fully realizing and even surpassing the eulogy which Goethe wrote for the monument of another national hero, perhaps worthy, but certainly not so worthy of it as William the Silent:--

“In advance or retreat, In success or defeat, Ever conscious and great, Ever watchful to see, From foreign dominion he made us free!”

In translating Goethe’s inscription on the famous Blücher monument at Rostock we were strongly impressed with the fact that it was even better adapted for a monument of the great Prince of Orange than for that of the indomitable, but rather reckless, “Marshal Vorwärts.”

The King of Spain had from the first day of his accession known the powerful influence which the Prince of Orange exerted in the Netherlands. The Prince stood without a rival at the head of the nobility, and his eminent talents enhanced the authority which his illustrious birth had secured for him. The King was also informed by his special representatives--the Duchess Regent, Granvella, the Duke of Alva, Don John of Austria, and others--that this authority was steadily increasing, that the great mass of the people idolized the Prince, that his wish was a law for the burghers, and that practically the revolt, its failure or success, depended on him. The exalted character of the Prince precluded the very idea of winning him over to the other side by means of high distinctions or honors, much less by pecuniary bribes or corruption, and nothing remained therefore for the King to do, if he wanted to get rid of the dangerous popular leader, who held a number of the provinces entirely under his sway, than to place him beyond the pale of the law and to offer a high reward for his head. This method of removing rivals or enemies was not unusual in those days; and it should cause no surprise that the monarch who is, and very likely justly, suspected of having ordered the murder of his half-brother, Don Juan d’Austria, and also that of his own son, Don Carlos, was perfectly willing to adopt this method of getting rid of the Prince of Orange, who in his eyes was not only a rebel, but also a heretic, and as such deserved death a hundredfold. The price he put on the Prince’s head--twenty-five thousand ducats--showed sufficiently the importance he attached to his life, and how willing he was to tempt assassins by the enormous sum of the reward.

The King, who evidently had experience in such matters, had not miscalculated the temptation, for several attempts were made on the Prince’s life in consequence; but they always failed, and it would almost seem as if that life was under the special protection of Providence that it might carry out the plans predestined for it. In 1582, Juan Jaureguy, a young man in the employ of a Spanish merchant of Antwerp, and a religious fanatic, fired a pistol shot at the Prince which came very near killing him. The ball entered the head under the right ear, passed through the roof of the mouth, breaking several teeth, and came out under the left jaw-bone. For a while the Prince’s life was despaired of, but he finally rallied and recovered. His would-be assassin was immediately killed, and his accomplices, of whom there were several, were publicly strangled and quartered. In order to deter others from making attempts on the Prince’s life, the ghastly remains of these accomplices, one of them a Dominican monk, were nailed to the gates of Antwerp. The joy at the Prince’s recovery was general, and thanksgiving days, with divine service in the churches and public halls, were held in a number of the provinces. Unfortunately neither these public demonstrations of gratitude and delight, nor the terrible warnings addressed to assassins were sufficient to protect a life so valuable to his country and to the world.

Another assassin was more successful than Jaureguy. The scene of the murder, which took place on the tenth day of July, 1584, was the city of Delft in Holland. Shortly after the noon hour of that day a common-looking man, who had found access to the Prince’s residence for the purpose of securing a passport, approached the Prince as he came from the dining-hall and fired three shots at him, one passing through the stomach and causing his death after a very short while. The assassin was a man still young, less than thirty years of age. He was a Frenchman, Balthasar Gérard by name, who had come from his home in Franche-Comté or Burgundy to carry out his hellish design, which was inspired by religious fanaticism and encouraged by Jesuits of the College of Trèves. Through these he was introduced to the Duke of Parma, then Governor-General of the Netherlands, who promised him the royal reward in case of success, and other royal favors besides. Gérard had made his preparations for the murder with considerable circumspection; these preparations were very similar to those which Booth made for his escape after the murder of Abraham Lincoln, and just like Booth, Gérard stumbled and fell in making his escape and hurt himself, and this led to his arrest.

After having undergone the most terrible tortures, his joints having been wrenched and his body nearly roasted alive, he was executed in the most cruel manner imaginable. His right hand was burnt off with red-hot irons; the flesh was torn from half a dozen different parts of his body, which was then broken on the wheel. Gérard was still alive; his vitality was wonderful. The executioners then disembowelled and quartered him; tore out his heart and flung it in his face. It was then only that the unfortunate man breathed his last. His head was then cut off and placed on a pike of a gate in the rear of the Prince’s residence, and the four parts of his body were fastened to the four gates of the city. This cruel mutilation and dismemberment of the assassin’s body was hardly sufficient to satisfy the vengeance of the people; the certainty that the King of Spain stooped even to murder of the basest sort to recover his sovereignty over the Netherlands exalted their desire for absolute and lasting national independence to a sort of religious dogma which made all hope of peace illusory.

When the assassin’s hand cut short the life of the Prince of Orange, he had not completed the great work for which he had toiled, fought, suffered and died. But part of that work had been done, and it had been done so well and so thoroughly that the Republic stood on a firm foundation ready to receive the other provinces which were still in the power of Spain as a fitting superstructure. For this reason history recognizes William the Silent as the founder of the Dutch Republic and of the independence of the United Provinces.

To Americans the character of William the Silent is of special interest because it bears, in many respects, a striking resemblance to that of George Washington. Both were the principal figures in wars for the independence of their countries; both were soldiers and statesmen of a high order. If Washington was very likely the greater general, William the Silent was very likely the greater statesman, and the success of the American cause would have been as impossible without Washington as the failure of the Dutch struggle would have been certain without William of Orange. Both were sterling patriots and subordinated their own interests to those of the nations they represented; but in this respect Washington was, perhaps, superior to William, who had an eye on the possibilities which might arise after a successful issue of the war. It should be remembered, however, that William of Orange was a prince and sovereign before he was made the head of the Netherlanders rising in revolt against Spain, and that, as a sovereign, it was natural for him to look after the interests of his family and dynasty. As far as mental and moral qualifications are concerned, both men were distinguished by that perfect equilibrium of powers of the mind and powers of the soul, which is but rarely found in men of the highest rank. Neither of these statesmen had the capacity of immediately conceiving and executing plans of a decisive character. Their minds, although full of resources, worked slowly in elaborating such plans; they weighed and hesitated before taking action; but as soon as their minds had been made up and a plan had been resolved upon, they acted without wavering, and held on to it until success or failure resulted from it. The great respect in which Washington has been always held by British historians and statesmen is, perhaps, the noblest tribute that can be paid to his character and abilities. The fact that Philip the Second relied less on his splendid armies, led by some of the ablest generals of Europe, and on his powerful navy, than on the death of William the Silent is, perhaps, the greatest eulogy which can be given to the great founder of the Dutch Republic. Unquestionably the Spanish monarch considered the twenty-five thousand gold pieces which he offered for the assassination of William of Orange, although an enormous sum for those times, but a very cheap equivalent for the life of a man who had been the very life and soul, the inspiring genius of the rebellious Dutch provinces. If monuments of foreign statesmen and rulers are to be erected on American soil, no fitter and no worthier man can be found for that honor than William the Silent.