leaving the house he loitered about the courtyard, furtively examining
the premises, so that a sergeant of halberdiers asked him why he was
waiting there. Balthazar meekly replied that he was desirous of
attending divine worship in the church opposite, but added, pointing to,
his shabby and travel-stained attire, that, without at least a new pair
of shoes and stockings, he was unfit to join the congregation.
Insignificant as ever, the small, pious, dusty stranger excited no
suspicion in the mind of the good-natured sergeant. He forthwith spoke
of the wants of Gerard to an officer, by whom they were communicated to
Orange himself, and the Prince instantly ordered a sum of money to be
given him. Thus Balthazar obtained from William's charity what Parma's
thrift had denied--a fund for carrying out his purpose.
Next morning, with the money thus procured he purchased a pair of
pistols, or small carabines, from a soldier, chaffering long about the
price because the vender could not supply a particular kind of chopped
bullets or slugs which he desired. Before the sunset of the following
day that soldier had stabbed himself to the heart, and died despairing,
on hearing for what purpose the pistols had been bought.
On Tuesday, the 10th of July, 1584, at about half-past twelve, the
Prince, with his wife on his arm, and followed by the ladies and
gentlemen of his family, was going to the dining-room. William the
Silent was dressed upon that day, according to his usual custom, in very
plain fashion. He wore a wide-leaved, loosely-shaped hat of dark felt;
with a silken cord round the crown-such as had been worn by the Beggars
in the early days of the revolt. A high ruff encircled his neck, from
which also depended one of the Beggar's medals, with the motto, "Fideles
au roy jusqu'a la besace," while a loose surcoat of grey frieze cloth,
over a tawny leather doublet, with wide, slashed underclothes completed
his costume. Gerard presented himself at the doorway, and demanded a
passport. The Princess, struck with the pale and agitated countenance of
the man, anxiously questioned her husband concerning the stranger. The
Prince carelessly observed that "it was merely a person who came for a
passport," ordering, at the same time, a secretary forthwith to prepare
one. The Princess, still not relieved, observed in an under-tone that
"she had never seen so villainous a countenance." Orange, however, not
at all impressed with the appearance of Gerard, conducted himself at
table with his usual cheerfulness, conversing much with the burgomaster
of Leewarden, the only guest present at the family dinner, concerning the
political and religious aspects of Friesland. At two o'clock the company
rose from table. The Prince led the way, intending to pass to his
private apartments above. The dining-room, which was on the ground
floor, opened into a little square vestibule, which communicated, through
an arched passageway, with the main entrance into the court-yard. This
vestibule was also directly at the foot of the wooden staircase leading
to the next floor, and was scarcely six feet in width. Upon its left
side, as one approached the stairway, was an, obscure arch, sunk deep in
the wall, and completely in the shadow of the door. Behind this arch a
portal opened to the narrow lane at the side of the house. The stairs
themselves were completely lighted by a large window, half way up the
flight. The Prince came from the dining-room, and began leisurely to
ascend. He had only reached the second stair, when a man emerged from
the sunken arch, and, standing within a foot or two of him, discharged
a pistol full at his heart. Three balls entered his body, one of which,
passing quite through him, struck with violence against the wall beyond.
The Prince exclaimed in French, as he felt the wound, "O my God; have
mercy upon my soul! O my God, have mercy upon this poor people."
These were the last words he ever spoke, save that when his sister,
Catherine of Schwartzburg, immediately afterwards asked him if he
commended his soul to Jesus Christ, he faintly answered, "Yes." His
master of the horse, Jacob van Maldere, had caught him in his arms as the
fatal shot was fired. The Prince was then placed on the stairs for an
instant, when he immediately began to swoon. He was afterwards laid upon
a couch in the dining-room, where in a few minutes, he breathed his last
in the arms of his wife and sister.
The murderer succeeded in making his escape through the side door, and
sped swiftly up the narrow lane. He had almost reached the ramparts,
from which he intended to spring into the moat, when he stumbled over a
heap of rubbish. As he rose, he was seized by several pages and
halberdiers, who had pursued him from the house. He had dropped his
pistols upon the spot where he had committed the crime, and upon his
person were found a couple, of bladders, provided with apiece of pipe
with which he had intended to assist himself across the moat, beyond
which a horse was waiting for him. He made no effort to deny his
identity, but boldly avowed himself and his deed. He was brought back to
the house, where he immediately underwent a preliminary examination
before the city magistrates. He was afterwards subjected to excruciating
tortures; for the fury against the wretch who had destroyed the Father of
the country was uncontrollable, and William the Silent was no longer
alive to intercede--as he had often done before--in behalf of those who
assailed his life.
The organization of Balthazar Gerard would furnish a subject of profound
study, both for the physiologist and the metaphysician. Neither wholly a
fanatic, nor entirely a ruffian, he combined the most dangerous elements
of both characters. In his puny body and mean exterior were enclosed
considerable mental powers and accomplishments, a daring ambition, and a
courage almost superhuman. Yet those qualities led him only to form upon
the threshold of life a deliberate determination to achieve greatness by
the assassin's trade. The rewards held out by the Ban, combining with
his religious bigotry and his passion for distinction, fixed all his
energies with patient concentration upon the one great purpose for which
he seemed to have been born, and after seven years' preparation, he had
at last fulfilled his design.
Upon being interrogated by the magistrates, he manifested neither despair
nor contrition, but rather a quiet exultation." Like David," he said,
"he had slain Goliath of Gath."
When falsely informed that his victim was not dead, he showed no
credulity or disappointment. He had discharged three poisoned balls into
the Prince's stomach, and he knew that death must have already ensued.
He expressed regret, however, that the resistance of the halberdiers had
prevented him from using his second pistol, and avowed that if he were a
thousand leagues away he would return in order to do the deed again, if
possible. He deliberately wrote a detailed confession of his crime, and
of the motives and manner of its commission, taking care, however, not to
implicate Parma in the transaction. After sustaining day after day the
most horrible tortures, he subsequently related his interviews with
Assonleville and with the president of the Jesuit college at Treves
adding that he had been influenced in his work by the assurance of
obtaining the rewards promised by the Ban. During the intervals of
repose from the rack he conversed with ease, and even eloquence,
answering all questions addressed to him with apparent sincerity. His
constancy in suffering so astounded his judges that they believed him
supported by witchcraft. "Ecce homo!" he exclaimed, from time to time,
with insane blasphemy, as he raised his blood-streaming head from the
bench. In order to destroy the charm which seemed to render him
insensible to pain, they sent for the shirt of a hospital patient,
supposed to be a sorcerer. When clothed in this garment, however,
Balthazar was none the less superior to the arts of the tormentors,
enduring all their inflictions, according to an eye-witness, "without
once exclaiming, Ah me!" and avowing that he would repeat his
enterprise, if possible, were he to die a thousand deaths in consequence.
Some of those present refused to believe that he was a man at all.
Others asked him how long since he had sold himself to the Devil? to
which he replied, mildly, that he had no acquaintance whatever with the
Devil. He thanked the judges politely for the food which he received in
prison, and promised to recompense them for the favor. Upon being asked
how that was possible, he replied; that he would serve as their advocate
in Paradise.
The sentence pronounced against the assassin was execrable--a crime
against the memory of the great man whom it professed to avenge. It was
decreed that the right hand of Gerard should be burned off with a red-hot
iron, that his flesh should be torn from his bones with pincers in six
different places, that he should be quartered and disembowelled alive,
that his heart should be torn from his bosom and flung in his face, and
that, finally, his head should be taken off. Not even his horrible
crime, with its endless consequences, nor the natural frenzy of
indignation which it had excited, could justify this savage decree,
to rebuke which the murdered hero might have almost risen from the sleep
of death. The sentence was literally executed on the 14th of July, the
criminal supporting its horrors with the same astonishing fortitude. So
calm were his nerves, crippled and half roasted as he was ere he mounted
the scaffold, that when one of the executioners was slightly injured in
the ear by the flying from the handle of the hammer with which he was
breaking the fatal pistol in pieces, as the first step in the execution
--a circumstance which produced a general laugh in the crowd--a smile was
observed upon Balthazar's face in sympathy with the general hilarity.
His lips were seen to move up to the moment when his heart was thrown in
his face--"Then," said a looker-on, "he gave up the ghost."
The reward promised by Philip to the man who should murder Orange was
paid to the heirs of Gerard. Parma informed his sovereign that the "poor
man" had been executed, but that his father and mother were still living;
to whom he recommended the payment of that "merced" which "the laudable
and generous deed had so well deserved." This was accordingly done, and
the excellent parents, ennobled and enriched by the crime of their son,
received instead of the twenty-five thousand crowns promised in the Ban,
the three seignories of Lievremont, Hostal, and Dampmartin in the Franche
Comte, and took their place at once among the landed aristocracy. Thus
the bounty of the Prince had furnished the weapon by which his life was
destroyed, and his estates supplied the fund out of which the assassin's
family received the price of blood. At a later day, when the unfortunate
eldest son of Orange returned from Spain after twenty-seven years'
absence, a changeling and a Spaniard, the restoration of those very
estates was offered to him by Philip the Second, provided he would
continue to pay a fixed proportion of their rents to the family of his
father's murderer. The education which Philip William had received,
under the King's auspices, had however, not entirely destroyed all his
human feelings, and he rejected the proposal with scorn. The estates
remained with the Gerard family, and the patents of nobility which they
had received were used to justify their exemption from certain taxes,
until the union of Franche Comte, with France, when a French governor
tore the documents in pieces and trampled them under foot.
William of Orange, at the period of his death, was aged fifty-one years
and sixteen days. He left twelve children. By his first wife, Anne of
Egmont, he had one son, Philip, and one daughter, Mary, afterwards
married to Count Hohenlo. By his second wife, Anna of Saxony; he had one
son, the celebrated Maurice of Nassau, and two daughters, Anna, married
afterwards to her cousin, Count William Louis, and Emilie, who espoused
the Pretender of Portugal, Prince Emanuel. By Charlotte of Bourbon, his
third wife, he had six daughters; and by his fourth, Louisa de Coligny,
one son, Frederic William, afterwards stadholder of the Republic in
her most palmy days. The Prince was entombed on the 3rd of August,
at Delft, amid the tears of a whole nation. Never was a more extensive,
unaffected, and legitimate sorrow felt at the death of any human being.
The life and labors of Orange had established the emancipated common-
wealth upon a secure foundation, but his death rendered the union of all
the Netherlands into one republic hopeless. The efforts of the
Malcontent nobles, the religious discord, the consummate ability, both
political and military, of Parma, all combined with the lamentable loss
of William the Silent to separate for ever the southern and Catholic
provinces from the northern confederacy. So long as the Prince remained
alive, he was the Father of the whole country; the Netherlands--saving
only the two Walloon provinces--constituting a whole. Notwithstanding
the spirit of faction and the blight of the long civil war, there was at
least one country; or the hope of a country, one strong heart, one
guiding head, for the patriotic party throughout the land. Philip and
Granvelle were right in their estimate of the advantage to be derived
from the Prince's death, in believing that an assassin's hand could
achieve more than all the wiles which Spanish or Italian statesmanship
could teach, or all the armies which Spain or Italy could muster. The
pistol of the insignificant Gerard destroyed the possibility of a united
Netherland state, while during the life of William there was union in the
policy, unity in the history of the country.
In the following year, Antwerp, hitherto the centre around which all the
national interests and historical events group themselves, fell before
the scientific efforts of Parma. The city which had so long been the
freest, as well as the most opulent, capital in Europe, sank for ever to
the position of a provincial town. With its fall, combined with other
circumstances, which it is not necessary to narrate in anticipation,
the final separation of the Netherlands was completed. On the other
hand, at the death of Orange, whose formal inauguration as sovereign
Count had not yet taken place, the states of Holland and Zealand
reassumed the Sovereignty. The commonwealth which William had liberated
for ever from Spanish tyranny continued to exist as a great and
flourishing republic during, more than two centuries, under the
successive stadholderates of his sons and descendants.
His life gave existence to an independent country--his death defined its
limits. Had he lived twenty years longer, it is probable that the seven
provinces would have been seventeen; and that the Spanish title would
have been for ever extinguished both in Nether Germany and Celtic Gaul.
Although there was to be the length of two human generations more of
warfare ere Spain acknowledged the new government, yet before the
termination of that period the United States had become the first naval
power and one of the most considerable commonwealths in the world; while
the civil and religious liberty, the political independence of the land,
together with the total expulsion of the ancient foreign tyranny from the
soil, had been achieved ere the eyes of William were closed. The
republic existed, in fact, from the moment of the abjuration in 1581.
The most important features of the polity which thus assumed a prominent
organization have been already indicated. There was no revolution, no
radical change. The ancient rugged tree of Netherland liberty--with its
moss-grown trunk, gnarled branches, and deep-reaching roots--which had
been slowly growing for ages, was still full of sap, and was to deposit
for centuries longer its annual rings of consolidated and concentric
strength. Though lopped of some luxuriant boughs, it was sound at the
core, and destined for a still larger life than even in the healthiest
moments of its mediveval existence.
The history of the rise of the Netherland Republic has been at the same
time the biography of William the Silent. This, while it gives unity to
the narrative, renders an elaborate description of his character
superfluous. That life was a noble Christian epic; inspired with one
great purpose from its commencement to its close; the stream flowing ever
from one fountain with expanding fulness, but retaining all its original
pity. A few general observations are all which are necessary by way of
conclusion.
In person, Orange was above the middle height, perfectly well made and
sinewy, but rather spare than stout. His eyes, hair, beard, and
complexion were brown. His head was small, symmetrically-shaped,
combining the alertness and compactness characteristic of the soldier;
with the capacious brow furrowed prematurely with the horizontal lines of
thought, denoting the statesman and the sage. His physical appearance
was, therefore, in harmony, with his organization, which was of antique
model. Of his moral qualities, the most prominent was his piety. He was
more than anything else a religious man. From his trust in God, he ever
derived support and consolation in the darkest hours. Implicitly relying
upon Almighty wisdom and goodness, he looked danger in the face with a
constant smile, and endured incessant labors and trials with a serenity
which seemed more than human. While, however, his soul was full of
piety, it was tolerant of error. Sincerely and deliberately himself a
convert to the Reformed Church, he was ready to extend freedom of worship
to Catholics on the one hand, and to Anabaptists on the other, for no man
ever felt more keenly than he, that the Reformer who becomes in his turn
a bigot is doubly odious.
His firmness was allied to his piety. His constancy in bearing the whole
weight of struggle as unequal as men have ever undertaken, was the theme
of admiration even to his enemies. The rock in the ocean, "tranquil amid
raging billows," was the favorite emblem by which his friends expressed,
their sense of his firmness. From the time when, as a hostage in France,
he first discovered the plan of Philip to plant the Inquisition in the
Netherlands, up to the last moment of his life, he never faltered in his
determination to resist that iniquitous scheme. This resistance was the
labor of his life. To exclude the Inquisition; to maintain the ancient
liberties. of his country, was the task which he appointed to himself
when a youth of three-and-twenty. Never speaking a word concerning a
heavenly mission, never deluding himself or others with the usual
phraseology of enthusiasts, he accomplished the task, through danger,
amid toils, and with sacrifices such as few men have ever been able to
make on their country's altar; for the disinterested benevolence of the
man was as prominent as his fortitude. A prince of high rank, and, with
royal revenues, he stripped himself of station, wealth, almost at times
of the common necessaries of life, and became, in his country's cause,
nearly a beggar as well as an outlaw. Nor was he forced into his career
by an accidental impulse from which there was no recovery. Retreat was
ever open to him. Not only pardon but advancement was urged upon him
again and again. Officially and privately, directly and circuitously,
his confiscated estates, together with indefinite and boundless favors in
addition, were offered to him on every great occasion. On the arrival of
Don John, at the Breda negotiations, at the Cologne conferences, we have
seen how calmly these offers were waved aside, as if their rejection was
so simple that it hardly required many words for its signification, yet
he had mortgaged his estates so deeply that his heirs hesitated at
accepting their inheritance, for fear it should involve them in debt.
Ten years after his death, the account between his executors and his
brother John amounted to one million four hundred thousand florins--due
to the Count, secured by various pledges of real and personal property;
and it was finally settled upon this basis. He was besides largely
indebted to every one of his powerful relatives, so that the payment of
the incumbrances upon his estate very nearly justified the fears of his
children. While on the one hand, therefore, he poured out these enormous
sums like water, and firmly refused a hearing to the tempting offers of
the royal government, upon the other hand he proved the disinterested
nature of his services by declining, year after year, the sovereignty
over the provinces; and by only accepting, in the last days of his life,
when refusal had become almost impossible, the limited, constitutional
supremacy over that portion of them which now makes the realm of his
descendants. He lived and died, not for himself, but for his country:
"God pity this poor people!" were his dying words.
His intellectual faculties were various and of the highest order. He had
the exact, practical, and combining qualities which make the great
commander, and his friends claimed that, in military genius, he was
second to no captain in Europe. This was, no doubt, an exaggeration
of partial attachment, but it is certain that the Emperor Charles had
an exalted opinion of his capacity for the field. His fortification of
Philippeville and Charlemont, in the face of the enemy his passage of the
Meuse in Alva's sight--his unfortunate but well-ordered campaign against
that general--his sublime plan of relief, projected and successfully
directed at last from his sick bed, for the besieged city of Leyden--
will always remain monuments of his practical military skill.
Of the soldier's great virtues--constancy in disaster, devotion to duty,
hopefulness in defeat--no man ever possessed a larger share. He arrived,
through a series of reverses, at a perfect victory. He planted a free
commonwealth under the very battery of the Inquisition, in defiance of
the most powerful empire existing. He was therefore a conqueror in the
loftiest sense, for he conquered liberty and a national existence for a
whole people. The contest was long, and he fell in the struggle, but the
victory was to the dead hero, not to the living monarch. It is to be
remembered, too, that he always wrought with inferior instruments. His
troops were usually mercenaries, who were but too apt to mutiny upon the
eve of battle, while he was opposed by the most formidable veterans of
Europe, commanded successively by the first captains of the age. That,
with no lieutenant of eminent valor or experience, save only his brother
Louis, and with none at all after that chieftain's death, William of
Orange should succeed in baffling the efforts of Alva, Requesens, Don
John of Austria, and Alexander Farnese--men whose names are among the
most brilliant in the military annals of the world--is in itself,
sufficient evidence of his warlike ability. At the period of his death
he had reduced the number of obedient provinces to two; only Artois and
Hainault acknowledging Philip, while the other fifteen were in open
revolt, the greater part having solemnly forsworn their sovereign.