Meuse and the Rhine. Extraordinary | the river, following the example of their exertions, however, were made to raise sisters on the Rhine, had succumbed to new levies, and to improve the fortresses; the invader's efforts. Louis, before this, and if the grand pensionary cannot escape had approached Utrecht and taken pos blame for having, during his protracted session of the surrounding country; and, rule, neglected the military force of the by the 18th of June, the citizens of AmStates, and for being too late at this con- sterdam heard with terror that a vast hosjuncture, he made good use of the re- tile force was encamped within a few sources at hand to place the common-leagues of their walls. Had the king listened to the advice of Condé *—the wealth in a state of defence. In May, 1672, the long-threatened tem- most daring and brilliant general of the pest suddenly burst. Three armies, or-age a few thousand horsemen might at ganized with extreme care, and furnished this crisis have fallen upon and captured with every appliance required to master the city; and, in that event, it is difficult rivers and overcome fortresses, were di- to see how the commonwealth could have rected against the territories of the States: escaped destruction. the first, under the command of Luxem- Hostilities had begun a month only; the bourg, advancing to meet the allied con- invaders had marched from conquest to tingents of the two bishops on the lower conquest; and now Zealand and Holland Rhine; the second, with the great Condé were the only provinces of the republic at its head, moving on a parallel line by outside their iron grasp. Even at sea the the Meuse; the third, led by Turenne and projects of the grand pensionary had been Louis, by the Sambre across the Spanish to a great extent frustrated; Charles, Netherlands, the neutrality of which had throwing off the mask, had declared war, been violated with contempt, as in the and endeavored to suppress the voice of case, long afterwards, of the campaign of his people; and the junction of the EnUlm. The second and third armies glish and French squadrons had made the effected their junction not far from Maes- intended descents impossible. De Ruytricht, on the lower Meuse. That cele ter, indeed, had vindicated his high rebrated fortress did not arrest the move-nown; he had surprised the allied fleets ment, having been masked by a sufficient detachment; and Louis, following the counsel of Turenne, a master of the great operations of war, made, with his united forces, for the lower Rhine. The celerity of the invaders' march was unexampled in the seventeenth century; fortress after fortress, assailed with the art and resources perfected by the renowned Vauban, and feebly defended, opened their gates; and by the second week of June, the victorious French had turned the great defensive line of the Wahal, and had penetrated into the province of Gelderland. The barrier of the Leck was next broken through, an advanced guard of horse having forced the passage, under the eyes of the king, with audacious courage; and by the 14th of June the conquering army, from sixty to eighty thousand strong, was rapidly marching towards the Yssel. The Prince of Orange had not more than thirty thousand men to defend the river; his army, besides, was too extended; and he was compelled to retreat from the last line of vantage, and to fall back to the verge of Holland. Meanwhile Luxembourg and his auxiliary forces were overrunning the northern provinces; towards the middle of June they had reached the Yssel and drawn near to the main army; and, in a few days, the fortified towns on in the roads of Solebay, and had gained a bloody but indecisive victory; but the navy of the States, after the disasters on land, was compelled gradually to abandon the sea, and was drawn towards the coast for the national defence. The situation seemed all but hopeless; and, in the uni versal panic caused by the rapidity and completeness of the French invasion, John de Witt assembled the States-General, and, with their approval, sent a deputation. to Louis. It may well be that the proposal to treat, at this terrible crisis, was an unwise policy; the grand pensionary ought probably to have seen that conces sion and compromise were now useless, and that resistance to the death was the one chance for his country; but the step he took, it is just to recollect, was sanctioned by the great national council, by a large majority of his own order, and even by many of the people of Holland; and finally it was in no sense opposed by the Prince of Orange and the military chiefs, who thought it impossible to prolong the war. On the other hand, the author of this work, with an industry and research deserving all praise, has shown that the heroic resolve which first arrested the in his "Lives of the Condés," will, no doubt, explain this The Duc d'Aumale, in the forthcoming volumes of important passage of the campaign. vader's progress, and proved the salvation | provinces were absent, or uttered doubt ful protests; but ultimately a majority in the States of Holland gave De Groot full powers in the name of the commonwealth, the secretary of the States-General withholding his signature to an instrument which expressed their consent. The vote, due in the main to the influence of a discredited class in a single province, became the signal for a great Orange rising, and for a tremendous outburst of popular passion. A cry went forth from Zealand and Holland, and found an echo in the other provinces, that the base merchants who had mismanaged everything, and had brought the nation to the verge of ruin, were about to save their wealth and their skins, by making an ignominious peace with the enemy; and a furious demand for a change in the government was adroitly encouraged by the adherents of William, and was backed by a mass of of the republic, was due in the main to the high-minded statesman, who is described by more than one historian of the time as, at this conjuncture, a pusillanimous coward. Before the French army had drawn near Utrecht, John de Witt had secretly given directions to have everything ready to pierce the dykes; and at the very time when he was parleying with the foe, he was inviting the chief men of the towns of Holland to venture upon a tremendous experiment, to be justified only by the extremity of danger. The assembly was by no means unanimous; many angry or timid protests were raised, but the grand pensionary was firm in his purpose; and the magistrates of Amsterdam having declared on his side, the orders were issued in the third week of June. In a few days the devouring sea, regaining with joy its ancient domain, had blotted out a rich and prosperous angry discontent, and by the army almost landscape formed by the toil of industrious ages; and villages, houses, pastures, and gardens, had disappeared under its silent wastes. But a broad and impassable expanse of waters lay between Amsterdam and the French army; and menof-war, floating like fortresses on the waves, formed a line of defence round the still imperilled city. nent to a man; while it was even approved by reflecting persons, who sincerely thought that, at this crisis, the best chance for the commonwealth lay in a transfer of power to the Prince of Orange. Words rapidly passed into significant acts; a general insurrection broke out; in several towns the existing head men were violently replaced by Orange partisans; in others the magBy this time the republican envoys istrates were forced to swear allegiance of whom De Groot, a son of the famous to the young chief of the army, who was Grotius, and formerly ambassador from already hailed as the new chief of the the States to France, was the most emi-State; in many, the government was dehad made their way to the camp of Louis. The king scornfully refused to see them, and handed them over to the pitiless Louvois, who, on the pretence that they had not sufficient powers, sent them back to the States without a word of hope. De Groot and his colleagues were at the Hague on the 25th and 26th of June; but they found the government almost in anarchy, and a revolution already imminent. The disasters of the commonwealth had brought disgrace on the long dominant high-burgher caste, and had enormously strengthened the Orange party; an insurrectionary movement had begun; and the grand pensionary, a mark for conspiracy, had been severely wounded by the hands of assassins. Long and angry debates, not restrained by the wisdom and moderating influence of John de Witt, followed in the States of Holland and the States General on the question of treating further with Louis; the deputies of Amsterdam and of five other towns insisted on break ing off, and refused to vote; the represen tatives in the States-General of five of the as nounced by excited and shouting mobs as knaves and cowards; and in some the burgher class had to hide their heads, or fly for their lives from the wrath of the populace. The movement was wild, but, on the whole, national; and rude banners worked with the quaint inscription of "Orange open, Witt (White) onder," they were flung out from many a tower and steeple, or were borne on high in a hundred market-places, attested the force of the prevailing sentiment. Nor was the success of the rising doubtful; the States of Holland - the centre and seat of the authority of the late ruling order — were compelled in terror, and under the threats of the populace, to give the revolution a solemn sanction, and to place William at the head of the commonwealth. On the 1st of July the prince was invested with the full authority of the ancient stadtholders by the assembly which, a few years before, had tried hard to abolish the office. The change in the government was sudden and complete. John de Witt ere long retired from the post he had filled with honor for nearly twenty years, and the administration of the two unconquered provinces was transferred to adherents of the Prince of Orange. Revolution, how ever, thirsts for blood, and the abettors of faction and popular fury united in a fierce cry for vengeance on the alleged traitors and foes of the States. The late grand pensionary was naturally the chief object of this passionate hate; but the first blow fell on the faithful brother, who had been for years his best friend and adviser. Cornelius de Witt, as high commissioner of the States, had been at sea during the late contest, and his presence of mind, of which he had given proof on De Ruyter's deck during the fight of Solebay, had won the admiration of the great seamen and his crew. But party madness thrust aside such memories: he had resented the violent change of magistrates at Dort, where the revolution first broke out, and this was enough in itself to mark him for a victim. An informer, infamous in life and character, made a false and scandalous charge against him, of having conspired against the Prince of Orange; and, having been arrested, and, contrary to law, taken out of the jurisdiction of Dort, he was cast into the state prison of the Hague. The judges of the supreme court of Holland, either being partisans of the new government or influenced by the frenzy of the hour, felt no scruples about trying to extort a confession from him by the direst tortures, and when the barbarous attempt had failed, and no proof of guilt could be found, they sentenced him to banishment for life. This example, however, went for nothing, while the other brother, a greater criminal in the eyes of the multitude, remained unpunished. John de Witt had been the head of the high-burgher class; he had always favored the national enemy; he had done nothing for the defence of the provinces; he had neglected, wasted, and misdirected everything; and mingled with these terrible charges, in which falsehood was artfully combined with truth, calumny noised about that he had betrayed the republic, that his private life had been steeped in vice, and that he was a bad citizen and a designing traitor. Denunciations like these breed crime, as a matter of course, at a popular crisis, and a conspiracy was hatched to murder the statesman who a few months before had been the pride of his countrymen. The wretches who had informed against one brother, and, terrible to relate, one of that brother's judges, were deep in the plot against the late grand pensionary; and it was finally agreed that a visit, to be made by John de Witt to Cornelius in prison, should be the occasion for the slaughter of both. The deed was to be done by a mob directed against the prison when the brothers were inside; but the conspiracy had skilful and determined leaders, and the sympathy at least of the multitude; and it is not improbable that John de Witt was lured to the terrible fate prepared for him by an invitation forged in his brother's name.* The tragedy that followed was not only a national crime of the deepest dye, with horrible and revolting incidents, but it illustrates one of the lessons of history, that in a revolution authority will often fail, be untrue to itself, and become powerless in presence of reckless and audacious wickedness. The charge of the state prison and the adjoining precincts was, it seems, divided between a committee of the States of Holland, at this time in session, and the magistrates of the town council of the Hague; and, as intelligence of a plot had perhaps been obtained, a body of soldiers from the regular army and parties from the train-bands of the guilds had been stationed around the building, with orders to keep the peace and to drive off a crowd. As soon, however, as an excited multitude, stirred to fury by the authors of the plot, had surged into the square around the prison, the members of the committee of the States slunk away, or only protested feebly; the magistrates, retreating to the town hall, entered into a parley with the very men who had been told off to commit the crime, and the soldiers were marched away on a false pretext, the commander, alone true to his duty, exclaiming against the desertion of their post. Thus the work to be done became easy; the trainband parties made no resistance; and one of these bodies actually furnished hands to consummate the execrable deed. We transcribe from the volumes before us details of the crime and the scenes that fol lowed; the narrative is copious and less dull than usual. The assassins found the doomed men together: The brothers heard them approach without alarm. Cornelius de Witt, broken down by the agonies of torture, was stretched upon his bed; he wore a nightcap, and was dressed in a robe of foreign stuff. John de Witt, who had kept on his shoulders his velvet cloak, was * M. Pontalis denies this; but see Henri Martin and his authorities on the other side. (Histoire de France, vol. xiii., p. 404.) seated before a table at the foot of the bed. He was reading the Bible to his brother, to strengthen him against the fear of death, and the anguish of the last hour of life. The officers of the guilds, who were their guardians, tried in vain to defend them against the murderers; these drove them back, charged them with having been bribed, and threatened them with the fate of the prisoners. A kind of prelude to the crime followed: Impatient to hasten to the bloody end, Verhoef, followed by his band, rushes to the bed of Cornelius de Witt, rudely draws the curtains, and exclaims, "Traitor, you must die; pray to God, and get ready.' "What harm have I done you?" was the calm answer of the victim. "You intended to take away the Prince's life; make haste, get up at once," said Verhoef. Proud and resigned, as he had been in the presence of the torturer, and with his hands joined, the magistrate collects himself in a last prayer, while a blow with the butt-end of a musket, directed against him, and turned aside by Verhoef, strikes one of the posts of the bed and breaks it. He is commanded to dress, and as he is putting a stocking on, a dagger is brandished at him, and he is forced to get up. John de Witt, separated from his brother by the irruption of the assassins, and having tried in vain to lay hold of a sword to defend himself and die, boldly advances to meet them, and asks them if they propose to slay him likewise. 66 Yes," is the cry; traitor, scoundrel, thief, the fate of your brother will be yours." At this moment, Van Soenen, a notary, strikes him on the back of his head with a pike, and blood gushes out. The Grand Pensionary calmly takes off his hat, and binds his pocket-handkerchief. Crossing his arms, he exclaims, in a firm tone of voice, "Do you wish my life? throw me, then, on the ground at your feet." And he the wound with bared his breast. The victims were then dragged forth from the prison, and massacred in sight of the populace: By Verhoef's orders, John and Cornelius de Witt, forced from their room, are violently driven towards the circular staircase, with its twenty-nine steps. The Grand Pensionary is dragged down first; his brother, wounded by a blow from a board, is nearly thrown over and hurled to the lowest banister. Scarcely able to move, he stretches out his arms. Their hands join in a parting clasp; and, looking at each other for the last time, each says, "Brother, good-bye!" When they reached the bottom of the staircase, they could not speak, and lost sight of each other. Verhoef had made John de Witt go on first; he kept close to him, like an executioner. "Troubled by the power of his eye," as he himself declared, he would not have dared to strike the first blow, even with the aid of two comrades, had John de Witt possessed a weapon to defend himself. He admitted that he was confounded by the coolness of the Grand Pensionary, who, having now only his honor to save, justified himself from the crime of treason laid to his charge, and exclaimed, "If all had done as I, not a town would have been surrendered." Hearing this conversation, and fearing that the prey would escape, the murderers began to accuse Verhoef of having been bribed, and of accepting from John de Witt his purse and watch. To clear himself, he pushed his victim away, and handed him over to the band of savages, who were waiting for him at the entrance of the prison, in order to conduct him, with his brother, sixty paces further to the scaffold in front of his Their fury prehouse in the Kneuterdijk. vented them from carrying out their orders, and the two prisoners were immolated before they reached the customary place of execu tion. Cornelius de Witt, having been dragged rather than led in the footsteps of his brother, he had been behind him, - was the first to "What perish by the hands of the murderers. do you wish me to do?" he said; "whither am I to go?" Scarcely has he passed from the prison vault, driven along at the point of daggers and pikes, and entered the adjoining square, when, forced against the balustrade that overlooks the canal, he stumbles, falls to the ground, and is trodden under foot. Two citizens, a wineseller called Van Kyp and one Louw, a butcher, strike him down with the butts of their guns. He was trying to raise himself on his hands, when Cornelis d'Assigny, an engraver, the lieutenant of the Blue trainband, stabs him with a dagger, while a sailor splits his skull with a hatchet. The bystanders then rush forward and dance on the corpse. his own. John de Witt, having been led from The agony of his brother follows close upon the prison bareheaded, and with blood flowing down his face from the stroke of the pike, had wrapped himself up in a cloak, and was making use of it to ward off the blows that were aimed at him from every side. He had been delivered from Verhoef, who, wounded by a blow from a musket, had thought it unsafe to stay by his side, and was trying to escape; and he was addressing the spectators in last words like these, "What are you doing? surely you do not wish this?" when the pitiless men of the Blue train-band drive him back, and close their ranks, while he makes a vain attempt to get through their double line. He was turning his head, horror-stricken, as the frightful sounds that announced the death of his brother reached his ears, when he is shot from behind by a pistol fired by John Van Valme, a navy officer, whose brother had been one of Verhoef's band. Seeing him totter and fall, the assassin exclaims, "There is the Perpetual Edict on the ground!" John de Witt, bruised and dying, is nevertheless still able to lift his head, and to stretch his clasped hands towards heaven, when this last insult is not spared: "You pray to God? | formally absolved from the oath he had why you don't believe in Him; you have long sworn to obey the fallen government. ago abjured Him, you traitor and miscreant ! But he had not uttered a word to restrain At this moment, another assassin, Peter Verhaguen, an innkeeper, leaves the ranks of the Blue train-band; his gun having missed fire, he gives the Grand Pensionary a violent blow on the head with a musket, which leaves him senseless; and then some other men of the same company- - a butcher, Christopher Haan, was one of them- fire at him point-blank, and thus despatch him. It was half past four in the afternoon. the savage violence of his extreme partisans; he allowed the revolution to run its course and to raise him to power, without an attempt to moderate its disgraceful. excesses; he acquiesced in anarchy, and profited by it. As for the brothers De Witt, we do not believe that he compassed or even connived at their deaths; his nature was superior to deeds of blood, and, as a statesman, he knew that crimes are blunders; but he artfully encouraged the movement against them; he did not raise a finger to avert their fate; he cynically remarked when all was over that it Two corpses were all that remained of the great citizens who, after faithful and glorious" was a lamentable but a fortunate acciservices, had been immolated as their country's dent;" and the principal murderers were, enemies. These, too, were not spared. Having beyond question, rewarded or amnestied brought them to one spot, the train-bands next the prison form into a circle, and discharge under his government. Yet genuine and their pieces in sign of rejoicing. The corpses even ardent patriotism undoubtedly blend. were then dragged to the scaffold; they were ed with selfish ambition in prompting hung up by employing the locks and bandoliers William to pursue this course of calculatof the muskets. A sailor tied them back to ing but far-sighted statecraft. He felt, back by the feet, and fastened them to the and he was soon to show, that the safety highest steps of the gibbet, declaring that of the republic depended on himself; and, "criminals such as these ought not to be not to speak of the extraordinary powers hanged by their heads." Their clothes were he was before long to reveal to the world,. torn away and the fragments divided. Adrian Van Vaalm, a postboy, one of the chief con- the ties that linked him to royal houses,. spirators, got hold of the velvet cloak of John and that became the means of securing de Witt, and ran through the streets, crying the aid of more than one monarchy to the out, "Here are the rags of great John the Seven Provinces, caused him to be at this. traitor ! " crisis their most fitting governor. These: considerations tell strongly for him; nor ought we to blame his party for seeking a change in the government at this conjunc ture. The services of John de Witt had, no doubt, been splendid; he was person-ally very little to blame for the compara. tively defenceless state of the Provinces.;. he had labored more successfully than was generally supposed to combine alli ances against the enemy; in the hour of trial he had proved himself not unequal to cope with a dire emergency. But he was which had in some measure betrayed its the representative and head of a class trust, and did not possess the national sympathy; he had always favored the alliance with France, and his policy was naturally condemned and decried when a French army was at the gates of Amsterdam. In these circumstances, a general movement to deprive him of office and to place in his stead a scion of a great race of heroes, who on other occasions had saved the commonwealth, was to be expected and was not blameworthy; what history justly censures are the abominable crimes of the revolution which was the consequence. In the midst of the howling of a mob thirsting for blood, the victims after death received treatment of the most barbarous kind. The two first fingers of John de Witt's right hand were cut off, as if to make him expiate the use he had put them to in signing and assenting to the Perpetual Edict. In wanton outrage the more excited wretches in the crowd mutilated the corpses in the most shameful and obscene fashion. As if to exhibit the last excesses of savage brutality, one of those at this abominable work took a piece of flesh, and boasted that he would eat it. The mangled remnants of the bodies were sold by auction. "I bought,' an eyewitness said, "a finger of John de Witt's hand for two sous and a pot of beer." The 20th of August, 1672, a day long remembered with grief in Europe, was the date of this execrable deed of blood. The conduct of William in the revolution, of which we have briefly sketched the outline, was of a piece with his wellknown character. With habitual self command and prudence, he took care not to forestall events or to make a single premature step; he had the warrant of law for all his acts; he even refused with grave decorum the office of stadtholder when proffered to him, until he had been VOL. XLVIII 2494 LIVING AGE. Success was ere long to justify William, |