The iron gate that served as a defense to the castle had been forced open. A portion of the mob penetrated into the outer yard which separated the square from the façade of the castle, and where a low stoop led up to an ogive door. The shadow, into which the vault of the door threw the inside, allowed but an indistinct view of the lowest steps of the staircase by which John and Cornelius De Witt descended. The instant the two brothers appeared at the top of the stoop, whither they were pushed by the militiamen of the Blue Flag, yells of hate and vengeance broke forth from all sides.
"There they are!" "We got them both!" "Death to the De Witts!" "Death to the traitors!" "Death to the French party!"
Separated from the two victims, and hemmed in by a compact mass of people, Serdan, Salaun Lebrenn and Nominoë were as impotent to bring the slightest help to Cornelius and John as to flee from the spectacle that they were about to witness. In that situation, and justly fearing to be recognized as Frenchmen and massacred on the spot, they controlled their grief and indignation, and only exchanged looks of despair as the tragedy was enacted before their eyes.
The moment the two De Witts, John sustaining his brother, stepped out upon the stoop, one of the militiamen raised his musket, holding it by the barrel, and dealt Cornelius De Witt a furious blow upon the head, shouting at the same time:
"Die, traitor! The blood, shed by the soldiers of Louis XIV, shall fall upon your head! Death to all the accomplices of the French King!"
Stunned by the blow, Cornelius staggered and reeled. Instantly the butcher seized him by the hair, and dragged him down to the bottom of the stoop, brandishing his knife. John De Witt rushed forward to his brother's help, but before he could descend two steps, a notary, Van Soenen by name, barred his way, and, exclaiming: "Die, traitor! Your friends the French murdered our prisoners at Swamerdam! Die, traitor, renegade!" hurled his pike into the face of the Grand Pensionary, transfixing it.
Blinded by the blood that spurted from his wound, John De Witt dropped on one knee. He immediately endeavored to rise, crying: "My brother! My brother!" But at that moment a man named Van Valen gripped him by the throat, threw him to the ground, and planting his foot upon De Witt's chest, discharged his pistol into the head of the prostrate man, loudly vociferating: "Die, wretch! You betrayed your country! So shall all the accomplices of Louis XIV die! Death to all papists!"
The corpse of John De Witt was dragged under the Buytenhoff Arcade beside his brother's, whom the butcher killed. The mob pounced like tigers upon the two bodies, riddled them with shots, stripped them naked, mutilated them beyond recognition—and, Oh, frightful reprisals that the two martyrs were the innocent victims of! each act of sacrilegious profanation was accompanied with a thousand imprecations intended to recall the atrocities committed by the soldiers of Louis XIV, who crowned their acts of pillage, of incendiarism, of iniquities perpetrated upon women, and of murder, by outraging even the corpses which they stripped of their funeral robes, and deprived of burial!
Finally, the shapeless remains of the two great citizens were hung from the gibbet where common malefactors were executed.