election was therefore equivalent to his appointment as Stadtholder of the Republic. In effect it placed the De Witts at his mercy.
In vain the Grand Pensionary handed in his resignation on the fourth of August. The Orange party was not satisfied with permitting him to retire from the public service; it formed a sinister conspiracy which engulfed the two illustrious men in ruin and death. A worthless scoundrel, a certain Tichelaar who on several occasions had been accused of felonies, openly charged Cornelius de Witt with having tried to bribe him to assassinate the Prince Stadtholder,—a proposition which he had indignantly rejected in spite of the tempting rewards offered to him. Incredible as it may appear, the accusation, contradicted both by the noble character of Cornelius de Witt and by the bad reputation of the informer, was eagerly acted upon by the authorities of Holland. Cornelius was arrested and imprisoned at the Hague, where for four days he was subjected to the infamy of the torture. It was hoped that in his agony he would make a confession of guilt which, true or not, would justify his partisan judges in passing a sentence of death on him. But Cornelius remained firm in his disdainful denial of the odious accusation, and the repetition of the torture on four different days did not change his testimony. Under these circumstances his base judges, instruments of the Stadtholder and his party, did not dare to pronounce the death sentence against him; but they found him guilty nevertheless, deprived him of all his public dignities, and exiled him for life from the territory of the Republic.
It may appear strange that the Orange party persecuted Cornelius de Witt, who was the brother of the Grand Pensionary, with such venomous hatred; but an occurrence which had shortly preceded his arrest will explain the ill-will of the leaders of the Orange party. Like the other cities of Holland, the city of Dordrecht had, by a vote of its Common Council, revoked the Perpetual Edict. Cornelius de Witt had but a few weeks before returned from the battle of Solbay, where he had so greatly distinguished himself, and was confined to his bed by serious illness. Being one of the highest city officials, his signature was required on the act of revocation, and the Orange leaders demanded that the document should be forthwith presented to him. City officials, followed by an excited and hostile mob, took it to his residence and requested him to sign it. He refused. In vain his family, his friends, and his servants implored him to affix his signature, telling him that a mob of thousands of excited people surrounded the house and threatened to demolish it and kill the inhabitants if his name should not appear on the paper. Finally the supplications and tears of his wife and children, imploring him not to sacrifice their lives by his obstinacy, induced him to affix his signature, but he added the two initials V. C. to it; and when the officials asked him what those two letters meant, he answered, “They stand for the words ‘Vi coactus’” (yielding to violence). This declaration caused an outburst of indignation in the crowd, and but for the speedy erasure of the obnoxious initials by his wife, and the energetic efforts of his friends to protect him, Cornelius de Witt would very likely on that day have paid for his boldness with his life. It was ascertained that Tichelaar, who shortly afterwards accused him of having planned the assassination of the Prince of Orange, had been one of the mob surrounding the house and vociferously demanding the punishment of the rebellious magistrate. The infamous charge of Tichelaar against the great patriot had unquestionably sprung from the scene at Cornelius de Witt’s residence. The Orange leaders saw that it would not be safe for them or their master to let republicans like the two De Witts remain among them, and their death was resolved upon.
The twentieth of August, 1672, was the fatal day which was to seal the doom of the two illustrious brothers. Cornelius, crushed by the sentence of perpetual banishment pronounced against him, remained in his cell at the Buitenhof, the terrible prison of the Hague. On the morning of that day John de Witt was called to the Buitenhof, where his brother wished to see him. Although warned by his friends not to go, the brave ex-Pensionary did not hesitate to comply with the summons. It was a false message. Reaching the prison, he found himself entrapped and at the mercy of the mob, which had assembled before the prison howling and shouting, “Hurrah for Orange! Death to the traitors!” It was but a short time after his arrival, and after a hurried and pathetic interview with his brother, that the rabble, instigated by the calumnies of the Orange men, burst open the doors of the prison, and with axes and sledge-hammers and clubs forced their way up to the cell where Cornelius was imprisoned. At the sight of the two brothers the fury of the mob knew no bounds. Like tigers they jumped upon them, threw them down, clubbed and slew them amid cries of beastly exultation. “There goes the Perpetual Edict!” one of the butchers is said to have exclaimed as a powerful blow with the butt-end of his musket prostrated John de Witt senseless at his feet. Another murderer came up, and noticing symptoms of returning consciousness in the countenance of the Pensionary, he fired his pistol at him, blowing out his brains. Cornelius was killed by a tremendous blow with an iron bar which fractured his skull; he died instantly. But death alone did not satisfy the slayers. With unheard-of brutality they kicked, beat and abused, in every possible manner, the lifeless bodies, and finally, after having stripped off their clothes, dragged the mangled and disfigured remains from the jail to a gibbet which had been erected by volunteer executioners, and hung them by the feet. The popular frenzy went so far that the murderers cut and tore the flesh in pieces from the bodies of “the great traitors, John and Cornelius de Witt,” and sold them in the streets of the city for a few cents each.
Thus suffered and died, on the twentieth of August, 1672, two of the purest and most high-minded patriots that any nation has produced,—murdered by their own people, whom they had served faithfully and successfully for many years. Their death is a dark blot on the annals of the Dutch Republic: and it is an indelible stain on the otherwise great and fair name of William the Third of Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic and afterwards King of England. History has forgotten many crimes, but it will not forget the assassination of the brothers De Witt.