Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War — Complete (1614-23)

by John Lothrop Motley

Were these the words of a baffled conspirator and traitor? Were they uttered to produce an effect upon public opinion and avert a merited condemnation by all good men? There is not in them a syllable of reproach, of anger, of despair. And let it be remembered that they were not written for the public at all. They were never known to the public, hardly heard of either by the Advocate's enemies or friends, save the one to whom they were addressed and the monarch to whom that friend was accredited. They were not contained in official despatches, but in private, confidential outpourings to a trusted political and personal associate of many years. From the day they were written until this hour they have never been printed, and for centuries perhaps not read.

He proceeded to explain what he considered to be the law in the Netherlands with regard to military allegiance. It is not probable that there was in the country a more competent expounder of it; and defective and even absurd as such a system was, it had carried the Provinces successfully through a great war, and a better method for changing it might have been found among so law-loving and conservative a people as the Netherlanders than brute force.

"Information has apparently been sent to England," he said, "that My Lords of Holland through their commissioners in Utrecht dictated to the soldiery standing at their charges something that was unreasonable. The truth is that the States of Holland, as many of them as were assembled, understanding that great haste was made to send his Excellency and some deputies from the other provinces to Utrecht, while the members of the Utrecht assembly were gone to report these difficulties to their constituents and get fresh instructions from them, wishing that the return of those members should be waited for and that the Assembly of Holland might also be complete—a request which was refused—sent a committee to Utrecht, as the matter brooked no delay, to give information to the States of that province of what was passing here and to offer their good offices.

"They sent letters also to his Excellency to move him to reasonable accommodation without taking extreme measures in opposition to those resolutions of the States of Utrecht which his Excellency had promised to conform with and to cause to be maintained by all officers and soldiers. Should his Excellency make difficulty in this, the commissioners were instructed to declare to him that they were ordered to warn the colonels and captains standing in the payment of Holland, by letter and word of mouth, that they were bound by oath to obey the States of Holland as their paymasters and likewise to carry out the orders of the provincial and municipal magistrates in the places where they were employed. The soldiery was not to act or permit anything to be done against those resolutions, but help to carry them out, his Excellency himself and the troops paid by the States of Holland being indisputably bound by oath and duty so to do."

Doubtless a more convenient arrangement from a military point of view might be imagined than a system of quotas by which each province in a confederacy claimed allegiance and exacted obedience from the troops paid by itself in what was after all a general army. Still this was the logical and inevitable result of State rights pushed to the extreme and indeed had been the indisputable theory and practice in the Netherlands ever since their revolt from Spain. To pretend that the proceedings and the oath were new because they were embarrassing was absurd. It was only because the dominant party saw the extreme inconvenience of the system, now that it was turned against itself, that individuals contemptuous of law and ignorant of history denounced it as a novelty.

But the strong and beneficent principle that lay at the bottom of the Advocate's conduct was his unflagging resolve to maintain the civil authority over the military in time of peace. What liberal or healthy government would be possible otherwise? Exactly as he opposed the subjection of the magistracy by the priesthood or the mob, so he now defended it against the power of the sword. There was no justification whatever for a claim on the part of Maurice to exact obedience from all the armies of the Republic, especially in time of peace. He was himself by oath sworn to obey the States of Holland, of Utrecht, and of the three other provinces of which he was governor. He was not commander-in-chief. In two of the seven provinces he had no functions whatever, military or civil. They had another governor.

Yet the exposition of the law, as it stood, by the Advocate and his claim that both troops and Stadholder should be held to their oaths was accounted a crime. He had invented a new oath—it was said—and sought to diminish the power of the Prince. These were charges, unjust as they were, which might one day be used with deadly effect.

"We live in a world where everything is interpreted to the worst," he said. "My physical weakness continues and is increased by this affliction. I place my trust in God the Lord and in my upright and conscientious determination to serve the country, his Excellency, and the religion in which through God's grace I hope to continue to the end."

On the 28th August of a warm afternoon, Barneveld was seated on a porcelain seat in an arbor in his garden. Councillor Berkhout, accompanied by a friend, called to see him, and after a brief conversation gave him solemn warning that danger was impending, that there was even a rumour of an intention to arrest him.

The Advocate answered gravely, "Yes, there are wicked men about."