PG Edition of Netherlands series — Complete

by John Lothrop Motley

Meantime information had come to the authorities that a suspicious stranger had been seen at Scheveningen. The fisherman's wife was arrested. Threatened with torture she at last confessed with whom her husband had fled and whither. Information was sent to the bailiff of Vlieland, who with a party of followers made a strict search through his narrow precincts. A group of seamen seated on the sands was soon discovered, among whom, dressed in shaggy pea jacket with long fisherman's boots, was the Seigneur de Groeneveld, who, easily recognized through his disguise, submitted to his captors without a struggle. The Scheveningen fisherman, who had been so faithful to him, making a sudden spring, eluded his pursuers and disappeared; thus escaping the gibbet which would probably have been his doom instead of the reward of 4000 golden guilders which he might have had for betraying him. Thus a sum more than double the amount originally furnished by Groeneveld, as the capital of the assassination company, had been rejected by the Rotterdam boatman who saved Stoutenburg, and by the Scheveningen fisherman who was ready to save Groeneveld. On the 19th February, within less than a fortnight from the explosion of the conspiracy, the eldest son of Barneveld was lodged in the Gevangen Poort or state prison of the Hague.

The awful news of the 6th February had struck the widow of Barneveld as with a thunderbolt. Both her sons were proclaimed as murderers and suborners of assassins, and a price put upon their heads. She remained for days neither speaking nor weeping; scarcely eating, drinking, or sleeping. She seemed frozen to stone. Her daughters and friends could not tell whether she were dying or had lost her reason. At length the escape of Stoutenburg and the capture of Groeneveld seemed to rouse her from her trance. She then stooped to do what she had sternly refused to do when her husband was in the hands of the authorities. Accompanied by the wife and infant son of Groeneveld she obtained an audience of the stern Stadholder, fell on her knees before him, and implored mercy and pardon for her son.

Maurice received her calmly and not discourteously, but held out no hopes of pardon. The criminal was in the hands of justice, he said, and he had no power to interfere. But there can scarcely be a doubt that he had power after the sentence to forgive or to commute, and it will be remembered that when Barneveld himself was about to suffer, the Prince had asked the clergyman Walaeus with much anxiety whether the prisoner in his message had said nothing of pardon.

Referring to the bitter past, Maurice asked Madame de Barneveld why she not asked mercy for her son, having refused to do so for her husband.

Her answer was simple and noble:

"My husband was innocent of crime," she said; "my son is guilty."

The idea of pardon in this case was of course preposterous. Certainly if Groeneveld had been forgiven, it would have been impossible to punish the thirteen less guilty conspirators, already in the hands of justice, whom he had hired to commit the assassination. The spectacle of the two cowardly ringleaders going free while the meaner criminals were gibbeted would have been a shock to the most rudimentary ideas of justice. It would have been an equal outrage to pardon the younger Barnevelds for intended murder, in which they had almost succeeded, when their great father had already suffered for a constructive lese-majesty, the guilt of which had been stoutly denied. Yet such is the dreary chain of cause and effect that it is certain, had pardon been nobly offered to the statesman, whose views of constitutional law varied from those of the dominant party, the later crime would never have been committed. But Francis Aerssens—considering his own and other partisans lives at stake if the States' right party did not fall—had been able to bear down all thoughts of mercy. He was successful, was called to the house of nobles, and regained the embassy of Paris, while the house of Barneveld was trodden into the dust of dishonour and ruin. Rarely has an offended politician's revenge been more thorough than his. Never did the mocking fiend betray his victims into the hands of the avenger more sardonically than was done in this sombre tragedy.

The trials of the prisoners were rapidly conducted. Van Dyk, cruelly tortured, confessed on the rack all the details of the conspiracy as they were afterwards embodied in the sentences and have been stated in the preceding narrative. Groeneveld was not tortured. His answers to the interrogatories were so vague as to excite amazement at his general ignorance of the foul transaction or at the feebleness of his memory, while there was no attempt on his part to exculpate himself from the damning charge. That it was he who had furnished funds for the proposed murder and mutiny, knowing the purpose to which they were to be applied, was proved beyond all cavil and fully avowed by him.

On the 28th May, he, Korenwinder, and van Dyk were notified that they were to appear next day in the courthouse to hear their sentence, which would immediately afterwards be executed.

That night his mother, wife, and son paid him a long visit of farewell in his prison. The Gevangen Poort of the Hague, an antique but mean building of brown brick and commonplace aspect, still stands in one of the most public parts of the city. A gloomy archway, surmounted by windows grimly guarded by iron lattice-work, forms the general thoroughfare from the aristocratic Plaats and Kneuterdyk and Vyverberg to the inner court of the ancient palace. The cells within are dark, noisome, and dimly lighted, and even to this day the very instruments of torture, used in the trials of these and other prisoners, may be seen by the curious. Half a century later the brothers de Witt were dragged from this prison to be literally torn to pieces by an infuriated mob.