The Blacksmith's Hammer; or, The Peasant Code: A Tale of the Grand Monarch

by Eugène Sue

  CHAPTER VII.

  MOB-VERDICT.

  In the near vicinity of the palace, where the States General of theRepublic of the Seven Provinces held their sessions, rose a vast edificeblackened by years and pierced with narrow, iron-barred windows. Thisancient castle now did the services of a place of detention. Itsprincipal facade, pierced with an ogive gate that was led up to by a fewstairs, was separated from Buytenhoff Square by a closed iron-barredgate, before which, on this particular day, stood drawn up the cavalrytroop of Monsieur Tilly. Up to that moment the troopers had, thanks totheir coolness and the closeness of their ranks, prevented the mob thatcrowded the square from forcing the iron gate of the prison in whichCornelius De Witt lay. The tumultuous gathering that at first had beenemitting furious howls and threats of death against the French party,now crowded in silence around several citizens of The Hague who, mountedupon posts, or standing upon the stairs, or upon carts, read aloud andcommented on to the gaping mob letters recently received from theprovinces that the armies of Louis XIV had invaded. Among the more fieryof the orators a rich goldsmith of The Hague was prominent. His namewas Henry Weroeff, who until recently was one of the most active membersof the French party. Accordingly, when he jumped upon an unhitched wagonand announced that he wanted to speak, his voice was drowned under avolley of hoots. Weroeff held a letter in his hand, and motioned forsilence while he shouted:

  "My friends, deceived and misled like so many others, I belonged up tonow to the French party--but I have come to apologize for my error, andto declare in the face of heaven and of man that the brothers De Witt,the heads of the party, deserve public execration. Either asaccomplices, or the dupes of Louis XIV, they are responsible for thehorrible deeds that the armies of that King are now committing in ourprovinces. Listen to this letter, which I received this morning from arelative who lives in Bodegrave:

  "My dear friend, I write to you in haste. I owe my life to a miraculous accident. Our two burgs of Swamerdam and Bodegrave, each consisting of over six hundred houses, have just been reduced to ashes by the army of the King of France. Only one house is left standing--by the merest accident. The soldiers were especially bent upon destroying the Protestant churches. Not one escaped. The school houses and the City Hall, where the court met, were set on fire. In order to carry out their detestable work, the soldiers furnished themselves in Utrecht with torches of readily combustible material. This is a sight that I saw--a father, mother and children were locked up in their house, and then the place was forthwith set on fire. Those who sought to escape the flames were massacred by the soldiers and transfixed with pikes--"[3]

  An explosion of furious yells, born of the indignation aroused byWeroeff's letter, interrupted him at this point. A butcher of herculeanstature, with red hair and beard, blood-shot eyes, and livid with rage,rushed forward, and jumping upon the cart from which the goldsmith wasspeaking, cried out in a stentorian voice that rang above the din: "Theletter tells the truth! My sister lived in Swamerdam. Her two childrenwere burnt to death in her house. She herself was violated--and thenmurdered by the royal soldiers!"

  The infuriate man then drew a long knife from his belt, and brandishingit, cried:

  "Massacre and death! In default of the King of France himself, I shallcut the throats of his good friends in Holland!"

  "Death to the De Witts!" "Death to the accomplices of Louis XIV!" echoedthe mob, whose exasperation rose to fever heat. "Death to the traitors!""Upon them the blood that has flowed!"

  Silence being restored by degrees, the goldsmith proceeded to read:

  "Yesterday, when, upon the departure of the enemy, we returned to our burgs, and removed the ashes of our homes, we found everywhere charred bodies of men, women and children, the women often holding the lifeless and partially burnt corpses of their infants in their own charred stumps. Acts of unheard-of ferocity were committed in cold blood by the soldiery of Louis XIV. A blind and crippled old woman, the object of our people's compassion, was killed before the eyes of her four children, and then thrown, together with them, into the flames. A number of little children were found horribly mutilated. The soldiers took a cruel delight in cutting off their limbs; others would throw them up in the air and receive them on the points of their bayonets!"

  "Little children! Poor little children! Massacre and death! Theseatrocities must be revenged!" cried the butcher, whose voice broke thefirst silence caused by the stupor and consternation produced byWeroeff's reading. The butcher's cries were immediately followed by avolley of imprecations that it is impossible to reproduce. "Death andextermination!"

  "Listen!" said Weroeff. "There is worse yet:

  "Girls were violated before the eyes of their mothers, wives before the eyes of their husbands. The only act of charity on the part of the soldiers was to spare the victims of their brutalities the shame of surviving their dishonor--they drowned them in the canal, or murdered them on the spot--"

  At these words, which reminded him of his sister's fate, the butcher,instead of breaking forth anew with violent imprecations, covered hisface in both his hands and began to weep. The sight of this rough andrude man's tender sorrow produced a deep impression upon the crowd. Thefrightful ferment of a revengeful, inexorable and blind hatred causedeven the coldest hearts to boil with indignation. The goldsmith finishedhis letter amid a mass of humanity that was panting for revenge, andimpatient to slake its ire upon the partisans of the French:

  "Greed, besides cruelty, animated both the French captain and his soldiers. They hanged men by the feet in the chimneys of their own houses, and lighted a fire under them in order that, suffocated and singed by the clouds of smoke that rose upward and the flames that licked their faces, they be driven to disclose where they had hidden their money and valuables. Often the victims possessed none of these, and they perished, the prey to barbarous greed. Other soldiers stripped the last shred of clothing from the women and girls whom they outraged, and drove them naked into the fields where they were left to die of hunger and cold. One officer (in justice to him be it said) finding two young ladies of the upper class in this condition, took pity upon them, gave them his cloak and some linen that he had with him, and, before returning to his post, recommended the unfortunate girls to the care of another officer. The latter, however, violated both the girls, and thereupon turned them over to his soldiers, who, after subjecting them to further and extreme outrage, mutilated them frightfully.[4] Their shapeless corpses were found day before yesterday near the dike that leads from Bodegrave to Woerden.

  "From Nymwegen I learn that one of those butchers, who do not deserve the name of soldiers, and who was wicked enough to cut off the breasts of a lying-in mother and to sprinkle gunpowder upon her wounds, died yesterday in the agonies of a frightful delirium, caused by remorse for his crime. He believed he saw the distracted woman pursuing him, and heard her cries of pain. A boatman, the brother of my father's tenant farmer, was nailed by both his hands to the mainmast of his barge, while, under the very eyes of the poor fellow, the soldiers indulged their depravity upon his daughter. Not even the dead are respected. Two funerals were stopped on the way to the graveyard, the corpses were stripped of their shrouds by the soldiers of Louis XIV, and then thrown into the canal."

  The recital of such sacrilegious profanation--doubly abominable in theeyes of a Protestant people, who religiously guard their dead--causedthe popular fury to boil over. It wanted instant victims to slake itsthirst for revenge and for reprisals. Such victims were at hand--thebrothers De Witt and the other chiefs of the French party, consideredeither the dupes or the accomplices of Louis XIV, as the mob declaredwith pitiless logic. The popular rage reached its highest pitch. Anear-rending cry went up from all throats--"Death to De Witt! To theprison! To the prison!"

/>   By a spontaneous movement the whole mass of enraged humanity rolledagainst the prison, the approaches to which Tilly and his troopers hadup to that moment managed to keep clear. So spontaneous was the rushagainst the prison, and so resolutely was it executed, that Tilly'shorsemen, finding themselves assailed by a shower of stones, wereconstrained in self-defense to draw their sabers. They were on the pointof falling upon their assailants when, with drums beating and amid theglad acclaims of the multitude, an infantry company of The Haguemilitia, known by the name of the "Blue Flag," and consistingexclusively of Orangemen, debouched upon the square. The captain ofthis militia corps informed Monsieur Tilly that, in order to avoid aneffusion of blood in a conflict with the populace, the Council of Statehad ordered the company of the Blue Flag to mount guard at the castle,and relieve the cavalry posted there. Monsieur Tilly had no choice butto obey and yield the place to his substitutes, although he had no doubtthat the prison would now be speedily invaded by the delirious mob. Thecavalry, its retreat covered by the infantry corps, withdrew from thesquare amidst the hootings, the vociferations and even the threats ofthe mob which now had reached a pitch of delirious paroxysm.

  "After De Witt, to the others, and Tilly shall have his turn. We knowwhere he lives!" yelled a bitter Orangeman. "He has taken a lot ofFrench people into his house. Some of them are grand dames! I saw themyesterday on the balcony."

  "Massacre and death! May lightning strike me if I do not take revengefor my sister upon those French women!" bellowed the butcher. "Butforward, now! First bleed the De Witts. The prison is ours!"

  The butcher's threats, directly alluding to Mademoiselle Plouernel andher aunt, were heard by Serdan, Salaun Lebrenn and his son, who, havingreturned to the square, and being driven by the current of the mass,found themselves pushed in the direction of the prison. Vainly had theysought to keep their promise to Monsieur Tilly of protecting the life ofJohn De Witt. When the venerable man left his house under the guidanceof the jail grenadier, Serdan and his friends requested him to allowthem to escort him. He consented. Together they crossed several narrowand quiet streets and presently an almost deserted lane. When, at theend of the same, they arrived before a gate that barred further passageand opened upon a corridor leading into the castle, the grenadierdeclared to the companions of John De Witt that they could go nofurther, his orders being to allow admission only to the GrandPensionary of Holland. John De Witt urged his friends to withdraw,clasped their hands, and entered alone, the door being unlocked, thenclosed and re-locked after him by the grenadier who was furnished with akey. John De Witt was taken without delay to his brother, and therediscovered the trap that was laid for him. His brother had not sent forhim, and was greatly alarmed at what he considered a most inopportunevisit, in view of the general popular excitement, and the riot at theprison gate. A heartrending scene took place between the two brothers.John sought to induce his brother to leave the prison, the doors ofwhich, he argued, had to be opened to him, seeing he was sentenced tobanishment. Cornelius declined, on the ground that he had appealed fromthe decree of proscription. He insisted that the judges pronounce himeither innocent or guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. To quit theprison would be to accept the sentence which put a blot upon his name,and against which he protested. Unable to induce his brother to flee,John De Witt declared he would not leave him, and would share his fate.While this debate, a struggle of fraternal generosity, was proceedingin the prison of Cornelius, two officers and four militiamen of the BlueFlag company forced themselves into the chamber in which the twobrothers were conversing, and assailed them with violent threats.

  Alas! son of Joel; I shall let an eye-witness of that lamentable eventnarrate it in his own words, and let us transmit the report to ourdescendants:

  "The officers and the militiamen found Cornelius De Witt lying on hiscouch in a morning gown, and his brother seated near the head of the bedreading to him out of the Bible. The Grand Pensionary sought to awakensome sense of humanity in the maddened men who entered the room. Theyonly redoubled their threats, and compelled the two brothers to rise andleave the room, saying they were to be taken to the place wherecriminals are executed. The De Witts embraced each other tenderly at thehead of the stairs which led out of the castle, and bade each othertheir last adieus. Cornelius De Witt, who, in consequence of thetorture, was very weak, descended leaning upon his brother's arm. Thelatter, preserving a most heroic calmness in sight of so imminent adanger, exhorted in kind language those who led him and his brother notto commit so great an iniquity as they threatened to be guilty of. 'Myfriends,' he said to them as he continued to descend the stairs,sustaining his brother, 'we are innocent, we are not traitors to theRepublic; take us wherever you please, but take us to judges.' 'March!March!' the officers answered, brutally pushing him forward and causinghim to trip and stumble over the lowest steps of the staircase; 'Youwill soon know where you are taken to, traitors!'"

  The iron gate that served as a defense to the castle had been forcedopen. A portion of the mob penetrated into the outer yard whichseparated the square from the facade of the castle, and where a lowstoop led up to an ogive door. The shadow, into which the vault of thedoor threw the inside, allowed but an indistinct view of the loweststeps of the staircase by which John and Cornelius De Witt descended.The instant the two brothers appeared at the top of the stoop, whitherthey were pushed by the militiamen of the Blue Flag, yells of hate andvengeance broke forth from all sides.

  "There they are!" "We got them both!" "Death to the De Witts!" "Death tothe traitors!" "Death to the French party!"

  Separated from the two victims, and hemmed in by a compact mass ofpeople, Serdan, Salaun Lebrenn and Nominoe were as impotent to bring theslightest help to Cornelius and John as to flee from the spectacle thatthey were about to witness. In that situation, and justly fearing to berecognized as Frenchmen and massacred on the spot, they controlled theirgrief and indignation, and only exchanged looks of despair as thetragedy was enacted before their eyes.

  The moment the two De Witts, John sustaining his brother, stepped outupon the stoop, one of the militiamen raised his musket, holding it bythe 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 fallupon your head! Death to all the accomplices of the French King!"

  Stunned by the blow, Cornelius staggered and reeled. Instantly thebutcher seized him by the hair, and dragged him down to the bottom ofthe stoop, brandishing his knife. John De Witt rushed forward to hisbrother's help, but before he could descend two steps, a notary, VanSoenen by name, barred his way, and, exclaiming: "Die, traitor! Yourfriends 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 droppedon one knee. He immediately endeavored to rise, crying: "My brother! Mybrother!" But at that moment a man named Van Valen gripped him by thethroat, threw him to the ground, and planting his foot upon De Witt'schest, discharged his pistol into the head of the prostrate man, loudlyvociferating: "Die, wretch! You betrayed your country! So shall all theaccomplices of Louis XIV die! Death to all papists!"

  The corpse of John De Witt was dragged under the Buytenhoff Arcadebeside his brother's, whom the butcher killed. The mob pounced liketigers upon the two bodies, riddled them with shots, stripped themnaked, mutilated them beyond recognition--and, Oh, frightful reprisalsthat the two martyrs were the innocent victims of! each act ofsacrilegious profanation was accompanied with a thousand imprecationsintended to recall the atrocities committed by the soldiers of LouisXIV, who crowned their acts of pillage, of incendiarism, of iniquitiesperpetrated upon women, and of murder, by outraging even the corpseswhich they stripped of their funeral robes, and deprived of burial!

  Finally, the shapeless remains of the two great citizens were hung fromthe gibbet where common malefactors were executed.