Life and Death of John of Barneveld Part 53

Du Maurier however obtained a hearing before the a.s.sembly on the 1st May, where he made a powerful and manly speech in presence of the Prince, urging that the prisoners ought to be discharged unless they could be convicted of treason, and that the States ought to show as much deference to his sovereign as they had always done to Elizabeth of England. He made a personal appeal to Prince Maurice, urging upon him how much it would redound to his glory if he should now in generous and princely fashion step forward in behalf of those by whom he deemed himself to have been personally offended.

His speech fell upon ears hardened against such eloquence and produced no effect.

Meantime the family of Barneveld, not yet reduced to despair, chose to take a less gloomy view of the proclamation. Relying on the innocence of the great statesman, whose aims, in their firm belief, had ever been for the welfare and glory of his fatherland, and in whose heart there had never been kindled one spark of treason, they bravely expected his triumphant release from his long and, as they deemed it, his iniquitous imprisonment.

On this very 1st of May, in accordance with ancient custom, a may-pole was erected on the Voorhout before the mansion of the captive statesman, and wreaths of spring flowers and garlands of evergreen decorated the walls within which were such braised and bleeding hearts. These demonstrations of a n.o.ble hypocrisy, if such it were, excited the wrath, not the compa.s.sion, of the Stadholder, who thought that the aged matron and her sons and daughters, who dwelt in that house of mourning, should rather have sat in sackcloth with ashes on their heads than indulge in these insolent marks of hope and joyful expectation.

It is certain however that Count William Lewis, who, although most staunch on the Contra-Remonstrant side, had a veneration for the Advocate and desired warmly to save him, made a last and strenuous effort for that purpose.

It was believed then, and it seems almost certain, that, if the friends of the Advocate had been willing to implore pardon for him, the sentence would have been remitted or commuted. Their application would have been successful, for through it his guilt would seem to be acknowledged.

Count William sent for the Fiscal Duyck. He asked him if there were no means of saving the life of a man who was so old and had done the country so much service. After long deliberation, it was decided that Prince Maurice should be approached on the subject. Duyck wished that the Count himself would speak with his cousin, but was convinced by his reasoning that it would be better that the Fiscal should do it. Duyck had a long interview accordingly with Maurice, which was followed by a very secret one between them both and Count William. The three were locked up together, three hours long, in the Prince's private cabinet. It was then decided that Count William should go, as if of his own accord, to the Princess-Dowager Louise, and induce her to send for some one of Barneveld's children and urge that the family should ask pardon for him.

She asked if this was done with the knowledge of the Prince of Orange, or whether he would not take it amiss. The Count eluded the question, but implored her to follow his advice.

The result was an interview between the Princess and Madame de Groeneveld, wife of the eldest son. That lady was besought to apply, with the rest of the Advocate's children, for pardon to the Lords States, but to act as if it were done of her own impulse, and to keep their interview profoundly secret.

Madame de Groeneveld took time to consult the other members of the family and some friends. Soon afterwards she came again to the Princess, and informed her that she had spoken with the other children, and that they could not agree to the suggestion. "They would not move one step in it--no, not if it should cost him his head."

The Princess reported the result of this interview to Count William, at which both were so distressed that they determined to leave the Hague.

There is something almost superhuman in the sternness of this stoicism.

Yet it lay in the proud and highly tempered character of the Netherlanders. There can be no doubt that the Advocate would have expressly dictated this proceeding if he had been consulted. It was precisely the course adopted by himself. Death rather than life with a false acknowledgment of guilt and therefore with disgrace. The loss of his honour would have been an infinitely greater triumph to his enemies than the loss of his head.

There was no delay in drawing up the sentence. Previously to this interview with the widow of William the Silent, the family of the Advocate had presented to the judges three separate doc.u.ments, rather in the way of arguments than pet.i.tions, undertaking to prove by elaborate reasoning and citations of precedents and texts of the civil law that the proceedings against him were wholly illegal, and that he was innocent of every crime.

No notice had been taken of those appeals.

Upon the questions and answers as already set forth the sentence soon followed, and it may be as well that the reader should be aware, at this point in the narrative, of the substance of that sentence so soon to be p.r.o.nounced. There had been no indictment, no specification of crime.

There had been no testimony or evidence. There had been no argument for the prosecution or the defence. There had been no trial whatever. The prisoner was convicted on a set of questions to which he had put in satisfactory replies. He was sentenced on a preamble. The sentence was a string of vague generalities, intolerably long, and as tangled as the interrogatories. His proceedings during a long career had on the whole tended to something called a "blood bath"--but the blood bath had never occurred.

With an effrontery which did not lack ingenuity, Barneveld's defence was called by the commissioners his confession, and was formally registered as such in the process and the sentence; while the fact that he had not been stretched upon the rack during his trial, nor kept in chains for the eight months of his imprisonment, were complacently mentioned as proofs of exceptionable indulgence.

"Whereas the prisoner John of Barneveld," said the sentence, "without being put to the torture and without fetters of iron, has confessed . . .

to having perturbed religion, greatly afflicted the Church of G.o.d, and carried into practice exorbitant and pernicious maxims of State . . .

inculcating by himself and accomplices that each province had the right to regulate religious affairs within its own territory, and that other provinces were not to concern themselves therewith"--therefore and for many other reasons he merited punishment.

He had instigated a protest by vote of three provinces against the National Synod. He had despised the salutary advice of many princes and notable personages. He had obtained from the King of Great Britain certain letters furthering his own opinions, the drafts of which he had himself suggested, and corrected and sent over to the States' amba.s.sador in London, and when written out, signed, and addressed by the King to the States-General, had delivered them without stating how they had been procured.

Afterwards he had attempted to get other letters of a similar nature from the King, and not succeeding had defamed his Majesty as being a cause of the troubles in the Provinces. He had permitted unsound theologians to be appointed to church offices, and had employed such functionaries in political affairs as were most likely to be the instruments of his own purposes. He had not prevented vigorous decrees from being enforced in several places against those of the true religion. He had made them odious by calling them Puritans, foreigners, and "Flanderizers," although the United Provinces had solemnly pledged to each other their lives, fortunes, and blood by various conventions, to some of which the prisoner was himself a party, to maintain the Reformed, Evangelical, religion only, and to, suffer no change in it to be made for evermore.

In order to carry out his design and perturb the political state of the Provinces he had drawn up and caused to be enacted the Sharp Resolution of 4th August 1617. He had thus nullified the ordinary course of justice.

He had stimulated the magistrates to disobedience, and advised them to strengthen themselves with freshly enlisted military companies. He had suggested new-fangled oaths for the soldiers, authorizing them to refuse obedience to the States-General and his Excellency. He had especially stimulated the proceedings at Utrecht. When it was understood that the Prince was to pa.s.s through Utrecht, the States of that province not without the prisoner's knowledge had addressed a letter to his Excellency, requesting him not to pa.s.s through their city. He had written a letter to Ledenberg suggesting that good watch should be held at the town gates and up and down the river Lek. He had desired that Ledenberg having read that letter should burn it. He had interfered with the cashiering of the mercenaries at Utrecht. He had said that such cashiering without the consent of the States of that province was an act of force which would justify resistance by force.

Although those States had sent commissioners to concert measures with the Prince for that purpose, he had advised them to conceal their instructions until his own plan for the disbandment could be carried out.

At a secret meeting in the house of Tresel, clerk of the States-General, between Grotius, Hoogerbeets, and other accomplices, it was decided that this advice should be taken. Report accordingly was made to the prisoner.

He had advised them to continue in their opposition to the National Synod.

He had sought to calumniate and blacken his Excellency by saying that he aspired to the sovereignty of the Provinces. He had received intelligence on that subject from abroad in ciphered letters.

He had of his own accord rejected a certain proposed, notable alliance of the utmost importance to this Republic.

[This refers, I think without doubt, to the conversation between King James and Caron at the end of the year 1815.]

He had received from foreign potentates various large sums of money and other presents.

All "these proceedings tended to put the city of Utrecht into a blood-bath, and likewise to bring the whole country, and the person of his Excellency into the uttermost danger."

This is the substance of the sentence, amplified by repet.i.tions and exasperating tautology into thirty or forty pages.

It will have been perceived by our a.n.a.lysis of Barneveld's answers to the commissioners that all the graver charges which he was now said to have confessed had been indignantly denied by him or triumphantly justified.

It will also be observed that he was condemned for no categorical crime--lese-majesty, treason, or rebellion. The commissioners never ventured to a.s.sert that the States-General were sovereign, or that the central government had a right to prescribe a religious formulary for all the United Provinces. They never dared to say that the prisoner had been in communication with the enemy or had received bribes from him.

Of insinuation and implication there was much, of a.s.sertion very little, of demonstration nothing whatever.

But supposing that all the charges had been admitted or proved, what course would naturally be taken in consequence? How was a statesman who adhered to the political, const.i.tutional, and religious opinions on which he had acted, with the general acquiescence, during a career of more than forty years, but which were said to be no longer in accordance with public opinion, to be dealt with? Would the commissioners request him to retire honourably from the high functions which he had over and over again offered to resign? Would they consider that, having fairly impeached and found him guilty of disturbing the public peace by continuing to act on his well-known legal theories, they might deprive him summarily of power and declare him incapable of holding office again?

The conclusion of the commissioners was somewhat more severe than either of these measures. Their long rambling preamble ended with these decisive words:

"Therefore the judges, in name of the Lords States-General, condemn the prisoner to be taken to the Binnenhof, there to be executed with the sword that death may follow, and they declare all his property confiscated."

The execution was to take place so soon as the sentence had been read to the prisoner.

After the 1st of May Barneveld had not appeared before his judges. He had been examined in all about sixty times.

In the beginning of May his servant became impatient. "You must not be impatient," said his master. "The time seems much longer because we get no news now from the outside. But the end will soon come. This delay cannot last for ever."

Intimation reached him on Sat.u.r.day the 11th May that the sentence was ready and would soon be p.r.o.nounced.

"It is a bitter folk," said Barneveld as he went to bed. "I have nothing good to expect of them." Next day was occupied in sewing up and concealing his papers, including a long account of his examination, with the questions and answers, in his Spanish arm-chair. Next day van der Meulen said to the servant, "I will bet you a hundred florins that you'll not be here next Thursday."

The faithful John was delighted, not dreaming of the impending result.

It was Sunday afternoon, 12th May, and about half past five o'clock.

Barneveld sat in his prison chamber, occupied as usual in writing, reviewing the history of the past, and doing his best to reduce into something like order the rambling and miscellaneous interrogatories, out of which his trial had been concocted, while the points dwelt in his memory, and to draw up a concluding argument in his own defence. Work which according to any equitable, reasonable, or even decent procedure should have been entrusted to the first lawyers of the country--preparing the case upon the law and the facts with the doc.u.ments before them, with the power of cross-questioning witnesses and sifting evidence, and enlightened by constant conferences with the ill.u.s.trious prisoner himself--came entirely upon his own shoulders, enfeebled as he was by age, physical illness, and by the exhaustion of along imprisonment.

Without books, notes of evidence, or even copies of the charges of which he stood accused, he was obliged to draw up his counter-arguments against the impeachment and then by aid of a faithful valet to conceal his ma.n.u.script behind the tapestry of the chamber, or cause them to be sewed up in the lining of his easy-chair, lest they should be taken from him by order of the judges who sat in the chamber below.

While he was thus occupied in preparations for his next encounter with the tribunal, the door opened, and three gentlemen entered. Two were the prosecuting officers of the government, Fiscal Sylla and Fiscal van Leeuwen. The other was the provost-marshal, Carel de Nijs. The servant was directed to leave the room.

Barneveld had stepped into his dressing-room on hearing footsteps, but came out again with his long furred gown about him as the three entered.

He greeted them courteously and remained standing, with his hands placed on the back of his chair and with one knee resting carelessly against the arm of it. Van Leeuwen asked him if he would not rather be seated, as they brought a communication from the judges. He answered in the negative. Von Leeuwen then informed him that he was summoned to appear before the judges the next morning to hear his sentence of death.

"The sentence of death!" he exclaimed, without in the least changing his position; "the sentence of death! the sentence of death!" saying the words over thrice, with an air of astonishment rather than of horror. "I never expected that! I thought they were going to hear my defence again.

I had intended to make some change in my previous statements, having set some things down when beside myself with choler."

He then made reference to his long services. Van Leeuwen expressed himself as well acquainted with them. "He was sorry," he said, "that his lordship took this message ill of him."

"I do not take it ill of you," said Barneveld, "but let them," meaning the judges, "see how they will answer it before G.o.d. Are they thus to deal with a true patriot? Let me have pen, ink, and paper, that for the last time I may write farewell to my wife."