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

"John," added Serdan, "we join Tilly in urging you to flee as soon as possible. Who knows but that your own house may be invaded at one moment or another by that senselessly furious mob, as your father's house was invaded in Dortrecht!"

"Preserve yourself for your brother's sake, Monsieur De Witt," put in Salaun Lebrenn. "Leave The Hague."

"Live for this people which is more blind than it is ungrateful. Maybe the day will come when it will implore you to save the Republic!" said Nominoë with tears in his eyes, as he saw John De Witt receive the urgings of his friends with a silent impatience that betrayed his inner resolution to go to his brother.

Monsieur Tilly made a last effort, crying: "Is it your purpose to risk your own life, as well as that of Cornelius, by proceeding to the prison?" And answering an impatient wafture of John De Witt's hand, he added: "It is horrible, but it is a fact – the first blood that a mob sheds throws it into a savage intoxication. So far from being allayed by your death, the hatred of those furious men will then become so unbridled that it will be impossible any longer to restrain them. They will then force the prison gates and slaughter your brother!"

"Enough! Enough, my friend!" said John De Witt with a shudder, and almost overcome by the insistence of his friends. He seemed to hesitate in his first determination, when he saw Madam De Witt step into the apartment.

"My friend," said she to her husband handing him a note that she held in her hand, "one of the grenadiers of the prison has just brought you this letter from our brother Cornelius. It is urgent, says the man. He is waiting for your answer. He says there is considerable commotion in The Hague, and that, should you wish to proceed to the castle, he offers to lead you through the closed Borlek Alley, and thence to Vivier Alley, of which he has the key. But he says you must not delay."

John De Witt hastened to take the note, ran his eyes over it, and cried: "My brother writes to me that he wishes to see me immediately."

"It is a trap!" exclaimed Serdan. "You seem to forget that Cornelius is not in a condition to write! Crime and treachery!"

"Why should he not be in a condition to write?" asked Madam De Witt, ignorant of the circumstance that her brother-in-law's hands were crushed.

An embarrassing silence followed upon Madam De Witt's question, a silence which Monsieur Tilly broke:

"Madam, your brother is suffering with an abscess on his thumb. It would be difficult for him to hold a pen."

"Mary, my cloak, my sword, my gloves; quick, I pray you," said John De Witt to his wife.

Madam De Witt left in quest of the articles demanded by her husband. No sooner had she withdrawn than Tilly, Serdan, Salaun Lebrenn and his son cried in alarm: "Give up the thought! Do not go to the castle! You will be marching to your death!"

"The letter is a forgery!" added Serdan. "They are laying a snare for you, and the jailer is in the plot!"

"First of all, hear what Cornelius writes to me," said John De Witt to his friends, and he read:

"Dear brother, I am obliged to help myself with a stranger's hand to write to you. I urge you earnestly, come to me to the castle without delay. Your presence is indispensable. One of the jailers is devoted to me. He will lead you by a circuitous route, where you are not likely to meet anyone. Come, come."

"Treachery!" repeated Serdan. "I tell you once more, their purpose is to lead you into a trap, an ambush!"

"Cornelius has heard from his prison the clamor of the people for his life, and for yours," added Monsieur Tilly. "There is even fear that the maddened mob may succeed in breaking into the prison, and do you suppose that your brother would call you to his side at such a moment? No, no! There is treachery in all this!"

"But suppose this letter was truly dictated by my brother!" cried John De Witt, interrupting Tilly. "Suppose that, finding himself about to die as the result of his torture, he wishes to die in my arms! Suppose he awaits my presence as a supreme consolation! Should I hesitate before a sacred duty? No, never!"

As John De Witt was uttering these last words Madam De Witt re-entered accompanied by her two daughters, Agnes and Mary, one thirteen, the other fifteen years of age. They brought their father's cloak and sword. Their candid and smiling faces presented so painful a contrast to the dangers that threatened their father, that the witnesses of the scene felt their hearts wrung.

"Father," said Mary, handing John De Witt his cloak, and helping him to put it on, "since you are going to see our dear uncle in that horrid prison, that I am sure he will soon be free to leave, tell him for me that, although he was away from us, we always had him in mind."

"But, better still, father," added Agnes gaily, giving her father his sword, "bring us our dear uncle back soon. And while we wait for his return give him this kiss for me – "

"And this one from me," said Mary, embracing and kissing her father.

With a superhuman effort John De Witt controlled and concealed his afflicted thoughts, tenderly answered the caresses of his daughters by covering their young foreheads with kisses, and addressing his wife, said: "Adieu, my faithful friend; brave companion in evil days, adieu! I hope shortly to bring you better tidings of my brother," and he left abruptly, followed by Monsieur Tilly, Salaun Lebrenn, his son and Monsieur Serdan.

"The die is cast!" said Tilly to his friends in a low voice while John De Witt descended the stairs of his house. "Follow him! Guard him! My horse is waiting for me near by; I shall rejoin my company. We shall defend the prison with all our might."

"Rely upon us," answered Serdan; "all that three resolute men can do shall be done by us. May we be able to save John De Witt, and, with him, the Republic."

CHAPTER VII.

MOB-VERDICT

In the near vicinity of the palace, where the States General of the Republic of the Seven Provinces held their sessions, rose a vast edifice blackened by years and pierced with narrow, iron-barred windows. This ancient castle now did the services of a place of detention. Its principal façade, pierced with an ogive gate that was led up to by a few stairs, was separated from Buytenhoff Square by a closed iron-barred gate, before which, on this particular day, stood drawn up the cavalry troop of Monsieur Tilly. Up to that moment the troopers had, thanks to their coolness and the closeness of their ranks, prevented the mob that crowded the square from forcing the iron gate of the prison in which Cornelius De Witt lay. The tumultuous gathering that at first had been emitting furious howls and threats of death against the French party, now crowded in silence around several citizens of The Hague who, mounted upon posts, or standing upon the stairs, or upon carts, read aloud and commented on to the gaping mob letters recently received from the provinces that the armies of Louis XIV had invaded. Among the more fiery of the orators a rich goldsmith of The Hague was prominent. His name was Henry Weroeff, who until recently was one of the most active members of the French party. Accordingly, when he jumped upon an unhitched wagon and announced that he wanted to speak, his voice was drowned under a volley of hoots. Weroeff held a letter in his hand, and motioned for silence while he shouted:

"My friends, deceived and misled like so many others, I belonged up to now to the French party – but I have come to apologize for my error, and to declare in the face of heaven and of man that the brothers De Witt, the heads of the party, deserve public execration. Either as accomplices, or the dupes of Louis XIV, they are responsible for the horrible deeds that the armies of that King are now committing in our provinces. Listen to this letter, which I received this morning from a relative 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 by Weroeff's letter, interrupted him at this point. A butcher of herculean stature, with red hair and beard, blood-shot eyes, and livid with rage, rushed forward, and jumping upon the cart from which the goldsmith was speaking, cried out in a stentorian voice that rang above the din: "The letter tells the truth! My sister lived in Swamerdam. Her two children were burnt to death in her house. She herself was violated – and then murdered by the royal soldiers!"

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

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

"Death to the De Witts!" "Death to the accomplices of Louis XIV!" echoed the 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! These atrocities must be revenged!" cried the butcher, whose voice broke the first silence caused by the stupor and consternation produced by Weroeff's reading. The butcher's cries were immediately followed by a volley of imprecations that it is impossible to reproduce. "Death and extermination!"

"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 his face in both his hands and began to weep. The sight of this rough and rude man's tender sorrow produced a deep impression upon the crowd. The frightful ferment of a revengeful, inexorable and blind hatred caused even the coldest hearts to boil with indignation. The goldsmith finished his letter amid a mass of humanity that was panting for revenge, and impatient 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 the eyes of a Protestant people, who religiously guard their dead – caused the popular fury to boil over. It wanted instant victims to slake its thirst for revenge and for reprisals. Such victims were at hand – the brothers De Witt and the other chiefs of the French party, considered either the dupes or the accomplices of Louis XIV, as the mob declared with pitiless logic. The popular rage reached its highest pitch. An ear-rending cry went up from all throats – "Death to De Witt! To the prison! To the prison!"

By a spontaneous movement the whole mass of enraged humanity rolled against the prison, the approaches to which Tilly and his troopers had up to that moment managed to keep clear. So spontaneous was the rush against the prison, and so resolutely was it executed, that Tilly's horsemen, finding themselves assailed by a shower of stones, were constrained in self-defense to draw their sabers. They were on the point of falling upon their assailants when, with drums beating and amid the glad acclaims of the multitude, an infantry company of The Hague militia, known by the name of the "Blue Flag," and consisting exclusively of Orangemen, debouched upon the square. The captain of this militia corps informed Monsieur Tilly that, in order to avoid an effusion of blood in a conflict with the populace, the Council of State had ordered the company of the Blue Flag to mount guard at the castle, and relieve the cavalry posted there. Monsieur Tilly had no choice but to obey and yield the place to his substitutes, although he had no doubt that the prison would now be speedily invaded by the delirious mob. The cavalry, its retreat covered by the infantry corps, withdrew from the square amidst the hootings, the vociferations and even the threats of the mob which now had reached a pitch of delirious paroxysm.

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

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

The butcher's threats, directly alluding to Mademoiselle Plouernel and her aunt, were heard by Serdan, Salaun Lebrenn and his son, who, having returned to the square, and being driven by the current of the mass, found themselves pushed in the direction of the prison. Vainly had they sought to keep their promise to Monsieur Tilly of protecting the life of John De Witt. When the venerable man left his house under the guidance of the jail grenadier, Serdan and his friends requested him to allow them to escort him. He consented. Together they crossed several narrow and quiet streets and presently an almost deserted lane. When, at the end of the same, they arrived before a gate that barred further passage and opened upon a corridor leading into the castle, the grenadier declared to the companions of John De Witt that they could go no further, his orders being to allow admission only to the Grand Pensionary of Holland. John De Witt urged his friends to withdraw, clasped their hands, and entered alone, the door being unlocked, then closed and re-locked after him by the grenadier who was furnished with a key. John De Witt was taken without delay to his brother, and there discovered the trap that was laid for him. His brother had not sent for him, and was greatly alarmed at what he considered a most inopportune visit, in view of the general popular excitement, and the riot at the prison gate. A heartrending scene took place between the two brothers. John sought to induce his brother to leave the prison, the doors of which, he argued, had to be opened to him, seeing he was sentenced to banishment. Cornelius declined, on the ground that he had appealed from the decree of proscription. He insisted that the judges pronounce him either innocent or guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. To quit the prison 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 proceeding in the prison of Cornelius, two officers and four militiamen of the Blue Flag company forced themselves into the chamber in which the two brothers were conversing, and assailed them with violent threats.

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

"The officers and the militiamen found Cornelius De Witt lying on his couch in a morning gown, and his brother seated near the head of the bed reading to him out of the Bible. The Grand Pensionary sought to awaken some sense of humanity in the maddened men who entered the room. They only redoubled their threats, and compelled the two brothers to rise and leave the room, saying they were to be taken to the place where criminals are executed. The De Witts embraced each other tenderly at the head of the stairs which led out of the castle, and bade each other their last adieus. Cornelius De Witt, who, in consequence of the torture, was very weak, descended leaning upon his brother's arm. The latter, preserving a most heroic calmness in sight of so imminent a danger, exhorted in kind language those who led him and his brother not to commit so great an iniquity as they threatened to be guilty of. 'My friends,' he said to them as he continued to descend the stairs, sustaining his brother, 'we are innocent, we are not traitors to the Republic; take us wherever you please, but take us to judges.' 'March! March!' the officers answered, brutally pushing him forward and causing him to trip and stumble over the lowest steps of the staircase; 'You will soon know where you are taken to, traitors!'"

The iron gate that served as a defense to the castle had been forced open. A portion of the mob penetrated into the outer yard which separated the square from the façade of the castle, and where a low stoop led up to an ogive door. The shadow, into which the vault of the door threw the inside, allowed but an indistinct view of the lowest steps of the staircase by which John and Cornelius De Witt descended. The instant the two brothers appeared at the top of the stoop, whither they were pushed by the militiamen of the Blue Flag, yells of hate and vengeance broke forth from all sides.

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

Separated from the two victims, and hemmed in by a compact mass of people, Serdan, Salaun Lebrenn and Nominoë were as impotent to bring the slightest help to Cornelius and John as to flee from the spectacle that they were about to witness. In that situation, and justly fearing to be recognized as Frenchmen and massacred on the spot, they controlled their grief and indignation, and only exchanged looks of despair as the tragedy was enacted before their eyes.

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

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

The corpse of John De Witt was dragged under the Buytenhoff Arcade beside his brother's, whom the butcher killed. The mob pounced like tigers upon the two bodies, riddled them with shots, stripped them naked, mutilated them beyond recognition – and, Oh, frightful reprisals that the two martyrs were the innocent victims of! each act of sacrilegious profanation was accompanied with a thousand imprecations intended to recall the atrocities committed by the soldiers of Louis XIV, who crowned their acts of pillage, of incendiarism, of iniquities perpetrated upon women, and of murder, by outraging even the corpses which they stripped of their funeral robes, and deprived of burial!

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

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FLIGHT

Salaun Lebrenn, his son, and their friend, the witnesses to the massacre, stood shuddering with terror, when they were suddenly aroused by the cries of several voices: "And now for Tilly!" "Death to Tilly!" "To the sack of his house!" "Death to the traitors!" "Death to the friends of the French!"

"Vengeance and reprisals!" howled the most infuriated of the mob. "To Tilly's house! to Tilly's house! Sack the house of Tilly!"

The three Frenchmen, who were, until then, wedged in the compact mass of the mob, and compelled, despite themselves, to witness the sight of the popular fury, succeeded by dint of vigorous efforts in cleaving their way in a diagonal line across the press, and finally freed themselves entirely, while the mass of people took the direction of the house of Monsieur Tilly.

Madam Tremblay and Abbot Boujaron, faithful to the recommendations of Monsieur Tilly, kept the curtains of the windows closed, and abstained from showing their faces. Standing near one of the embrasures, and slightly parting the curtain, the Abbot sought to obtain a glimpse of what went on upon the street, and cast furtive looks upon the square.

"Abbot! – no imprudence!" cried the Marchioness.

Mademoiselle Plouernel sat steeped in revery at the opposite end of the parlor. Her mind dwelt indignantly upon the odious designs that her own family had dared to plot, and in which so ignoble a role was assigned to her. She remained an utter and indifferent stranger to all that was happening within and without the house.