The Blacksmith's Hammer, or The Peasant Code Part 7

"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 Nominoe 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 circ.u.mstance that her brother-in-law's hands were crushed.

An embarra.s.sing 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 ambus.h.!.+"

"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 princ.i.p.al facade, 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 ma.s.sacred 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 brandis.h.i.+ng it, cried:

"Ma.s.sacre 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 compa.s.sion, 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! Ma.s.sacre 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 ma.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 ca.n.a.l."

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 ma.s.s 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 hors.e.m.e.n, finding themselves a.s.sailed by a shower of stones, were constrained in self-defense to draw their sabers. They were on the point of falling upon their a.s.sailants when, with drums beating and amid the glad acclaims of the mult.i.tude, 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 subst.i.tutes, 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."

"Ma.s.sacre 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!"