The Brothers de Witt (Chapters 1–4)

On the 20th of August 1672, the city of The Hague, so lively, so neat, so trim, that one might believe every day to be Sunday — the city of The Hague, with its shady park, its tall trees bending over its Gothic houses, its canals like great mirrors in which its steeples and its almost Eastern cupolas are reflected — the city of The Hague, the capital of the seven United Provinces, was filling all its streets with a black and red stream of hurried, panting and restless citizens, who, with knives in their belts, muskets on their shoulders, or sticks in their hands, were pushing on towards the Buitenhof, a terrible prison, whose grated windows are still to be seen.

In that prison was Cornelius de Witt, brother of John de Witt, the Grand Pensionary — the chief minister — of Holland. For nearly twenty years the two brothers had governed the Republic, honestly and well, as republicans, against the House of Orange. But that year the armies of King Louis XIV of France had invaded the Netherlands, and the people, terrified, blamed the de Witts; they made the young Prince William of Orange their Stadtholder, their military leader; and Cornelius had been arrested on a false charge of plotting to murder the Prince, tortured, and sentenced to banishment. John de Witt, who had resigned his office, came to the prison to take his brother away into exile.

The charge against Cornelius had been brought by a barber-surgeon, a man called Tyckelaer, of bad reputation, who swore that Cornelius had tried to bribe him to murder the Prince. It was a lie; but the times were mad. Cornelius had been put to the question — tortured — to make him confess; he had not confessed, and had recited, through his pain, the lines of Horace on the just man who stands firm though the world crashes about him. The judges, not daring to acquit him, had banished him. He lay in his cell with his limbs broken by the torture, calm and proud, while outside the crowd roared for his death.

The mob was waiting for them. A small troop of cavalry, under an honest officer, Count Tilly, protected the prison door; but the order came — from no one would say whom — for the cavalry to withdraw. The mob broke into the prison. The brothers tried to escape in a carriage; they were dragged out, beaten, stabbed, shot, and torn to pieces in the street, before the eyes of the citizens of The Hague. Dumas tells it at length; it is enough to say here that it was one of the most shameful scenes in the history of the Republic.

In the cell, the two brothers spoke of one danger only: the letters. John de Witt had kept, for years, his private correspondence with the Marquis de Louvois, the French minister of war; letters harmless in themselves, but which, in the hands of the Orange party, could be twisted into proof that the de Witts had sold their country to France — and which would compromise many others too. Cornelius told his brother that he had given them, in a sealed parcel, to his godson at Dort, who knew nothing of their contents. John was alarmed: the young man must burn them. Cornelius wrote the note there and then, and they gave it to John's faithful servant, Craeke, who slipped out of the prison and rode for Dort.

Count Tilly refused, at first, to withdraw his troopers from the prison gate without a written order; when the written order came, he obeyed, and rode away.

From a window nearby, a young man, pale, thin, with a cold dark eye, wrapped in a cloak, watched it all without a word. It was William of Orange. When it was over, he left the city in silence.

Before he died, Cornelius de Witt had sent a message, by a faithful servant, to his godson in the town of Dort: "Burn the parcel I gave you in trust. Burn it without looking at it, and without opening it, so that its contents may remain unknown even to yourself. Secrets of the kind it contains are death to those who keep them. Burn it, and you will have saved John and Cornelius de Witt."