William of Orange arrived next day at the Hague, too late for his fame, and for the punishment of the obscure assassins, whom he allowed to escape.  The compassers of the plot obtained before long appointments and rewards.  “He one day assured me,” says Gourville, “that it was quite true he had not given any orders to have the Witts killed, but that, having heard of their death without having contributed to it, he had certainly felt a little relieved.”  History and the human heart have mysteries which it is not well to probe to the bottom.

For twenty years John van Witt had, been the most noble exponent of his country’s traditional policy.  Long faithful to the French alliance, he had desired to arrest Louis XIV. in his dangerous career of triumph; foreseeing the peril to come, he had forgotten the peril at hand; he had believed too much and too long in the influence of negotiations and the possibility of regaining the friendship of France.  He died unhappy, in spite of his pious submission to the will of God; what he had desired for his country was slipping from him abroad as well as at home; Holland was crushed by France, and the aristocratic republic was vanquished by monarchical democracy.  With the weakness characteristic of human views, he could not open his eyes to a vision of constitutional monarchy freely chosen, preserving to his country the independence, prosperity, and order which he had labored to secure for her.  A politician as, bold as and more far-sighted than Admiral Coligny, twice struck down, like him, by assassins, John van Witt remained in history the unique model of a great republican chief, virtuous and able, proud and modest, up to the day at which other United Provinces, fighting like Holland for their liberty, presented a rival to the purity of his fame, when they chose for their governor General Washington.

For all their brutal ingratitude, the instinct of the people of Holland saw clearly into the situation.  John van Witt would have failed in the struggle against France; William of Orange, prince, politician, and soldier, saved his country and Europe from the yoke of Louis XIV.

On quitting his army, the king had inscribed in his notebook, “My departure.—­I do not mean to have anything more done.”  The temperature favored his designs; it did not freeze, the country remained inundated and the towns unapproachable; the troops of the Elector of Brandenburg, together with a corps sent by the emperor, had put themselves in motion towards the Rhine; Turenne kept them in check in Germany.  Conde covered Alsace; the Duke of Luxembourg, remaining in Holland, confined himself to burning two large villages—­Bodegrave and Saammerdam.  “There was a grill of all the Hollanders who were in those burghs,” wrote the marshal to the Prince of Conde, “not one of whom was let out of the houses.  This morning we were visited by two of the enemy’s drummers, who came to claim a colonel of great note