Prince Maurice never recovered from the error—­to put for the moment no worse epithet to it—­of the death of Barneveldt.  He had killed his best counsellor; thenceforward his power diminished; and with every rebuff he who had abandoned his first adviser complained that God had abandoned him.  Davies sums up the case thus:  “The escutcheon of Maurice is bright with the record of many a deed of glory; the fabric of his country’s greatness raised by his father, strengthened and beautified by himself; her armies created the masters of military science to the civilized world; her States the centre and mainspring of its negotiations; her proud foe reduced to sue humbly at her feet.  But there is one dark, deep stain on which the eye of posterity, unheeding the surrounding radiance, is constantly fixed:  it is the blood of Barneveldt.”

The Binnenhof leads to the Buitenhof, a large open space, the old gateway to which is the Gevangenpoort prison—­scene of another shameful deed in the history of Holland, the death of John and Cornelius de Witt.  The massacre occurred two hundred and thirty-three years ago—­in 1672.  Cornelius de Witt was wrongfully accused of an attempt to procure the assassination of the Stadtholder, William III.  To him, in his cell in the Gevangenpoort, came, on 22nd August, John de Witt, late Grand Pensionary, brought hither by a bogus message.

I quote from Davies, who elsewhere makes it clear that (as Dumas says) William III was privy to the crime:  “His friends, fearful of some treachery, besought him to pause and inquire into the truth of the summons before he obeyed it; and his only daughter threw herself at his feet, and implored him with floods of tears not to risk unnecessarily a life so precious.  But his anxiety for his brother, with whom he had ever lived on terms of the tenderest affection, proved stronger than their remonstrances; and setting out on foot, attended by his servant and two secretaries, he hastened to the prison.  On seeing him, Cornelius de Witt exclaimed in astonishment, ‘My brother, what do you here?’ ‘Did you not then send for me?’ he asked; and receiving an answer in the negative, ‘Then,’ rejoined he, ‘we are lost’.

“During this time one of the judges sent for Tichelaar, and suggested to him that he should incite the people not to suffer a villain who had intended to murder the Prince to go unpunished.  True to his instructions, the miscreant spread among the crowd collected before the prison doors the report, that the torture inflicted on Cornelius de Witt was a mere pretence, and that he had only escaped the death he deserved because the judges favoured his crime.  Then, entering the gaol, he presented himself at the window, and exclaimed to the crowd below, ’The dog and his brother are going out of prison!  Now is your time; revenge yourselves on these two knaves, and then on thirty more, their accomplices.’