The relatives, no longer hoping to save the criminal, thought only of obtaining a commutation of the sentence.  Some of them came to me, asking me to save them:  though I was not related to the Horn family, they explained to me, that death on the wheel would throw into despair all that family, and everybody connected with it in the Low Countries, and in Germany, because in those parts there was a great and important difference between the punishments of persons of quality who had committed crimes; that decapitation in no way influenced the family of the decapitated, but that death on the wheel threw such infamy upon it, that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters, and the three next generations, were excluded from entering into any noble chapter, which, in addition to the shame, was a very injurious deprivation, annihilating the family’s chance of ecclesiastic preferment; this reason touched me, and I promised to do my best with M. le Duc d’Orleans to obtain a commutation of the sentence.

I was going off to La Ferme to profit by the leisure of Holy Week.  I went therefore to M. le Duc d’Orleans, and explained to him what I had just learnt.  I said that after the detestable crime the Comte de Horn had committed, every one must feel that he was worthy of death; but that every one could not admit it was necessary to break him on the wheel, in order to satisfy the ends of justice.  I showed him how the family would suffer if this sentence were carried out, and I concluded by proposing to the Regent a ‘mezzo termine’, such as he was so fond of.

I suggested that the decree ordering death by the wheel should be pronounced.  That another decree should at the same time be prepared and kept ready signed and sealed, with only a date to fill in, revoking the first, and changing the punishment into decapitation.  That at the last moment this second decree should be produced, and immediately afterwards the head of the Comte de Horn be cut off.  M. le Duc d’Orleans offered no objection, but consented at once to my plan.  I said to him, by way of conclusion, that I was going to set out the next day, and that I begged him not to be shaken in the determination he had just formed, by the entreaties of Dubois or Law, both of whom were strongly in favour of punishment by the wheel.  He assured me he would keep firm; reiterated the assurance; I took leave of him; and the next day went to La Ferme.

He was firm, however, in his usual manner.  Dubois and Law besieged him, and led the attack so well that he gave in, and the first thing I learnt at La Ferme was that the Comte de Horn had been broken alive on the wheel at the Greve, on Holy Friday; the 26th March, 1720, about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and the scoundrel Mille with him on the same scaffold, after having both suffered torture.

The result of this was as I anticipated.  The Horn family and all the grand nobility of the Low Countries, many of Germany, were outraged, and contained themselves neither in words nor in writings.  Some of them even talked of strange vengeance, and a long time after the death of M. le Duc d’Orleans, I met with certain of the gentlemen upon whose hearts the memory of this punishment still weighed heavily.