Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War, 1618 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 99 pages of information about Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland .

Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War, 1618 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 99 pages of information about Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland .
mouths as they heard how the Advocate had for years and years been the hireling of Spain, whose government had bribed him largely to bring about the Truce and kill the West India Company; how his pockets and his coffers were running over with Spanish ducats; how his plot to sell the whole country to the ancient tyrant, drive the Prince of Orange into exile, and bring every city of the Netherlands into a “blood-bath,” had, just in time, been discovered.

And the people believed it and hated the man they had so lately honoured, and were ready to tear him to pieces in the streets.  Men feared to defend him lest they too should be accused of being stipendiaries of Spain.  It was a piteous spectacle; not for the venerable statesman sitting alone there in his prison, but for the Republic in its lunacy, for human nature in its meanness and shame.  He whom Count Lewis, although opposed to his politics, had so lately called one of the two columns on which the whole fabric of the States reposed, Prince Maurice being the other, now lay prostrate in the dust and reviled of all men.

“Many who had been promoted by him to high places,” said a contemporary, “and were wont to worship him as a god, in hope that he would lift them up still higher, now deserted him, and ridiculed him, and joined the rest of the world in heaping dirt upon him.”

On the third day of his imprisonment the Advocate wrote this letter to his family:—­

“My very dear wife, children, children-in-law, and grandchildren,—­I know that you are sorrowful for the troubles which have come upon me, but I beg you to seek consolation from God the Almighty and to comfort each other.  I know before the Lord God of having given no single lawful reason for the misfortunes which have come upon me, and I will with patience await from His Divine hand and from my lawful superiors a happy issue, knowing well that you and my other well-wishers will with your prayers and good offices do all that you can to that end.

“And so, very dear wife, children, children-in-law, and grandchildren, I commend you to God’s holy keeping.

“I have been thus far well and honourably treated and accommodated, for which I thank his princely Excellency.

“From my chamber of arrest, last of August, anno 1618.

“Your dear husband, father, father-in-law, and grand father,

Johnof Barneveld.”

On the margin was written: 

“From the first I have requested and have at last obtained materials for writing.”

A fortnight before the arrest, but while great troubles were known to be impending, the French ambassador extraordinary, de Boississe, had audience before the Assembly of the States-General.  He entreated them to maintain the cause of unity and peace as the foundation of their state; “that state,” he said, “which lifts its head so high that it equals or surpasses the mightiest republics that ever

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Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War, 1618 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.