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 IV

Rotterdam

He who says the romance of the West is dead has never mingled
much with the “eight-section man” down in the southwestern corner
of Texas. He who avers that the romance of steel is played out and
defunct has never straddled an I-beam of a New York skyscraper in
the building high above the vortexes of street traffic, above the flirt
of a housemaid hanging out clothes on a lower roof. He who claims
that the romance of shipping has succumbed under the pressure of
modern methods has never been to Rotterdam.
They have a pretty park in that San Francisco of Holland that
fringes the bank of the Maas. On its river side, near the entrance,
there is a café, where, in the evening, the less romantic Rotterdamer
basks and imbibes in the throes of a virulent orchestra. Farther along
under the trees, past the café and overlooking the river, numerous
benches invite the lover of the sea and its ships to sit him down and
gaze upon the great steel hulls—and wooden ones, too—that have
just returned from, or are about to depart for, a lengthy and
uncertain argument with Father Neptune.
The view from here is several times more magnetic than it is from
the neighborhood of the café, and so here, about dusk, come those
wizened warriors upon whom the sea has cast her spell once and for
all time, to sit and smoke their pipes upside down and dream,
perhaps, of other days, of other ships, of other seas. Three or four
may occupy a single bench, but it will be an hour before a word is
passed between them. It is their only method of rejuvenation, and
they are loath to be reminded that their day is almost done. A
certain sort of reverence pervades the place; it would seem a
blasphemy even to speak aloud.
On one of these wooden benches I sat one evening at sunset,
looking out across to the docks on the opposite side of the river.
Busy little motor boats were sputtering hither and thither between
the shipping, bent upon the fulfillment of their last missions of the
day. A few hundred yards farther up, a couple of gloomy-looking
steam ferries, built like Rhine river tugs, transferred their deck loads
of workmen from the different docks and machine shops on the
Feijenoord to the Westplein landing in Rotterdam. From out in the
stream came the rattle of chain through hawse pipe, as a
Portuguese tramp, having entered the harbor too late for a stranger
to dock, was preparing an anchorage for the night. Close by lay a
Norwegian “wind jammer”—so close that the two of them might
easily have rubbed figure-heads. A big cargo boat, bound out,
preceded by a tiny tug to herald her approach and followed by its
twin to help keep her straight while passing, an exact fit, through
the draw to one of the many “havens,” bayed sonorously for the less
conspicuous craft to get out of her way; while alongside the
Wilhelminakade the upper decks of a great passenger-carrying
leviathan, already electric lighted, showed through the rigging of the
intermediate vessels. Out of respect for the tide, she was to sail at
three the next morning, and her passengers, when they awakened,
would find themselves well down the English Channel on their way
back to New York after a summer in Europe.
Presently, two young women, pushing a baby-coach between
them, came strolling along, and took up positions at the railing just
in front of me. Plainly they were English, and, although I strained
every nerve to overhear their conversation (which was mean of me),
but could not, I divined the reason for their coming. The same thing
occurs a dozen times a day in Liverpool, in ’Frisco, in Sydney, in
Valparaiso, in every port of any consequence in the world. One was
the wife, and the other perhaps the sister, or her sister, or maybe a
close friend. And there was also the kiddy.
 Their vigil was not long in being rewarded, for during the three
weeks’ absence—three months’, more likely, if the voyage had been
a long one—they had perused the Lloyd reports daily and diligently,
and with the additional aid of a letter or two, had calculated the time
of arrival to a nicety.
Soon a great black hull appeared far down the river. Darkness was
gathering fast, but they knew the lines of that ship as they knew
their little gardens at home. They un-reticuled their handkerchiefs
and waved and giggled and giggled and waved. For full twenty
minutes they waved and giggled, and then they held the kiddy up.
The ship turned off to enter a dock on the opposite side of the
stream and, as she turned her port beam to us, someone—it would
not have been difficult to guess whom—on her bridge held up a
navigator’ s three-foot telescope, it having been doubtless already
very much in hand, and waved a brief but significant, “All’s well; see
you in two hours”—or waves to that effect.
Yes, there is still romance in shipping, and Rotterdam, being first,
last, and all the time a shipping town, there is romance in
Rotterdam.
The most satisfactory way of approaching Rotterdam is by water,
and the most satisfactory water way is from Dortrecht. By this route
you obtain not only the most characteristic views of Rotterdam and
the bustle and business about her water front, but you get also the
glimpse of Dortrecht that Albert Cuyp availed himself of so often, for
the water front of Dortrecht doesn’t seem to have changed much,
according to Cuyp, except in the item of steam for sail.
It is a pleasant trip of an hour and a half duration down the Maas,
past numerous shipyards that are capable of building anything from
a canal boat to an ocean-going cargo carrier; past great suction
dredges assigned to the perennial duty of keeping the river
conquered; past fishers for salmon, who, by treaty, may lower their
nets only upon certain days in order to give the German fishers,
higher up the stream, an equal opportunity to make a living; past
little hamlets whose river docks and picturesque dock tenders serve
in lieu of railway stations and the more prosaic red-capped and
frock-coated station masters.
But Rotterdam, by reason of her trade, does not coincide with the
general idea of Holland. She is more or less cosmopolitan, to be
sure, but this phase strikes the traveler less forcibly than her ardent
activity. What with her electric cranes and machine shops and sugar
refineries and tobacco factories and shipbuilding yards and
distilleries, she gives one the impression of a thriving German
seaport. The home port claimed by the greater number of the seven
hundred or more steam and sailing vessels that make up the
merchant marine of Holland, is Rotterdam, and through this port
passes at least one-half the country’s total imports by sea and
almost as much of her exports, together with four-fifths of Holland’s
trade with the Rhine. But Baltimore, in the matter of population,
would make two of this, the most active, the most important seaport
of the Netherlands.
Still, Rotterdam is essentially Dutch, in fact if not in first
appearances. She has her Groote Kerk, the Church of St. Lawrence,
begun in 1412; she has her Town Hall, without which, it seems, no
town in Holland could survive; she has her picture gallery, although
a mediocre one, in the Boymans Museum; she has her old market
and her new church; and she has her fish market, where women of
the most uncertain antiquity sit and gossip and knit and sell sole
between stitches. Here and there, too, she has her old windmill,
thatch covered, browbeaten by the weather, massive and
ponderous-looking, that, in the very midst of twentieth century hurry
and scurry, waves its stiff arms as if depicting in pantomime a scene
of other days. And then, in striking contrast, right at the very edge
of the old harbor, stands the tallest building in the Netherlands. It
must be as sky-scraping as eight or ten stories, and high up under
its eaves it displays the advertisement of an American breakfast
food. Its builders probably thought that a photographer would be
the only mortal who could be induced to rent the top story, so they
made the building’s sloping roof into one glorious skylight, under
which rural Holland might sit and have its picture taken for the
family album.

In spite of its up-to-date spirit, Rotterdam is essentially Dutch, with

the canals much in evidence

It was while waiting for a car at the beginning of The Oosterkade

and just across the old harbor from this Metropolitan Tower of
Rotterdam that the more nearly general of all Dutch customs was
brought home to me.
The car had approached its terminus and I was about to mount,
when the conductor, more forcibly than politely, requested that I
discontinue the attempt and take up my position where I belonged,
with the rest of the crowd, in the vicinity of a certain lamp-post a
few steps beyond—the Dutch being most precise and systematic. I
ambled thither and was standing in the more or less protecting
umbrage of the lamp-post, with sarcastic but not envious mien,
watching the traction company partake of a large slab of black bread
and cheese (until the disappearance of which the car refused to
continue) when I was accosted by a small street urchin of about the
tender age of seven, who was armed with an immense cigar. I
happened to be smoking at the time, and this was what brought the
boy in my direction. He wanted a light and wasted no words in
asking for it. Being somewhat shocked that a youth of such tender
years should be so faithful a slave to the vile, pernicious weed, I
submitted to his plea under mental protest. But he seemed not in
the least embarrassed, for he saluted and marched off, apparently
enjoying the thing as if it had been his fifth since breakfast.
Before I was through with Holland, however, I came to know that
every able-bodied male in the kingdom acquires the cigar habit as
early in life as his physical condition permits, and I have yet to see
the adult Dutchman who doesn’t use tobacco in some form. Holland,
by virtue of her colonial holdings in Sumatra and the Straits
Settlements, is the paradise of smokers, and tobacco stores in every
town, be it large or small, are as thick as saloons in McKeesport,
Pennsylvania. If you pay more than the equal value of two American
cents for a cigar in Holland you are branded as a foreigner or an
extravagant roué. Of course foreigners who unfurl their native colors
full in the face of the tobacconist are expected to and do pay more,
but a cigar equal in flavor and composition to the best of our ten
cent brands can be bought in Holland for five Dutch cents, and often
less, if you go about it in the proper manner. The age at which boys
learn to smoke in Holland has never been correctly computed, but in
the country I have seen lads of five or six serenely eliminating all
possible chance of being rewarded the oft-referred-to gold watch at
the age of twenty-one, and handling their cigars with as much real
enjoyment as their paternal grandparent.
Perhaps at this point it might be opportune to tell the story of old
Herr van Klaes of this same town of Rotterdam, who consumed a
five-ounce package of tobacco daily and died in action at the age of
ninety-eight with his pipe actually in his mouth. In his will he
expressed the wish that every smoker in the kingdom be invited to
his funeral “by letter, circular, and advertisement,” and all who took
advantage of the invitation should be presented with ten pounds of
tobacco and two pipes, the name of van Klaes, his crest, and the
date of his demise to be engraved upon the latter. Every poor man in
the neighborhood who accompanied the bier was to receive a large
package of smoking mixture on each anniversary of the death of his
champion. The will stipulated further that all who wished to partake
of its benefits must smoke “without interruption during the entire
ceremony.” The body was to be placed in a coffin lined with the
wood of his old cigar boxes, and at the foot should be placed a
package of French tobacco and one of the Dutch blend. At his side in
the coffin was to be laid his favorite pipe and a box of matches,
“For,” he said, “one never knows what may happen.” And all persons
in the funeral procession were requested to sprinkle the ashes of
their pipes upon the bier as they passed it while taking their
departure from the grounds.
It is said the funeral of Herr van Klaes at least enjoyed the
distinction of being the largest seen in Rotterdam in many a day. It
must have been a busy time for the aanspreker. Indeed, it must
have taken the concentrated efforts of all the aansprekers in Holland
to help advertise the funeral. But here a few lines as to the solution
of the word “aanspreker.”
The Dutch aanspreker is he of the mourning robes whose duty it is
to go about from house to house, wherever even the flimsiest ties,
whether social or business, exist, and announce the saddening news
of a death; or it is he of the more gaudy apparel who gives the
gladsome tidings of a birth in the family—and the degree of his
mournfulness or jocundity in appearance bespeaks the mournfulness
or jocundity of his employers.
In earlier times the services of the aanspreker were augmented by
those of the huilebalk, a kind of a professional mourner, who, in the
case of a death, accompanied the aanspreker on his rounds and
wept more or less fluently after the completion of each doleful
message. His coat was long-tailed and his hat wide-brimmed and the
extent of his sorrow in each case depended wholly upon the receipts
for his services; the more money, the more tears. Both must have
been depressing professions at best, but this manner of announcing
the news constituted an essential factor of every funeral. The
aanspreker is often seen to-day, but the huilebalk has wept himself
out of existence, probably on account of a simple dearth of
apprentices.
The patron saint, almost, of Rotterdam is Gherardt Gherardts,
better known by the more poetic name of Erasmus Desiderius—
meaning “beloved and long desired”—scholar, critic, philosopher,
intellectual fly-by-night, born in Rotterdam in 1466. A bronze statue
of him by Hendrik de Keyser decorates the Groote Markt of his
birthplace. Known best by his immortal satire, “The Praise of Folly,”
and for his being, in 1516, the first to be so bold as to amend the
text of the Greek New Testament, Erasmus was undoubtedly the
“intellectual dictator of his age.” He entered the order of the
Brethren of the Common Life, first at ’S Hertogenbosch and later at
Delft, and the year America was discovered saw him acting as
secretary to the Bishop of Cambrai. He studied in Paris, in Orleans,
in Oxford, in Rome, and then returned to England to accept a
professorship at the University of Cambridge. He died in Basle in
1536.
Rotterdam cannot be said to be noted for its cleanliness; in fact, it
crowds Amsterdam for first place as the dirtiest city in Holland. But
still Rotterdam as well as Amsterdam has its beauty spots. Some of
the residence streets in the newer part of the city are veritable
gardens in themselves. The Parklaan, with the Park at one end and
the Grooteveerhaven, the latter crowded with private motor boats
and yachts that gleam in their innocence of dirt, at the other, is lined
with beautiful homes. It and the Mauritsweg and the Eendragtsweg
are tree studded and kept swept and sprinkled quite as thoroughly
and as frequently as any of the streets in The Hague. The canal that
borders these two latter streets is banked with lawns and crossed
here and there by artistic rustic bridges, for in Rotterdam, as in the
German municipalities, they pay more attention to the details of city
beautification than do we in America. The community at large seems
to take a personal interest in such affairs. Can you imagine the
linemen for a telegraph company or an electric light corporation
coming along the streets of a German city, exercising the right of
eminent domain by ripping up the pavements of the property
holders and digging holes big enough to bury a horse, in which to
plant the unsightly wooden poles that seem to them, on account of
their comparative cheapness, the only known method of carrying
wires? The Germans wouldn’t stand it for a minute. They use steel
wire carriers over there—a more businesslike looking trestle work in
the shape of an elongated truncated pyramid, set slightly above the
ground on a concrete foundation. And I noticed that these “trestle”
telegraph poles in Rotterdam, when the conditions permitted, were
planted in the center of a little bed of geraniums, while some even
had vines climbing upon them.
The Dutch, too, are sticklers for coziness and they try to make
their living quarters as habitable as possible. In the congested
harbors of Rotterdam, where, sometimes, you can step from one
side of the stream to the other upon the flat decks of the swarms of
canal boats, it is doubtful if you will see an uncurtained cabin
window, and pots of flowers will be displayed in most of them. The
train shed of the Beurs railway station in the heart of the city has an
outside cornice of flower boxes filled with pink geraniums. But then,
you will remember about the Dutch locomotives—which accounts for
much.
As you enter Rotterdam or Amsterdam on the railway you pass
row after row of what we please to call tenement houses. Even
these are not devoid of a cozy, homelike aspect that our tenements
and even reasonably inexpensive apartment houses know not. Each
apartment can boast of a balcony in the rear that is partitioned off
from its neighbors. In many cases these balconies are shaded with
awnings from the glare of the sun and decorated with flowerpots in
profusion. This serves the city dweller in lieu of a garden, and here
he eats his meals and spends his evenings after work. In the
daytime the family use the balcony as an improvised sewing room.
Many of the back yards of the smaller houses consist of a tree lined
canal over which the family looks from the seclusion of a flower
girdled, awning covered veranda.
The Dutch not only keep themselves cozy but they take a tender
sort of interest in the well-being of their birds and dumb animals.
True, they train their dogs to help their masters pull the milk carts or
vegetable wagons, but the dogs look husky and well fed and seem
to take pride in their accomplishment. A spare-ribbed stray canine
prowling around the neighborhood is an unknown quantity in
Holland.
In the center of some of Rotterdam’s canals which are barred to
traffic and made, instead, to assist in the beautification of the city,
you will see little wicker duck nests, like empty market baskets
turned on their sides. They rest on piles driven into the bottom of
the canal, and the entrance to each is approached from the water by
means of a wooden incline about the size of a shingle. This is not
only a convenience for the ducks but features as an artistic break in
the monotony, I might say, of the canal.
And these are but a few of the reasons why a visit to Rotterdam,
although barren of the types and characteristics that Holland is
noted for, is well worth the trouble; if only to study the city and its
inhabitants from a psychological point of view it is well worth while.
 V

Delft and Her Tragedy

Nineteen minutes in the train from Rotterdam, and you are in Delft—
such are the distances between towns in South Holland.
The population of Delft amounts, numerically, to some 32,000, but
this is an item that is farthest from your thoughts. It is one of the
quietest, quaintest cities in the Netherlands. Up and down its
narrow, lime shaded canals the boatmen of Delft pole their barges
laboriously, yet noiselessly, walking along the decks from stem to
stern against their padded means of propulsion and literally pushing
their craft out from under them. In the spring these watery highways
are covered with a fragrant layer of fallen blossoms; in the fall, with
leaves of variegated colors. The houses that stand behind the trees
have been well built and are well preserved, adding to the place an
impression of comfortable solidity.
My first visit to Holland brought me to Delft from “The Hook” at a
very early hour in the morning, when the housemaids were about to
commence the first concentrated assault of the day upon their
pavements, doorsteps, front doors, and the brass-work pertaining
thereto in the shape of knobs and knockers. “Scrub” seemed to be
the housemaids’ slogan, and they were certainly living up to it. Pail
after pail of water was hoisted from the canals and splashed over
everything in reach, until it flowed across the streets and
pavements, and fell back whence it came originally. If I had
appeared upon the scene a little later I might have concluded that a
cloud-burst had struck the town. And all this brackish water, that, in
the canals, comes within an ace of being absolutely stagnant, being
poured so recklessly over the town, gave to it a kind of antique odor,
anything but pleasant to inhale. It gave every evidence that that
same water had been hoisted, put to its task, and allowed to drip
back into the canals again since medieval times.
This was on a week day. A subsequent visit to Delft took me there
on Sunday.
Now, for some reason, psychological or otherwise, the housemaids
of Delft don’t seem to take the same interest in the scrupulousness
of their doorsteps on a Sunday that they do on a week day. Sunday
is the day that everybody in Delft dons his or her best bib and tucker
and goes to church, or leans over the railings of the canal bridges
and chats with a friend, or walks about the town under the shade of
its trees, contemplating, perhaps, upon the exigencies of life. And a
housemaid is but human.

The East Gate of Delft, one of the quaintest and quietest cities of the
Netherlands
 To come upon Delft, therefore, during this weekly interruption in
the perennial polishing of the town, whatever the reason for it,
offers the traveler a different and vastly more agreeable impression.
He will see Delft and her people at their best, the latter more
congenially courteous, the former more serenely stolid. Instead of
the boatmen being continually in the act of disturbing the bottoms of
the canals with their poles, so that the housemaids can skim off the
most graveolent of it with which to scour and rinse their pavements,
they assume for the day the rôle of flower sellers. Boats bearing
fragrant burdens of potted plants of every variety, and cut flowers as
well, as if to try to make amends for the mal-odor of the previous
week, will be drawn as close to the sidewalks as the banks of the
canals permit, in order to tempt the frailty of the Delft housewife—if
an inherent love of flowers may be termed as such—on her way
home from church.
Delft is old and she show’s symptoms of the fact in spots. Down at
the southern end of the city, near the Rotterdam gate, stands a
venerable building, once one of the numerous warehouses scattered
over the country belonging to the Dutch East India Company—that
most famous and wealthiest of all Dutch trading concerns, founded
in 1602, when the power and wealth of the Republic had attained
their high-water marks under the stadtholdership of Maurice, one of
the sons of the ill-fated Prince William of Orange. The place has long
since been put to use as a military storehouse. Directly opposite is
the ominous-looking city arsenal, bearing above its arched entrance
a massive copy of the arms of the old Dutch Republic, carved in
stone. Another of the old buildings is the Gemeelandshuis van
Delftland, showing in sandstone a rich Gothic façade of the
beginning of the sixteenth century.
With us, Delft’s principal claim to notoriety lies in the manufacture
of its faience, commonly called “Delft ware,” in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Its composition and design at first copied from
the Chinese and Japanese porcelain, this faience became celebrated
throughout the world. Dutch designs were soon substituted for the
Oriental, and the industry prospered proportionately. Later it lapsed
into decay and the true process has been revived in Delft only within
comparatively recent years. A large plant for its manufacture now
operates on the Oosteinde, not far from the New Church.
But in the heart of the Hollander, Delft will ever be revered as the
scene of the tragedy that cut short the life and terminated the
praiseworthy deeds of that eminent founder of Dutch liberty,
“William the Silent,” Prince of Orange, the George Washington of the
Netherlands.
Born of noble German parentage at Dillenburg in the Duchy of
Nassau in 1533, William, curiously enough, became the favorite of
Philip II of Spain, who appointed him, in 1559, when but twenty-six
years of age, stadtholder or governor of the provinces of Zeeland,
Holland, Friesland, and Utrecht. Two years later William found
himself in bad odor with Granvella, the Bishop of Arras, whom Philip
had appointed as counselor to his half-sister, Margaret of Parma, the
then regent of the Netherlands. William finally effected the enforced
relinquishment of this post by the Bishop in 1564.
The subsequent unrest in the Netherlands, provoked mainly by the
atrocities of Spanish soldiery, led to the sanguinary assignment of
Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, to command an army of
10,000 picked men, mustered from Lombardy, Sardinia, Sicily, and
Naples, to quell the possible insurrection. This move was bitterly
resented, not only by her subjects, but was opposed, although
without success, by Margaret of Parma herself; for the name of Alva
was as odious to her as it was to them.
A man of brilliant military attainments and the most experienced
general in Europe at the time, but bubbling over with avarice and
revengefulness, cruel and overbearing, Alva accepted the
assignment with alacrity. “I have tamed people of iron in my day,” he
was reported to have said contemptuously; “shall I not easily crush
these men of butter?”
When Alva, with his army, entered the Netherlands and took it
upon himself, after much intrigue and conniving, to supersede the
half-sister of his sovereign as governor of the province, the Prince of
Orange retired to Dillenburg. Continued oppressions by the
Spaniards later called him to arms with the French Huguenots as
allies, and he set out betimes upon an unsuccessful campaign to
liberate the southern provinces from their yoke of Spanish tyranny.
Since that time he was ever an active revolutionist. In 1571 he
championed the “Water Beggars,” by which name those insurgents
who assisted their compatriots by sea were known, and one year
later, having been invited by the provinces of Zeeland and Holland to
command their troops against the Spaniards, he captured
Middelburg, and later came to the successful rescue of the besieged
town of Leyden. Soon after the formation of the famous defensive
league known as the “Utrecht Union,” William was condemned to
exile by Philip. The fact that the States-General defied the
sovereign’s authority in this matter was the percussion cap that
exploded the general uprising and the throwing off of Dutch
allegiance to Spain in 1581.
“Uneasy lies the head that wears”—the helmet of revolt, and from
the time of his first attempt to achieve the success of his ambitious
project, the life of no medieval ruler was ever more in jeopardy than
was that of William of Orange. Within a period of two years five
separate and distinct attempts to take his life had been perpetrated,
and a sixth, albeit an abhorrently successful one, was about to
follow—all of which were undoubtedly at the initial instigation of the
Duke of Alva.
Just across the canal from the Old Church at Delft still stands the
house of William the Silent, now known as the Prinsenhof, where the
tragedy took place. It is a low, two-story building with a red-tiled
roof, formerly a cloister, but fitted up in 1575 as the residence of the
Princes of Orange. Here came William, in the summer of 1584, to
join his fourth wife, Louisa de Coligny, at the christening of their son,
born in Delft the previous winter, who later became the celebrated
governor, Frederic William. The door marked Gymnasium Publicum,
opposite the tower of the church, leads through a courtyard to the
staircase where the murder was committed; and in a dark corner of
the wall at the foot of the steps the custodian will show you a hole
made by one of the bullets that killed the Prince. The dining-room
beyond, from which William had come to his death, is now a
museum containing reminiscences of him.
The Czolgosz of the occasion, the perpetrator of the dastardly act,
was Bathazar Gérard, alias Francis Guion, the self-alleged son of a
martyred Calvinist, a religious fanatic who had long cherished an
insane desire to murder Orange.
“The organization of Bathazar Gérard,” says Motley, “would furnish
a subject for profound study, both for the physiologist and the
metaphysician. Neither wholly a fanatic nor entirely a ruffian, he
combined the most dangerous elements of both characters. In his
puny body and mean exterior were inclosed considerable mental
powers and accomplishments, a daring ambition, and a courage
almost superhuman. Yet those qualities led him only to form upon
the threshold of life a deliberate determination to achieve greatness
by the assassin’s trade.”
After long and exasperating delays, Gérard had finally succeeded,
on account of his ambitions, in nursing himself into the good graces
of Alexander of Parma, the Spanish governor of the Netherlands at
that time. On the other hand, “Parma had long been looking for a
good man to murder Orange, feeling—as Philip, Granvelle, and all
former governors of the Netherlands had felt—that this was the only
means of saving the royal authority in any part of the provinces.
Many unsatisfactory assassins had presented themselves from time
to time, and Alexander had paid money in hand to various
individuals—Italians, Spaniards, Lorrainers, Scotchmen, Englishmen,
who had generally spent the sums received without attempting the
job. Others were supposed to be still engaged in the enterprise, and
at that moment there were four persons—each unknown to the
others, and of different nations—in the city of Delft, seeking to
compass the death of William the Silent.”
Upon the death, at this time, of the French Duke of Anjou, Gérard
was recommended to Parma by various parties as a capable
messenger “to carry this important intelligence to the Prince of
Orange.” Concerning the outcome of this mission, I can do no better
than to quote John Lothrop Motley from his “The Rise of the Dutch
Republic,” as I have done elsewhere in this chapter:
“The dispatches having been intrusted to him” (Gérard), “he
traveled post-haste to Delft, and to his astonishment the letters had
hardly been delivered before he was summoned in person to the
chamber of the Prince. Here was an opportunity such as he had
never dared to hope for. The arch-enemy to the Church and to the
human race” (that is, the Prince, so called), “whose death would
confer upon his destroyer wealth and nobility in this world, besides a
crown of glory in the next, lay unarmed, alone, in bed, before the
man who had thirsted seven long years for his blood.
“Bathazar could scarcely control his emotions sufficiently to
answer the questions which the Prince addressed to him concerning
the death of Anjou; but Orange, deeply engaged with the
dispatches, and with the reflections which their deeply important
contents suggested, did not observe the countenance of the humble
Calvinist exile, who had been recently recommended to his
patronage by Villers. Gérard had, moreover, made no preparation for
an interview so entirely unexpected, had come unarmed, and had
formed no plan for escape. He was obliged to forego his prey when
most within his reach, and after communicating all the information
which the Prince required, he was dismissed from the chamber.
“It was Sunday morning, and the bells were tolling for church.
Upon leaving the house he loitered about the courtyard, furtively
examining the premises, so that a sergeant of halberdiers asked him
why he was waiting there. Bathazar meekly replied that he was
desirous of attending divine worship in the church opposite, but
added, pointing to his shabby and travel-stained attire, that, without
at least a pair of new shoes and stockings, he was unfit to join the
congregation. Insignificant as ever, the small, pious, dusty stranger
excited no suspicion in the mind of the good-natured sergeant. He
forthwith spoke of the wants of Gérard to an officer, by whom they
were communicated to Orange himself, and the Prince instantly
ordered a sum of money to be given him. Thus Bathazar obtained
from William’s charity what Parma’s thrift had denied—a fund for
carrying out his purpose!

The Prinsenhof in Delft, revered by every Hollander as the scene

where “William the Silent,” the George Washington of the
Netherlands, was murdered

“Next morning, with the money thus procured, he purchased a

pair of pistols or small carabines from a soldier, chaffering long about
the price because the vender could not supply a particular kind of
chopped bullets or slugs which he desired. Before the sunset of the
following day that soldier had stabbed himself to the heart, and died
despairing, on hearing for what purpose the pistols had been
bought.
 “On Tuesday, the 10th of July, 1584, at about half-past twelve, the
Prince, with his wife on his arm, and followed by the ladies and
gentlemen of his family, was going to the dining-room. William the
Silent was dressed upon that day, according to his usual custom, in
very plain fashion. He wore a wide-leaved, loosely-shaped hat of
dark felt, with a silken cord round the crown—such as had been
worn by the Beggars in the early days of the revolt. A high ruff
encircled his neck, from which also depended one of the Beggars’
medals, with the motto, ‘Fideles au roy jusqu’ a la besace,’ while a
loose surcoat of gray frieze cloth, over a tawny leather doublet, with
wide, slashed underclothes, completed his costume. Gérard
presented himself at the doorway, and demanded a passport. The
Princess, struck with the pale and agitated countenance of the man,
anxiously questioned her husband concerning the stranger. The
Prince carelessly observed that ‘it was merely a person who came for
a passport,’ ordering, at the same time, a secretary forthwith to
prepare one. The Princess, still not relieved, observed in an
undertone that ‘she had never seen so villainous a countenance.’
Orange, however, not at all impressed with the appearance of
Gérard, conducted himself at table with his usual cheerfulness,
conversing much with the burgomaster of Leeuwarden, the only
guest present at the family dinner, concerning the political and
religious aspects of Friesland. At two o’clock the company rose from
table. The Prince led the way, intending to pass to his private
apartments above. The dining-room, which was on the ground floor,
opened into a little square vestibule, which communicated, through
an arched passageway, with the main entrance into the courtyard.
This vestibule was also directly at the foot of the wooden staircase
leading to the next floor, and was scarcely six feet in width. Upon its
left side, as one approached the stairway, was an obscure arch, sunk
deep in the wall, and completely in the shadow of the door. Behind
this arch a portal opened to the narrow lane at the side of the
house. The stairs themselves were completely lighted by a large
window halfway up the flight. The Prince came from the dining-
room, and began leisurely to ascend. He had only reached the
second stair, when a man emerged from the sunken arch, and,
standing within a foot or two of him, discharged a pistol full at his
heart. Three balls entered his body, one of which, passing quite
through him, struck with violence against the wall beyond. The
Prince is said to have exclaimed in French, as he felt the wound, ‘O
my God, have mercy upon my soul! O my God, have mercy upon this
poor people!’
“These were the last words he ever spoke, save that when his
sister, Catherine of Schwartzburg, immediately afterwards asked him
if he commended his soul to Jesus Christ, he faintly answered, ‘Yes.’
His master of the horse, Jacob van Maldere, had caught him in his
arms as the fatal shot was fired. The Prince was then placed on the
stairs for an instant, when he immediately began to swoon. He was
afterwards laid upon a couch in the dining-room, where in a few
minutes he breathed his last in the arms of his wife and sister.
“The murderer succeeded in making his escape through the side
door, and sped swiftly up the narrow lane. He had almost reached
the ramparts, from which he intended to spring into the moat, when
he stumbled over a heap of rubbish. As he rose he was seized by
several pages and halberdiers, who had pursued him from the
house. He had dropped his pistols upon the spot where he had
committed the crime, and upon his person were found a couple of
bladders, provided with a piece of pipe, with which he had intended
to assist himself across the moat, beyond which a horse was waiting
for him. He made no effort to deny his identity, but boldly avowed
himself and his deed. He was brought back to the house, where he
immediately underwent a preliminary examination before the city
magistrates. He was afterwards subjected to excruciating tortures;
for the fury against the wretch who had destroyed the father of the
country was uncontrollable, and William the Silent was no longer
alive to intercede—as he had often done before—in behalf of those
who assailed his life.”
The tortures that the man endured prior to his speedy execution
are unmentionable.
 “William of Orange,” continues Motley, “at the period of his death,
was aged fifty-one years and sixteen days. He left twelve children.
By his first wife, Anne of Egmont, he had one son, Philip, and one
daughter, Mary, afterwards married to Count Hohenlo. By his second
wife, Anna of Saxony, he had one son, the celebrated Maurice of
Nassau, and two daughters, Anna, married afterwards to her cousin,
Count William Louis, and Emilie, who espoused the pretender of
Portugal, Prince Emanuel. By Charlotte of Bourbon, his third wife, he
had six daughters; and by his fourth, Louisa de Coligny, one son,
Frederic William, afterwards stadtholder of the Republic in her most
palmy days. The Prince was entombed on the 3rd of August at Delft,
amid the tears of a whole nation. Never was a more extensive,
unaffected, and legitimate sorrow felt at the death of any human
being.”
So passed the greatest man that little Holland ever did or ever will
produce. His ashes lie in a vault in the Nieuwe Kerk of Delft,
together with those of thirty-five other princes and princesses of the
House of Orange, the last being King William III, father of the
present Queen, who died on November 23rd, 1890. Above the vault
stands the handsome and imposing marble monument to William the
Silent, worked by the de Keysers, begun by the father in 1616 and
finished by the son. A translation of the Latin epitaph of the Prince
reads as follows:
In honor of God Almighty and for an eternal memorial
of William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, father of his
fatherland, who valued the welfare of the Netherlands
more than his own interests or those of his family; who
twice, and principally at his own expense, collected
powerful armies and led them into the field under the
command of the States; who averted the tyranny of
Spain; called back and restored the true religion and the
ancient laws; who at last left the nearly regained liberty
to be confirmed by his son, Prince Maurice, heir to the
virtues of his father; the truly pious, prudent and
invincible hero, whom Philip II, King of Spain, that terror
of Europe, feared, but could neither subdue nor
intimidate, but killed with gross perfidiousness by the
 hand of a hired murderer, the United Provinces have
ordered this to be erected as an eternal memorial of his
merits.
Motley’s phraseology with regard to the Prince’s attributes and
ambitions cannot be improved upon.
“His firmness was allied to his piety. His constancy in bearing the
whole weight of a struggle, as unequal as men have ever
undertaken, was the theme of admiration, even to his enemies. The
rock in the ocean, ‘tranquil amid raging billows,’ was the favorite
emblem by which his friends expressed their sense of his firmness.
From the time when, as a hostage in France, he first discovered the
plan of Philip to plant the Inquisition in the Netherlands, up to the
last moment of his life, he never faltered in his determination to
resist the iniquitous scheme. This resistance was the labor of his life.
To exclude the Inquisition, to maintain the ancient liberties of his
country, was the task which he appointed to himself when a youth of
three-and-twenty. Never speaking a word concerning a heavenly
mission, never deluding himself or others with the usual phraseology
of enthusiasts, he accomplished the task through danger, amid toils,
and with sacrifices such as few men have ever been able to make on
their country’s altar.”
Truly, Wilhelmina has an illustrious ancestor.
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