The Assassin Paid In His Victim's Own Coin

On Sunday 8th July 1584, a young Frenchman named Balthasar Gérard was hanging around the courtyard of the Prinsenhof in Delft, where William of Orange was staying. A guard asked why he wasn’t at church. Gérard said he was too poorly dressed to attend.

The guard took pity on him and told William. William ordered that 50 crowns be given to the shabby stranger to buy himself decent clothing.

The next morning, Gérard used that money to buy two wheel‑lock pistols from a soldier. He haggled over the price because the gunsmith couldn’t provide the exact ammunition he wanted, but he bought them anyway.

On 10th July, as William left the dining room and began to climb the main staircase behind his wife and daughters, Gérard stepped out from a doorway at the foot of the stairs and fired both pistols at close range into William’s upper body. The prince collapsed onto the steps. He was 51. He is widely regarded as the first head of state in European history assassinated with a handgun.

The lead balls embedded in the wall behind him. The marks they left are still there.

The Horror

Gérard tried to flee, but he was caught almost immediately. What followed was not an execution so much as a four‑day dismantling.

On the first night, he was tied to a pole and whipped. In the days that followed, heavy weights were attached to his toes and left there until the tendons stretched and tore. He was forced into shoes made from fresh dog skin, sewn deliberately too small, and placed near a fire. As the raw leather shrank in the heat, it crushed his feet. When the shoes were finally cut away, skin and flesh came off with them.

His armpits were branded with hot irons. He was dressed in a shirt soaked with spirits and had burning animal fat poured over his body. Nails or spikes were driven under his fingernails and toenails. Contemporary observers remarked on his composure, noting that he showed little sign of fear or pain.

On 14th July, the formal execution began. Gérard’s right hand — the one that had fired the pistols — was burned off with a red‑hot iron. His flesh was torn from his limbs with red‑hot pincers in multiple places. He was disembowelled alive and quartered. His heart was ripped from his chest and, according to some accounts, thrown toward his face. Finally, his head was cut off.

King Philip II of Spain had earlier promised a reward of 25,000 crowns to anyone who killed William of Orange. When Gérard succeeded, the Spanish crown did not hand his family the full cash bounty, but Philip granted them nobility and several estates in reward, turning the assassin’s relatives into landed gentry.

In the aftermath, at least one senior Catholic cleric obtained Gérard’s head and took it to Rome, petitioning to have him recognised as a martyr for the faith. The attempt failed. The Church never canonised him. His head’s final resting place is unknown.

The Modern Relic

The Prinsenhof in Delft is now a museum. The staircase where William fell is still there. At the bottom of the stairs, on the white wall, two dark, ragged bullet holes are preserved under a sheet of glass. The surrounding plaster has been repaired and repainted many times over four centuries. The holes themselves have never been filled.

Visitors lean close to look at them: two small cavities in a smooth wall, the kind of damage you’d barely notice in any other building. Here, they mark the exact spot where a man who financed his own assassin’s weapons bled out on the steps of his home.

Outside, Delft is quiet: canals, bicycles, blue‑and‑white porcelain in shop windows. Inside, those two wounds in the plaster quietly record the moment when the “Father of the Fatherland” met the young stranger he had unknowingly armed.

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