The Brothers Torn Apart By Their Own Countrymen

The murder of the De Witt brothers is one of the most shocking and grotesque events in the history of Europe — the moment when the leader of one of the richest, most sophisticated, most civilised nations on earth was torn apart and cannibalised by his own citizens in the street, in broad daylight, in the heart of his capital. It is a story about how quickly a society can turn, how a campaign of lies can prime a crowd for murder, and how thin the veneer of order truly is.

To understand it, you have to understand who Johan de Witt was. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was at the dazzling height of its Golden Age — the wealthiest trading power in the world, a hub of art, science, and commerce, with Rembrandt painting and Dutch ships dominating the oceans. And for two decades, the man who effectively governed this republic was Johan de Witt, the Grand Pensionary of Holland. He was brilliant — a gifted mathematician as well as a statesman — and he led the Republic through its most powerful years. But de Witt was the leader of a political faction that had deliberately kept power away from the House of Orange, the popular princely dynasty, and specifically from the young Prince William III of Orange. This made de Witt powerful enemies who were simply waiting for him to stumble.

In 1672, he did more than stumble. That year is remembered in Dutch history by a single, chilling name: the Rampjaar — the “Disaster Year.” The Republic was suddenly invaded on multiple fronts, most devastatingly by the vast armies of Louis XIV of France, and the Dutch land forces, which de Witt’s government had neglected in favour of the navy, crumbled. The country was gripped by panic and terror as French troops overran province after province. And in that atmosphere of fear and catastrophe, de Witt’s enemies — the supporters of the House of Orange — saw their opportunity. They unleashed a relentless, vicious campaign of propaganda against the de Witts: a flood of pamphlets, forgeries, and what we would now call fake news, portraying the brothers as corrupt, treacherous elitists who had left the nation defenceless and were secretly in league with its enemies. The lies did their work. The public, terrified and looking for someone to blame, turned its rage on Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis.

The Horror

The trap closed in August 1672. Johan had already survived one assassination attempt, stabbed and wounded in June, and had resigned his office. His brother Cornelis was then arrested on a charge of plotting against Prince William, based on the testimony of a single dubious witness. Cornelis was tortured, but refused to confess. He was sentenced only to exile — a verdict the Orangist mob considered outrageously lenient. On the 20th of August 1672, Johan de Witt was lured to the Gevangenpoort prison in The Hague, invited to help his brother depart into exile. And it was there that the ambush was sprung. A large, armed mob gathered outside the prison. And crucially, the cavalry troops who should have been protecting the brothers were ordered away — a decision that pointed suspicion, then and now, directly at the man who stood to gain everything: William III of Orange, though his direct involvement was never proven.

With the soldiers gone, the mob stormed the prison and dragged Johan and Cornelis de Witt out into the square. What followed was an orgy of violence that has horrified historians for three and a half centuries. The brothers were shot and beaten to death. Then their bodies were dragged to the public gallows on the square — a spot known as the Groene Zoodje — and strung up by their feet, hanging upside down. And then the crowd fell upon the corpses. The bodies were stripped naked and butchered. Rioters cut out the brothers’ hearts, livers, and other organs. Some of the mob roasted and ate pieces of the men — genuine, documented cannibalism, in the streets of one of the most civilised cities in Europe. Others hacked off fingers, toes, ears, and other body parts to keep or to sell as souvenirs of the day. Contemporary records even preserve the going rates: a finger fetched fifteen to twenty pennies, an ear twenty-five to thirty, a toe around ten. People carried pieces of the murdered statesmen into the taverns to show them off. The Grand Pensionary who had led the Dutch Golden Age was, quite literally, torn to pieces and consumed by his own people.

The Modern Relic

In the aftermath, no one was ever punished for the massacre. Just the opposite: William III of Orange, who rose to supreme power in the Republic in the wake of the de Witts’ deaths, not only failed to prosecute the ringleaders — he rewarded some of them, granting them pensions and high offices. Whether or not William personally ordered the murders, he was their greatest beneficiary, and he protected the killers. The de Witt faction was finished, and the House of Orange ruled.

The relic is one of the most macabre objects on public display anywhere in the world, and it sits in The Hague to this day. After the slaughter, supporters of the de Witts managed to recover pieces of the brothers, and they preserved them as relics — kept in lead boxes as mementoes of the murdered leaders. And two of those pieces survive: the tongue of Johan de Witt, and a finger of his brother Cornelis. They are held today in the collection of the Haags Historisch Museum — the Hague Historical Museum — the actual, preserved body parts of a 17th-century head of state, torn from him by a mob and kept for 350 years. One is stored in a box bearing an inscription describing it as the “wondrous part” of Jan de Witt. And the place it happened is still there too — the Gevangenpoort, the prison from which they were dragged, still stands in The Hague as a museum, and the square where they were butchered can be walked across today, where a monument now marks the men who died there. The story is remembered in the Netherlands not just as a horror, but as a warning — a cautionary tale, told again in our own age, about what can happen when fear and a torrent of lies are turned loose on a frightened crowd, and the thin membrane between a civilised society and a cannibal mob is torn away in a single afternoon.

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