773 



WITT, DE, JOHN AND CORNELIUS. 



WITT, DE, JOHN AND CORNELIUS. 



774 



Witikind however did not appear, but fled to Siegfried, king of 

 Denmark, whose sister Qera he had married. Charles, believing that 

 Saxony would keep quiet, turned his arms towards tho Arabs in 

 Spain ; but no sooner was he gone than Witikind, supported by a 

 body of Danish horsemen, renewed the war ; and when the Saxons 

 heard that a Frankish army had been destroyed by the Basques in the 

 valley of Roncesvalles, the whole country took up arms, and Witikind 

 ravaged the Frankish territory as far aa Cologne and Coblenz. Charles 

 returned from Spain in 779, invaded Saxony, defeated his enemy at 

 Bocholt (not far from Wesel), and in 780 encamped near the junction 

 of the Ohre with the Elbe, where he onco more received the homage of 

 many Saxon chiefs, but not of Witikind, who remained in Holstein, 

 and quietly waited for the absence of Charles, against whom he secretly 

 excited the Sorbi, a Slavonian nation .on the right bank of the Elbe. 

 Suddenly he crossed the Elbe and destroyed a Frankish army at 

 Mount Siintelberg, near Minden. Charles, infuriated, appeared with 

 fresh troops, and having compelled a portion of the Saxons to give up 

 their principal leaders with their adherents, he ordered them all to be 

 beheaded near Verden, on the Aller, 4500 in number (783). This 

 cruelty produced a terrible outbreak among the Saxons. A bloody 

 but indecisive battle was fought near the place where Varus perished 

 with three Roman legions, in the Teutoburger Wald ; nor could 

 Charles boast of having defeated his enemy in a second engagement 

 which was fought near the sources of the Hase, north of Osnabriick. 

 The places where Charles and Witikind had ranged their armies, two 

 sand-plains, at a short distance from each other, near Vorden, in a 

 barren desolate country, are called to the present day, the one the 

 ' Kerlsfeld,' the other the ' Wittefeld.' During the two following 

 years Charles continued an obstinate struggle with the Saxons ; and 

 seeing the impossibility of subduing them unless he gained their 

 chiefs, he sent messengers to Witikind and Albion, who were then in 

 Holstein, and promised them the free enjoyment of all their estates if 

 they would adopt the Christian religion and recognise Charles as their 

 master. Upon this proposition they both submitted. They went to 

 Attiniacum, now Attigny, near Rheims in Champagne, were Charles 

 then resided, submitted to the Fraukish king, and were baptised ; 

 whereupon they returned to their dominions (A.D. 785). The final 

 subjugation of the Saxons was not however completely effected till 

 the year 803. 



A proof of Witikind's attachment to the Christian religion is his 

 foundation of the convent, afterwards chapter of St. Alexander, at 

 Wildeshausen, in the grand-duchy of Oldenburg, where the respective 

 documents (though not signed by Witikiud) may still be seen. At 

 Wildeshauseu there are some ruins, situated on a hillock surrounded 

 by the Hunte, which are said to be the remains of the chief residence 

 of Witikind ; and in the mountains near Dissen, east of Oanabriick, 

 there is a ruined stronghold called Witikinds-Burg. It is said, but it 

 cannot be proved, that Witikind lost his life in 807, in a battle with 

 Geroald, duke of Suabia. His body was interred at Paderborn, whence 

 it was carried to Engers, and subsequently to Herford, near Minden. 

 In 1377 the emperor Charles IV. ordered a monument to be erected to 

 his memory in the parochial church at Engers, and in 1822 his re- 

 mains were carried from Herford to Engers, and deposited under that 

 monument. 



(Eginhartus, Vita Caroli Magni, ed. Schminck, with the notes of 

 Besels, Bolland, and Goldast ; Poeta Saxo (Anonymous) in Leibnitz, 

 Scriptores Her. Brunswic. ; Moser, Osnabruckische Geschichte, vol. i., the 

 best work on the subject.) 



WITT, DE, JOHN and CORNELIUS, two of the ablest and 

 most honourable of Dutch statesmen, were so inseparable in their 

 career that the history of their lives must also be one. John, though 

 the younger by two years, played, in consequence of his genial, ver- 

 satile, and aspiring character, the more prominent part; but it is 

 doubtful whether he could so long have sustained himself without 

 the aid of his brother's solid though less showy parts. Cornelius was 

 one of those rare and invaluable natures who intuitively feel them- 

 selves born to perform a secondary part, and are s probably, in the per- 

 severing unostentatious discharge of their duties, more useful as they 

 are more difficult to find than even leaders of commanding talent. 

 There is something extremely beautiful in the uninterrupted co- 

 operation of two men like Cornelius and John de Witt, each among 

 the very finest specimens of his own class of characters, when the tie 

 of brotherhood strengthens the bands of friendship. 



The father of John and Cornelius was a leader in the pai ty opposed 

 to the assumptions of the house of Orange, and a member of the 

 States General of Holland and West Friesland. He was considered 

 by advisers of the Stadtholder of sufficient consequence to be included 

 among the eight citizens imprisoned in the castle of Lowenstein, in 

 1650. The young De Witts therefore were early imbued with hostility 

 to the pretensions of the family of Orange, and devoted to the Repub- 

 lican and Arminian party : and at the same time encouraged by the 

 position of their father to look forward to public employment. 



JOHN DE WITT was born at Dordrecht in 1625, and educated at 

 Leyden, where, in addition to the studies necessary for one who 

 aspired to rise in the state, he is understood to have cultivated the 

 mathematical sciences with success. A treatise published at Leyden, 

 in 1650, under the title ' Elementa Linearum Curvarum,' is attributed 

 to him. 



The death of William II., prince of Orange, on the 2nd of October 

 1650, threw the management of affairs into the hands of the party to 

 which De Witt's father belonged. Cornelius, his eldest son, having 

 been, as will appear in the more particular notice of his career in 

 the sequel of this article, appointed burgomaster of Dordrecht, the 

 family influence obtained for John the office of pensionary of that 

 city. The ability which he displayed in that charge procured for him, 

 two years later (in 1652), when only in his 27th year, the more 

 important appointment of grand pensionary of Holland, which he 

 retained till 1672. During the intervening twenty years, he was, 

 under tho modest title of grand pensionary, virtual chief-magistrate of 

 the republic. The period was a critical one for Holland during tho 

 earlier part of it De Witt was called upon to make head against Crom- 

 well, and during the latter against Louis XIV., and he struggled at 

 the same time against the inveteracy of domestic faction. 



De Witt on assuming the reins of government found the republic 

 engaged in a war with England. A series of sea-engagements in which, 

 although great skill and bravery were displayed by the Dutch and 

 English commanders, and many lives were lost, victory inclined 

 alternately to each side without declaring very decidedly for either, 

 paved the way for a peace which was negociated by De Witt, and 

 signed at Westminster on the 15th of April 1654. On the part of the 

 Dutch the honours claimed by the English for their flag in the Channel 

 were conceded. A secret article was appended to the treaty, in which 

 it was stipulated that the Stuart family should receive no support 

 from the United States, and that no prince of the house of Orange, 

 so nearly allied to the Stuarts, should be elected stadtholder, or grand- 

 admiral. This article was first signed by the representative of Holland 

 alone : the other provinces were as jealous of the ascendancy of Hol- 

 land as the republican party of the ambition of the house of Orange. 

 This treaty embraced the great outlines of the policy in which De 

 Witt persevered during the whole of his future administration: 

 Avoiding giving umbrage to the States of Europe by stickling on 

 points of empty etiquette ; aiming to preserve peace and the security 

 of its foreign possessions for Holland ; balancing the different European 

 powers against each other ; and guarding against the establishment of 

 hereditary power in the house of Orange, 



Towards the attainment of the last-mentioned object De Witt 

 laboured indefatigably. The republican party preponderated in Hol- 

 land, but the Orangists were masters in Zealand. The other states 

 hesitated between their fears of being domineered over by Holland or 

 by the Prince of Orange. It was not till the year 1667 that De Witt 

 obtained the assent of the States General to the ' perpetual edict,' by 

 which the office of stadtholder was declared to be for ever abolished. 

 There was however no admixture of personal hostility to the Prince 

 of Orange in this persevering zeal for the destruction of his house's 

 power. William, prince of Orange, (afterwards William III. of Eng- 

 land) was a posthumous child, and the care of his education devolving 

 on the States, had been left almost entirely to De Witt. He discharged 

 this duty conscientiously and sagaciously; and William, notwith- 

 standing the hatred against De Witt which his mother endeavoured to 

 instil into him, and notwithstanding his own ambition, which rendered 

 him ready enough to take advantage of the grand pensionary's unpo- 

 pularity, always retained and expressed, in his guarded manner, a 

 grateful and respectful sense of the manner in which De Witt behaved 

 towards him during his minority. 



The next care of De Witt was to introduce order into the finances 

 of the republic. In this he succeeded so well that the States of Hol- 

 land presented a formal request to him that he would develop his 

 financial system in writing. 



Mutual respect had established a friendship that might almost be 

 termed confidential between Viscount Turenne and De Witt. Turenne, 

 in 1660, had endeavoured to persuade the French government to con- 

 clude treaties with Portugal and the United Provinces, as a check 

 upon the ambition of Spain, but had been thwarted by Mazarin. On 

 the death of that minister the viscount renewed his representations 

 to Louis XIV., who left the affair entirely in his hands. The price at 

 which Turenne obtained the acquiescence of the grand pensionary in 

 his scheme was a treaty of commerce between France and the United 

 Provinces, concluded in 1661, by which each state conceded to the 

 other entire freedom of commerce in their respective ports ; the States 

 General guaranteed the possession of Dunkerque to France; and tho 

 king of France guaranteed to the Dutch the right which they claimed 

 of fishing off the coast of Great Britain and Ireland. The cabinet of 

 Charles II. made a feeble remonstrance against this last article, but 

 Louis contrived to appease them for the time. 



But the affront rankled in the public mind of England ; and the 

 commercial rivalry between that nation and Holland soon accumulated 

 other grounds of complaint. The mariners and traders of the two 

 countries had frequent quarrels on the coast of Africa and in the 

 Indies, and each persisted in representing the other as the aggressor. 

 War was declared between Holland and England in 1665. De Witt 

 invoked the aid of France, but in vain : Louis XIV. only offered his 

 mediation. Admiral Opdam was defeated by the Duke of York and 

 Prince Rupert off Harwich, and forced to seek shelter with the 

 remnant of his fleet in the Texel. On this occasion De Witt gave a 

 striking instance of the daring self-confidence which a great emergency 

 could awaken in him. Antwerp was the only port in the possession 



