'My God. My God, have mercy on me and this poor people." Those would have been William of Orange's last words before Balthasar Gerards murdered him on 10 July 1584 in the Prinsenhof in Delft. Many people know those words by heart. A new interpretation of the original autopsy report from 1584 recently showed that the Father of the Fatherland must have died instantly, and therefore could not have released anything at all.
The famous last words of William of Orange appear for the first time in the minutes of the States General of July 10, 1584, the day of the murder. 'Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, ayez pitié de moi et de ce pauvre peuple', he is said to have uttered in French – the language that Dutch nobles liked to use at the time – the official document reads.
It is quite possible that the news of William of Orange's death and the phrase about his last words were not written down until later. The same minutes also contain details about accomplices of the murderer Balthasar Gerards. Gerards was arrested soon after the murder, but only began to reveal details about his client and accomplices in the course of the night, when he was brutally tortured.
If we assume that the Prince of Orange had indeed died instantly and was no longer able to publish anything - as can be concluded from the autopsy report according to forensic experts from the Delft research bureau Delftech - his supporters apparently had an interest in that Willem would go down in history with these now famous last words. But who would have wanted it that way, and for what reason?
Save reputation
“A relevant and valid question,” says Judith Pollmann, professor of early modern Dutch history at Leiden University. She regularly publishes on the role of public opinion and the use of propaganda during the Eighty Years' War.
Pollmann first points to the general importance that was accorded to a good deathbed in the sixteenth century. “At that time there was a strong belief that the way a person dies is a harbinger of heaven, or a way to hell. A person could always have lived a good life, but if such a person died with much anger and resistance, it could be a sign that God's grace had fallen from him after all."
But in the case of William of Orange there was of course an important political dimension at play. “At the time of his assassination, his leadership within the Rebellion was highly contested,” Pollmann said. “Militarily he was not able to accomplish much, but his political maneuvers – such as his insistence to appoint the Catholic Duke of Anjou as sovereign monarch over the Netherlands – also caused him to lose a lot of supporters in a short time.
“But the cause of the revolt was not served by reputational damage for Orange,” Pollmann continues. “The fact that William of Orange died as a result of a successful assassination attempt could play into the hands of the enemies of the Revolt. Orange's death is God's will, they could have said. Do you see that God disapproves of the rebellion! Partly because there was no successor for Orange at that time, it was of great importance for his supporters to save his reputation.”
Successful propaganda offensive
By putting the last words in William of Orange's mouth in official documents in which he speaks about God and about his poor people, his supporters were thus able to give him a dignified death and send the message into the world that his mission - in the name of God and of the people – had to be continued. All in all, an excellently successful propaganda offensive, as many Dutch people still associate these words with the 'Father of the Fatherland' more than four centuries later.
According to Judith Pollmann, the supposed 'last words' of William of Orange are clearly in line with the political propaganda apparatus that he himself launched during his lifetime. “Together with a small think tank of political confidants, Orange was the first to introduce the concept of a 'Dutch homeland'. Although the regions differed enormously from each other – and were proud of this rather than seeing it as a problem – according to Orange, all inhabitants of the Netherlands had the same common enemy, namely the Spaniards.”
Although the Revolt was in fact a civil war between those who wanted to remain loyal to the Spanish king and those who wanted to leave him, Orange missed every opportunity to denounce 'the Spaniard' as a new, common enemy. According to Orange, Spaniards were cruel and haughty because of their Moorish and Jewish blood. The choice Orange presented to the inhabitants of the 'homeland' was therefore simple:join my revolt against Spanish tyranny or become a slave, just like the Indians in the New World.