Reinier van Oldenbarnevelt was a chip off the old headsman’s block on this date in 1623, beheaded in The Hague for plotting to avenge the beheading of his father.
The old man, Johan van Oldenbarnevelt by name, had lost a power struggle to Maurice of Orange and gone to the scaffold in 1619.
Full of murderous filial piety, our man Reinier (English Wikipedia entry | Dutch) conspired with his brother Willem and others of their faction to return the favor on Maurice by having a gang of toughs ambush him in early February.
Word leaked early; the plot fizzled and Reinier was captured to face the vengeance Maurice had once once designed for his father. (Willem escaped to Belgium, but two of their accomplices were dismembered with Reinier.)
Dutch illustrator Claes Janszoon Visscher depicted the son’s execution, as he had once depicted the father’s. For an analysis of the scene, see John Decker’s Death, Torture and the Broken Body in European Art, 1300-1650.
On this day..
- 1987: Lawrence Anini, The Law
- 1825: El Pirata Cofresi
- 1929: Luther Baker, moonshine bootlegger
- 1560: Baron de Castelnau, for the Amboise Conspiracy
- 4 BCE: Antipater, disinherited Herodian
- 1875: Richard Coates, gunner and rapist
- Daily Double: Victorian Soldiery
- 1944: Roger Bushell and others for the Great Escape
- 1946: Laszlo Baky and Laszlo Endre, Hungarian Holocaust authors
- 1946: Phillip and William Heincy, father and son
- 1935: Thomasina Sarao, miscalculated
- 1796: Francois de Charette, Vendee rebel
- 1720: Charles Vane, an unsinkable pirate