The Awful End of Prince William the Silent: The First Assassination of a Head of State with a Hand-Gun

The cold-blooded killing of the Prince of Orange was high drama in the volatile political arena of the Low Countries. Its perpetrator, though, was unnervingly ordinary. Twenty-five-year-old Balthasar Gérard came from Vuillafans, in Franche-Comté, near Besançon in France (where you can still visit his family home in rue Gérard today).

(#litres_trial_promo) Small, quiet and unassuming, Balthasar was one of eleven children from a well-to-do, devoutly Catholic family, who were also staunch supporters of the Habsburgs as their rulers and benefactors (Franche-Comté had benefited materially from financial investment – and significant tax relief – through its special association with the Habsburgs). He had studied at the nearby Catholic University of Dôle, and it was apparently there that he became determined to fulfil Philip II’s request for a volunteer assassin to infiltrate the Orange court and rid him of his prime political adversary. Among the many conspiracy theories which inevitably followed the murder of the Prince of Orange, Gérard’s place of origin was judged significant. Antoine Perrenot, Cardinal Granvelle, Archbishop of Mechelen and Primate of the Catholic Low Countries – a figure loathed, feared and eventually unseated by the Orangists – also came from Franche-Comté, and it was suggested that Gérard’s family had owed particular allegiance to him.

It does seem unlikely that Gérard had acted without accomplices, or at least without some outside help. He used an elaborate sequence of ruses to gain access to William of Orange’s entourage, including forged testimonials and counterfeit sealed documents. Adopting the assumed name François Guyon, Gérard claimed to be the son of an obscure Protestant serving-man, Guy of Besançon, who had suffered persecution for his religious beliefs. To corroborate his story he produced letters signed by prominent figures within the Catholic administration in the Low Countries, which suggested that he was trusted enough by the Spanish to allow him access to classified Catholic information which might significantly help the Orange faction. His documentation had been sufficiently convincing for Pierre Loyseleur de Villiers, William of Orange’s close personal adviser, chaplain and intelligence-gatherer, to take him into his personal service on the strength of it, as a messenger and potentially valuable spy. Although in the aftermath of William’s death Villiers was briefly arrested and accused of double-crossing the Orange cause, there seems little doubt that he had been genuinely taken in by Gérard’s forged testimonials, and particularly by the quality of the sensitive intelligence he had provided by way of introduction.

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For several months Gérard came and went between Villiers and William’s household, running errands and carrying messages. He did not yet have the necessary level of security clearance to allow him to enter the inner circles around William. However, on 12 June 1584 an extraordinary stroke of luck fortuitously gave him the access and opportunity he was waiting for. As he rode to deliver a confidential message from Villiers to the Duke of Anjou, he was met on the road by messengers bringing news that Anjou had died two days earlier. Gérard seized the moment, and volunteered to ride post-haste to William at Delft to inform him of the death of his close, politically controversial ally. He was admitted into the presence of William himself (subsequently it was said that he was allowed into the prince’s own bedchamber because of the urgency of the message he carried), delivered his unwelcome news in a manner that pleased William, and was thereafter accepted by the prince into his intimate circle of followers. Given the assiduousness with which Gérard’s credentials were being examined and re-examined before this chance encounter, it must have seemed to him that God had indeed intervened on his behalf.

Gérard now bided his time, waiting for a suitable occasion on which to act. Improvisation seems to have been a key part of the success of his plan. He acquired his weapon (either a single pistol, or a pair) on the very day of the assassination. Seeing a small pistol (or ‘dag’ as they were commonly called in English) in the hands of one of the prince’s immediate servants, he asked if the man was prepared to sell it to him. He had, he told him, shortly to go on a journey, and a pocket pistol would be the ideal weapon to carry to protect himself en route. He may even have been telling the truth – the money used to buy the gun may have been given to him by Villiers to purchase shoes and clothing for the next mission he was to be sent on. According to the broadsheet accounts, Gérard paid a sum equivalent to ten English shillings for the pistol.

In this, as in all other aspects of the planning of the killing, the would-be assassin showed unerring good sense. Gérard could not possibly have entered the presence of the Prince of Orange armed – we must surely assume that in such uncertain times, with the threat of violent attempts on William’s life, openly encouraged by Philip II, hanging over him, body-searches were routine. But pistols were (as we shall see) fashion items for members of the style-conscious élite, and were worn visibly and even ostentatiously by men with military pretensions. William’s closest bodyguards and most trusted servants will certainly have worn them, jauntily thrust into their waistband, or hitched on to their belt (surviving pistols from this period are often provided with a belt-hook, as well as being lavishly decorated and inlaid, for ornamental wear). Gérard’s purchase of a small wheel-lock pistol within the court itself allowed him then to conceal it about his person. We may imagine the vendor will have shown him how to charge the weapon and wind the lock; all Gérard now had to do was wait for a suitable opportunity to fire it. He may have discharged a pistol on a previous occasion. An assassin who had never before fired a fully loaded weapon would be unlikely, even at close range, to hold steady aim under the force of the gun’s unexpectedly violent recoil.