July 16th, 2008 Headsman
On this date in 1573, Wigbolt Ripperda was beheaded in Haarlem’s Grote Markt for having led a stubborn seven-month resistance to a Spanish siege.
In the intervening years, relations between the Low Countries and the Spanish crown that ruled them had deteriorated into outright revolt — the germ of the decades-long struggle that would result in Dutch independence.
Haarlem had initially tried to keep its head down in the conflict, but had declared against Spain in 1572. That brought it into the sights of a vengeful Spanish army that greatly outnumbered Haarlem’s 4,000 defenders. Spurning any talk of compromise or capitulation, city governor Ripperda rallied his garrison and held out against the Spanish siege throughout the winter and spring.
In the end, starvation did the work that engines of war could not. Haarlem fell on July 12, 1573.*
Ripperda was beheaded with a lieutenant a few days later, but in winning the battle, Spain had suffered a setback in the war: besides the seven-month delay, other Calvinist strongholds took heart from the effective resistance and got a lot less cowed by the royal army.
While this day’s martyrdom made “Ripperda” a fixture in Haarlem place names, and despite a somewhat illustrious family tree that also includes a signatory of the Peace of Munster and a fascinatingly disreputable 18th century politician, actual Ripperdas are apparently hard to find in present-day Holland. According to American Tom Ripperda, who runs the family site ripperda.org, the name lives on only in the U.S. and Germany.
“In the 1830’s the last of the Dutch Ripperdas died,” Ripperda told me. “There are no Ripperdas in the Netherlands since they moved to Germany (about 200 or so) and on to America (about 600 or so).”
* As to the vengeful mass executions visited on Haarlem, John Lothrop Motley conveys this anecdote.
Instead of Peter Hasselaer, a young officer who had displayed remarkable bravery throughout the siege, the Spaniards by mistake arrested his cousin Nicholas. The prisoner was suffering himself to be led away to the inevitable scaffold without remonstrance, when Peter Hasselaer pushed his way violently through the ranks of the captors. “If you want Ensign Hasselaer, I am the man. Let this innocent person depart,” he cried. Before the sun set his head had fallen.
On this day..
- 995: Tormod Kark - 2015
- 1517: Cardinal Alfonso Petrucci, plotter - 2014
- 1793: Joseph Chalier, Jacobin martyr - 2013
- 1936: Mary Frances Creighton and Everett Applegate - 2012
- 1937: Pavel Vasiliev, peasant poet - 2011
- 1676: Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers - 2010
- 1546: Anne Askew, the only woman tortured in the Tower - 2009
Entry Filed under: 16th Century,Activists,Beheaded,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,Famous,God,History,Netherlands,Occupation and Colonialism,Public Executions,Revolutionaries,Separatists,Soldiers,Spain
Tags: 1570s, 1573, calvinism, calvinist, dutch revolt, eighty years' war, genealogy, haarlem, iconoclasm, july 16, nicholas hasselaer, peace of munster, peter hasselaer, protestant, Protestant Reformation, protestantism, ripperda, siege, wigbolt ripperda