Oldenbarnevelt Executed

May 30, 1619

Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the seventy-two-year-old architect of Dutch independence, was beheaded in The Hague on spurious treason charges pushed by his rival Maurice of Orange. The execution shocked Europe and opened a permanent fault line in Dutch politics between the house of Orange and the Holland regents, a struggle between military monarchy and mercantile republicanism that would define Dutch history.