cahn

More diaries of our favorite 18th-century Prussian diary-keeper have been unearthed and have been synopsized!

January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!

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From:

cahn

Wow, okay, this really was super fascinating! And scary as to how it all escalated.

Then Amalie shows up! No, she doesn't single-handedly solve the problem. But her presence is one of several factors that ends up contributing to the de-escalation of tensions.

Much as I would like her to have saved the day through the power of her awesomeness, there's something kind of hilarious about her saving the day... because she wanted to go to church.

(I'm increasingly convinced this is how "taking the waters" got its reputation for being medicinally helpful: if you get a break from your stressful everyday life by going to a spa, you might feel better.)

And your family! :)

Eventually, Charles Bentinck, local governor, one of the famous Bentinck family (Horowski has a book supposedly* coming out in October that I'm planning to read)

Bentinck! I'm looking forward to you reading this :D

Said other guy would, based on other evidence, have been Andries Buntgens, the father of the local sexton. Ironically, if he was the guilty party, he was the only person found innocent during the trial. But if the blame was shifted from Andries to Father Bosten, it may have been for two reasons:

Wooooow, this all seems very plausible, and I feel really bad for Father Bosten (and really everyone involved) if this is true, even more than I already did.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Wow, okay, this really was super fascinating! And scary as to how it all escalated.

Indeed! On the guy who almost got tortured:

Not that judicial torture was employed lightly or carelessly—at least, not in the Republic. But when an accused person “dared adamantly deny” a heinous crime that seemed at least “half-proven,” early modern law authorized prosecutors to extract by this means a confession. In some parts of Europe, torture was deemed absolutely necessary in such cases because a person accused of a capital offense could be convicted and executed only if he or she confessed. This was the law in Overmaas, as it was in Holland, and in the Habsburg Netherlands. Originally the requirement was intended to protect suspects against unfounded accusations. The reality, notoriously, was quite different, and by the second half of the eighteenth century, many rulers and officials had developed serious qualms about the utility as well as ethics of judicial torture, which Frederick the Great of Prussia led the way in abolishing. In 1776, an official in Overmaas would lend his weight to the move toward abolition. Until then, however, judicial torture was still employed regularly in Overmaas. Between 1773 and 1776 alone, authorities there used torture to extract confessions from more than a hundred men accused of belonging to the Goat Riders. In fact, then, it was not a discretionary matter but a legal requirement Van den Heuvel was fulfilling when he asked to have Pieter Koetgens tortured—“in omni gradu,” as necessary.

Pieter Koetgens was a Catholic farmhand who was accused of being one of the raiders who "liberated" Cunegonde from Vaals, and then--this part is hilarious--returned to the scene of the crime a couple days later in a rowdy party that got ostentatiously drunk and had a flute played to taunt the locals with their victory. (I told you the book had all kinds of details in this drama that I wasn't able to include!)

Koetgens was known to own and sometimes play a flute, and he was accused of being the guy who played the flute to taunt the authorities. He claimed he wasn't there at all and said he wasn't the only person who owned a flute.

Now, the way the legal system worked, in a criminal case you would first accuse someone of wrongdoing in their absence, but after that was done, you had to accuse them a second time in their presence, and the judges would watch both sides' body language to form an opinion on who was likely lying.

So Koetgens was identified as the flute-playing perpetrator both in his absence and in his presence, and he steadfastly denied any wrongdoing. So the judges said he had to be tortured to try to extract a confession, only Vaals was a small village without the apparatus for torture, so he had to be sent to a bigger city (Maastricht). While Koetgens was awaiting torture, his family got together and hastily assembled an alibi and then threatened the lead accuser with repercussions if he didn't change his story.

He did. He and the other two accusers traveled to Maastricht to go, "Actually, wait, no, it might not have been him, it was dark and I didn't get a clear look."

So now the judges had to release Koetgens, and he was a free man.

It was a lucky thing: months later, the judges would hear convincing testimony that Koetgens had played no role in the kidnapping. They had almost tortured the wrong flutist.

Bentinck! I'm looking forward to you reading this :D

I'm looking forward to Selena reading it, because it won't take her a month to pick her way through the German and another month or year to get around to writing it up! (Seriously, the Cunegonde write-up took weeks and was like pulling teeth, and I'm still trying to gear myself up to do the Ferdinand of Parma write-up I promised...six months ago.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

And because I can hear

cahn going, "You can't just SAY 'authorities there used torture to extract confessions from more than a hundred men accused of belonging to the Goat Riders' and not ELABORATE!!", I give you Wikipedia:

The Buckriders (Dutch: Bokkenrijders, French: Les Chevaliers du Bouc) are a part of Belgian and Dutch folklore. They are ghosts or demons, who rode through the sky on the back of flying goats provided to them by a demon. During the 18th century, groups of thieves and other criminals co-opted the belief to frighten the inhabitants of southern Limburg, a province in the southern part of the Netherlands and eastern Belgium. Using the name "Bokkenrijders", these criminal bands launched raids across a region that includes southern Limburg, and parts of Germany and the Netherlands (parts of which were a part of the Southern Netherlands, nowadays Belgium). Commonly, the "Bokkenrijders" raided peaceful communities and farms. Several confessed "Bokkenrijders" were convicted and sentenced to death. Because of the link to the occult, authorities accused a large number of potentially innocent men of being "Bokkenrijders" and a number were tortured and subsequently convicted of crimes they denied having committed.

Edited Date: 2022-09-03 02:21 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

Wow! I would not have imagined FLYING GOATS. I am glad you forestalled me and elaborated!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

The new and improved Wild Hunt! Now with flying goats!

From:

cahn

in a rowdy party that got ostentatiously drunk and had a flute played to taunt the locals with their victory.

Okay, I must agree, it is hilarious that someone played the flute to taunt the authorities.

I'm glad they released him, ack!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

As the author says, he literally "flouted" the law!

From the OED's entry on "flout":

Etymology: First recorded in 16th cent.; possibly special use (preserved in some dialect) of floute , Middle English form of flute v. to play on the flute. Compare a similar development of sense in Dutch fluiten to play the flute, to mock, deride.

From:

cahn

I DID NOT KNOW that "flout" came from "flute"! And that apparently playing the flute was a traditional way to mock people?? ~~no wonder it was Fritz's favorite instrument~~