Уильям Оранскийды өлтірген кісі: Балтазар Жерар

Murderer of Dutch independence leader William the Silent in 1584

Balthasar Gérard (alternative spellings Gerards or Gerardts; c. 1557 – 14 July 1584) was the assassin of the Dutch revolt's leader, William the Silent of the House of Orange (William the Silent, and later known as the "Father of the Fatherland"). He killed William the Silent in Delft on 10 July 1584, by shooting him twice with a pair of pistols, and was afterwards tried, convicted, tortured, and executed. Gérard was born in Franche Comté (then belonging to Holy Roman Empire, afterwards to France). He came from a Roman Catholic family with 11 children and was a great admirer of Philip II, king of Spain and the Netherlands. He studied law at the University of Dole. On 15 March 1580, King Philip had offered a reward of 25,000 crowns, peerage and an inheritable estate to anyone who killed or captured William the Silent, to whom he referred in his decree as a "pest on the whole of Christianity and the enemy of the human race."

After the reward offered by Philip was published, Gérard left for Luxembourg, where he learned that Juan de Jáuregui had already been preparing to attempt the assassination, but this attempt did not succeed. In March 1584 he went to Trier, where he put his plan before the regent of the Jesuits, but another Jesuit convinced him to change his original scheme and go to the prince of Parma. In Tournai, after holding counsel with a Franciscan, Father Gery, Gérard wrote a letter, a copy of which was deposited with the guardian of the convent, and the original presented personally to the Prince of Parma. In the letter Gérard wrote, in part, "The vassal ought always to prefer justice and the will of the king to his own life." After William the Silent's murder, more than 200 years would pass until another head of state was killed by a firearm, when Gustav III, King of Sweden, was fatally wounded at a midnight masquerade in 1792. and his arms and legs displayed on four gates of the city.

Philip II gave Gérard's parents, instead of the reward of 25,000 crowns, three country estates in Lievremont, Hostal, and Dampmartin in the Franche Comté, and the family was raised to the peerage. Philip II would later offer the estates to Philip William, Orange's son and the next Prince of Orange, provided the prince continue to pay a fixed portion of the rents to the family of his father's murderer; the insulting offer was rejected. The estates remained with the Gérard family. The apostolic vicar Sasbout Vosmeer tried to have Gérard canonized, to which end he removed the dead man's head and showed it to church officials in Rome, but the idea was rejected.

The village of Vuillafans renamed the street where Gérard was born "Rue Gérard" in his memory.