Throughout the years, much has been said and written about the Bokkenrijders. There are lots of theories about this gang; who were they? Was it really a satanic gang? Has there ever even been a Bokkenrijders gang? These theories are roughly divided in three groups: the satanists theory, the Robin Hood theory and the innocents theory.
First theory: satanists
According to the satanists theory, the people who were convicted as Bokkenrijders were indeed guilty of the robberies that were committed in 18th century Limburg. Not only that; according to this theory, they worshipped the devil, they were evil people who deserved their fate. God bless that the government discovered their conspiracy in time and executed them!
It's not hard to figure out where this theory originates; the convicted Bokkenrijders spoke about a pact with the devil in their own confessions, about an oath that forced them to abolish God and worship the devil. Most of them confessed to committing the awful crimes they were accused of and named several other gang members. Most followers of this theory find this to be plenty of proof; the confessions, after all, came from the mouths of the convicted. What more proof do you need? And of course, the robberies and thefts did actually take place. Someone must have committed them.
Sources
We read about this opinion on the Bokkenrijders in contemporary sources, like the proces documents and a few songs about the Bokkenrijders, but also in letters from this time in which we can read that even in The Hague and Brussels people were worried about this alleged gang. This is the theory that mostly the earlier authors about the Bokkenrijders follow. Writers like S.J.P. Sleinada, who wrote the first book about the Bokkenrijders, disdainfully speak of this horrific gang and their devilish practices. Even authors who don't believe the wild stories about an oath, or about night time flights on the back of goats, often hold the opinion that this gang actually existed and terrorised the countryside of Limburg. This theory has existed throughout the century and was used as a basis for the Efteling-attraction Villa Volta.
Second theory: Robin Hood
Followers of the Robin Hood theory believe that the Bokkenrijders gang existed, but that it was more of a political group. They compare the Bokkenrijders with the gang of Robin Hood, who stood up for the common folk, who stole from the rich to give to the poor. The 18th century was a hard time and there was much poverty and crime in Limburg. Beneath the surface, political tensions formed; there was a big gap between the rich top layer of protestants, who held the offices of schepenen (aldermen) and drossaard (noble baliff), and the common, catholic people, who lived in poverty and had little impact on the decision making. According to believers of the Robin Hood theory, the Bokkenrijders gang was a manifestation of the discontentment of the people; a group that, according to some, committed robberies of rich farms to be able to divide the money under the poor people; and that, according to others, wanted to start a revolution and overthrow the status quo to found a free and independent Limburg. According to those last authors, the Bokkenrijders were some kind of early socialists and communists. The barber surgeon Joseph Kirchhoffs was presented as a leader of the gang, a relatively rich man who nevertheless had a good relationship with the poor.
Sources
This theory mostly pops up in the romantic literature. Later on, this image stayed popular, for example in the famous series Bende van de Bokkenrijders by Ton van Reen. In the proces documents, there's no broad basis for this theory, but it's true that the Bokkenrijders were - especially during the first mass trial - mostly common people, like poor day labourers. On top of that, there are the confessions of a few suspects like Geertrui Bosch, the daughter of alleged gang leader Antoon Bosch; she spoke about a big number of weapons which the gang wanted to use to start some kind of revolution, according to her.
Third theory: innocents
Since a few decades, another theory about the Bokkenrijders has risen: the theory that this gang never really existed. According to this theory, the convicts were mostly innocent people who were persecuted because of torture confessions. This theory presents as proof that the confessions of the Bokkenrijders were mostly done under torture. While they were tortured and had to resist horrible pain, they were asked time and time again if they were guilty of certain robberies. If they didn't confess, the torture continued, sometimes for multiple days. In the end, most of them broke down and confessed; they admitted to committing certain crimes and named the people who had helped them. These people were then persecuted as well, and the process would start all over again.
Sources
However, many of these confessions are contradictory. For example, often about twenty or thirty people were convicted for the same robbery, even though the victims had only seen and heard a few people. Most of the suspects didn't know any details; they had stood watch with a stick for a weapon. If all of these confessions were true, there would be about fifty people standing watch at most robberies. Additionally, some suspects said that they went to a farm with about sixty gang members to rob it, only to be scared away by a barking dog or a servant who came outside. Some confessions were contradictory, which led to different versions about the same event. Sometimes crimes were confessed that never took place. And there were many more particularities, like the case of Philip Hersseler, who was forced to confess that he took part in a robbery when he was only one year old, and then again when he was eight. Other suspects, Geertrui Bosch and Peter Müller, also confessed to being active in the gang as twelve-year-olds. A few times, people were sentenced for a crime that had already been solved in another town and of which all culprits had already been caught.
Because of these gaps in the torture confessions, and the contradictions with the victim's statements, most recent researchers like Louis Augustus and François Van Gehuchten draw the conclusion that most Bokkenrijders were convicted while innocent and only confessed to escape further torture. They blame the persecution from the Bokkenrijders trials for suffering from tunnel vision; they already believed that the suspects were guilty when starting the trial and used torture to extreme degrees to force confessions. It's possible that they were so severe because they really believed that they were freeing their lands from the curse of an evil gang, or because they believed that the devil had the suspects under his spell, causing them to no longer see human beings in front of them. But some skeptics wonder if it might have had something to do with the ways schepenen (aldermen) and the schout (sheriff or baliff) were paid: the more people were interrogated and sentenced, the more money they earned.
The first to present elaborate proof for this theory was Louis Augustus, who published an article in 1991: 'Vervolgingsbeleid en procesvoering tegen de Bokkerijders: het ontstaan van een waandenkbeeld.' (Prosecution policy and trial procedure against the Bokkenrijders: the birth of a delusion.) The first basis for this theory was, however, developed during the Bokkenrijders trials; in the last chapter of the book written by S.J.P. Sleinada in 1779, we read that some people already doubted the validity of these trials, because of the big number of convicts. Additionally, when a few lawyers independently researched the trials, they questioned the procedures that were used, causing the trials to be ended by the government eventually.
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