Matt Salusbury: February 2023

This article firsr appeared in Fortean Times 428, February 2023.

FOR MOST OF the eighteenth century, border provinces of what's now the Netherlands and Belgium were gripped by a reign of terror. Mysterious gangs of armed robbers carried out nocturnal raids and blackmailed the population with brandbrieven (arson letters), leaving demands for money or their houses would be burnt down.

< /br> < /br> These bendes (gangs) carried out arson attacks and robberies with great violence. Victims were tortured, raped and killed during their operations, with children among those murdered. Gang leader Joseph Kerckhoffs allegedly gave the order during one robbery "in the event of resistance to shoot dead or strike down everyone." ("Derselven chirugijen [Kerckhoffs] ordner hadde gegeven ingevalle van resistentie alles doot te scheiten of te slaan." Rijksarchief Limburg Maastricht LVO inv.no 8172, quoted in De Bokkenrijders in Nederlands and Belgisch Limburg 17726-1794, Tom Oversteegen, eigenboekuitgeven 2014.) Preferred targets were church estates, priests' homes, farmhouses (preferably isolated ones), inns, monasteries and castles. The gangs had an apparently supernatural ability to cover distances at speed and to melt away before law enforcement could mobilise. The gangs became known as the bokkenrijders - the billy goat riders, or buck riders.

Defendants testified in court that gang members used witchcraft - they flew through the air riding on the backs of billy goats. They were said to have sworn "ungodly oaths" in which they renounced God and pledged themselves to the Devil. Courts heard how they used in their robberies "hands of glory", dried and pickled severed human hands, in magic to prevent their victims raising the alarm. They were alleged to have gangs of 50 to 100 or more at their disposal, or even small armies.

An estimated 600 bokkenrijders were tried and convicted in three waves of persecution over a 75-year period. At least 350 – nearly all men - were executed. But did the bokkenrijders gangs even exist?

The provinces where the bokkenrijders committed "robbery in the Devil's name" are now roughly Nederlands-Limburg - a province in southern corner of the Netherlands - and Belgian-Limburg, a border province of Belgium. Some operated in Herzogenrath, now a corner of the federal state of North Rhine Westphalia in Germany.

Back in the days of the bokkenrijders, the region was the Land van Overmaas - the Land over the River Meuse (Maas in Dutch, hence the city of Maastricht). An earlier peace treaty had divvied up in this territory between the Republic of the Seven Provinces of the Netherlands and the Spanish Hapsburg Empire.

The Spanish territories were seceded to Austria from 1714, so in the time of the bokkenrijders there was two versions of the Land over the Meuse. There was the "Staats" version of Overmaas - Dutch territory. The States General, the Parliament of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands, was officially very Protestant. It didn't trust its Catholic provinces of the South. So the very Catholic Dutch Overmaas was under direct rule by a States General-appointed Guardian.

Nextdoor was another version of the Overmaas, ruled by a Councillor of State on behalf of the Austrian Empire, with the Empress Maria Theresa as its sovereign for much of the bokkenrijders period. (It's now part of Belgium.) The Overmaas included the Land of Hertogenrath - nominally part of the Austrian Empire in whose name a steward of a local abbey ruled, but effectively an autonomous dukedom where a dialect of German was spoken. There were "neutral" roads connected scattered bits of Austrian or Dutch territory with each other. Within the Overmaas were territories of prince bishoprics and monasteries that were also local lords, with their own courts, ensuring a chaotic administration of justice.

Being the border between empires, the Land over the Meuse bore the scars of several recent wars. Both versions of the Overmaas remained backwaters of their respective states, but as border provinces they were sorely taxed and compelled to billet troops. Some saw the modus operandi of the bokkenrijder gangs as inspired by the armies that passed through the region, plundering and living off the land.

The earliest documented robbery by a bokkenrijder gang was in August 1726, silverware was looted from the castle as Huis Oost near the Dutch city of Valkenburg. The robbers tried to fence the loot through pawnbroker Levi Jacobs in the town of Sittard. When he asked how they came by it, they threatened to shoot Jacobs dead, forcing him to accept 1440 guilders-worth of silver. The robbers showed up at Huis Oost again in 1738.

Bokkenrijder images generated by AI website Dall-E by the author, in the reasonable belief that copyright rests with them, although in the knowledge that this is about to be tested in multiple court cases.

The bokkenrijders covered their faces with scarves and wore wigs during robberies to disguise themselves. One Michel Hendrix was sentenced to death as a bokkenrijder after a search of his house uncovered a quantity of wigs that he couldn't explain. Witnesses occasionally described masked-up women in men's clothes among the bokkenrijders keeping watch during robberies.

In the West-Herck region of the Austrian Netherlands, one Francis van Leuwe in 1753 led a local bokkenrijders gang known as the zwartmakers ("those who made themselves black"). This was a revival of an old name. The original zwartmakers, who had already passed into folklore by the 1750s, were a gang operating further north, in the Dutch provinces of North Brabant and Gelderland, in the 1690s.

Jacobus van der Schlossen led the original zwartmakers - ex-soldiers who hid in the forests of Slabroek. They blacked up for their night raids to disguise their faces. They would batter down the doors of houses with thick poles and lock the residents in their cellar while they robbed them. Van der Schlossen was eventually hanged in Ravenstein Castle in 1695, in front of 20,000 spectators. Other Zwartmakers gangs operated from the heath at Teteringen near Breda and in Gelderland at around the same time.

Supernatural elements attached themselves to the zwartmaker stories, as they later did to the bokkenrijders. Anna Dirks, hanged in 1707 in Rhenen along with her mother and her aunt, was said to have brought to robberies a severed child's hand that she burned to bewitch the residents of houses so they didn't wake up. Van der Schlossen was said to have once avoided capture by jumping into a marsh and transforming into a bullrush, while the corpses of the hanged zwartmakers were said to roam the sites of their execution in Gelderland.

The peaks of bokkenrijder robbery came in 1726-1743, 1749-1750 and 1751-1774. While bokkenrijder crimes within the Dutch Republic were predominantly robberies, in the Austrian Netherlands they were also blackmailers, extorting money through their brandbrieven letters threatening arson. Many such "arson letters" survive in the Limburg historical archives, usually demanding the addressee leaves money in a particular place - under a stone, in a hole in the ground, by a wayside cross or shrine. One such letter, from Arnold de Wal to the innkeeper at Gerlingen warned "I will set fire to the four corners of your house" in the event of non-payment.

More bokkenrijder images generated by the author using Dall-E.

In the rural municipality of Wellen in the Austrian Netherlands there were between 20 and 30 such threatening letters received in less than a year in 1773. It was in one of these arson letters received in Wellen that the term bokkenrijder first appears. Its author wrote that "the Devil hunts us, now you shall know how the bokkenrijders live... through the Devil's intervention we rule..." The name bokkenrijder started to appear in local court documents. Previously there had just been "gangs", "rbbery gangs", "ungodly thieves" or "the Overmaas gangs." By 1790, bokkenrijder was a term in common use, with interrogators in Bree (now in Belgium) asking suspects if they were "with the gang of Overmaas or Valkenburg or the so-called bokkenrijders."

According to Belgian folklorist Signe Maene,riderless flying goats were already a phenomenon in Belgian skies before the bokkenrijders made their bokkenvluchten flights on the backs of billy goats. Some were afraid to go out at night because of "ghost goats" that "screeched eerily" as they flew overhead. Less fearful folk would gather to watch their flights.

At the time, a day's ride on good roads in daylight was 51km, a day's walk was 40km. Bokkenrijder "goat flights" seem to have shaved at least an hour or too off usual travel time, with travel by horse at night next to impossible anyway. At least six written testimonies of nocturnal "billy goat flights" from the Netherlands and four from Belgium survive.

Mathijs Smeets told how in September 1773, after an oath ceremony in the Saint Rosa Chapel in Sittard, he was led him to a crossroads out of town where a "long-bodied, black thing appeared, standing no more than a few feet from the ground." His description is vague, "we were so amazed we couldn't tell what it looked like," it resembled some enormous dachshund-type goat. All 42 bokkenrijders present could climb up onto its back, with the gang's "major" and the "captain" both "sitting at the head of it." On this beast they were whisked through the air from Venlo to Roermond in the space of four hours, less than it would take to walk it in daylight. There they carried out a robbery. The supernatural long-bodied black goat thing brought them all back to Sittard "in no time" by early next morning.

Reiner Sijban, detained in a Dutch prison, recalled flying from Klimmen to Maastricht with two other men on the back of a "bok", a flying billy goat, on night in 1774. There they found "a number of perpetrators" who'd also arrived on goats. They all did a burglary, then flew back to Klimmen.

Arnold Gielen, held in an Austrian prison in Wellen in the same year, told how following a meeting on the heath outside Abswellen, there appeared "nine or ten beasts in the form of a billy goat, slightly bigger and longer." Gielen's "captain" assembled the men to "fly over the treetops" on goats to rob a tenancy farm on the other side of Maastricht, leaving their goats "standing there" before returning to their Abswellen assembly point within two hours. (It's a four-hour walk in daylight.) A cross-border goat flight from Abswellen to Meersen in the Dutch Republic featured in testimony by Peter Willem Stassen. He recalled being in a group of about 30 gang members, each "sitting on a billy goat the greatness of a horse."

Some "eight or nine hundred people," including "three or four parties from Wellen," made a cross-border billy goat flight in 1770 from a point on the Meuse between Liege and Maastricht, according to Mattijs Goffins, "with three or four men on a billy goat". The flight took in the Linen Tree Inn along the river, the town of Tongeren and a castle where "hundreds" stood on guard while bokkenrijders climbed in through a window. Another account by a bokkenrijder named Gerits had the Devil himself transport "accomplices" from the Our White Lady convent outside Maastricht into the town. The Devil, summoned by chanting the bokkenrijder oath, appeared "in the shape of a great billy goat with horns and the rear of a horse." In other testimony the Devil appeared as several large billy goats to transport bokkenrijders to robberies.

"I forswear God and pledge myself to the Devil!" That was the bokkenrijder's oath. Both Dutch and Austrian authorities regarded such oaths as a threat to the social and spiritual order - it was these "ungodly oaths" that earned many bokkenrijders the death penalty.

Gang members were inducted in blasphemous oath ceremonies, often ending with tips or "change" - coins being pressed into their hands. Ledgers with membership lists were produced, some showing members' military "ranks". Ceremonies featured stolen holy wafers -participants spat these out - a green drink that "drove men mad" (probably absinthe) and a red-coloured, bitter oil sprinkled on food. Sometimes they held their ceremonies in chapels, with participants crawling in on their hands and knees, some oaths were administered in the woods. Sometimes a drawing of the Devil or a goat's head was displayed, or a dried pickled "hand of glory" was on show. Arnoldus Zander testified to being at an inn in Hertogenrath where alleged bokkenrijder Joseph Kerckshoff was administering oaths and had with him a "death's head" - a severed human head.

The oaths included terrible punishments for those who betrayed their comrades, one read, "so the Devil break my neck." Some bokkenrijders described having to take the oath several times over. In some accounts, a hooded figure walked among the congregation, said to be the Devil or at least to represent him. Once a year, bokkenrijders were said to visit their master, the Devil, on the Mookerheide, a wasteland near the River Waal, north of Overmaas. Such details suspiciously resemble those in dodgy 15th-century witchfinder's manual Males Meleficarum

Joseph Kerckhoffs, a former officer in the Austrian army and the respectable town surgeon of Hertogenrade, was fingered as the leader of the bokkenrijders. But multiple testimonies described a supreme bokkenrijder commander for both the Dutch and the Austrian Netherlands, above Kerckhoffs. There were sightings of a tall, fat man of military bearing, wearing a fine pale blue officer's tailcoat with silver trim and silver trim on his hat too. He spoke High German and French, and was seen giving orders over a fifteen-year period up to 1775. He was named as Baron Joachim Reihold van Gleasnap (aka Hean). He is believed he died of natural causes.

This "robbery in the Devil's name" brought surprisingly little loot to individual bokkenrijders. Mattijs Goffins testified that an almost thousand-strong raid at a castle netted a total of only 20 shillings, while other bemused bokkenrijders said they earned as much in their "tips" after oaths as they did in shares of booty. Some bokkenrijder captains seemed overly keen on recruitment - court testimony regularly stated than ridiculously large gangs - 100 or 200-strong - turned up to (unspecified) robberies to "stand watch." Willem de Kamp stated of one 1756 robbery he was part of that "the portion was not great because the band was so strong" in numbers.

Jabobus Offermans claimed he had "heard say" that there was a plan "to make themselves masters of town and city and to ravage everything." The City Council of Maastricht in March 1770 got wind a vague conspiracy by some 500 persons who threatened the lives of the city government's officials. They took this seriously enough to post a reward of 100 gold ducats for "discovery of conspirators" - assumed to be bokkenrijders.

It's likely that these bokkenrijder numbers, along with their billy goat flights and their ungodly oaths, were exaggerated or planted under torture. The three biggest waves of bokkenrijder persecution came in 1743-1775 (with an estimated 200 people tried), from 1750-1751 (35 people tried) and 1771-1777 (400 tried). Some were on trial for crimes committed 12 years earlier.

In Dutch Limburg, the aldermen's courts tried bokkenrijders in "extra-ordinaire" trials. Prosecutions included a "first interrogation" within 24 hours of arrest. Then followed the streng verhoor the "strict interrogation" under torture - always in the presence of two magistrates, a secretary and a surgeon. Joseph Kerckhoffs, said to be a bokkenrijder "general", was tortured for months, including one torture session after he'd been sentenced to death. But he never confessed to anything, telling judges, "Gentlemen, you can tear my body to pieces, but I have nothing to say."

During prosecutions, courts would usually order the suspect's property confiscated to pay for the costs of the trial. In 1773, The States General in The Hague, while vigorously pursuing bokkenrijder gangs within the Dutch Republic, expressed alarm at the expense of bokkenrijder prosecutions. States General resolutions from this period request detailed breakdowns of the cost of prosecutions, remuneration for the executioners, secretaries and surgeons, how much was paid to informers, bills from carpenters who built gallows and so on. The States General imposed fixed fees for officers of the court trying and sentencing bokkenrijders and established systems for the speedy liquidation of their confiscated property.

Particularly in the Austrian Empire, bokkenrijders and thieves generally were executed on "the breaking wheel" or the "Catherine Wheel". They were tied down in a prone position while the rim of a heavy cartwheel was dropped onto them, starting with their legs and working their way up, dropping the wheel on their chest was usually enough to kill them outright. Hanging or garrotting was more common in Dutch jurisdiction. On one busy day for an executioner in the Dutch town of Heerlen, seven convicted bokkenrijders were hanged.

The first written account of the bokkenrijders was Origin, Causes, Proof and Discovery of an Ungodly, Sworn Band of Night Thieves and Assailants within the Lands of Overmaas and Adjacent Regions written in 1790 by "S.J.P. Slienada", an anagram of A. Daniels, a Dutch priest who knew some of the bokkenrijders personally. Daniels wrote of the bokkenrijders' pacts with the Devil, and how "the common people" told stories of their nocturnal billy goat flights. His book includes a spell used to achieve goat flights - "Over houses, over gardens, over stakes, even to Cologne and into the wine cellar!"("Over huis, over tuin, over staak, en dat tot Keulen in de wijnkelder!")

Frontispiece from Origin, Causes, Proof and Discovery of an Ungodly, Sworn Band of Night Thieves and Assailants within the Lands of Overmaas and Adjacent Regions, the first published account of the bokkenrijders from 1790.

The bokkenrijders may have been an exaggeration or invention to cover up the weakness of the authorities of the Dutch Republic and the Austrian Netherlands, and their inability to deal with what was probably just lots of small gangs operating at the same time, mostly with impunity.

Records of bokkenrijder prosecutions are less frequent from the late 1780s onwards. 1789 saw a brief uprising in the Austrian Netherlands. A subsequent military campaign against revolutionary France ended badly for the Austrian Empire, with the Austrian Netherlands annexed to the Republic of France in 1795. The Dutch Republic became the pro-French Batavian Republic in the same year. Maastricht and environs was ceded to France, with all of the Netherlands eventually annexed to Napoleon's empire in 1811. The bokkenrijders disappeared, international criminal networks emerged operating across the Netherlands and into Germany, benefitting from the upheaval of regime change. The haphazard feudal courts were abolished, their revolutionary successors had no room for superstitious conspiracy theories. The Kingdom of the United Netherlands that emerged in 1814 after Napoleon's fall retained its secular courts. These were no longer inclined to hear testimony of suspects flying through the air on goats.

Having an ancestor who was tried as a bokkenrijder is now a badge of honour in both Dutch and Belgian Limburg. Today they have a reputation as Robin Hood-type anti-authority figures, celebrated in monuments and guided walks. There is a Bokkenrijders Festival in the Dutch town of Klimmen every August, and a Bokkenrijders Week every October in Valkenburg. Some municipalities in Belgian Limburg mark 11 May - the day Joseph Kerckhoffs was sentenced to death – as International Bokkenrijders Day.

Witches - mostly female - riding on billy goats was already a thing in European demonology long before the bokkenrijders. Shown here are details from engravings of the witches' sabbaths on the Blockberg in the Harz Mountains of Germany, 1688 or earlier and all out of copyright.

Further Reading in English
Jacobus van der Schlossen - Wikipedia
Zwartmakers gang - Dutch Folklore
Joseph Kerckhoffs of Herzogenade (video)
The Buck Riders' Fellowship (English pages)

Project Bokkenrijders have an English-language podcast series. They have an online transcription of Slienada's Origin, Causes, Proof and Discovery into modern Dutch, with an online English translation appearing soon. Thanks to Project Bokkenrijders for suggested translations of bokkenrijder terminology for this article.

Bokbier ("bock beer") is a special beer - usually dark in colour and on sale in the autumn, when Northern Europe starts to drink less outdoors in cafe terraces and starts to move indoors to drink. The label, pump art and beer mats for bok bier usually feature a billy goat. (Young stags and male rats as well as billy goats are also "bucks" in English.) Above is an out-of-copyright late 19th century ad for a "Bock" beer and a selection of images of 21st-century bok beers from Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands or the USA.