William I and the Royal Contract Killer‏

On 15 March, 1580, King Philip offered a reward of 25,000 crowns to anyone who killed William the Silent, to whom he referred as a "pest on the whole of Christianity and the enemy of the human race." William was William I of the Netherlands, a man opposed to the rule of the Spanish through the Holy Roman Emperor, Phillip. While nationalism was involved, the essence was religious as the Netherlands was staunchly Protestant and Phillip, of course, was not.  Several devout Catholics leapt to the offer. The first was one  Juan de Jáuregui but his attempt did not succeed. Next was Balthasar Gérard, a law student. After discussing his plan with a number of religious, and getting absolution for travelling and living with Protestant heretics, he went to the Netherlands and, through a remarkable bit of intrigue and luck, managed to get close to William and shot him to death on July 10, 1584. The very business-like Dutch showed surprising savagery in killing Gérard.
This was one of many incidents in the Netherlands' evolution to statehood, one period called, in the wonderful Old World manner, the Eighty Years War. William has sixteen children and a solid, if torturous, succession. His grandson was William III of Orange, the future King of England (with Mary) who appears as a cold villain in Dumas' "Black Tulip" which concerns the murder (and a lot more) of the Republican de Witt brothers on August 20, 1672.
The Netherlands became formally independent after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.
In the Netherlands, William is known as the Vader des Vaderlands, "Father of the Fatherland", and the Dutch national anthem, the Wilhelmus, was written in his honor.