J. H. Merle D'Aubigné - History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin (Vol. 1-8)

Everything was changed in Geneva. The proposal to cut off forty heads was abandoned, to the great regret of Cartelier, who afterwards said: ‘What a pity! but for these —— Friburgers it would have been done.’ 244The huguenots, regaining their courage, ‘mocked at the Faucignerans and the other men-at-arms.’ 245The inhabitants of the Faubourg St. Gervais, strongly inclined to raillery, attacked their guests with songs, epigrams, and sarcasms. The huguenots imposed on their visitors a strict fast (it was the season of Lent), and gave them for rations only some small fish called bésolles (now féras ). ‘You are too good christians,’ they said ironically to the Savoyards, ‘to eat meat now.’ And hence they derisively called the expedition ‘the Bésolles war,’ a name recorded in contemporaneous chronicles.

They could not come to an understanding at Morges. Besançon Hugues and Malbuisson were urging the Friburg troops to advance; Taccon and De Lestilley were urging them to retire. And while the leaders hesitated, the deputies of the cantons arrived and proposed a middle course: that Savoy should withdraw her troops, and Friburg her alliance. It was Zurich, Berne, and Soleure that sought thus to take advantage of the opportunity to withdraw from Geneva the only help which, after God, could save her. The huguenots, abandoned by the cantons, stood stupefied. ‘Renounce your alliance with Friburg,’ repeated the League, ‘ without prejudice to your liberties .’ ‘But they would not,’ said Bonivard, ‘for they had the majority of votes.’ The real majority did not therefore consent to this fatal proposition; but it seems that it was again carried by the phantom of a general council, at which none but mamelukes were present. When that was done, the duke hastened to leave Geneva, but with less pomp than when he entered; and the plague took his place. 246

When Charles quitted the city, he left behind him sad forebodings. The Swiss accused the Genevans of violence and insults, declaring them guilty of disgraceful conduct to the duke, their most illustrious ally. 247The bishop, who was at Pignerol, wrote to the citizens: ‘Having recovered from my serious illness, I am thinking of passing the mountains, for the benefit and good of my city.’ 248Now every one remembered that he had made use of the same words when he had put Navis and Blanchet to death. The signs were threatening: the sky was thick with storm. The citizens trembled for those who were most precious to them, and frightful deeds were about to increase and prolong their terror. ‘From the war of 1519 until 1525,’ says the learned Secretary of State Chouet, ‘the people of Geneva was in great consternation.’ 249

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Neither the duke nor the bishop had exhausted their plans. The heads of Blanchet and Navis, suspended seven months before on the walnut-tree, were there still, tossed by every wind, and telling the passers-by that the wrath of the princes was not yet appeased. The bishop asked himself whether these commoners, who claimed liberty in the State, would delay much longer before demanding liberty in the Church.... People spoke of extraordinary things that were happening in Germany. A Wittemberg doctor had appealed from the pope to a general council, and was preparing to maintain certain propositions at Leipsic in which the primacy of the Roman Church was denied as being opposed to the history of eleven centuries and to the text of Scripture. Would these strange notions, worthy of the Germans, spread to countries nearer Rome? Would Wittemberg and Geneva, those two little corners of the earth, be two volcanoes to shake the ground around them? A remedy must be applied at any cost, and those principles of civil and religious liberty be stifled, which, if not seen to in time, might work strange revolutions in the world.

The bishop on his return from Turin had merely passed through Geneva; and fleeing from the plague, had taken refuge at Ripaille, near Thonon, whence he made the most serious complaints to the Genevans. ‘You are always conspiring,’ he wrote, ‘in order that you may satisfy the appetites of a heap of individuals who are plotting against their honour and against me.’ 250About the end of June he removed to the château of Troches, near Dovaine. The principal mamelukes hastened to this ancient manorial house. 251They had no very clear ideas of what was going on in Germany, and of the consequences that might result to Europe; their attachment to the ducal and episcopal cause depended rather upon motives of interest and family tradition; but they instinctively felt that a struggle had begun in Geneva between the old and the new times, and that the partisans of the former must combine all their strength against the latter. They made the halls of the château reecho with their loud voices; they entered into cowardly conspiracies; these supporters of feudalism, however honourable they might be in other matters, shrank not from any crime to check the advent of liberty. There was one citizen in particular whom they hated—one life that must be sacrificed. ‘First,’ said they to the bishop, ‘we require Berthelier’s death, and pray, my lord, let the blow be prompt. Second, the rebellious councillors must be dismissed. Third, your grace must come into the city ... with good swords !’ The mamelukes undertook to find employment for these swords, and the bishop said ‘Amen.’

The cruelties of the princes of Savoy had already fallen upon Bonivard. The very day when the duke entered the city, the prior of St. Victor left it, ‘disguised as a monk,’ accompanied by two friends of the Pays de Vaud with whom he was very familiar, the Sieur de Voruz and the Abbot of Montheron. ‘Fear nothing,’ said the latter to him; ‘we will go first to my abbey; then we will conduct you to Echallens, a town dependent on Berne, where you will be in safety.’ But they were leading him to a very different place of safety. The priest and the gentleman had made their account together. They had said that no one in Geneva was more hated by the bishop and the duke than Bonivard, that in their eyes he was not a Genevese, but a Savoyard who had betrayed his prince; so that, to get him into their power, these princes would give his weight in gold. The priory of St. Victor was a good benefice; the two perfidious friends had therefore determined to propose an exchange: they would put the duke in possession of the prior, while the duke should put them in possession of the priory. This establishment would naturally fall to the abbot; but the latter engaged to pay the Sieur de Voruz an annual pension of two hundred florins out of the stipend. The flashing of the gold dazzled these wretches, and they concluded their infamous bargain. The gentleman and the abbot appeared to redouble their vigilance lest any harm should befall the prior. When the three travellers reached Montheron, in the forest of Jorat, between Lausanne and Echallens, the prior was courteously conducted into a room, which, without his suspecting it, was to be his prison. The next morning Voruz, whom Bonivard trusted like a brother, entered the chamber, sat down opposite him, and, laying a sheet of paper on the table, said: ‘Resign your priory of St. Victor in favour of the abbot.’—‘What!’ exclaimed the startled Bonivard, ‘is it under a show of friendship that you lay these plots?’—‘You are our prisoner,’ Voruz answered coldly; ‘all attempts to escape will be useless.’ Bonivard now understood into what hands he had fallen. ‘So, then, instead of taking me to Echallens,’ he said, ‘you will prevent my going there.’ He declared that he would set his hand to no such robbery, and bluntly refused to resign his priory. ‘The duke is going to put Berthelier and his companions to death,’ resumed Voruz coldly; ‘be careful. If you will not do what we tell you, we will deliver you into his hands, and there will be one huguenot the more for the scaffold. You are free; make your choice—resignation or death!’ Bonivard had no wish to die. Could he leave so soon this world that he loved so passionately? Could he see rudely interrupted that beautiful dream of liberty, philosophy, and poetry, in whose chimeras he had so long indulged? He consented to everything. ‘Good!’ said Voruz, as he took away with him the renunciation the prior had signed, and locked the door behind him.