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

Charles was not a hero; the emotion of the people disturbed him, the energy of the patriots startled him. He determined to make an advantageous use of his perfidy by proposing an exchange: he would spare Lévrier’s blood, but Geneva must yield up her liberties. ‘Go,’ he said to Maurienne, ‘and tell the syndics and councillors of Geneva that, full of clemency towards them, I ask for one thing only: let them acknowledge themselves my subjects, and I will give up Lévrier.’ 343The Savoyard bishop carried this answer to the syndics, the syndics laid it before the council, and Charles calmly awaited the result of his Machiavellian plot.

The deliberations were opened in the council of Geneva. When there are two dangers, it is generally the nearest that affects us most: every day has its work, and the work of the day was to save Lévrier. The ducal courtiers flattered themselves with the success of this well-laid plot. But the citizens, in this supreme hour, saw nothing but their country. They loved Charles’s victim, but they loved liberty more; they would have given their lives for Lévrier, but they could not give Geneva. ‘What! acknowledge ourselves the duke’s subjects!’ they exclaimed; ‘if we do so, the duke will destroy our liberties for ever. 344Lévrier himself would reject the proposal with horror.’—‘To save the life of a man,’ they said one to another in the council, ‘we cannot sacrifice the rights of a people.’ They remembered how Curtius, to save his country, had leapt into the gulf; how Berthelier, to maintain the rights of Geneva, had given his life on the banks of the Rhone; and one of the citizens, quoting the words of Scripture, exclaimed in Latin: ‘ Expedit ut unus moriatur homo pro populo, et non tota gens pereat. ’ 345‘The duke calls for blood,’ they added: ‘let him have it; but that blood will cry out for vengeance before God, and Charles will pay for his crime.’ The council resolved to represent to the duke, that by laying hands on Lévrier he robbed the citizens of their franchises and the prince of his attributes. Maurienne carried this answer to his Highness, who persisted in his cruel decision: ‘I must have the liberties of Geneva or Lévrier’s life.’

During these official proceedings, certain noble-hearted women were greatly agitated. They said to themselves that when it is necessary to touch the heart, the weaker sex is the stronger. It was well known that the haughty Beatrice governed her husband; that she loved the city, its lake and mountains; that everything delighted her in this ‘ buena posada .’ The ladies who had danced at her balls, and found her all condescension, went on Sunday morning to the ducal residence, and, with tears in their eyes, said to her: ‘Appease his Highness’s wrath, Madam, and save this good man.’ But the Portuguese princess, faithful to her policy as to her pride, refused her mediation. She had hardly done so, when her conscience reproached her; after that refusal, Beatrice found no pleasure in Geneva; and before long, leaving the duke behind her, she went all alone ‘beyond the mountains.’ 346

Moreover it would have been too late. On Sunday morning, the 11th of March, three men were in consultation at the castle of Bonne, and preparing to despatch Lévrier. They were Bellegarde, sufficiently recovered from his fall to discharge his commission and simulate a trial; a confessor intrusted to set the accused at peace with the Church; and the executioner commissioned to cut off his head. His Highness’s steward, who had received instructions to have it over ‘in a few hours,’ ordered the prisoner to suffer the cord—‘nine stripes,’ says Michel Roset: ‘not so much from the necessity of questioning him,’ adds Bonivard, ‘as from revenge.’ This ducal groom (we mean Bellegarde) felt a certain pleasure in treating unworthily a magistrate the very representative of justice. ‘Have you no accomplices who conspired with you against my lord’s authority?’ said he to Lévrier, after the scourging. ‘There are no accomplices where there is no crime,’ replied the noble citizen with simplicity. Thereupon the Savoyard provost condemned him to be beheaded, ‘not because he had committed any offence,’ say the judicial documents, but because he was ‘a lettered and learned man, able to prevent the success of the enterprise of Savoy.’ 347After delivering the sentence, Bellegarde left Lévrier alone.

He had long been looking death in the face. He did not despise life, like Berthelier; he would have liked to consecrate his strength to the defence of right in Geneva; but he was ready to seal with his blood the cause he had defended. ‘Death will do me no evil,’ he said. He called Berthelier to mind, and the lines written on that martyr of liberty being engraved in his memory, Lévrier repeated them aloud in his gloomy dungeon, and then approaching the wall, he wrote with a firm hand: Quid mihi mors nocuit?...

‘Yes,’ said he, ‘death will kill my body and stretch it lifeless on the ground; but I shall live again; and the life that awaits me beyond the grave cannot be taken from me by the sword of the cruellest tyrant.’ He finished the inscription he had begun, and wrote on the prison wall: ... Virtus post fata virescit;

Nec cruce nec sævi gladio perit illa tyranni.

But he thought not of himself alone; he thought upon Geneva; he reflected that the death of the defenders of liberty secured its victory, and that it was by this means the holiest causes triumphed,

Et qu’un sang précieux, par martyre espandu,

A la cause de Dieu servira de semence.

Shortly after Bellegarde’s departure the confessor entered, discharged his duty mechanically, uttered the sentence: Ego te absolvo —and withdrew, showing no more sympathy for his victim than the provost had done. Then appeared a man with a cord: it was the executioner. It was then ten o’clock at night. The inhabitants of the little town and of the adjacent country were sleeping soundly, and no one dreamt of the cruel deed that was about to cut short the life of a man who might have shone in the first rank in a great monarchy. Bellegarde had no cause to fear that he would be disturbed in the accomplishment of his crime; still he dreaded the light; there was in his hardened conscience a certain uneasiness which alarmed him. The headsman bound the noble Lévrier, armed men surrounded him, and the martyr of law was conducted slowly to the castle yard. All nature was dumb, nothing broke the silence of that funereal procession; Charles’s agents moved like shadows beneath the ancient walls of the castle. The moon, which had not reached its first quarter, was near setting, and shed only a feeble gleam. It was too dark to distinguish the beautiful mountains in the midst of which stood the towers whence they had dragged their victim; the trees and houses of Bonne were scarcely visible; one or two torches, carried by the provost’s men, alone threw light upon this cruel scene. On reaching the middle of the castle yard, the headsman stopped and the victim also. The ducal satellites silently formed a circle round them, and the executioner prepared to discharge his office. Lévrier was calm: the peace of a good conscience supported him in this dread hour. He thought of God, of law, of duty, of Geneva, of liberty, and of the legitimate authority of St. Peter, whom, in the simplicity of his heart, he regarded as the sovereign of the city. It was really the prince-bishop whom he thus designated, but not wishing to utter the name of a prelate whom he despised, he substituted that of the apostle. Alone in the night, in those sublime regions of the Alps, surrounded by the barbarous figures of the Savoyard mercenaries, standing in that feudal court-yard, which the torches illumined with a sinister glare, the heroic champion of the law raised his eyes to heaven and said: ‘By God’s grace I die without anxiety, for the liberty of my country and the authority of St. Peter.’ The grace of God, liberty, authority—these main principles of the greatness of nations were his last confession. The words had hardly been uttered when the executioner swung round his sword, and the head of the citizen rolled in the castle yard. Immediately, as if struck with fear, the murderers respectfully gathered up his remains, and placed them in a coffin. ‘And his body was laid in earth in the parish church of Bonne, with the head separate.’ At that moment the moon set, and black darkness hid the stains of blood which Lévrier had left on the pavement of the court-yard. 348‘Calamitous death,’ exclaims the old Citadin de Genève , ‘which cost upwards of a million of Savoyard lives in the cruel wars that followed, in which no one received quarter, because the unjust death of Lévrier was always brought forward.’ 349There is considerable exaggeration in the number of Savoyards who, according to this writer, expiated Lévrier’s murder by their death. The crime had other consequences—and nobler ones.