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

Charles was not satisfied, however. He hated these majorities and minorities, and all these republican votes; he wanted a passive and unanimous obedience; he attended only to the votes of the minority, and meditated setting every engine to work to get rid of the forty-two huguenots who opposed his designs. At court they were delighted with the result; they made a jest of the forty-two independents who had had the simplicity to give their names, and thus point themselves out to the court of Turin as persons to be despatched first of all. The list was read over and over again: they picked it to pieces—a sarcasm against this man, an insult against that. All necessary measures were taken for the great act of purification which was to be accomplished. The duke gave orders to move up the army that was to enter the city and free it from the rebels.

The enemies of Geneva were not less active within than without. The vidame, a servile agent of Charles, assembled the chiefs of the mamelukes in his house. As all the citizens whose deaths they desired were not included among the forty-two, they occupied themselves at these meetings in drawing up proscription lists. Vidame, mamelukes, Savoyards, congratulated each other on ‘cutting off the heads of their adversaries,’ and wrote down the names of many of the best citizens. 369The disease, according to these conspirators, had spread widely; it was necessary to get rid of the friends of independence at one blow and not singly. They prepared to seize the patriots in the city, and to slay them outside the city; the parts were distributed; this man will arrest, that man will try, and the other will put to death. At the same time, to prevent the free Genevans from escaping, the duke stationed soldiers on every road. Geneva will be very fortunate if it escapes the plot this time, and if it does not see its old liberties and its new hopes of the Gospel and of reformation perish under the sword of Savoy.

Charles III., leading the way to Charles IX., began his persecution of the huguenots. He commenced with his own territories, where he could do as he pleased; Pierre de Malbuisson was seized at Seyssel; Beffant at Annecy; Bullon was arrested on Sunday (frightful sacrilege in the eyes of the catholics!) in the church of Our Lady of Grace, during high mass. ‘That matters not,’ said the ducal party; ‘there are cases where the privileges of the Church must give way to the interests of the State.’ During this time, the patriots remaining at Geneva went up and down the city, showing themselves brave even to imprudence, and boldly demanded the convocation of a general council of the people to annul the division which by a majority of eleven had given such satisfaction to the duke. This inflamed Charles’s anger to the highest degree; he swore to be avenged of such an insult, and everything was prepared to crush these audacious citizens. The sky grew dark; a dull murmur was heard in the city; there was a general uneasiness; every man asked his neighbour what was going to happen ... alarm was everywhere.

At last the storm burst. It was the 15th of September. One, two, three—several persons not known in Geneva, peasants, or tradespeople, and men of little importance, appeared at the gates: they were messengers sent to the patriots by their friends and relations settled in Savoy. One message succeeded another. The ducal army is in motion, they were told; it is preparing to quit the villages where it was stationed. Leaders and soldiers declare loudly that they are going to Geneva to put the duke’s enemies to death. Nothing else can be heard but threats, boasts, and shouts of joy.... A few minutes later the people of the neighbourhood ran up and announced that the army was only a quarter of a league distant. The people hastened to the higher parts of the city: they saw the arquebusiers, halberdiers, and flags; they heard the drums and fifes, the tramp of the march, and the hurrahs of the soldiers. The Savoyards were in the fields and the mamelukes in the streets. It was not even possible for the citizens to expose themselves to death on the ramparts. The ducal faction would not permit them to approach. ‘Make your escape,’ said some to the huguenot leaders; ‘if you delay an instant, you are lost.’ The mamelukes lifted their heads and exclaimed: ‘Now is the day of vengeance!’

The noble citizens threatened by the sword of Charles, or rather by the axe of his executioners, wished to come to some understanding with each other, but they had not the time to confer together. They knew the fate that awaited them, and the alarm of their friends and wives, of those who had nothing to fear, drove them out like a blast of wind. Some would have sold their lives dearly; others said that their task was not yet completed, that if the duke attacked them perfidiously, if the bishop basely abandoned them, they must retire elsewhere, pray for the hour of justice, and procure powerful defenders for Geneva. Their resolution was hardly formed when the field-sergeants approached the gates. The huguenots pursued by the sword of Savoy could neither carry away what would be necessary during their exile, nor take leave of their friends; people in the streets had hardly time to enter their houses. All departed amid the tears of their wives and the cries of their children.

The exodus began, not the exodus of a whole people, but of the flower of the citizens. Many were seen leaving the gates of the city. There was Jean Baud, captain of the artillery, with his brother Claude, a zealous episcopalian, but a friend of independence; Girard, who had succeeded Boulet as treasurer of the city; Jean Philippe, afterwards first syndic; the intrepid Jean Lullin, Hudriot du Molard, and Ami Bandière, who were syndics in the year of the Reformation; Jean d’Arloz, afterwards one of the Council of Two Hundred; Michael Sept, a frequent deputy to Switzerland; G. Peter, Claude Roset, father of the celebrated syndic and chronicler; J. L. Ramel, Pierre de la Thoy, Chabot, and Pécolat. Others quitted Geneva secretly; some by day, some by night, in disguise, on foot or on horseback, ‘in great haste, by different roads, without consulting one another.’ Some crept along the edge of the lake, others hastened towards the mountains. Melancholy dispersion, sad calamity! 370And yet as they departed, these generous men kept up the hope of seeing liberty victorious. In this dread and critical hour, they cast their eyes over the walls of the old city, and swore that they left it not to escape death, but to save it from oppression. They were going in search of help—not towards the enslaved banks of the Tiber, as they did once in their folly; but towards those noble mountains of Switzerland, which had thrown off the yoke of foreign tyrants. The sword of Savoy pursues them; but, wonderful providence of God! it drives them towards those countries where a new light has dawned, and where they will meet at nearly every step the friends of Zwingle and of the Reformation. It is a prince, a friend of the pope, that is sending them to the school of the Gospel.

The most threatened of all was Besançon Hugues: if he had been taken, his head would have been the first to fall. At that time he happened to be at a farm he possessed at Chatelaine, a short distance from Geneva, in the direction of Gex. He was serious, but calm, for he felt the importance of the crisis, and was tranquilly preparing to gather his grapes, for it was vintage time. On the evening of the 15th of September he received a visit from his friend Messire Vuillet, commandant of Gex, who rode up on horseback, and asked him, with an air of frankness, to give him a bed for the night. Hugues had no suspicion; the horse was put into the stable; a room was prepared for Vuillet, and the two friends, sitting down at table, talked a long while over their supper. The commandant of Gex, commissioned by the duke to arrest Hugues, had ordered his officers to be at Chatelaine early in the morning of the 16th; and to make sure of not losing his victim, he had thought the cleverest way was to come and sup as a friend with the man whom he was to deliver up to the death of Berthelier and of Lévrier, to sleep under his roof, to arrest him next morning, and hand him over to the executioners. Hugues as yet knew nothing of what was going on at Geneva.