The bishop at this period was Pierre de la Baume, an immoral and inconsistent man, who, having served the duke at the expense of the citizens, with like caprice abandoned his cause, and sworn a solemn oath to consult no interests but theirs, broke it ere the year had passed away, and, on their refusal to renounce the alliance and restore the vidomnat, became their implacable enemy and the duke’s friend once more. His intrigues with Berne and Fribourg induced them to send deputies to Geneva, offering to cancel the treaty should the Genevese agree to doing so. But when, admitted before the council, they had discharged their task, and each member, raising his right hand, swore rather to die than consent, the ambassadors felt that their unanimous courage at least commanded esteem, and that, consistently with their own honour, their native towns could not abandon one so worthy support and liberty.
The surrounding country ravaged; the insulted faubourgs; the discovery of divers conspiracies for taking the city by storm, and putting its inhabitants to the sword, left the cantons no excuse for delaying to grant their promised assistance. Their army arrived at Morges, while ten thousand men commanded by the duke besieged Geneva; and, though the allies were inferior in number, these last, on the news of their approach, retired in haste and without order, for they were chiefly recruits and mercenaries. The Swiss came on notwithstanding; pillaging all on their way, and burning the castles of the brethren of La Cuiller. The duke sent an ambassador charged to throw the blame of all that had occurred on the last mentioned fraternity. The conferences were held at St. Julien, and Charles the Third saw himself obliged to acquiesce in the conditions proposed to him, engaging that all hostilities should cease, and placing in the power of Berne and Fribourg the Pays de Vaud as pledge of his sincerity, abandoning in their favour all rights he possessed over it, provided it were proved that he had not fulfilled his part of the treaty.
These concessions made, the chiefs of the allied army thought their most pressing business in Geneva consisted henceforth in demanding payment of the expenses of their expedition. The starved and pillaged Genevese solicited the patience due to their situation, yet by an effort worthy them and their love of liberty, divesting themselves even of necessaries, a portion of the debt was defrayed. When the army of the cantons marched from the town, they found themselves reduced to seek a last resource in their unshaken courage, which was most efficient of all. The troops had hardly retreated, ere the duke again attempted to cut off supplies, and levied a considerable corps with the design of employing it against them. Some time after, notwithstanding the alliance made and confirmed at several times, the duke’s intrigues at Berne influencing the cantons, they again ungenerously proposed its dissolution; giving, as a reason, that the Genevese were not rich enough to pay for the assistance they would require at each fresh attack. This proposal was made in a form painful as was its spirit to those by whom it was received; for the three deputies who were its bearers accompanied it with various menaces; yet the small and struggling nation, in its worst extremity, bore up bravely. “The more we may be threatened,” they replied, “the more will we be firm and constant; forasmuch as dying for the right, we will hold ourselves happy. Nevertheless, we so trust in God and the citizens of the two towns, believing they will observe the oaths made in presence of their Creator and fellow-men, that we will satisfy our debt, even if, so to do, we shall be obliged to pledge all our worldly goods, even to our wives and our children.”
It was after this that Berne and Fribourg, having vainly attempted to temporize, and striven to adopt a middle course, which the Genevese proudly rejected, returned to better feelings, and refused to renew their alliance with the duke, who had failed to pay to themselves the sums which he had forfeited. The Protestant religion was now gaining rapid growth, animating the Swiss with fresh zeal for the liberty it favoured, and deepening the duke’s hatred, as it changed to a kind of crusade what had been a mere spoliation. Though Geneva has since borne the title of reformed Rome, Zwingle and his associates had disseminated their doctrines over the rest of the Swiss states before it reached herself in 1528: for its entrance here grew out of the ill conduct and scandalous lives of their bishops and ecclesiastics, and such observations as the citizens made during the frequent journeys their commerce necessitated into Switzerland. Bonnivard, prior of the abbey of St. Victor, situated close to Geneva, esteemed for his pure life and profound learning, exhorted the Genevese to reform their conduct and enlighten their minds, to dare to speak and think freely. Fribourg (remained faithful to the Catholic creed) employed threats as well as prayers to prevent their allies falling away; but the Bernese soldiers, during the brief time they had spent in Geneva, had taught the people to insult the outward signs of their old faith, to fling down for firewood the rude wooden statues which decorated the churches; and the people, finding their bravadoes unpunished, repeated and exaggerated them daily. In 1530 Bonnivard was betrayed to the duke of Savoy, some say by false friends, others by bandits, who seized and rifled him on a wild tract of the Jura; and, delivered to Charles the Third, he was cast into the dungeon of Chillon. The bishop was leagued with the duke, though secretly, to make war on Geneva, and the proofs of his collusion were not wanting. Farel and Saulnier, both reformers, preached publicly to the excited multitude; and the little state divided by religious fury, the hand of the father was lifted against his son, and brother betrayed brother.
The Catholics conspired, and the Protestants resisted; conflicts in broad day and assassinations in the dark continued; while the laws of the magistrates were useless, and words of peace were despised. At last an order in council enacted “that every one should enjoy liberty of conscience, avoiding to create scandal.” But this species of truce did not last long. The Catholic priests provoked fresh sedition, and in the tumult which followed in the streets, a citizen of Fribourg was killed. Long disputes ensued, the Bernese taking part with the townsmen, the men of Fribourg with the bishop; till the latter, feigning or feeling fear, quitted Geneva to join the duke, and returned thither no more, the citizens shortly after publishing their resolve no longer to recognize him for their superior. His grand vicar published a charge, which commanded, on pain of excommunication, the burning of all French and German Bibles. The Bernese insisted that permission to preach should be granted to the reformers; and the sermons of Farel, delivered in consequence in the church of the Cordeliers, attracted multitudes and converted many. The bishop had excommunicated the citizens as hardened heretics, and these last could only procure food at the sword’s point, when the grand council, after long debates, commanded that the celebration of mass should cease in the city till further orders.
An edict ordained that God should be served according to the rules of the Gospel, and that all acts of papistical idolatry should be interdicted for ever.
Geneva was again besieged in 1535, and reduced to the last extremity, when Francis the First, king of France, not that he hated the heretics less, but that he hated Savoy more, offered assistance to the Genevese on condition of their putting him in possession of the rights their bishop had held. They rejected his proposals, saying, “They had suffered all things in the cause of freedom, and recommended it to his generosity.”
A few levies of troops were consequently made in France; but the Savoyards closed the passage to Geneva, while the duke declared “he would never permit the Genevese to change their religion without permission of the pope; and also, that his nobility, of whom he was in this instance master, was determined on sacrificing life and land to exterminate the Lutherans.” Under these circumstances, and also because an ally of the duke’s had made violent inroads on the Bernese possessions, Berne, aroused at last, declared war against Savoy,—representing in her manifesto as sole reason for so doing the “oppression of Geneva, with which it was impossible to bear longer; her own honour being interested in protecting a people persecuted for their common religion,—as to abandon her ally would cast upon herself an ineffaceable stain.”
As the Bernese army came on, the ducal troops fled. Advancing unresisted, the former burned the castles of the brotherhood of La Cuiller, and, entering Geneva, brought with their presence the term of its sufferings and long perplexities. Francis the First, reviving a former claim made on the death of Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, despatched at this time (1536) an army to invade the Milanese territory, which on its march occupied Bresse and a great part of Savoy. His alliance was offered to Berne and accepted, and the unfortunate duke lost to France, Bresse, Turin, and Piedmont, as well as almost all which remained to him of Savoy. The Bernese were wanting in generosity once more. Their gain in booty and increase of territory had been great: the Pays de Vaud, with little pains, had become theirs; yet they demanded of the Genevese, as theirs by conquest, the rights and revenues of their duke and bishops. The Genevese answered proudly:—
“If we could have borne the yoke of a master, we could have spared ourselves the struggles and expenses our liberty has cost; we will not lose the fruit of them. We conjure you, who aided us in its maintenance, not to persist in a demand which tarnishes your glory: by all reasonable means we will strive to repay your services.”