Still more sorrowful was the case of the immigrant pastors from France, who had no wages. The magistrates distributed a certain amount of money among them, and advised them that, as no more was likely to be forthcoming, they would be wise to lay out a part of it in learning a business or a trade. Their reply is worth preserving:
‘For several weeks,’ they said, ‘their position had been very painful; they felt their indebtedness to the Genevans the more acutely because no one reminded them of it; and they had decided to do with as little as possible to eat until the spring, when they hoped to have better news from their own country.’
LA ROCHE, HTE. SAVOIE
CHAPTER X
WAR WITH SAVOY
The situation righted itself by degrees, with the help of subscriptions from other Swiss cities; but then there was another deadly peril to be faced. The pretensions of Savoy were not yet extinguished. The Duke was still determined to capture Geneva, whether by violence or by stealth, believing that the act would be equally advantageous to the Church and to himself. Two attempts to ‘rush’ the town in time of peace—once by means of soldiers who were to enter concealed in barges laden with wood, and once by means of armed men disguised as muleteers—induced the Council to meet and resolve to ‘ask the advice of God and M. de Bèze’; and, from 1589 onwards, there was open war, in which 2,186 Genevans held their own against 18,000 Savoyards.
The atrocities committed by the Savoyard soldiers were numerous and terrible. We read of one prisoner of war being skinned alive; of another who, with his feet amputated, was driven about on a donkey with his face to the tail, and then flung on a dunghill to die. We also read of peasants being hung up to be roasted alive over the fire-places in their own cottages. It is not wonderful that the Genevan soldiers held that this sort of thing gave them the right to retaliate, at least by pillaging, when they gained the upper hand. The wonderful thing is that, when they did pillage, M. de Bèze called them to order, and was listened to. He told them that they were degrading Geneva to the level of a brigand’s cave, and bade them make instant restitution of the plunder which they had taken from the peasantry. It is recorded that they obeyed him, and there could be no better proof that M. de Bèze was a strong man.
These hostilities came to an end in 1589, owing to the intervention of Henri IV. of France; but the peril was not conjured. Baffled in the field, Duke Charles Emmanuel fell back upon treachery, and planned the adventure known to history as the Escalade. It is the most notable episode in all the Genevan annals. Fragments of scaling-ladders, kept as memorials of the ignominious failure of the enterprise, are still proudly exhibited in one of the town museums. The story must be told at length.