CHAPTER XI
THE ESCALADE
The time was December, 1602. Duke Charles Emmanuel had secretly crossed the mountains, and established his head-quarters at Etrembières; a sufficient army had been quietly mobilized; there were 800 Savoyards, 1,000 Spaniards, 400 Neapolitans, and 4,000 Piedmontese at Bonne, La Roche, Bonneville, and other places near Geneva. The Duke had also been at pains to allay suspicion by assuring the Genevans, through his agents, that he desired nothing more than to be on friendly terms with them. But at midnight of December 12 he set his troops in motion.
A storming-party of some two hundred men led the way, under the command of M. Berlonière, who had extreme unction administered to him ostentatiously before he started. The main body of 4,000 men was to follow under Lieutenant-General d’Albigni. Acting on information received, the storming-party struck the Corraterie rampart at a point where there was no sentinel on the look-out for them. They carried with them faggots and hurdles to help them over the moat, ladders that could be dovetailed together to scale the rampart with, and axes and crowbars for breaking down or forcing gates. A Scotch Jesuit, named Alexander, gave them his benediction as they climbed, and handed to every man an amulet which purported to guarantee him in the first instance against being killed, and in the second instance against being damned eternally if he were killed.
Fortune at first smiled upon their efforts. They succeeded in attaining the rampart unobserved, and kept quiet, waiting for d’Albigni and the dawn. A single sentinel whom they met was slain in silence. But presently a small company of the watch passed by upon its rounds. Upon these, too, the soldiers flung themselves, and most of them were quickly pitched over into the moat. One gun went off, however, and one man managed to escape. He was the drummer, and he ran along the rampart, drumming as he went, as far as the Porte de la Monnaie. It was enough. The alarm was given. The invaders saw that they must fight in the dark, instead of waiting for the dawn. ‘Vive Espagne!’ they shouted. ‘Ville gagnée! Tue, Tue!’ and dashed down into the streets, expecting d’Albigni and his 4,000 men to follow them.
But this was what d’Albigni and his 4,000 men could not do. Chance—or the hand of Providence—had interfered to save Geneva. A message to say that the city was as good as captured had already been sent off to the Duke of Savoy at Etrembières; and the Duke was dispatching couriers to announce his victory at all the Courts of Europe. But it happened that the Genevans at the Porte Neuve loaded a cannon to the muzzle with chains, and any other old iron that came to hand, and fired it in a direction parallel with the rampart. Had the aim been bad, Geneva would have fallen that night beyond a doubt. But the aim was good, and the shot broke the ladders into pieces, so that no one could climb by them any more; and there was Lieutenant-General d’Albigni with his army helpless in the moat, while the storming party was caught in a trap within the walls. The citizens snatched up their weapons, and hurried down, half dressed, to give them battle in the dark. Their pastor, Simon Goulart,[A] who wrote a jubilant description of the episode, declared that he himself would have been delighted to join in the affray if only he had had a coat of mail. A worthy woman, who was making soup for an early breakfast, flung the scalding fluid, saucepan and all, out of window on to the heads of the intruders. Other missiles were showered upon them from other windows; while the number of armed men who faced them in the open steadily increased. In the end, after inflicting upon the Genevans a loss of seventeen killed and twenty wounded, they were swept back into the moat, leaving many dead and thirteen prisoners behind them.
[A] Simon Goulart (1543–1628) was a Frenchman, who accepted the Reformation in 1565, and came to Geneva in 1566. In 1572 he was made pastor of the Church of St. Gervais. After the death of M. de Bèze he became President of the Venerable Company. He wrote more than fifty books on various subjects.
THE CASTLE OF ETREMBIÈRES, HTE. SAVOIE