Their mother, Anne of Cyprus, had brought with her to Savoy a number of ‘Cypriote leeches’ as they were called, and after they had drained the blood of her husband’s states, she launched them on the states of her children. One Cypriote prelate, Thomas de Sur, whom she had appointed governor to little Bishop Peter, particularly distinguished himself in the art of robbing citizens of their money and their liberty. It was Bishop John Louis, the least wicked of the three brothers, who inflicted the most terrible blow on Geneva. We shall tell how that happened; for this dramatic episode is a picture of manners, carrying us back to Geneva with its bishops and its princes, and showing us the family of that Charles III. who was in the sixteenth century the constant enemy of the liberties and Reformation of the city.
Duke Louis of Savoy, son of the pope-duke Amadeus, was good-tempered, inoffensive, weak, timid, and sometimes choleric; his wife, Anne of Cyprus or Lusignan, was arrogant, ambitious, greedy, intriguing, and domineering; the fifth of their sons, by name Philip-Monsieur, was a passionate, debauched, and violent young man. Anne, who had successively provided for three of her sons by placing them on the episcopal throne of Geneva, and who had never met with any opposition from the eldest Amadeus IX., a youth subject to epilepsy, had come into collision with Philip. The altercations between them were frequent and sharp, and she never missed an opportunity of injuring him in his father’s affections; so that the duke, who always yielded to his wife’s wishes, left the young prince without appanage. Philip Lackland (for such was the name he went by) angry at finding himself thus deprived of his rights, returned his mother hatred for hatred; and instead of that family affection, which even the poets of heathen antiquity have often celebrated, an implacable enmity existed between the mother and the son. This Philip was destined to fill an important place in history; he was one day to wear the crown, be the father of Charles III. (brother-in-law to Charles V.) and grandfather of Francis I. through his daughter Louisa of Savoy. But at this time nothing announced the high destiny which he would afterwards attain. Constantly surrounded by young profligates, he passed a merry life, wandering here and there with his troop of scapegraces, establishing himself in castles or in farms; and if the inhabitants objected, striking those who resisted, killing one and wounding another, so that he lived in continual quarrels. ‘As my father left me no fortune,’ he used to say, ‘I take my property wherever I can find it.’—‘All Savoy was in discord,’ say the old annals, ‘filled with murder, assault, and riot.’[37]
The companions of the young prince detested the Cypriote (as they called the duchess) quite as much as he did; and in their orgies over their brimming bowls used the most insulting language towards her. One day they insinuated that ‘if she plundered her husband and her son it was to enrich her minions.’ Philip swore that he would have justice. Duke Louis was then lying ill of the gout at Thonon, on the southern shore of the Lake of Geneva. Lackland went thither with his companions, and entering the chapel where mass was going on, killed his mother’s steward, carried off his father’s chancellor, put him in a boat and took him to Morges, ‘where he was drowned in the lake.’ Duke Louis was terrified; but whither could he flee? In his own states there was no place where he could feel himself safe; he could see no other refuge but Geneva, and there he resolved to go.
John Louis, another of his sons, was then bishop, and he was strong enough to resist Philip. Although destined from his infancy for the ecclesiastical estate, he had acquired neither learning nor manners, ‘seeing that it is not the custom of princes to make their children scholars,’ say the annals. But on the other hand he was a good swordsman; dressed not as a churchman but as a soldier, and passed his time in ‘dicing, hawking, drinking, and wenching.’ Haughty, blunt, hot-headed, he was often magnanimous, and always forgave those who had rightfully offended him. ‘As appears,’ says the old chronicle, ‘from the story of the carpenter, who having surprised him in a room with his wife, cudgelled him so soundly, that he was left for dead. Nevertheless, the bishop would not take vengeance, and went so far as to give the carpenter the clothes he had on when he was cudgelled.’
John Louis listened favourably to his father’s proposals. The duke, Anne of Cyprus, and all the Cypriote officers arrived at Geneva in July 1642, and were lodged at the Franciscan convent and elsewhere; but none could venture outside Geneva without being exposed to the attacks of the terrible Lackland.[38]
The arrogant duchess became a prey to alarm: being both greedy and avaricious, she trembled lest Philip should succeed in laying hands upon her treasures; and that she might put them beyond his reach, she despatched them to Cyprus after this fashion. In the mountains near Geneva the people used to make very excellent cheeses; of these she bought a large number, wishing (she said) that her friends in Cyprus should taste them. She scraped out the inside, carefully stored her gold in the hollow, and therewith loaded some mules, which started for the East. Philip having received information of this, stopped the caravan near Friburg, unloaded the mules, and took away the gold. Now that he held in his hands these striking proofs of the duchess’s perfidy, he resolved to slake the hatred he felt towards her: he would go to Geneva, denounce his mother to his father, obtain from the exasperated prince the Cypriote’s dismissal, and receive at last the appanage of which this woman had so long deprived him.
Philip, aware that the bishop would not let him enter the city, resolved to get into it by stratagem. He repaired secretly to Nyon, and thence despatched to Geneva the more skilful of his confidants. They told the syndics and the young men of their acquaintance, that their master desired to speak to his father the duke about a matter of great importance. One of the syndics (the one, no doubt, who had charge of the watch) seeing nothing but what was very natural in this, gave instructions to the patrol; and on the 9th of October, Philip presenting himself at the city gate—at midnight, according to Savyon, who is contradicted by other authorities—entered and proceeded straight to Rive, his Highness’s lodging, with a heart full of bitterness and hatred against his cruel mother. We shall quote literally the ancient annals which describe the interview in a picturesque manner:—‘Philip knocks at the door; thereupon one of the chamberlains coming up, asks who is there? He answers: “I am Philip of Savoy, I want to speak to my father for his profit.” Whereupon the servant having made a report, the duke said to him: “Open to him in the name of all the devils, happen what may,” and immediately the man opened the door. As soon as he was come in Philip bowed to his father, saying: “Good day, father!” His father said: “God give thee bad day and bad year! What devil brings thee here now?” To which Philip replied meekly: “It is not the devil, my lord, but God who brings me here to your profit, for I warn you that you are robbed and know it not. There is my lady mother leaves you nothing, so that, if you take not good heed, she will not only make your children after your death the poorest princes in christendom, but yourself also during your life.”’
At these words Philip opened a casket which contained the gold intended for Cyprus, and ‘showed him the wherewithal,’ say the annals. But the duke, fearing the storm his wife would raise, took her part. Monsieur then grew angry: ‘You may bear with it if you like,’ he said to his father, ‘I will not. I will have justice of these thieves.’ With these words he drew his sword and looked under his father’s bed, hoping to find some Cypriotes beneath it, perhaps the Cypriote woman herself. He found nothing there. He then searched all the lodging with his band, and found nobody, for the Cypriotes had fled and hidden themselves in various houses in the city. Monsieur did not dare venture further, ‘for the people were against him,’ say the annals, ‘and for this cause he quitted his father’s lodging and the town also without doing other harm.’[39]
The duchess gave way to a burst of passion, the duke felt very indignant, and Bishop John Louis was angry. The people flocked together, and as they prevented the Cypriotes from hanging the men who had opened the gate to Monsieur, the duke chose another revenge. He represented to the bishop that his son-in-law Louis XI., with whom he was negotiating about certain towns in Dauphiny, detested the Genevans, and coveted their large fairs to which people resorted from all the country round. He begged him therefore to place in his hands the charters which gave Geneva this important privilege. The bishop threw open his archives to the duke; when the latter took the documents in question, and carrying them to Lyons, where Louis XI. happened to be, gave them to him. The king immediately transferred the fairs first to Bourges and then to Lyons, forbidding the merchants to pass through Geneva. This was a source of great distress to all the city. Was it not to her fairs, whose privileges were of such old standing, that Geneva owed her greatness? While Venice was the mart for the trade of the East, and Cologne for that of the West, Geneva was in a fair way to become the mart of the central trade. Now Lyons was to increase at her expense, and the city would witness no longer in her thoroughfares that busy, restless crowd of foreigners coming from Genoa, Florence, Bologna, Lucca, Brittany, Gascony, Spain, Flanders, the banks of the Rhine, and all Germany. Thus the catholic or episcopal power, which in the eleventh century had stripped Geneva of her territory, stripped her of her wealth in the fifteenth. It needed the influx of the persecuted Huguenots and the industrial activity of Protestantism to recover it from the blow that the Romish hierarchy had inflicted.[40]
This poor tormented city enjoyed however a momentary respite. In the last year of the fifteenth century, after the scandals of Bishop Francis of Savoy, and his clergy and monks, a priest, whom we may in some respects regard as a precursor of the Reformation, obtained the episcopal chair. This was Anthony Champion, an austere man who pardoned nothing either in himself or others. ‘I desire,’ he said, ‘to sweep the filth out of my diocese.’ He took some trouble to do so. On the 7th of May, 1493, five hundred priests convened by him met in synod in the church of St. Pierre. ‘Men devoted to God’s service,’ said the bishop with energy, ‘ought to be distinguished by purity of life; now our priests are given to every vice, and lead more execrable lives than their flocks. Some dress in open frocks, others assume the soldier’s head-piece, others wear red cloaks or corslets, frequent fairs, haunt taverns and houses of ill fame, behave like mountebanks or players, take false oaths, lend upon pawn, and unworthily vend indulgences to perjurers and homicides.’ Thus spoke Champion, but he died eighteen months after the synod, and the priestly corruption increased.[41]