It struck twelve. No sound was heard but the measured steps of the sentinels; a dark night covered the city with its curtain, and all were asleep. Suddenly the flash of a torch gleamed from the top of one of the three towers of St. Pierre; it was the signal agreed upon between Cartelier and the duke at the nocturnal conference held under the tree in the Falcon orchard: that flash announced that the Swiss could enter without resistance. The noise of horses was heard almost immediately without the city, in the direction of St. Antoine, and a loud blow was struck on the gate. It was Philip, count of Genevois, the duke’s brother, at the head of his cavalry: having knocked, he waited for the mamelukes to open according to their promise. But the sentry at the St. Antoine gate, who had seen the torch and heard the knock, suspecting treachery, fired his arquebus and gave the alarm. Immediately the tocsin sounded; the citizens awoke, grasped their arms, and hurried in the direction of the attack. ‘All were much frightened and vexed, and great uproar was made in the city.’ Everybody was running about shouting and ordering. The count, who was listening, began to fear that the plot had failed. In the midst of the confusion, a clap of thunder was heard, which terrified both sides. The count and his followers hesitated no longer, but retired; the Genevans did the same, and a few angry patriots, as they passed Marti’s house on their way home, went in and asked him angrily: ‘Is this the fine truce you brought us?’[229]
The Grand Council met before daybreak on Monday, April 4. The mamelukes made an excuse for the night affair: it was no doubt a patrol of cavalry which had advanced too far. But Marti did not conceal the danger: ‘The duke is at your gates with his whole army,’ he said: ‘if you comply with his demands, he told me you would be satisfied with him; if not, he will enter by force this very afternoon. Make a virtue of necessity; or, at the least, send him a deputation.’ The syndics started for Gaillard immediately. The duke received them most graciously and affectionately. ‘I will enter Geneva with none but my ordinary retinue,’ he told them; ‘I will take only five hundred footmen for my guard and dismiss all the rest of my army. I will do no injury either to the community or to individuals, and my stay shall not be long.’ His Highness made so many promises and oaths that entrance was at last yielded to him.
When this resolution of the council was known, the indignant patriots threw away their arquebuses; all laid down their arms, and a profound dejection came over men’s minds. Cries of vexation and of sorrow were heard, but there still lingered here and there a hope that God would finally deliver the city.[230]
On the morning of Tuesday, April 5, the duke set all his army in motion. All!... When they heard of this, the Genevans hastened to remonstrate with him. ‘My people will only pass through Geneva,’ he answered; ‘fear nothing, but open your gates.’—‘Certainly,’ added some mamelukes; ‘be easy; they will come in at one gate and go out at another.’ The triumph of violence and craft was about to be achieved. A people, too simple and confiding, were now to be crushed under the feet of a powerful prince and of his numerous satellites. All the gates were opened, and those which had been walled up were broken down. The huguenots, who had voted unhesitatingly against the admission of Charles into the city, looked on with indignation at this sad sight; but they were determined to be present to the end at the humiliation of Geneva. Bonivard was the most provident; he took the alarm: he had no culverins now in his priory, and he could not have resisted the Savoy army with his ten monks. ‘Consent to the duke’s entrance ... what madness!’ he exclaimed. ‘Certainly those who know his honesty, of whom I am one, are aware of what will happen.’ And this, in Bonivard’s opinion, was, that he would be the first victim sacrificed by the duke, and that there would be many others. ‘Wishing,’ he tells us, ‘to be wiser and cleverer than the rest,’ he hastily escaped into the Pays de Vaud. Berthelier, who was more exposed than his friend, and who saw clearly his end approaching, was not frightened. He knew that the defenders of law and liberty serve their cause by their deaths as well as by their lives, and determined to await the attacks of Charles and the bastard.[231]
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE ARMY OF SAVOY IN GENEVA.
(April and May 1519.)
The army of Savoy approached the St. Antoine gate: it was like a triumphal progress. Monarchy, according to politicians, was about to gain the victory over republicanism. ‘In front marched the Count of Genevois, in complete steel armour,’ say the chronicles, ‘wearing a long plume, and riding on a stout stallion, who curvetted about so that it was pleasant to see.’ He was followed by the cavalry in breast-plates. Then came the main body, to the number of about eight thousand infantry, headed by six Genevan mamelukes. Last appeared the duke, followed by all his guard; he had laid aside his gracious humour, and desired that his entrance should have something warlike and alarming. ‘Montrotier,’ he said to his principal captain, ‘I have sworn that I will only enter Geneva over the gates.’ Montrotier understood him, and, going forward with a body of men, knocked down the St. Antoine gate and the adjoining wall. The satisfied duke now resumed his triumphal march. He was armed from head to foot and rode a handsome hackney: two pages carried before him his lance and his helmet. One of these was J. J. de Watteville, afterwards avoyer of Berne. The weak-minded Charles, inflated with his success, pulled up his courser, and made him paw the rebellious stones. ‘A true Don Quixote,’ says a catholic historian, ‘he showed the same pride as a conqueror loaded with glory who at the cost of much blood and fatigue had reduced a fortress after a long and dangerous siege.’ And if we may believe contemporary documents, ‘Charles advanced more like a Jupiter surrounded with his thunders than a conqueror; his head was bare in order, said his courtiers, that his eyes, flashing with wrath, should blast the audacity of the Genevans who should be rash enough to look in his face.’ All the army having passed the gate after him marched through the city in order to parade its triumph in the streets and defy the citizens.[232]
In conformity with the engagements made by the duke, his soldiers entering by one gate ought, after crossing the city, to have gone out by the other. Bonivard on hearing of this had shaken his head. ‘It will be with Geneva as with Troy,’ said the classical prior; ‘the Savoyards, entering by stratagem like the Greeks of Sinon, will afterwards remain by force.’ And so it happened, for the whole army took up its quarters immediately in the city. The bands of Faucigny, which were the most terrible, established themselves at St. Gervais by order of the duke; those of the Pays de Vaud at St. Leger, up to the Arve; those of Chablais at the Molard and along the Rhone; those of Savoy and Genevois in the Bourg de Four and the upper part of the city. The nobles were lodged in the best houses situated principally between Rive and the Molard. The duke took up his quarters also on the left bank, near the lake, in the Maison de Nice which belonged to Bonivard. The count, appointed by his brother governor of the city, fixed his head-quarters at the hôtel-de-ville. Geneva was taken; the Duke of Savoy had made himself master of it by perjury, and there he intended to remain. Many citizens thought their country for ever lost. The plans formed during so many years and even centuries, were realised at last; despotism, triumphant in Geneva, was about to trample under foot law, constitution, and liberty. The Savoyards had seen from their mountain-tops a fire in this city which disquieted them—a fire whose flames might extend and consume the time-worn edifices their fathers had raised. They were now going to stifle these flames, to extinguish the embers, and scatter the ashes; the duke, the emperor his brother-in-law, and his nephew Francis I. might henceforth at their pleasure oppress their subjects, put martyrs to death, wink at the disorders of nobles and monks, and sleep quietly on their pillows.
The Savoyard princes behaved as in a city taken by assault. The very evening of the 5th of April, the Count of Genevois removed the cannon from the ramparts, placed them round his quarters, and had them loaded that they might be ready to fire upon the people, the hôtel-de-ville thus becoming a citadel to keep Geneva in obedience. Notwithstanding these precautions the count was uneasy; he had violated his oaths, and knew that he had to deal with men of energy. He did not lie down, and at two in the morning his officers went by his orders and knocked at the doors of the four syndics, commanding them to proceed immediately to the hôtel-de-ville. ‘Hand me the keys of the gates,’ said the count, ‘the ramparts, the arsenal, and the provision magazines.’ If the magistrates had really fancied that the Savoyards would come as friends, their foolish delusion must now have ceased and the bandage have fallen from their eyes. But how could they resist? The army filled all the city, and the citizens were divided: the syndics did what was required of them. The fanaticism of the disloyal mamelukes was not yet satisfied. Cartelier, Pierre Joly, Thomas Moyne, and others, taking a lesson from the terrible Montrotier, who desired to muzzle the Genevans completely, visited all the streets, squares, and churches, and began to wrench off the staples and locks from the city chains and gates, and even the clappers from the bells. The syndics strove in vain to stop this violence. The wretches did not forget a street, and having thus disarmed Geneva, they carried all these trophies to the duke. ‘It is a sign,’ said they, laying them before him, ‘of the real transfer of the jurisdiction of the city, to intimidate the rebels and deprive them of all hope of succour. Geneva lies at the feet of your Highness.’ This occurred before daybreak.[233]
At length Wednesday, 6th April, dawned, and that day was not less mournful than its predecessor. The Savoyard soldiers, forgetting that they owed their success to the scandalous violation of the most sacred promises, intoxicated alike with hatred and pride, began to show the insolence of conquerors. We know the disorders in which the undisciplined armies of that period were accustomed to indulge in cities taken by storm. The ducal soldiers, not less cruel but more fantastical, exhibited in the sack of Geneva some of those farces which the imperialists played eight years later at the sack of Rome. The citizens, taking refuge in the garrets, had given up their feather beds to the soldiers. The latter slept soundly, and next morning, to make up for the battle which had not been fought, indulged in one of a different kind. Instead of balls they flung the bolsters at each other’s heads; taking the beds for enemies, they thrust their swords up to the hilt in the feathers:—these were the hardest blows struck in this war by the soldiers of Charles III.—Then, eager to prolong their coarse jests, they shook the beds out of the windows, watching, with roars of laughter, the evolutions made by the feathers in the air. They next called for the keys of the cellars, and forming a circle round the casks, tapped them in various places, singing their loudest as they drank their fill. ‘Lastly,’ says a chronicle, ‘they pulled out the spigots, so that the cellar was filled with wine; and stumbling upstairs again into the house, they insulted everybody they met, ran shouting through the streets, made boasting speeches, and committed a thousand acts of violence.’ At Rome, the imperialists made a jest of the papacy; at Geneva, the ducal soldiers, drunk with wine and joy, trampled independence under foot and exulted over liberty. But on a sudden, an alarm was sounded: the braggarts imagined that the Genevans were going to defend themselves, and, the noisiest talkers being generally the greatest cowards, they all scampered away—some ran to the right, others to the left; many fled towards the river and hid themselves under the mills; the more cunning sought other retreats.[234] It was only a false alarm; the Count of Genevois, being displeased at their behaviour, had given it that it might serve as a lesson to the marauders.
During this time the mamelukes were sitting night and day in ‘the little stove,’ consulting on the best means of repressing for ever the spirit of national independence in Geneva. They believed the city could never belong to Savoy whilst those who had voted for the alliance with Friburg were alive. A king of Rome, while walking in his garden, struck off with his stick the heads of the tallest poppies. The conspirators, resolving to profit by the lessons of history, began to draw up a proscription list, and placed on it the four syndics, the twenty-one councillors, and other notable citizens so as to make up forty. Wishing to end the affair promptly, certain mamelukes went to the executioner and asked him ‘how much he would take for forty heads?’ It seems that he required more than the heads were worth, according to the value which had been set upon them, for contemporary documents tell us that they ‘haggled’ about it. Three chronicles of the time, all worthy of trust, describe this disgusting visit to the headsman.[235] The rumour got abroad, and all Geneva trembled. Some who knew they were on the list, hid themselves. ‘A very foolish thing,’ said others. ‘Without God, the most secret hiding-places are but as the fancies of children, who put their hands before their eyes and think nobody can see them.’ The boldest huguenots were filled with indignation: instead of concealing themselves, they girded on their swords, raised their heads, and walked proudly in the streets. ‘But they were made to feel the cord (sentir la corde).’ We do not know whether this means that they were beaten or only threatened. ‘After this,’ continues Savyon, ‘there was no other resource but to commend ourselves to God.’[236]