Neither the duke nor the bishop had exhausted their plans. The heads of Blanchet and Navis, suspended seven months before on the walnut-tree, were there still, tossed by every wind, and telling the passers-by that the wrath of the princes was not yet appeased. The bishop asked himself whether these commoners, who claimed liberty in the State, would delay much longer before demanding liberty in the Church.... People spoke of extraordinary things that were happening in Germany. A Wittemberg doctor had appealed from the pope to a general council, and was preparing to maintain certain propositions at Leipsic in which the primacy of the Roman Church was denied as being opposed to the history of eleven centuries and to the text of Scripture. Would these strange notions, worthy of the Germans, spread to countries nearer Rome? Would Wittemberg and Geneva, those two little corners of the earth, be two volcanoes to shake the ground around them? A remedy must be applied at any cost, and those principles of civil and religious liberty be stifled, which, if not seen to in time, might work strange revolutions in the world.
The bishop on his return from Turin had merely passed through Geneva; and fleeing from the plague, had taken refuge at Ripaille, near Thonon, whence he made the most serious complaints to the Genevans. ‘You are always conspiring,’ he wrote, ‘in order that you may satisfy the appetites of a heap of individuals who are plotting against their honour and against me.’[250] About the end of June he removed to the château of Troches, near Dovaine. The principal mamelukes hastened to this ancient manorial house.[251] They had no very clear ideas of what was going on in Germany, and of the consequences that might result to Europe; their attachment to the ducal and episcopal cause depended rather upon motives of interest and family tradition; but they instinctively felt that a struggle had begun in Geneva between the old and the new times, and that the partisans of the former must combine all their strength against the latter. They made the halls of the château reecho with their loud voices; they entered into cowardly conspiracies; these supporters of feudalism, however honourable they might be in other matters, shrank not from any crime to check the advent of liberty. There was one citizen in particular whom they hated—one life that must be sacrificed. ‘First,’ said they to the bishop, ‘we require Berthelier’s death, and pray, my lord, let the blow be prompt. Second, the rebellious councillors must be dismissed. Third, your grace must come into the city ... with good swords!’ The mamelukes undertook to find employment for these swords, and the bishop said ‘Amen.’
The cruelties of the princes of Savoy had already fallen upon Bonivard. The very day when the duke entered the city, the prior of St. Victor left it, ‘disguised as a monk,’ accompanied by two friends of the Pays de Vaud with whom he was very familiar, the Sieur de Voruz and the Abbot of Montheron. ‘Fear nothing,’ said the latter to him; ‘we will go first to my abbey; then we will conduct you to Echallens, a town dependent on Berne, where you will be in safety.’ But they were leading him to a very different place of safety. The priest and the gentleman had made their account together. They had said that no one in Geneva was more hated by the bishop and the duke than Bonivard, that in their eyes he was not a Genevese, but a Savoyard who had betrayed his prince; so that, to get him into their power, these princes would give his weight in gold. The priory of St. Victor was a good benefice; the two perfidious friends had therefore determined to propose an exchange: they would put the duke in possession of the prior, while the duke should put them in possession of the priory. This establishment would naturally fall to the abbot; but the latter engaged to pay the Sieur de Voruz an annual pension of two hundred florins out of the stipend. The flashing of the gold dazzled these wretches, and they concluded their infamous bargain. The gentleman and the abbot appeared to redouble their vigilance lest any harm should befall the prior. When the three travellers reached Montheron, in the forest of Jorat, between Lausanne and Echallens, the prior was courteously conducted into a room, which, without his suspecting it, was to be his prison. The next morning Voruz, whom Bonivard trusted like a brother, entered the chamber, sat down opposite him, and, laying a sheet of paper on the table, said: ‘Resign your priory of St. Victor in favour of the abbot.’—‘What!’ exclaimed the startled Bonivard, ‘is it under a show of friendship that you lay these plots?’—‘You are our prisoner,’ Voruz answered coldly; ‘all attempts to escape will be useless.’ Bonivard now understood into what hands he had fallen. ‘So, then, instead of taking me to Echallens,’ he said, ‘you will prevent my going there.’ He declared that he would set his hand to no such robbery, and bluntly refused to resign his priory. ‘The duke is going to put Berthelier and his companions to death,’ resumed Voruz coldly; ‘be careful. If you will not do what we tell you, we will deliver you into his hands, and there will be one huguenot the more for the scaffold. You are free; make your choice—resignation or death!’ Bonivard had no wish to die. Could he leave so soon this world that he loved so passionately? Could he see rudely interrupted that beautiful dream of liberty, philosophy, and poetry, in whose chimeras he had so long indulged? He consented to everything. ‘Good!’ said Voruz, as he took away with him the renunciation the prior had signed, and locked the door behind him.
Bonivard, who thought himself free now that he had become poor, had to learn that the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. He was immediately given up by Voruz and the abbot to the duke, who had him conveyed to Gex by the captain of his guards. He asserted in vain that his only fault was being a friend of the huguenots and of the Swiss; Charles, in whose eyes that was a great crime, imprisoned him in the castle of Grolée, on the banks of the Rhone, two leagues from Belley.[252] This first imprisonment, which lasted two years, was a foretaste of his harsher and longer captivity in the castle of Chillon. The duke put the abbot in possession of the priory of St. Victor; Voruz received his two hundred florins; the wicked triumphed, and Bonivard in his solitude gave way to gloomy thoughts. Was it at the bottom of an obscure dungeon that the new times of light and liberty were to begin?
The duke having struck the first blow, it was now the bishop’s turn. He was taking his holiday, travelling from Ripaille to Troches, from Troches to the castle of Bonne, thence to other adjoining places, and employing all his episcopal zeal in raising soldiers. On the 16th of August the peasants of these districts, who came to the market at Geneva, mentioned that the bishop was assembling armed men for his entrance into the city. The syndic De la Mare and one of his colleagues, alarmed for the future of the republic, set out immediately for Bonne, and commended the city to John’s episcopal tenderness. ‘Alas!’ they said, ‘it is stricken with the double scourge of the plague and the sword.’ The prelate, as false as his cousin, replied: ‘You have been deceived, gentlemen; I shall certainly enter Geneva to-morrow, but only with a hundred or a hundred and fifty footmen for my guard. I desire to live there merrily with the citizens and protect each one in his rights.’[253] De la Mare and his friend believed what John of Savoy told them, and made their report. The people of the city were somewhat reassured: that little weak and starveling bishop, who looked so like a corpse, seemed not a very formidable appearance to them. They resolved at least to hide the discontent and fears that they felt at heart. ‘The shops will be closed, as on a holiday,’ said the council, ‘and those who have horses will go out to meet his lordship.’
On Saturday, April 20, 1519, the syndics and a great part of the city were afoot. At four in the afternoon the bishop’s escort came in sight; the perfidious prelate, who was coming for the purpose of putting the noblest of the citizens to death, noted with a cunning look the handsome reception made him. Six hundred soldiers, stout rough men, surrounded the pastor of Geneva; ‘the bishop had thought that number necessary,’ say the annals, ‘to take Berthelier.’ The Genevans, remembering that John was only to bring with him one hundred or one hundred and fifty men-at-arms, counted ... and found six hundred. They saw that the prelate’s entrance was only a second edition of that of the duke. The bastard, satisfied with the welcome he received, proceeded immediately to his palace and without delay convened the general council for the next day. Sadness was in all men’s hearts.
On Sunday morning, when the people were assembled, the bishop appeared, surrounded by his councillors and courtiers. He seemed scarcely alive, but his sullen fierce look announced severe measures. ‘My lord not having many days to live,’ said the official, ‘desires that all things be put in order before his decease. He has therefore brought some soldiers with him that he may correct any who shall be mad enough to resist him.’[254]
After delivering this threatening message, the bishop returned hastily to his palace, where he remained shut up for two days without giving any signs of life. He had selected his first victim and was ruminating in silence on the means of sacrificing him. ‘He kept still,’ said Bonivard, ‘watching for Berthelier, whom he considered the leader of the flock.’ During this time his satellites, however, did not keep quiet. Being quartered on the huguenots, they stole all they could carry off; if resistance was made, they used insulting language; they went about marauding. But the bishop still gave no word or sign. This silence alarmed all the city, and every one expected what was going to happen.[255]
One man alone in Geneva preserved a tranquil heart and serene look; it was Berthelier. He had not wished to escape either when Charles or when the bastard entered; he was vainly entreated to withdraw to Friburg; all was useless. He waited for death; the ‘cheat’ of hope (to use the common expression) did not deceive him. ‘The wolf is in the fold,’ said his friends, ‘and you will be the first victim.’ Berthelier listened, smiled, and passed on. In his opinion there could be no evil in life to him who has learnt that the privation of life is not an evil. He awaited calmly that tragical end which he had himself foretold, every day exposing himself to the attacks of his enemies. After the bishop’s arrival, ‘he went and came just as before; one would have said that, instead of fleeing death, he was running after it.’[256]
Without the city, in a solitary place then called Gervasa (now corrupted into Savoises), was a quiet meadow, which the Rhone bathed with its swift waters: this was Berthelier’s favourite retreat. Remote from the noise of the city, seated on the picturesque bank of the river, watching its blue waves gliding rapidly past, he dwelt on the swiftness of time, and casting a serious glance into the future, he asked himself when would Geneva be free? ‘Every day he was in the habit of taking his pleasure there,’ say the annals, ‘and never omitted doing so, although at the time he had so many enemies in Geneva.’[257]