=FIGHT ON THE BRIDGE.=
For several days past the citizens had been talking in Geneva about the conference at Nyon; they said that these gentlemen of the Spoon were planning some new attack, that they were going once more to plunder and kill, and that this time they would probably try to carry fire and sword into Geneva itself. The irritation was excessive among the people; some of the citizens, meeting in the public places or in their own houses, were talking about the gentlemen assembled at Nyon, and many jokes were made upon them. 'These gentlemen!' said one huguenot. 'Call them rob-men (gens-pille-hommes),' said a second; 'or kill-men (gens-tue-hommes),' added a third; and despite the serious state of affairs, they all began to laugh. On a sudden, here before them, in their very city, was the leader of the enterprise, the man who never ceased harassing them: he had drawn his sword and struck one of the citizens. The latter drew in their turn, and just as the bold cavalier had crossed the suburb of St. Gervais, and was coming upon the bridge, they surrounded him, and one of them struck him in the face. The representative of feudalism was fighting almost alone with the representatives of the bourgeoisie. The old power and the new were struggling on the Rhone bridge. And while the blue waters were flowing beneath, as they had ever done; while the old waters were running on to be lost in the sea, and the new ones were coming, loosened from the Alpine glaciers by the beams of the sun,—on the bridge above there were other ancient things passing away, and other new ones appearing in their place. Amid the flashing of swords and the shock of arms, amid the indignant shouts of the citizens and the oaths of the knight, a great transformation was going on; society was passing over to the system of freedom and abandoning the system of feudalism.
The Sire de Pontverre, seeing the number of his enemies increasing, spurred his horse, dashed through the crowd, and reached the Corraterie gate, by which he desired to leave the city, and which led to the Black Friars' monastery. But the Genevans had got there before him.... The gate, alas! was shut. In this extremity, Pontverre did not falter. Close at hand was the house, dependent on the hospital, the back gate of which led outside the city, and by which he designed introducing the Savoyards by night. Thanks to his horse, he was a little in advance of his pursuers; he lost not a moment, he turned back, and reached the house in question. To get at the door it was necessary to go up several steps. The Genevans were now rushing after him in a crowd, shouting: 'Pontverre! Pontverre!'... The latter faced his enemies, and, without dismounting, backed his horse up the steps, at the same time using his sword against his pursuers. At this moment the syndic Ami Girard arrived; he found the Sire de Simon, and the other horsemen who had accompanied their chief, beset on all sides. The syndic begged that they might not be hurt; and as the horsemen surrendered their arms, they were lodged in a place of safety. Pontverre dismounted on reaching the top of the steps, and, hoping to escape by the door we have mentioned, rushed into the house. His face was covered with blood, for, says an eye-witness, 'he had a sword-cut on his nose;' his eyes were wild; he heard the feet of the huguenots close behind him. Had he no time to reach the door, or did he find it shut? We cannot tell. Seeing that he could not escape, he appears to have lost his presence of mind. Had he still been himself, he would no doubt have faced his enemies and sold his life dearly, but, for the first time in his life, he became frightened; he dashed into one of the apartments, threw himself on the floor, and crept hastily under a bed: a child might have done the same. What a hiding-place for the most valiant knight whom the Alps and the Jura had seen perhaps for centuries!
=THE DEATH-STRUGGLE.=
At this moment, the Genevans who were pursuing him rushed into the house and began to search it; they entered the room where the man lay hid who had threatened to swallow Geneva as if it were a spoonful of rice. At their head was Ami Bandière, one of the huguenots who had been compelled to flee to Berne at the same time as Hugues and the leaders of the party—the man, it will be remembered, whose father and children had appeared before the council in 1526, when it was necessary to defend the huguenots who had taken refuge in Switzerland. Bandière, an upright, determined, and violent man, an enthusiast for liberty, noticed the bed; he thought that the proud gentleman might possibly be hidden beneath it. 'They poked their swords underneath,' says Bonivard, 'and the wretched man hidden there received a stab.'[797] This was too much: the Sire de Pontverre was aroused: being an active and powerful man, he rushed out of his hiding-place in a fury, and, springing to his feet, seized Bandière with his vigorous arms, threw him on the bed, and stabbed him in the thigh with a dagger. The shouts now grew louder. If he had surrendered no harm would have been done him; but Bandière's friends, excited by the blood of their brother, were eager to avenge him. They rushed upon Pontverre. Alone in the middle of the room, this athletic man received them boldly: he swung his sword round him, now striking with the edge, and now with the point; but a citizen, inflamed by anger, aimed a violent blow at him, and the captain-general of the knights of the Spoon fell dead. At this moment the syndic Ami Girard entered, exclaiming: 'Stop! stop!' but it was too late.
Thus died François de Ternier, lord of Pontverre, whose ancestors had always been enemies of Geneva, 'and who himself had been the worst,' says one of his contemporaries. He fell a martyr to feudalism, say some; a victim to his own insolence, say others. His sole idea had been to ruin Geneva, to disperse its inhabitants, to throw down its walls; and now he lay dead a few yards from the place where, in 1519, he was present at the head of his troopers to take part in the murder of Berthelier, and in the very place by which he had arranged to enter and destroy the city by fire and sword.—'A memorable instance of divine justice,' said some of the citizens; 'a striking deliverance for Geneva; a terrible lesson for its enemies!' There is a great difference, it must be observed, between the martyrs of liberty and right, and those of feudalism and the papacy. Arbitrary power perfidiously seized the greatest citizens, the Bertheliers and Lévriers, in the midst of an inoffensive life, and put them to death by the vile hand of the common headsman, after a sham trial, which was a disgraceful mockery of justice; but it was only when provoked by the champions of feudalism, and at the risk of their own lives, that the men of liberty struck their adversaries. Pontverre died in a contest in which he had been the first to draw the sword.
=HONOURS TO THE DEAD.=
As the Genevans wished to show every mark of respect to their dead enemy, the council ordered that he should be buried with the usual rites by the Franciscans in a chapel of the convent of Rive, which had been founded by his family, and where some of his ancestors had been laid. After this ceremony had taken place according to the forms of the Roman ritual, an inquest was made into the cause of this tragical death, 'to do justice therein, if there should be need.' All the cool-headed people in Geneva were seriously grieved: 'Alas!' said they, 'what a pity that he would not live in peace, for he was a virtuous cavalier, except that he was so pugnacious! It would have been better to make him prisoner; it would have been the means of obtaining a perpetual treaty!' The officers of justice found letters on his person which had reference to the plot hatched against Geneva, and in which the knights of the Spoon were ordered to assemble 'with swords and spears' against the city. It was made evident that he had been the chief of the bands which pillaged and killed without mercy the citizens and inhabitants of the country, and that he was to blame, having first wounded Bandière: the magistrates, therefore, came to the conclusion that there were no grounds for bringing any one to trial. The Sire de Simon and the other companions of the famous captain were conducted uninjured to the frontier of Savoy.[798]