Retreat Of The Savoyards.
Yet the lion’s eye still glared above the city. ‘The sugar-plums are all ready for our supper,’ said the men-at-arms.[[608]] Every one thought of retiring: Mauloz and Simon gave orders for the retreat. As day was beginning to break, the Genevese look-outs stationed on the tower saw the Savoyards filing off in the direction of Castle Gaillard, with drums beating and colors flying.
The Genevan catholics were in suspense no longer: their enterprise had miscarried. They were stupefied and furious against their allies. One of them, Francis Regis, said with a great oath: ‘We are ruined and undone: those gentlemen are not worth a straw. We made the signals, everything was in good order, but the gentry deceived us.’[[609]] As for the bishop, he was more frightened than disappointed. When the terrible beacon shone out from the temple of St. Pierre’s, some men, commissioned to keep him informed of what was going on, had started off full gallop, and reported to him the ominous words of the ferocious Mauloz: ‘We are betrayed!’ Instantly the poor prelate mounted his horse, and rode hastily away to join the duke.
When the sun rose, not an enemy was to be seen about the city. The Genevans could not believe their eyes: the events of that memorable night seemed almost miraculous, and they were transported with joy, like men who have been saved from death. All the morning the streets were filled with people; they exchanged glances, they shook hands with each other; many blessed God; some could not believe that their catholic fellow-citizens were cognizant of the plot. One little incident removed every doubt. As some citizens happened to be passing the house of the keeper of the artillery, they heard the shrill voice of a woman screaming in great emotion: ‘Ha! traitor! you are betraying me as you betrayed the city!’ ... A man replied with abuse and blows; the screams of the wretched creature became louder and louder, and the coarse voice of another woman was mingled with hers. It was the Bossu, his wife, and servant: the keeper of the artillery had been surprised by his wife in flagrant infidelity. The huguenots, hearing the uproar, stopped and entered the house. ‘Yes,’ screamed the wife louder than ever; ‘yes, traitor, you gave Jean Levrat the keys through the loop-hole.’ Levrat, the Bossu, and the locksmith were immediately arrested.[[610]]
The leaders of the conspiracy remained, as usual, at liberty. Skulking in their houses, Guillet, De Prato, Perceval de Pesmes, the two Du Crests, the two Regis, and many others, knew well that they merited death more than Portier; and, affrighted like the hare in its form, which pricks up its ears to listen for the pursuing huntsman, they started at the slightest noise, and fancied every moment that the syndics or their officers were coming. As no one appeared, they formed a desperate resolution: disguising themselves in various ways, they left their houses and escaped; ‘and never returned to the city again,’ says Froment. The bishop’s conspiracy with Portier and the Pennets had forced several catholics to leave the council; the project of a night attack obliged many to leave Geneva. Every effort made by catholicism to rise helped it to descend, and every blow aimed at the Reformation for its destruction raised it still higher. The citizens remarked to one another, reports a contemporary, who has recorded the words: ‘It was God who brought down the hearts of our enemies, both without and within, so that they could not make use of their strength.’[[611]]
Vigilance And Meditation.
Meanwhile Geneva was not at ease. The Marshal of Burgundy and the Governor of Chablais had not appeared; and the enemy might have withdrawn only to wait for these powerful reinforcements. All the citizens were called to arms. ‘Throughout that week a strong guard was kept up, and the gates of the city were closed.’ As the episcopals had often had recourse to the bells to summon their partisans, ‘it was forbidden to ring the church-bells either day or night.’ A silence, accompanied with meditation and vigilance, prevailed through the city. The inhabitants were ready to sacrifice their lives, and showed their resolution by a deep earnestness, and not by idle boasts. The preachers would converse with the soldiers, speaking familiarly to them of the good fight, and the soldiers never grew tired of listening to them. ‘What a new way of making war,’ said many. ‘In old times the soldiers used to have dissolute women with them at their posts, but now they have preachers, and instead of debauchery and filthy language, every thing is turned to good.’[[612]]
Could such generous zeal save the city from the attacks of Savoy supported by France, Friburg, Burgundy, and the mamelukes? There were men who shook their heads with sorrow and ‘lived in fear and despondency.’ But ‘a friend sticketh closer than a brother.’ On the morning after the enterprise, a delegate from Lausanne arrived in Geneva, and although the Duke had given orders that the Estates of Vaud should make common cause with him, the messenger said: ‘We are ready, brethren, to send you a hundred arquebusiers if you want them.’ Neuchâtel made a similar offer. Berne commissioned Francis Nägeli the treasurer, the banneret Weingarten, and two other citizens, to exhort the Duke and Marshal of Burgundy to desist from hostilities. The Swiss cantons, assembled at Baden, forwarded a similar message to Charles III.
The partisans of the pope and of the bishop saw that as their enterprise had miscarried, their cause was lost. The leaders had escaped at first: now the flight became general. Even the friends of the Genevese franchises began to leave the city; it was, therefore, natural that the fanatics should depart to swell the ranks of the mamelukes. They took with them all they could carry, and used various stratagems to get out of the city, stealing away cautiously by night. Some took refuge on the left shore of the lake; a greater number in the castle of Peney, on the right bank of the Rhone, whence they kept the Genevese population continually on the alert. Their wives and children, left behind in the city, held secret interviews with them at the foot of the steep cliffs which line the banks of the river, and told them all the news. No Genevan citizen could start for Lyons without the refugees at Peney being informed of it; they were always on the look-out for travellers. It was a strange phenomenon, of which history presents, however, more than one example, this opposition of the papists and feudalists to civil and religious liberty degenerating into brigandage.[[613]]
The flight of the episcopalian laity destroyed the power of the clergy, whose support they were, and made the reformers masters of the situation. Geneva was resolved to keep within her walls none but those who were ready to shed their blood for her. One night when the drum called citizens to arms a timid man bade his wife say he was absent: some of his neighbors, however, forced their way into his chamber and found him hidden in bed, pretending to have the fever: he shook, indeed, but it was with fear. The coward was banished from the city for life, under pain of being flogged if he returned: a year later, however, he was indulgently readmitted, ‘because it is not given to every man to have the courage of a Cæsar,’ says the ‘Register’; but he was always looked upon as an alien. Courage was at that time one of the qualifications necessary for Genevese citizenship.[[614]]