[692] Registres du Conseil du 10 Janvier 1536.
[693] 'Ils nous ont assaillis vigoureusement; mais Dieu, à qui en est tout honneur, les a repoussés.'—Registres du Conseil du 13 Janvier 1536.—Chron. MSC. de Roset, liv. iii. ch. 56.
[694] Froment, Gestes de Genève, pp. 186, 187.
[695] Registres da Conseil du 24 Janvier 1536.—Chron. MSC. de Roset, liv. iii. ch. 58.—Froment, Gestes de Genève, pp. 204-206.
CHAPTER XII.
EXTREME PERIL.
(January to February 1536.)
=GENEVA IN PERIL.=
The duke of Savoy was preparing to aim more decisive blows at Geneva. He desired to satisfy the ancient ambition of his house, and to crush a city which believed itself called upon to divorce from Rome the populations scattered around her. In this he was animated by his wife, Beatrice, a Portuguese princess, who was inspired by that religious fanaticism which generally distinguishes the women of the Iberian peninsula. The cities of Asti, Ivrea, and Verceil had fallen into the hands of the house of Savoy, and Geneva was to experience the same fate. The moment seemed favorable. Charles V. was preparing to destroy protestantism: lansquenets, recruited by the emperor's brother, were arriving from Germany, and the army which Charles himself was bringing back from Africa, was moving towards the Alps. Letters from Berne announced that the emperor and the duke would begin by reducing Geneva, reformed Switzerland would follow, and last of all Lutheran Germany. Thus the subjection of the city of the huguenots formed part of a general plan. That mighty monarch, upon whose dominions the sun never set, had determined to abolish the Reformation, beginning with this city.
=GIANGIACOMO DE MEDICI.=
Charles III. had learnt that what had paralyzed his former efforts was the error he had committed by not sending disciplined troops against the huguenot city. He therefore determined on this occasion to select none but veteran soldiers and to place them under the orders of one of the boldest captains of the age, whose march should be accompanied with plunder and devastation. A person of low birth, who had settled at Milan, had acquired a small fortune by his industry. This man, Bernardino Medici (a name not to be confounded with that of the Medicis of Florence) had two sons, Giovanni Angelo, who became Pope under the name of Pius IV., and Giangiacomo, a rash, enterprising, treacherous, and cruel young man, whose ambition was insatiable and whose trade was war. Having been sent to the castle of Musso on the lake of Como, by the duke of Milan, with a letter charging the governor to put the bearer to death, the cunning Giangiacomo had opened the letter, got together a few companions, seized the castle, and made a small principality of it, which he had increased little by little, by furious inroads into the surrounding districts—the Valteline, the Milanese, Venetia, and even the Grisons. The Swiss, with Nägueli at their head, marched against the robber chieftain and destroyed his lair. From that time the daring freebooter had carried his impetuosity and devastations elsewhere. Portions of French Switzerland, on the side of the Jura, had been ravaged by him. It was this Attila on a small scale whom Charles III. selected to put at the head of the new campaign against Geneva. It was not a question of merely taking the city, but of putting it in such a position that it could never lift its head again; in short, of destroying it. Giangiacomo was just the man for the work. At a later period Charles V., wishing to employ him against the German Reformation, created him marquis of Marignano, and gave him the command of the artillery in his campaign against the Lutherans. For the present, however, it was not Wittemberg but Geneva that Medici was to lay waste.[696]