[1781 A.D.]
In 1781 Peter Nicholas Chenaux of la Tour de Trême, John Peter Raccaud, and an advocate of Gruyères of the name of Castellaz, formed a league for the achievement of a higher degree of freedom. First they endeavoured to work upon the people by fair promises. Then Chenaux, at the head of a select band of fifty or sixty, undertook to terrify the government into a compromise. But the gates being closed on the party, and the walls manned with armed burghers, this undertaking ended in open revolt. The toll of alarm-bells summoned up the country people from every hill and valley in the canton to assist in the coercion of the domineering capital. A body of nearly three thousand men encamped before the walls of Fribourg, and further aid was hourly expected. The terrified burghers instantly called for the armed intervention of Bern, and the latter town detached a part of its guard without delay. Three hundred dragoons marched upon Fribourg, and were to be followed by fourteen hundred foot. The burghers of Fribourg now thought themselves strong enough to meet force with force. The garrison made a sally from the town, and on the first sight of the Bernese flag, not to mention the heavy artillery, the malcontents solicited an armistice. The surrender of their arms and of the ringleaders was demanded as preliminary to all negotiation. The people refused the latter of these conditions, but fled panic-struck on the first attack, without making any resistance.
The whole affair would have ended without bloodshed, had not the leader Chenaux been murdered in his flight by Henry Rosier, himself one of the popular party. The two remaining heads of the insurgents got clear off: Chenaux’s corpse was delivered to the public executioner, and his head fixed on a spear above the Romont gate. Sentence of death was passed on Castellaz and Raccaud, the two fugitives. Several others were visited with less degrees of punishment: new reinforcements from Bern, Solothurn, and Lucerne secured the town from any recurrence of tumult, and their ambassadors strove to promote the restoration of tranquillity. It was ordered to be proclaimed, from all the pulpits, that the council was well disposed to protect the old and well attested rights of its loving subjects, as well as to hear, with its never-failing graciousness, every suitable and respectful representation. Three days were allotted to each commune to lay their complaints and wishes before the government, through delegates. But when months elapsed without the popular grievances having obtained a hearing, the loss of Chenaux began to be appreciated. Multitudes assembled round his tomb weeping and praying: pilgrimages, as if to the tomb of a saint, were made thither with banners, and with crucifixes. Vainly were these demonstrations of feeling stigmatised, by the government as crime against the state, by the bishop as impious profanations. They were neither to be checked by posting sentinels, nor fulminating excommunications. They were the last sad consolation of the people—the last substitute for hopes that were already given up.
DISORDERS AT GENEVA (1707-1782 A.D.)
[1707-1714 A.D.]
Shortly after the establishment of Genevan independence, it had been decreed by the general assembly, for the better suppression of hostile attempts against their hard-won freedom, that whoever should propose a change in the government of Geneva should be considered to deserve capital punishment. This did not, however, hinder alterations being made, at different times, in various parts of the constitution. So early as the middle of the sixteenth century, the laws were revised and improved. The advantageous situation of the town and the long duration of peace promoted the increase of wealth in Geneva, and the rise of many families to opulence. These families aimed at separating themselves from their fellow citizens, even in their places of habitation, by settling in the upper part of the town, near the council-house, while the other burghers inhabited the lower town. The principal families already regarded themselves as a standing patriciate; and even the name of patrician came into use in the acts of council.
The year 1707 witnessed an effort of the inferior burghers to wrest from the principal families a part of their usurped power, and to introduce amendments in the constitution. In this emergency, the council invoked the mediation of Bern and Zurich, received a confederate garrison, and maintained itself by force of arms and by execution of its principal antagonists. A renewal of the disturbances which had been quelled by such violent measures, was produced, in 1714, by the imposition of an arbitrary tax by the council for the enlargement and completion of the fortifications of the town. This stretch of power occasioned great discontent among the burghers; bitter attacks and censures on the government appeared in print; and the more strictly these were prohibited, they obtained the more eager perusal and credence.
One of the arch-promoters of the rising storm was Michael Ducrest, a Genevan burgher and noble, an officer in the army, and a member of the great council. This man opposed himself with extraordinary vehemence to the building of the new fortifications, and heaped offensive charges on the partisans of the measure. The government condemned him to recant, and, on his evading compliance by flight, a penal sentence was pronounced against him. New attempts which he made to excite disturbance were followed by a sentence of perpetual imprisonment. This sentence could not be put in execution, as Ducrest had taken refuge under a foreign jurisdiction, where he set at defiance the council of Geneva, and provoked that body to such a degree by his writings and intrigues against them, that sentences more and more severe were heaped upon his head, until at length the most offensive of his writings was torn by the hangman, and his effigy was suspended from the gallows. His person, however, enjoyed impunity till 1744, when he was taken into custody in the territory of Bern. The government of Geneva did not thirst for his blood, and was content with his perpetual imprisonment. Even in this situation he contrived to mix in Hentzi’s conspiracy, was confined in the castle of Aarburg, and closed, in extreme old age, as a state prisoner, a life which he had spent in incessant labours in the cause of democracy.
[1734-1738 A.D.]
Meanwhile Geneva continued to be agitated by party manœuvres and popular discontents. In the year 1734 a body of eight hundred burghers addressed themselves to the heads of the government, desiring the curtailment of the projected fortifications, and the repeal of the tax levied for that object. The council only replied by preparations for defence: firearms were transported to the council hall; barricades erected in the approaches thither as well as in those to the upper town, where the principal class of burghers lived, and the garrison kept in readiness to act on the first signal. All this apparatus was regarded with mistrust by the burghers, who were still farther provoked by reports of the approach of Bernese troops, and by the removal of a part of the town artillery to the upper regions, while two and twenty other pieces were spiked. The multitude made themselves masters of the city guard, pointed field-pieces on the road by which the troops from Bern were expected, and tumultuously demanded the convocation of the burgher assembly, the sovereign authority of Geneva. The council contrived to win over the members of this body so far that they voted unanimously the completion of the fortifications and the continuance of the tax for ten years. The declaration of an amnesty and improvement of the criminal and judicial administration formed the rest of their business. The burghers laid down their arms and returned to their ordinary vocations; so that an embassy which arrived from Zurich and Bern found Geneva in a state of apparent tranquillity.