The military resources of his realm were limited. He counted ten able-bodied subjects, but they were monks and not liable to service. The culverins of his uncle were gone, but he had six muskets—a loan from the city—and there were four pounds of powder in the magazine. But this was not of itself sufficient for a war against the duke of Savoy. He must subsidize mercenaries.
About this time there chanced to be at Geneva a swashbuckler from Berne, Bischelbach by name, by trade a butcher, who had found the new régime of the Reformers at that city too strait-laced for his tastes and habits, and had come to Geneva, with some vagabonds at his heels, in search of adventures and a livelihood. Him did the prior of St. Victor, greatly impressed with his own accounts of his powers, commission as generalissimo of the forces. Second in command he set a priest, likewise just thrown out of business by the Reformation in the North; and in a council of war the plan of campaign was determined. But before the actual clash of arms began the solemn preliminaries usual between hostile powers must be scrupulously fulfilled. A herald was commissioned to make proclamation in the name of the lord of St. Victor, through all the lands of Cartigny, that no man should venture to execute there any orders, whether of pope or duke, under penalty of being hung. This energetic procedure struck due terror, for when Bonivard's captain with several soldiers appeared before the castle it capitulated without a blow.
It was a brief though splendid victory. The very first raid in which the "Knights of the Spoon"—an association of neighboring country gentlemen—harried that region they found that the captain and entire garrison of the castle had gone to market (not without imputations of treason), leaving the post in charge of one woman, who promptly surrendered.
The sovereign of St. Victor's blood was up. He resolved to draw, if need were, on the entire resources of his realm. The army was promptly reinforced to twenty men, and Bonivard took the field in person at the head of his forces. On what wise this array debouched in two corps d'armée one Sunday morning from two of the gates of Geneva; how the junction of the forces was effected; the military history of the march; how they appeared, at last, before the castle of Cartigny,—are these not written by the pen of the hero himself in his Chronicles of Geneva? But Bonivard, though brave, was merciful. Willing to spare the effusion of blood, he sent the general-in-chief, Bischelbach, with his servant, Diebolt, as an interpreter, to summon the castle. The answer was a shot that knocked poor Diebolt over with a mortal wound; whereupon the attacking army fell back in a masterly manner into the woods and made good their way into Geneva, bringing one prisoner, whom they had caught unarmed near the castle, and leaving Diebolt to die at a roadside inn.
We may not further narrate the deeds of Bonivard as a martial hero, though they are neither few nor uninteresting.[10] But he is equally worthy of himself as a religious reformer. It was about this time that the stirrings of religious reformation at Berne and elsewhere began to be heard at Geneva, and the thought began to be seriously entertained by some of the patriotic "Sons of Geneva" that perhaps that liberty for which they had dared and suffered so much in vain might best come with that gospel which had wrought such wonders in other communities. There was one man who could advise them what to do; and they went together over to the convent and sought audience and ghostly counsel of the prior. "We are going to have done with all popish ceremonies," said they, "and drive out the whole rabble-rout of papistry, monks, priests and all: then we mean to send for gospel ministers to introduce the true Christian Reformation." It is pleasant to imagine the expression of Bonivard's countenance as he replied to his ardent friends: "It is a very praiseworthy idea. There is no doubt that all these ecclesiastics sadly need reformation. I am one of them myself. But who is to do the reforming? Whoever it is, they had better begin operations on themselves. If you are so fond of the gospel, why don't you practise it? It looks as if you did not so much love the gospel as you hate us. And what do you hate us for? It is not because we are so different from you, but because we are so like. You say we are a licentious lot; well, so are you. We drink hard; so do you. We gamble and we swear; but what do you do, I should like to know? Why should you be so hard on us? We don't interfere with your little enjoyments: for pity's sake, don't meddle with ours. You talk about driving us out and sending for the Lutheran ministers. Gentlemen, think twice before you do it. They will not have been here two years before you will wish they were gone. If you dislike us because we are too much like you, you will detest them because they are so different from you. My friends, do one thing or the other. Either let us alone, or, if you must do some reforming, try it on yourselves."
Thus did this excellent pastor, in the spirit of the gospel injunction to count the cost, give spiritual counsel to those who sought reformation of the Church. "I warrant you," he wrote concerning them, "they went off with their tails between their legs. I am as fond of reformation as anybody, but I am a little scrupulous as to who shall take it in hand."[11]
Bonivard's harum-scarum raids into the duke of Savoy's dominions after rents or reprisals at last became so embarrassing to his Geneva friends that, much as they enjoyed the fun of them, it became necessary to say to the good monk that this sort of thing really must stop; and feeling the force of his argument, that he must have something to live on, the city council allowed its neighboring potentate a subvention of four crowns and a half monthly to enable him to keep up a state worthy of the dignity of a sovereign. He grumbled at the amount, but took it; and thereafter the peace of Europe was less disturbed on his part.
But bad news came to the gay prior in his impoverished monastery. His mother was ill at his old home at Seyssel in Savoy, and he must see her before she died. It was venturing into the tiger's den, as all his friends told him, and as he did not need to be told. But he thought he would adventure it if he could get a safe-conduct from the tiger. The matter was arranged: the duke sent Bonivard his passport, limited to a single month; and the prior arrived at Seyssel, and nearly frightened the poor old lady out of her last breath with her sense of the peril to which he had exposed himself.
Our hero's incomparable genius for getting himself into difficulties never shone more brightly than at this hour. While here in the country of his mortal enemy, on the last days of his expiring safe-conduct, he got news of accusations gravely sustained at Geneva that he had gone over into Savoy to treat with the enemy. He did not dare to stay: he did not dare to go back. If he could get his safe-conduct extended for one month, to the end of May, he would try to make his way through the Pays de Vaud (then belonging to Savoy) to Fribourg in the Swiss Confederation. The extension was granted, and with many assurances of good-will from friends of the duke he pushed on. It was a fine May morning, the 26th, that he was on his last day's journey to Lausanne, and passing through a pine wood. Suddenly men sprang from ambush upon Bonivard, who grasped his sword and spurred, calling to his guide, "Put spurs!" But instead of so doing the guide turned and whipped out his knife and cut Bonivard's sword-belt; "Whereupon these worthy gentlemen," says Bonivard's Chronicle, "jumped on me and took me prisoner in the name of my lord duke." Safe-conducts were in vain. A bagful of ropes was produced, and he was carried on a mule, bound hand and foot, in secrecy, to the duke's castle of Chillon, the captain of which was one of the ambuscading party. For six years he was hidden from the world, and at first men knew not whether he was alive or dead. But his sufferings at the hand of the common foe put to shame the suspicions that had been engendered at Geneva, and it is recorded, to the honor of the Genevese, that during all that period, whenever negotiations were opened between them and the duke of Savoy, the liberation of Bonivard was always insisted on as one of the conditions.
The story of the imprisonment is soon told; for, strangely enough, this most garrulously egotistical of writers never alludes to it but twice, and then briefly. The first two years he was kept in the upper chambers of the castle and treated kindly, but at the end of this time the castle received a visit from the duke, and from that time forth the Prisoner of Chillon was remanded to the awful and sombre crypt. A single sentence in his handwriting is all that he tells us of this period, of which he might have told so much, and in this he shows a disposition to look at the affair rather in its humorous than in its Byronesque aspect. For his one recorded reminiscence of his four years of dungeon-life is, that "he had such abundant leisure for promenading that he wore in the rock pavement a little path as neatly as if it had been done with a stone-hammer."[12]