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=PONTVERRE MOWS FOR BONIVARD.=

CHAPPUIS, Gringalet, and Levrat filled the places through which they passed with their complaints, and all the bigots looked upon them as martyrs. The knights of the Spoon, being informed of the fate with which monastic institutions were threatened in Geneva, resolved to avenge religion and do all the injury they could to the audacious burgesses. Pontverre had already opened the campaign by a little scene of pillage, which is of no importance except to show the manners of the age. Wishing to spoil and plunder the Genevans under their noses, he had ordered his tenants to sharpen their scythes. One day in the beginning of June, the peasants shouldered their scythes; Pontverre put himself at their head, his men-at-arms surrounded them, and all marched towards the meadows of the Genevans on the left bank of the Arve, about a quarter of an hour's walk from the city. The mowers arrived, whetted their instruments, and then proceeded to cut down the new grass. At last they came to a meadow which belonged to Bonivard: to rob the prior was a dainty thing for Pontverre. Meanwhile the Genevans, having heard of what was going on, had hurried to the spot, and discovered by the side of the mowers a body of men whose arms flashed in the rays of the sun. Bonivard easily recognised the seigneur of Ternier. The huguenots could hardly contain themselves. The chief of the knights of the Spoon, having charged his people not to leave a blade of grass standing, approached the bridge of Arve which separates the two countries, and, calling out to the Genevans assembled on the right bank, began to insult and defy them. 'Come, come, cheer up!' he said; 'why don't you cross the bridge and fetch the hay we have cut for you?' The citizens loaded their arms, and the two bands began to fire at each other with their arquebuses. 'Let us take him at his word,' said some of the huguenots; 'let us go over the bridge and drive away the robbers.' Already several young men were preparing to cross the river; but Bonivard did not think a few loads of hay worth the risk of a battle that might not end well for Geneva. 'I dissuaded them,' says he, 'and led them back to the city.'791

The Genevans, seeing the danger with which they were threatened by the knights, energetically prepared for resistance, and solicited aid from Berne and Friburg. Two enseignes, that is, eight hundred men, principally from Gessenay, arrived in Geneva and were quartered among the inhabitants, but especially on the churchmen and in the convents. The duke, who attached great importance to the Swiss alliance, and feared to come into collision with their men-at-arms, now permitted provisions to be carried to the market of Geneva, and, the semblance of peace having been restored, the allied troops quitted the city on the 30th of October, 1528.

=THE MEETING AT NYON.=

Pontverre's humour was not so pacific. One of the last representatives of feudal society, he saw that its elements were on the verge of dissolution, and its institutions about to disappear. Power, which had long ago passed from the towns to the country, was now returning from the country to the towns; Geneva, in particular, seemed as if it would nullify all the seigneurs in its neighbourhood. And, further still, the Church which puts forward creeds in an absolute manner, so that no person has the right to examine them, was attacked by the religious revolution beginning in Geneva. Pontverre desired to preserve the ancient order of things, and, with that object, to take and (if necessary) destroy that troublesome city. He therefore, as prior of the order, convened a general assembly of the knights of the Spoon at Nyon, in order to arrange, in concert with the duke, the requisite measures for capturing the city. The bailiwick of Ternier, the lordship of Pontverre, was situated about a league from Geneva, between the verdant flanks of the Salève and the smiling shores of the Rhone. It would have been easy, therefore, for that chief to cross the river between Berney and Peney, and thus get on the right bank of the lake; but he thought it more daring and heroic to traverse Geneva. They represented to him, but to no purpose, the danger to which he would expose himself, for if he was always quick to provoke the Genevans, they were equally quick to reply. Pontverre would listen to nothing. There was a treaty by which Savoyard gentlemen had the right of free passage through the city; and, armed with a sword, he feared nobody. It was in the month of December, when, presenting himself at daybreak at the Corraterie gate, Pontverre passed in; he rode quietly through the city, looking to the right and to the left at the shops which were still closed, and did not meet a single huguenot. On arriving at the Swiss gate, by which he had to leave the city, he found it shut. He summoned the gate-keeper, who, as it appears, was not yet up. The horse pawed the ground, the rider shouted, and the porter loitered: he ran out at last and lowered the chain. The impatient Pontverre paid him by a slap in the face, and said: 'Rascal, is this the way you make gentlemen wait?' He then added with violent oaths: 'You will not be wanted much longer. It will not be long before we pull down your gates and trample them under foot, as we have done before.' He then set spurs to his horse and galloped away. The porter, exasperated by the blow he had received, made his report, and the Genevans, who were irritable folk, became very angry about it. 'It is not enough,' they said, 'for these Savoyards to do us all sorts of injury outside the walls, but they must come and brave us within. Wait a little! We will pay them off, and chastise this insolent fellow.' The council, while striving to restrain the people, ordered sentinels to be stationed everywhere.792

=CONFERENCE AT NYON.=

The gentry of the district who had taken part in the meeting at Bursinel, had immediately begun to canvass their neighbours, and a great number of persons, incensed against Geneva, had taken the Spoon, as in the time of the crusades men took the Cross. The second meeting, therefore, promised to be more numerously attended than the first. From all quarters, from Gex and Vaud and Savoy, the knights arrived at Nyon, a central situation for these districts, where they usually held their councils of war. Climbing the hill, they entered the castle, from whose windows the lake, its shores, and the snowy Alps of Savoy were visible in all their magnificence. Having taken their places in the great hall, they began their deliberations. These unpolished gentlemen, descended from the chevaliers of the middle ages, who thought it enough to build a tower upon a rock and to pass their lives in crushing the weak and plundering the innocent, still preserved something of the nature of their ancestors. Pontverre, who was their president, had no difficulty in carrying them with him. Feudalism and even catholicism exercised great influence over him, and gave to his words an energy and deep conviction which it was hard to resist. He pointed out to these lords that the authority of the prince and of the pope, religious and monarchical order, the throne and the altar, were equally threatened by an insolent bourgeoisie. He showed them how monstrous it was that lawyers, that men of low birth and no merit, and that even shopkeepers should presume to take the place of the bishop and the duke. 'We must make haste,' he said, 'to disperse and crush the seeds of rebellion, or you will see them spreading far and wide.' The knights of the castle of Nyon were unanimous. The right of resistance had been the characteristic of the feudal system; and never had the exercise of that right been more necessary. One lord exercised it in the middle ages against another lord, his neighbour. But what were these isolated adversaries compared with that universal and invisible enemy which threatened the old society in all its parts, and which, to be surer of triumph, was inaugurating a new religion? In the valley of the Leman, Geneva was the stronghold of this new and terrible adversary. 'Down with Geneva! Rome and Savoy for ever!' was the cry that rose from every heart. It was agreed that all the gentlemen and their followers should meet at a certain time and place, armed with sword and lance, in order to seize upon the city and put an end to its liberties.

Pontverre, delighted at seeing the success of his appeal, sat silent, and appeared for a time lost in deep meditation. He had a subtle mind, he did not fear to resort to stratagem, and hoped that an assault would not be necessary. With the greatest secresy he had gained friends who occupied a house in the Corraterie, the back door of which opened to the outside of the city. It would seem that this house belonged to the hospital of the Pont du Rhone, situated between that bridge and the Mint, and placed under the patronage of the canons of the cathedral.793 The council rose. Pontverre was particularly intimate with the Sire de Beaufort, governor of Chillon, one of the most valiant knights of the assembly. Taking him aside, and enjoining secresy, he said: 'We have a gate in Geneva at our orders. No one knows of it; but do not fear. I will undertake that you shall all enter.'—'Pontverre did indeed enter,' said Bonivard, some time after, when he heard of this remark; 'he went in, but he did not come out.'794

=PONTVERRE'S INSOLENCE.=

The knights mounted their horses, and each one rode off to his castle to prepare for the great enterprise. Pontverre did the same; but, always daring, and taking a delight in braving the people of Geneva, he resolved to pass through the city again. His friends reminded him that the citizens were now on their guard; that he had offended them some days before; that if he attempted such an imprudent act, he was a dead man; and that his life was necessary to their enterprise. It was all to no purpose. 'His hour was come,' says the chronicler of St. Victor, 'and it pleased God so.'—'Fear not,' answered the daring soldier to his brothers in arms; 'I will pass through by night, and wrap my face up in my cloak, so that no one can recognise me. Besides, if they attack me, I have my sword.' One of his friends, the Sire de Simon, resolved to accompany him, and some armed attendants followed them. The knights who remained behind, watched him as he galloped off towards Geneva, and wondered anxiously what would happen.

Pontverre, checking the speed of his horse, reflected on the work he was about to undertake. He thought it worthy of the name he bore, and of the memory of his ancestors. By lending his sword to the Duke of Savoy and to the pope, he would make absolutism in the Church and in the State triumphant in Geneva; at one blow he would crush in that restless city both independence and the Reformation. He reached Geneva between four and five o'clock in the afternoon of Saturday, the 2nd of January, 1529, and night had set in. Pontverre hid his face in his cloak, presented himself with his escort at the Pâquis gate, and passed through. He entered the streets. The commander of an army which purposed capturing and destroying Geneva, was traversing, like an ordinary traveller, the city he was about to surround with his forces, besiege, and perhaps burn.... Such impudent assurance has perhaps never been witnessed in modern times. He was hardly inside the city, when, no longer able to contain himself (for pride and anger prevailed over discretion), he put aside all precaution, threw off his cloak, and, drawing his sword, 'uttered threats and insults out of his haughtiness and insolence.'795 He went even further than this: the streets of Geneva, and the presence of the detested huguenots whom he saw moving about, made his wrath boil over; and striking one of the citizens on the head with his sword, he exclaimed with a round oath: 'We must kill these traitors!' The assaulted citizen turned round, and others ran up: this took place in the Rue de Coutance, which has witnessed many other fights since then, even in very recent times.796 The huguenots surrounded the horseman, and, recognising him, called out: 'It is Pontverre! it is Pontverre!' The crowd increased and blocked up the bridge over the Rhone, which the chief of the knights of the Spoon would have to cross.

=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

One would have thought that, as the head of the league against Geneva had fallen, the league itself would have been weakened; but, on the contrary, Pontverre's death added fuel to the rage of the brethren of the Spoon. Disorder and violence increased around the city, and the very next day, Sunday, the 3rd of January, the gentry, wishing to avenge their chief, kept the field everywhere. 'We will kill all the Genevans we can find,' said they.—'They fell upon the first they met, committing violence and murder.' It seemed as if Pontverre's soul had revived, and was impelling his former colleagues to offer sacrifices without number to his shade. An early attack was expected; the alarm spread through Geneva, and the council met. 'François de Ternier's death,' said one of the members, 'has thrown oil upon the fire instead of extinguishing it. Alone, we cannot resist the attack of Savoy and of the knights. Let us make haste to inform Berne and Friburg.'—'It is impossible,' said another councillor; 'all the gentlemen of Vaud are in arms; no one can cross the province. Our envoys would be stopped at Versoy, Coppet, Nyon, and Rolle; and whoever is taken will be put to death to avenge the fall of the illustrious chief.'

But a free people always finds citizens ready to sacrifice themselves. Two men stood up: they were two of the bravest huguenots, Jean Lullin and Robert Vandel. 'We will go,' they said. They embraced their relatives, and got into a boat, hoping to reach some place on the lake where they could land without danger. But they had hardly left the shore when they were recognised and pursued by some of the enemies' boats, well manned and armed. As soon as the two Genevans observed them, they saw their danger, and, catching up the spare oars, assisted the boatmen with their vigorous arms, and rowed off as fast as they could. They kept gaining on the Savoyard boats; they passed unmolested within sight of several harbours occupied by their enemies, and at last reached Ouchy, dripping with perspiration. The people of Lausanne, who were well disposed towards the Genevans, assisted them. They got to Friburg, 'by subtle means,' probably in disguise, and told their old friends of the increasing dangers to which the city was exposed, especially since the death of Pontverre.799

=THE SIRE DE VIRY.=

The place of the latter was now filled by the Sire de Viry, whose castle, like Pontverre's, was situated between Mont Salève and the lake (between Chancy and Léluiset), and whose family had always supplied Savoy with fanatical partisans. Viry was furious at the escape of Lullin and Vandel; and, accordingly, on the next day, the servants of these two Genevans, who had been ordered to take their masters' horses to Lausanne, having passed through Coppet, were thrown into prison by his orders. He did not stop at this. 'The gentlemen assaulted every Genevan they met with their daggers and battle-axes, striking them on the loins, the shoulders, and other parts, and many died thereof.'—'All the territory of Monseigneur of Savoy is in arms,' said people at Geneva in the beginning of March 1529, 'and no one can leave the city except at great risk.'

The ducal party, desirous of defying the Genevans in every way, resolved to send them, not a written but a living message, which would show them the fate that awaited them. On the 14th of March, the people who were leaving the church of Our Lady of Grace, saw a strange figure coming over the bridge of Arve. He had at his back a wooden plank reaching from his feet to above his head, to which he was fastened; while his outstretched arms were tied to a cross piece which was placed on a level with his shoulders. The gentlemen had thought it a pretty jest to crucify a Genevan, without doing him any great injury, and they left his feet at liberty, so that he could return home thus singularly arrayed. 'What is that?' asked the people, stopping at the foot of the bridge. They thought they recognised an inhabitant of the city. 'They have made a cross of him front and back,' said the spectators. The man came over the bridge, approached his fellow-citizens, and told them his story. 'I had gone to the village of Troinex on business, when the enemy caught me, trussed me up in this manner, and compelled me to return in this condition to Geneva.' The people hardly knew whether to laugh or be angry; however, they unbound their crucified fellow-citizen, and all returned together to the city.

This was only a little joke of the young ones among the knights; the Sire de Viry and his colleagues had more serious thoughts. The attack upon Geneva, resolved upon at the castle of Nyon, was to be put into execution. The lords issued with their armed retainers from all the castles in the great valley, and on the 24th of March some peasants from the banks of the Arve came and told the syndics that there was a great concourse of gentlemen and soldiers at Gaillard; that these armed men intended on the following night to secretly scale the walls of the city, and that there was a strong guard upon all the roads to detain everybody who ventured out of Geneva. At that time the whole garrison consisted but of fifty soldiers, 'keeping watch and ward by turns,' as Bonivard informs us. How was it possible to resist with such a few men? Yet two powers kept the walls: the energy of the citizens and the providence of God.

=THE DAY OF THE LADDERS.=

At midnight on Holy Thursday (25th of March), the knights of the Spoon, with about four thousand Savoyard troops and the fugitive mamelukes, moved forward as secretly as possible to take Geneva by surprise. The citizens, accustomed to false alarms, had not paid much attention to the warning they had received. At the head of the band that was to lead the assault were a certain number of men carrying long ladders which had been made at Chillon. The men-at-arms who followed them wore white shirts over their armour in order to be recognised in the darkness; they had even sent to their friends in Geneva certain tokens which the latter were to fasten to the ends of their spears in order that the assailants might know them in the confusion. The city clocks had struck two when a few Savoyards arrived at the foot of the wall: not a sound was heard, the night was dark, and everything promised complete success. Meanwhile the main body had halted a quarter of a league from the city, and hesitated to make the attack. Pontverre was no longer among them, and Viry had not inherited his influence. 'At the moment of execution, a spirit of fear fell upon the Savoyards,' says a chronicler; 'God took away their courage, so that they were not able to come near.'—'We are not strong enough to carry out our enterprise,' said one.—'If we fail,' said another, 'Messieurs of the Swiss League will not fail us.' They consequently withdrew, and, in order to conceal their disgrace, said that the duke or the bishop had forbidden them to advance. Might not the duke, influenced by the cantons, have really given them the order to retreat at the last moment? That alone appears to explain this retrograde movement. However, the Genevans ascribed their deliverance to a higher cause; they entered on the registers of the council the following simple words which we copy: 'The gentlemen (gentils) had undertaken to attack the city, which God has preserved hitherto.' The 25th of March was called the day of the ladders.800

791 Bonivard, Chroniq. ii. p. 507. Gautier MS.

792 Bonivard, Chroniq. ii. p. 517.

793 Mém. d'Archéologie, iii. p. 201.

794 Bonivard, Chroniq. ii. p. 522.

795 Journal de Balard. Mém. d'Archéologie, x. p. 189.

796 July and December 1862, between radicals and liberals.

797 'A belles épées nues on fourgonna dessous, et le malheureux qui y était caché reçut un coup d'estoc.'

798 Registres du Conseil ad annum. Bonivard, Chroniq. ii. pp. 520-525. Spon, Hist. de Genève, i. p. 425. Savyon MS. Balard, Mém. d'Archéologie, x. p. 189. Le Levain du Calvinisme ou Commencement de l'Hérésie de Genève, par Révérende Sœur Jeanne de Jussie, publié en 1853, par M. G. Revilliod, p. 11.

799 Registres du Conseil des 2, 3 et 6 janvier 1529. Journal de Balard, p. 189. Spon, Hist. de Genève, ii. pp. 422-426. Gautier MS.

800 Registres du Conseil du 25 mars 1529. Journal de Balard, pp. 216, 219, 221, 222. Bonivard, Chroniq. ii. p. 533. La Sœur de Jussie, p. 6.