Читать книгу History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin (Vol. 1-8) - J. H. Merle D'Aubigné - Страница 36

The next day, Sunday, December 10, the great bell of the cathedral having summoned the citizens, men whose names are for the most part unknown appeared to form a council. The most important portion in this popular assembly was not the people, but the duke, who appeared between nine and ten o’clock, accompanied by the Bishop of Maurienne, the episcopal council, the chancellor of Savoy, and his chamberlains, esquires, officers, and many gentlemen from his states; before and behind came the archers of Savoy. Carrying their halberds with a threatening air, and impatient to reduce this herd of shopkeepers under their prince, these mercenaries gave the meeting the appearance of a battle-field rather than of a council. Nothing like it had ever been witnessed in the city. Resolved that day to make the conquest of Geneva, Charles proudly mounted to the place reserved for the sovereign; his courtiers drew up to the right and left, and his soldiers formed in a circle round the assembly, while above their heads flashed the broad-pointed bills at the end of the long staves, as if to frighten the citizens. The duke reclining upon the throne, which was covered with rich tapestry, ordered his chancellor to explain his sovereign intentions. The latter, making a low bow, read: ‘About three months ago, as the duke was preparing to cross the mountains on Italian business, he learnt that certain seditious people, who have fled to the country of the League, were sowing dissension between him and the bishop, between Geneva and the Swiss.... Whereupon his Highness, who has always been a mild and gentle prince to this city, seeing it threatened by a frightful calamity, neglected his own interests, hastened to you, and has spared neither money nor pains to restore peace among you. In return for so many benefits, this magnanimous prince asks but one thing ... that you should recognise him as your sovereign protector.’ The protection was evidently a mere veil to hide dominion and despotism; accordingly the few honest citizens there present were dispirited and silent. It was necessary to make haste, for the duke wished to avert all opposition. Having read the paper, the chancellor stepped forward, and cried as loud as he could, for his voice was weak: ‘Are you willing to live in obedience to your bishop and prince, and under the protection of my lord duke?’ ... The question should now have been put to the vote; but the impatient mamelukes carried it by acclamation, shouting out with all their might: ‘Yes, yes!’ The chancellor resumed: ‘My lord, seeing the great love this city feels towards him, cancels all the penalties it has incurred, takes off all sequestrations, remits all fines, which amount to twenty-two thousand crowns, and pardons all rebels—those excepted who have fled to Switzerland.’ Such are usually the amnesties of tyrants; those are excepted who ought to be included, and those included who do not need it. ‘Thanks, thanks!’ replied the mamelukes. ‘As my chancellor may not have been distinctly heard,’ said Charles to Syndic Montyon, ‘have the goodness to repeat what he has said in my name.’ After this, his Highness, with his chancellor, courtiers, gentlemen, and halberdiers, left the assembly and went to mass. It looked like a triumphal procession. As for those left behind, if there were venal citizens who dared to raise their heads, there were others whose uneasy consciences bowed them down.385

As soon as the Genevese were left to themselves, Montyon, a fanatical partisan of Savoy, got on a bench and repeated, not without embarrassment, the chancellor’s address. The halberdiers being away, the assent was no longer unanimous. There were still many honest men in Geneva who clung to the ancient institutions of the State and held a Savoyard usurpation in horror. Some, at the very moment when the liberty of their country was about to be thrown into the abyss, were smitten with a last love for her. ‘The address is full of guile,’ they said. Many, however, acceded to the ‘protection,’ but added, ‘saving the authority of the prince-bishop and the liberties of the city,’ which nullified the vote.386

Such was the Council of Halberds. It had given Geneva the Duke of Savoy for her protector, and had imposed on the citizens obedience towards that prince. An encroaching, powerful, able court, like that of Turin, could easily make an hereditary sovereignty out of such a concession. But a course of violence and stratagem provokes the resistance of noble minds. After the action of despotism, the reaction of liberty was to begin; the bow too violently bent by the duke was to break in his hand.

The next day, in fact, Charles, who fancied himself already prince of the city, wishing to enter upon his new career, requested the city to hand over to him the jurisdiction in criminal matters, which was refused. Nor was this the only check; the procurator-fiscal having, by his Highness’s orders, sent from house to house to collect votes against the alliance with the Swiss, many flatly refused to give them. At this moment the duke appeared as if he were stunned. He had matters on his mind which troubled and disturbed him; they made him mistrustful and anxious. The assembled people had just taken the oath of obedience to him ... and to his first two requests (such legitimate requests as he thought them) they had replied by a No! After having given an example of his extreme violence, Charles gave another of his extreme weakness. He thought Geneva crushed; but Geneva, even when crushed, alarmed him. He pressed his foot upon her neck, but he felt the corpse moving under him. Even the mamelukes he began to consider as obstinate republicans, secretly defending their independence. His head began to reel, his heart to fail him. The essential trait of his character, it will be remembered, was to begin everything and finish nothing. This union of violence and folly, of which several Roman emperors have furnished examples, was found also in Charles. At the moment he had gained an important victory, and just as it was necessary for him to remain on the field of battle to profit by it, he turned his back and fled precipitately into Piedmont. It was asserted that Beatrice had recalled him. ‘Venus overcame Pallas,’ says Bonivard. The prior of St. Victor is always inclined to be sarcastic. But if (as is possible) it was the desire to join the duchess which induced Charles III. to let that city of Geneva slip from his hands, which the house of Savoy had coveted for ages, it is a proof that if he was violent enough to take it, he was too weak to keep it. However that may be, on the 12th of December, 1525, the duke quitted the city, and from that day neither he nor his successors entered it again. If Charles had remained, and followed the advice of his ministers, he would probably have established his authority, and bound Geneva to Rome. The triumph of the power of Savoy at the extremity of Lake Leman would have had serious consequences. But the victory he was about to win—which he had even gained ... was lost by his cowardly desertion, and lost for ever.387

So did not think the syndic Montyon and fifty of the most servile mamelukes. Proud of the decision of the Council of Halberds, they resolved to make it known to the Swiss. The horseman intrusted with the message departed, and, on his arrival at Friburg, delivered the letters to the avoyer. ‘The fugitives are deceiving you,’ said the writers; ‘the entire community desires to live under the protection of our most dread lord the Duke of Savoy.’ This accusation revived all the energy of the huguenots. The mamelukes charged them with lying.... From that hour they feared neither the dungeon nor the sword. Imprison them in Cæsar’s tower, in the castle of Bonne, or elsewhere, it matters not: they are ready to expose themselves to the violence of the enemy. ‘Appoint a commissioner,’ said some of them; ‘let him come with us to Geneva, and he will tell you which of the two has lied, we or the mamelukes.’ John Lullin and two or three of his friends departed without a safe-conduct, accompanied by De Sergine, a Friburg notary, resolved to prove that Geneva desired to be free. The unexpected news of Lullin’s arrival spread through the city; numbers of citizens immediately crowded round the bold and imprudent huguenot, gazed upon him with tenderness, and anxiously asked for news of the exiles. Fathers, brothers, sons, friends came in great anxiety of mind to hear the tidings of those they loved dearest. ‘Alas!’ said Lullin, ‘how can I tell of their misery and sorrow?’ ... He described them as exiled, oppressed with fears for their country, despised by some, ill-treated by others, destitute, ‘reduced to Job’s dunghill,’ obliged in order to support their families to receive alms from such strangers as had compassion on their wretchedness. But here the generous huguenot, whose wounded heart was bursting with tears and full of bitterness, could contain himself no longer: ‘It is you,’ he exclaimed, ‘it is you that increase our sorrow—yes, you!’ He indignantly complained that the Genevans remaining in Geneva disavowed those who had left it to save her independence, and made them pass for liars. He asked them how it was that, as the foreign prince had fled beyond the Alps, Geneva did not reclaim the liberty which he had taken away. ‘Is it thus that citizens defend the ancient rights handed down by their fathers?’ This touching language, the presence of him who uttered it and of the two or three fugitives at his side, the sight of their poverty, their distress, their patriotism, and their heroic courage, stirred the citizens. The Savoyard agents, Balleyson, Saleneuve, and their soldiers, remained in the city to no purpose: Geneva awoke from her slumbers. ‘Friburg desires to know the real state of this city?’ said a few patriots to Sergine; ‘come, then, with us to the council—come and see for yourself.’ The most energetic men were still in Switzerland; but by degrees all in Geneva who loved liberty were seen to shake off the silence to which they had been reduced. They encouraged one another to make an imposing demonstration. Erelong the justification of the foreigners took place, and it was conducted with all the solemnity that a simple people could give it.388