THE ESCALADE
The time was December, 1602. Duke Charles Emmanuel had secretly crossed
the mountains, and established his head-quarters at Etrembières; a
sufficient army had been quietly mobilized; there were 800 Savoyards,
1,000 Spaniards, 400 Neapolitans, and 4,000 Piedmontese at Bonne, La
Roche, Bonneville, and other places near Geneva. The Duke had also
been at pains to allay suspicion by assuring the Genevans, through his
agents, that he desired nothing more than to be on friendly terms with
them. But at midnight of December 12 he set his troops in motion.
A storming-party of some two hundred men led the way, under the
command of M. Berlonière, who had extreme unction administered to
him ostentatiously before he started. The main body of 4,000 men was
to follow under Lieutenant-General d’Albigni. Acting on information
received, the storming-party struck the Corraterie rampart at a point
where there was no sentinel on the look-out for them. They carried with
them faggots and hurdles to help them over the moat, ladders that could
be dovetailed together to scale the rampart with, and axes and crowbars
for breaking down or forcing gates. A Scotch Jesuit, named Alexander,
gave them his benediction as they climbed, and handed to every man an
amulet which purported to guarantee him in the first instance against
being killed, and in the second instance against being damned eternally
if he were killed.
Fortune at first smiled upon their efforts. They succeeded in attaining
the rampart unobserved, and kept quiet, waiting for d’Albigni and
the dawn. A single sentinel whom they met was slain in silence. But
presently a small company of the watch passed by upon its rounds.
Upon these, too, the soldiers flung themselves, and most of them were
quickly pitched over into the moat. One gun went off, however, and
one man managed to escape. He was the drummer, and he ran along the
rampart, drumming as he went, as far as the Porte de la Monnaie. It
was enough. The alarm was given. The invaders saw that they must fight
in the dark, instead of waiting for the dawn. ‘_Vive Espagne!_’ they
shouted. ‘_Ville gagnée! Tue, Tue!_’ and dashed down into the streets,
expecting d’Albigni and his 4,000 men to follow them.
But this was what d’Albigni and his 4,000 men could not do. Chance--or
the hand of Providence--had interfered to save Geneva. A message to say
that the city was as good as captured had already been sent off to the
Duke of Savoy at Etrembières; and the Duke was dispatching couriers
to announce his victory at all the Courts of Europe. But it happened
that the Genevans at the Porte Neuve loaded a cannon to the muzzle
with chains, and any other old iron that came to hand, and fired it in
a direction parallel with the rampart. Had the aim been bad, Geneva
would have fallen that night beyond a doubt. But the aim was good, and
the shot broke the ladders into pieces, so that no one could climb by
them any more; and there was Lieutenant-General d’Albigni with his
army helpless in the moat, while the storming party was caught in a
trap within the walls. The citizens snatched up their weapons, and
hurried down, half dressed, to give them battle in the dark. Their
pastor, Simon Goulart,[A] who wrote a jubilant description of the
episode, declared that he himself would have been delighted to join in
the affray if only he had had a coat of mail. A worthy woman, who was
making soup for an early breakfast, flung the scalding fluid, saucepan
and all, out of window on to the heads of the intruders. Other missiles
were showered upon them from other windows; while the number of armed
men who faced them in the open steadily increased. In the end, after
inflicting upon the Genevans a loss of seventeen killed and twenty
wounded, they were swept back into the moat, leaving many dead and
thirteen prisoners behind them.
[A] Simon Goulart (1543-1628) was a Frenchman, who accepted the
Reformation in 1565, and came to Geneva in 1566. In 1572 he
was made pastor of the Church of St. Gervais. After the death
of M. de Bèze he became President of the Venerable Company.
He wrote more than fifty books on various subjects.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF ETREMBIÈRES, HTE. SAVOIE]
‘_Misérable butor, vous avez fait une belle cacade_’--‘Blockhead, you
have made a pretty mess of it’--was Charles Emmanuel’s greeting to
d’Albigni when he heard the truth; and with that he mounted his horse
and rode away to Turin, without even troubling to hear the fate of his
prisoners. These, it should be added, were all beheaded in the course
of the next day; while the heads of those who had been killed were
collected and spiked, as an ornament to the ramparts and a terror
to evil-doers.
M. de Bèze, who was now an old man and very deaf, had slept through the
fighting undisturbed, and knew nothing of it until his friends told
him the story the next morning. Though he had now retired from the
active duties of the pastorate, he dressed himself and went down to the
Cathedral of St. Pierre, where he mounted the pulpit stairs and called
upon the congregation to sing Psalm cxxiv.--the Psalm which begins:
‘If the Lord Himself had not been on our side, now may Israel say:
if the Lord Himself had not been on our side, when men rose up
against us.’
The Psalm which ends:
‘Our soul is escaped, even as a bird out of the snare of the
fowler: the snare is broken, and we are delivered.
‘Our help standeth in the name of the Lord: who hath made heaven
and earth.’
It was the old Reformer’s last public appearance--and a fitting one,
giving as it does the last dramatic touch to the most dramatic incident
in Genevan annals. He lived until 1605, but he was growing feebler
and feebler. He suffered from no actual malady, but it was obvious to
all that the light was flickering out. His intellect, however, was
clear until the last, and the picture of his last days, drawn by his
biographer, Antoine La Faye, recalls Bunyan’s picture of the Christian
pilgrims waiting in the Land of Beulah for their summons to cross the
river to the shining city.
The Venerable Company of Pastors in conclave resolved that no day
should be allowed to pass without at least two of their number paying
him a visit. For the rest he found his pleasure in reading grave and
pious colloquies and sermons, and particularly in those words of
Augustine: ‘Long have I lived; long have I sinned. Blessed be the name
of the Lord!’ And, at the last, ‘without pain, and without a struggle,
all his senses, as it seemed, failing him simultaneously, in one single
instant, he gave back his soul to God, his bodily pilgrimage having
lasted eighty-six years, three months, and nine days, and forty of his
years having been spent in the holy office of the ministry.’
‘M. de Bèze,’ La Faye continues, ‘was a man of sturdy build,
conspicuous beauty, and health so vigorous that he often said that he
did not know the meaning of a headache. He displayed high talents,
accurate judgment, a tenacious memory, and remarkable eloquence, while
in courtesy of manner he was second to no one. In view of the great
gifts thus recited, and his great age (though these are things less to
be regarded than his learning and his piety), many used to speak of M.
de Bèze as the Phœnix of his time.’