FIRST USURPATIONS AND FIRST STRUGGLES.
Geneva was at first nothing but a rural township (_vicus_), with a
municipal council and an edile. Under Honorius in the 4th century
it had become a city, having probably received this title after
Caracalla had extended the rights of citizenship to all the Gauls.
From the earliest times, either before or after Charlemagne, Geneva
possessed rights and liberties which guaranteed the citizens against
the despotism of its feudal lord. But did it possess political
institutions? was the community organised? Information is wanting on
these points. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the Genevese
claimed to have been free so long that _the memory of man runneth not
to the contrary_.[15] But this ‘memory of man’ might not embrace many
centuries.
The pope having invited Charlemagne to march his Franks into Italy,
for the _love of God_, and to fight against his enemies, that prince
proceeded thither in 773 with a numerous army, part of which crossed
Mount St. Bernard, thus pointing the way to another Charlemagne who was
to appear a thousand years later, and whose empire, more brilliant but
still more ephemeral than the first, was also in its dissolution to
restore liberty to Geneva, which had been a second time absorbed into
France.[16] Charlemagne, while passing through with his army, halted at
Geneva and held _a council_.[17] This word has led to the belief that
the city possessed _liberties_ and _privileges_, and that he confirmed
them;[18] but the council was probably composed of the councillors
around the prince, and was not a city council. Be that as it may, the
origin of the liberties of Geneva seems to be hidden in the night of
time.
Three powers in their turn threatened these liberties.
First came the counts of Geneva. They were originally, as it would
seem, merely officers of the Emperor;[19] but gradually became almost
independent princes.
As early as 1091, we meet with an Aymon, count of Genevois.[20]
The rule of these counts of Genevois soon extended over a wide and
magnificent territory. They resided not only at their hereditary
manor-seat in Geneva, which stood on the site of Gondebald’s palace,
but also in various castles scattered in distant parts of their
domain--at Annecy, Rumilly, La Roche, Lausanne, Moudon, Romont, Rue,
Les Clées, and other places.[21] In those days, the counts lived both a
solitary and turbulent life, such as characterised the feudal period.
At one time they were shut up in their castles, which were for the
most part surrounded by a few small houses, and begirt with fosses and
drawbridges, and on whose walls could be seen afar the arms of the
warders glittering in the rising sun. At other times, they would sally
forth, attended by a numerous escort of officers, with their seneschal,
marshal, cup-bearers, falconers, pages, and esquires, either in pursuit
of the chase on the heights of the Jura and the Alps; or it might be
with the pious motive of visiting some place of pilgrimage; or not
unfrequently indeed to wage harassing crusades against their neighbours
or their vassals. But during all these feudal agitations another power
was growing in Geneva--a power humble indeed at first--but whose mouth
was to _speak great things_.[22]
At the period of the Burgundian conquest Geneva possessed a bishop,
and the invasion of the Germans soon gave this prelate considerable
power. Gifted with intelligence far superior to that of the men by whom
they were surrounded, respected by the barbarians as the high-priests
of Rome, knowing how to acquire vast possessions by slow degrees, and
thus becoming the most important personages in the cities where they
resided, the bishops laboured to protect their city from abroad and to
govern it at home. Finally they confiscated without much ceremony the
independence of the people, and united the quality of prince with that
of bishop.
In 1124 Aymon, Count of Genevois, by an agreement made with Humbert
of Grammont, Bishop of Geneva, gave up the city to the latter,[23]
reserving only the old palace and part of the criminal jurisprudence,
but continuing to hold the secondary towns and the rural district.
The institution of bishop-princes, half religious and half political,
equally in disaccord with the Gospel of past ages and the liberty of
the future, may have been exceptionally beneficent; but generally
speaking it was a misfortune for the people of the middle ages, and
particularly for Geneva. If at that time the Church had possessed
humble but earnest ministers to hold up the light of the Gospel to the
world, why should not the same spiritual power, which in the first
century had vanquished Roman polytheism, have been able in later times
to dispel the darkness of feudalism? But what could be expected of
prelates who turned their croziers into swords, their flocks into
serfs, their pastoral dwellings into fortified castles? _Corruptio
optimi pessima._ The prince-bishop, that amphibious offspring of the
barbaric invasion, cannot be maintained in christendom. The petty
people of Geneva--and this is one of its titles to renown--was the
first who expelled him in modern times; and the manner in which it did
this is one of the pages of history we desire to transcribe. It needed
truly a powerful energy--the arm of God--to undertake and carry through
this first act which wrested from episcopal hands the temporal sceptre
they had usurped. Since then the example of Geneva has often been
followed; the feudal thrones of the bishops have fallen on the banks of
the Rhine, in Belgium, Bavaria, Austria, and elsewhere; but the first
throne that fell was that of Geneva, as the last will be that of Rome.
If the bishop, owing to the support of the emperors, succeeded in
ousting the count from the city of Geneva, leaving him only the
jurisdiction over his rural vassals, he succeeded also, in the natural
course of things, in suppressing the popular franchises. These
rights, however, still subsisted, the prince-bishop being elected
by the people--a fact recorded by Saint Bernard at the election of
Ardutius.[24] The prince even made oath of fidelity to the people.
Occasionally the citizens opposed the prelate’s encroachments, and
refused to be dragged before the court of Rome.[25]
Christianity was intended to be a power of liberty; Rome, by corrupting
it, made it a power of despotism; Calvin, by regenerating it, set it up
again and restored its first work.
But what threatened most the independence and liberty of Geneva, was
not the bishops and counts, but a power alien to it, that had begun by
robbing the counts of their towns and villages. The house of Savoy,
devoured by an insatiable ambition, strove to enlarge its dominions
with a skill and perseverance that were crowned with the most rapid
success. When the princes of Savoy had taken the place of the counts of
Genevois and the dukes of Zœhringen in the Pays de Vaud, Geneva, which
they looked upon as an _enclave_, became the constant object of their
desires. They hovered for centuries over the ancient city, like those
Alpine vultures which, spreading their wings aloft among the clouds,
explore the country beneath with their glance, swoop down upon the
prey, and return day after day until they have devoured each fragment.
Savoy had her eyes fixed upon Geneva,--first, through ambition, because
the possession of this important city would round off and strengthen
her territory; and second, through calculation, because she discovered
in this little state certain principles of right and liberty that
alarmed her. What would become of the absolute power of princes,
obtained at the cost of so many usurpations, if liberal theories should
make their way into European law? A nest built among the craggy rocks
of the Alps may perhaps contain a brood of inoffensive eaglets; but as
soon as their wings grow, they will soar into the air, and with their
piercing eyes discover the prey and seize it from afar. The safer
course, then, is for some strong hand to kill them in their nest while
young.
The relations between Savoy and Geneva--one representing absolutism,
the other liberty--have been and are still frequently overlooked. They
are of importance, however, to the history of Geneva, and even of the
Reformation. For this reason we are desirous of sketching them.
The terrible struggle of which we have just spoken began in the first
half of the thirteenth century. The house of Savoy finding two powers
at Geneva and in Genevois, the bishop and the count, resolved to take
advantage of their dissensions to creep both into the province and into
the city, and to take their place. It declared first in favour of the
bishop against the count, the more powerful of the two, in order to
despoil him. Peter of Savoy, Canon of Lausanne, became in 1229, at the
age of twenty-six, Provost of the Canons of Geneva; and having thus an
opportunity of knowing the city, of appreciating the importance of its
situation, and discovering the beauties that lay around it, he took a
liking to it. Being a younger son of a Count of Savoy, he could easily
have become a bishop; but under his amice, the canon concealed the arm
of a soldier and the genius of a politician. On the death of his father
in 1232, he threw off his cassock, turned soldier, married Agnes whom
the Count of Faucigny made his heiress at the expense of her elder
sister, and then took to freebooting.[26] Somewhat later, being the
uncle of Elinor of Provence, Queen of England, he was created Earl of
Richmond by his nephew Henry III., and studied the art of government
in London. But the banks of the Thames could not make him forget those
of the Leman. The castle of Geneva remained, as we have seen above,
the private property of his enemy the Count of Geneva, and this he
made up his mind to seize. ‘A wise man,’ says an old chronicler, ‘of
lofty stature and athletic strength, proud, daring, terrible as a lion,
resembling the most famous paladins, so brave that he was called the
valiant (_preux_) Charlemagne’--possessing the organising genius that
founds states and the warlike disposition that conquers them--Peter
seized the castle of Geneva in 1250, and held it as a security for
35,000 silver marks which he pretended the count owed him. He was now
somebody in the city. Being a man of restless activity, enterprising
spirit, rare skill, and indefatigable perseverance, he used this
foundation on which to raise the edifice of his greatness in the
valley of the Leman.[27] The people of Geneva, beginning to grow weary
of ecclesiastical authority, desired to enjoy freely those communal
franchises which the clergy called ‘the worst of institutions.’[28]
When he became Count of Savoy, Peter, who had conceived the design of
annexing Geneva to his hereditary states, promised to give the citizens
all they wanted; and the latter, who already (two centuries and a half
before the Reformation) desired to shake off the temporal yoke of their
bishop, put themselves under his guardianship. But erelong they grew
alarmed, they feared the sword of the warrior more than the staff of
the shepherd, and were content with their clerical government
De peur d’en rencontrer un pire.[29]
In 1267 the second Charlemagne was forced to declare by a public act
that he refused to take Geneva under his protection.[30] Disgusted
with this failure, weakened by age, and exhausted by his unceasing
activity, Peter retired to his castle at Chillon, where every day he
used to sail on that beautiful lake, luxuriously enjoying the charms
of nature that lay around; while the harmonious voice of a minstrel,
mingling with the rippling of the waters, celebrated before him the
lofty deeds of the illustrious paladin. He died in 1268.[31]
Twenty years later Amadeus V. boldly renewed the assault in which his
uncle had failed. A man full of ambition and genius, and surnamed
‘the Great,’ he possessed all the qualities of success. The standard
of the prince must float over the walls of that free city. Amadeus
already possessed a mansion in Geneva, the old palace of the counts
of Genevois, situated in the upper part of the city. He wished to
have more, and the canons gave him the opportunity which he sought of
beginning his conquest. During a vacancy of the episcopal see, these
reverend fathers were divided, and those who were hostile to Amadeus,
having been threatened by some of his party, took refuge in alarm in
the Château de l’Ile. This castle Amadeus seized, being determined to
show them that neither strong walls nor the two arms of the river which
encircle the island could protect them against his wrath. This conquest
gave him no authority in the city; but Savoy was able more than once to
use it for its ambitious projects. It was here in 1518, shortly after
the appearance of Luther, that the most intrepid martyr of modern
liberty was sacrificed by the bishop and the duke.
Amadeus could not rest satisfied with his two castles: in order to
be master in Geneva, he did not disdain to become a servant. As it
was unlawful for bishops, in their quality of churchmen, to shed
blood, there was an officer commissioned in all the ecclesiastical
principalities to inflict the punishment of death, _vice domini_, and
hence this lieutenant was called _vidomne_ or _vidame_. Amadeus claimed
this vidamy as the reward of his services. In vain did the citizens,
uneasy at the thought of so powerful a vidame, meet in the church of
St. Magdalen (November 1288); in vain did the bishop forbid Amadeus,
‘in the name of God, of the glorious Virgin Mary, of St. Peter, St.
Paul, and all the saints, to usurp the office of lieutenant,’[32] the
vulture held the vidamy in his talons and would not let it go. The
citizens jeered at this sovereign prince who turned himself into a
civil officer. ‘A pretty employment for a prince--it is a ministry
(_ministère_) not a magistry (_magistère_)--service not dominion.’
‘Well, well,’ replied the Savoyard, ‘I shall know how to turn the valet
into a master.’[33]
The princes of Savoy, who had combined with the bishop against the
Count of Geneva to oust the latter, having succeeded so well in their
first campaign, undertook a second, and joined the citizens against
the bishop in order to supplant him. Amadeus became a liberal. He
knew well that you cannot gain the hearts of a people better than by
becoming the defender of their liberties. He said to the citizens in
1285, ‘We will _maintain_, _guard_, and _defend_ your city and goods,
your _rights_ and _franchises_, and all that belongs to you.’[34] If
Amadeus was willing to _defend_ the liberties of Geneva, it is a proof
that they existed: his language is that of a conservative and not of
an innovator. The year 1285 did not, as some have thought, witness the
first origin of the franchises of Geneva but their revival. There was
however at that time an outgrowth of these liberties. The municipal
institutions became more perfect. The citizens, taking advantage of
Amadeus’s support, elected _rectors_ of the city, voted taxes, and
conferred the freedom of the city upon foreigners. But the ambitious
prince had calculated falsely. By aiding the citizens to form a
corporation strong enough to defend their ancient liberties, he raised
with imprudent hand a bulwark against which all the plans of his
successors were doomed to fail.
In the fifteenth century the counts of Savoy, having become dukes and
more eagerly desiring the conquest of Geneva, changed their tactics a
third time. They thought, that as there was a pope at Rome, the master
of the princes and principalities of the earth, a pontifical bull would
be more potent than their armies and intrigues to bring Geneva under
the power of Savoy.
It was Duke Amadeus VIII. who began this new campaign. Not satisfied
with having enlarged his states with the addition of Genevois, Bugey,
Verceil, and Piedmont, which had been separated from it for more than
a century, he petitioned Pope Martin V. to confer on him, for the
great advantage of the Church, the secular authority in Geneva. But
the syndics, councillors, and deputies of the city, became alarmed at
the news of this fresh manœuvre, and knowing that ‘Rome ought not to
_lay its paw_ upon kingdoms,’ determined to resist the pope himself,
if necessary, in the defence of their liberties, and placing their
hands upon the Gospels they exclaimed: ‘No alienation of the city or
of its territory--this we swear.’ Amadeus withdrew his petition; but
Pope Martin V., while staying three months at Geneva, on his return
in 1418 from the Council of Constance, began to sympathise with the
ideas of the dukes. There was something in the pontiff which told him
that liberty did not accord with the papal rule. He was alarmed at
witnessing the liberties of the city. ‘He feared those general councils
that spoil everything,’ says a manuscript chronicle in the Turin
library; ‘he felt uneasy about those turbulent folk, imbued with the
ideas of the Swiss, who were always whispering into the ears of the
Genevese the _license of popular government_.’[35] The liberties of the
Swiss were dear to the citizens a century before the Reformation.
The pope resolved to remedy this, but not in the way the dukes of
Savoy intended. These princes desired to secure the independence of
Geneva in order to increase their power; while the popes preferred
confiscating it to their own benefit. At the Council of Constance, from
which Martin was then returning, it had been decreed that episcopal
elections should take place according to the canonical forms, by the
_chapter_, unless for some _reasonable and manifest_ cause the pope
should think fit to name a person more useful to the Church.[36]
The pontiff thought that the necessity of resisting popular liberty
was a _reasonable_ motive; and accordingly as soon as he reached
Turin, he translated the Bishop of Geneva to the archiepiscopal see
of the Tarentaise, and heedless of the rights of the canons and
citizens, nominated Jean de Rochetaillée, Patriarch _in partibus_ of
Constantinople, Bishop and Prince of Geneva. Four years later Martin
repeated this usurpation. Henry V. of England, at that time master
of Paris, taking a dislike to Jean de Courte-Cuisse, bishop of that
capital, the pope, of his sovereign authority, placed Courte-Cuisse
on the episcopal throne of Geneva, and Rochetaillée on that of Paris.
Thus were elections wrested by popes from a christian people and their
representatives. This usurpation was to Geneva, as well as to many
other parts of christendom, an inexhaustible source of evils.
It followed, among other things, that with the connivance of Rome, the
princes of Savoy might become princes of Geneva. But could they insure
this connivance? From that moment the activity of the court of Turin
was employed in making interest with the popes in order to obtain the
grant of the bishopric of Geneva for one of the princes or creatures
of Savoy. A singular circumstance favoured this remarkable intrigue.
Duke Amadeus VIII., who had been rejected by the citizens a few years
before, succeeded in an unexpected manner. In 1434 having abdicated in
favour of his eldest son, he assumed the hermit’s frock at Ripaille
on the Lake of Geneva; and the Council of Basle having nominated him
pope, he took the name of Felix V. and made use of his pontifical
authority to create himself bishop and prince of Geneva. A pope making
himself a bishop ... strange thing indeed! Here is the key to the
enigma: the pope was a prince of Savoy: the see was the see of Geneva.
Savoy desired to have Geneva at any price: one might almost say that
Pope Felix thought it an advancement in dignity to become a Genevan
bishop. It is true that Felix was pope according to the episcopal, not
the papal, system; having been elected by a council, he was forced to
resign in consequence of the desertion of the majority of European
princes. Geneva and Ripaille consoled him for Rome.
As bishop and prince of Geneva, he respected the franchises of his
new acquisition; but the poor city was fated somewhat later to serve
as food to the offspring of this bird of prey. In 1451, Amadeus being
dead, Peter of Savoy, a child eight or ten years old, grandson of the
pope, hermit, and bishop, mounted the episcopal throne of Geneva; in
1460 came John Louis, another grandson, twelve years of age; and in
1482 Francis, a third grandson. To the Genevans the family of the
pope seemed inexhaustible. These bishops and their governors were as
leeches sucking Geneva even to the bones and marrow.
Their mother, Anne of Cyprus, had brought with her to Savoy a number of
‘Cypriote leeches’ as they were called, and after they had drained the
blood of her husband’s states, she launched them on the states of her
children. One Cypriote prelate, Thomas de Sur, whom she had appointed
governor to little Bishop Peter, particularly distinguished himself
in the art of robbing citizens of their money and their liberty. It
was Bishop John Louis, the least wicked of the three brothers, who
inflicted the most terrible blow on Geneva. We shall tell how that
happened; for this dramatic episode is a picture of manners, carrying
us back to Geneva with its bishops and its princes, and showing us
the family of that Charles III. who was in the sixteenth century the
constant enemy of the liberties and Reformation of the city.
Duke Louis of Savoy, son of the pope-duke Amadeus, was good-tempered,
inoffensive, weak, timid, and sometimes choleric; his wife, Anne of
Cyprus or Lusignan, was arrogant, ambitious, greedy, intriguing,
and domineering; the fifth of their sons, by name Philip-Monsieur,
was a passionate, debauched, and violent young man. Anne, who had
successively provided for three of her sons by placing them on the
episcopal throne of Geneva, and who had never met with any opposition
from the eldest Amadeus IX., a youth subject to epilepsy, had come into
collision with Philip. The altercations between them were frequent and
sharp, and she never missed an opportunity of injuring him in his
father’s affections; so that the duke, who always yielded to his wife’s
wishes, left the young prince without appanage. Philip Lackland (for
such was the name he went by) angry at finding himself thus deprived of
his rights, returned his mother hatred for hatred; and instead of that
family affection, which even the poets of heathen antiquity have often
celebrated, an implacable enmity existed between the mother and the
son. This Philip was destined to fill an important place in history;
he was one day to wear the crown, be the father of Charles III.
(brother-in-law to Charles V.) and grandfather of Francis I. through
his daughter Louisa of Savoy. But at this time nothing announced the
high destiny which he would afterwards attain. Constantly surrounded
by young profligates, he passed a merry life, wandering here and there
with his troop of scapegraces, establishing himself in castles or in
farms; and if the inhabitants objected, striking those who resisted,
killing one and wounding another, so that he lived in continual
quarrels. ‘As my father left me no fortune,’ he used to say, ‘I take my
property wherever I can find it.’--‘All Savoy was in discord,’ say the
old annals, ‘filled with murder, assault, and riot.’[37]
The companions of the young prince detested the _Cypriote_ (as they
called the duchess) quite as much as he did; and in their orgies over
their brimming bowls used the most insulting language towards her. One
day they insinuated that ‘if she plundered her husband and her son it
was to enrich her minions.’ Philip swore that he would have justice.
Duke Louis was then lying ill of the gout at Thonon, on the southern
shore of the Lake of Geneva. Lackland went thither with his companions,
and entering the chapel where mass was going on, killed his mother’s
steward, carried off his father’s chancellor, put him in a boat and
took him to Morges, ‘where he was drowned in the lake.’ Duke Louis was
terrified; but whither could he flee? In his own states there was no
place where he could feel himself safe; he could see no other refuge
but Geneva, and there he resolved to go.
John Louis, another of his sons, was then bishop, and he was strong
enough to resist Philip. Although destined from his infancy for the
ecclesiastical estate, he had acquired neither learning nor manners,
‘seeing that it is not the custom of princes to make their children
scholars,’ say the annals. But on the other hand he was a good
swordsman; dressed not as a churchman but as a soldier, and passed his
time in ‘dicing, hawking, drinking, and wenching.’ Haughty, blunt,
hot-headed, he was often magnanimous, and always forgave those who
had rightfully offended him. ‘As appears,’ says the old chronicle,
‘from the story of the carpenter, who having surprised him in a room
with his wife, cudgelled him so soundly, that he was left for dead.
Nevertheless, the bishop would not take vengeance, and went so far as
to give the carpenter the clothes he had on when he was cudgelled.’
John Louis listened favourably to his father’s proposals. The duke,
Anne of Cyprus, and all the Cypriote officers arrived at Geneva in July
1642, and were lodged at the Franciscan convent and elsewhere; but
none could venture outside Geneva without being exposed to the attacks
of the terrible Lackland.[38]
The arrogant duchess became a prey to alarm: being both greedy and
avaricious, she trembled lest Philip should succeed in laying hands
upon her treasures; and that she might put them beyond his reach, she
despatched them to Cyprus after this fashion. In the mountains near
Geneva the people used to make very excellent cheeses; of these she
bought a large number, wishing (she said) that her friends in Cyprus
should taste them. She scraped out the inside, carefully stored her
gold in the hollow, and therewith loaded some mules, which started
for the East. Philip having received information of this, stopped the
caravan near Friburg, unloaded the mules, and took away the gold.
Now that he held in his hands these striking proofs of the duchess’s
perfidy, he resolved to slake the hatred he felt towards her: he would
go to Geneva, denounce his mother to his father, obtain from the
exasperated prince the Cypriote’s dismissal, and receive at last the
appanage of which this woman had so long deprived him.
Philip, aware that the bishop would not let him enter the city,
resolved to get into it by stratagem. He repaired secretly to Nyon,
and thence despatched to Geneva the more skilful of his confidants.
They told the syndics and the young men of their acquaintance, that
their master desired to speak to his father the duke about a matter
of great importance. One of the syndics (the one, no doubt, who had
charge of the watch) seeing nothing but what was very natural in
this, gave instructions to the patrol; and on the 9th of October,
Philip presenting himself at the city gate--at midnight, according
to Savyon, who is contradicted by other authorities--entered and
proceeded straight to Rive, his Highness’s lodging, with a heart
full of bitterness and hatred against his cruel mother. We shall
quote literally the ancient annals which describe the interview in a
picturesque manner:--‘Philip knocks at the door; thereupon one of the
chamberlains coming up, asks who is there? He answers: “I am Philip
of Savoy, I want to speak to my father for his profit.” Whereupon the
servant having made a report, the duke said to him: “Open to him in
the name of all the devils, happen what may,” and immediately the man
opened the door. As soon as he was come in Philip bowed to his father,
saying: “Good day, father!” His father said: “God give thee bad day and
bad year! What devil brings thee here now?” To which Philip replied
meekly: “It is not the devil, my lord, but God who brings me here to
your profit, for I warn you that you are robbed and know it not. There
is my lady mother leaves you nothing, so that, if you take not good
heed, she will not only make your children after your death the poorest
princes in christendom, but yourself also during your life.”’
At these words Philip opened a casket which contained the gold intended
for Cyprus, and ‘showed him the wherewithal,’ say the annals. But the
duke, fearing the storm his wife would raise, took her part. Monsieur
then grew angry: ‘You may bear with it if you like,’ he said to his
father, ‘I will not. I will have justice of these thieves.’ With these
words he drew his sword and looked under his father’s bed, hoping to
find some Cypriotes beneath it, perhaps the Cypriote woman herself. He
found nothing there. He then searched all the lodging with his band,
and found nobody, for the Cypriotes had fled and hidden themselves in
various houses in the city. Monsieur did not dare venture further,
‘for the people were against him,’ say the annals, ‘and for this cause
he quitted his father’s lodging and the town also without doing other
harm.’[39]
The duchess gave way to a burst of passion, the duke felt very
indignant, and Bishop John Louis was angry. The people flocked
together, and as they prevented the Cypriotes from hanging the men who
had opened the gate to Monsieur, the duke chose another revenge. He
represented to the bishop that his son-in-law Louis XI., with whom he
was negotiating about certain towns in Dauphiny, detested the Genevans,
and coveted their large fairs to which people resorted from all the
country round. He begged him therefore to place in his hands the
charters which gave Geneva this important privilege. The bishop threw
open his archives to the duke; when the latter took the documents in
question, and carrying them to Lyons, where Louis XI. happened to be,
gave them to him. The king immediately transferred the fairs first to
Bourges and then to Lyons, forbidding the merchants to pass through
Geneva. This was a source of great distress to all the city. Was it
not to her fairs, whose privileges were of such old standing, that
Geneva owed her greatness? While Venice was the mart for the trade of
the East, and Cologne for that of the West, Geneva was in a fair way
to become the mart of the central trade. Now Lyons was to increase at
her expense, and the city would witness no longer in her thoroughfares
that busy, restless crowd of foreigners coming from Genoa, Florence,
Bologna, Lucca, Brittany, Gascony, Spain, Flanders, the banks of the
Rhine, and all Germany. Thus the catholic or episcopal power, which in
the eleventh century had stripped Geneva of her territory, stripped her
of her wealth in the fifteenth. It needed the influx of the persecuted
Huguenots and the industrial activity of Protestantism to recover it
from the blow that the Romish hierarchy had inflicted.[40]
This poor tormented city enjoyed however a momentary respite. In the
last year of the fifteenth century, after the scandals of Bishop
Francis of Savoy, and his clergy and monks, a priest, whom we may in
some respects regard as a precursor of the Reformation, obtained the
episcopal chair. This was Anthony Champion, an austere man who pardoned
nothing either in himself or others. ‘I desire,’ he said, ‘to sweep
the filth out of my diocese.’ He took some trouble to do so. On the
7th of May, 1493, five hundred priests convened by him met in synod
in the church of St. Pierre. ‘Men devoted to God’s service,’ said the
bishop with energy, ‘ought to be distinguished by purity of life; now
our priests are given to every vice, and lead more execrable lives than
their flocks. Some dress in open frocks, others assume the soldier’s
head-piece, others wear red cloaks or corslets, frequent fairs, haunt
taverns and houses of ill fame, behave like mountebanks or players,
take false oaths, lend upon pawn, and unworthily vend indulgences to
perjurers and homicides.’ Thus spoke Champion, but he died eighteen
months after the synod, and the priestly corruption increased.[41]
In proportion as Geneva grew weaker, Savoy grew stronger. The duke, by
circumstances which must have appeared to him providential, had lately
seen several provinces settled on different branches of his house,
reunited successively to his own states, and had thus become one of the
most powerful princes of Europe. La Bresse, Bugey, the Genevois, Gex,
and Vaud, replaced under his sceptre, surrounded and blockaded Geneva
on all sides. The poor little city was quite lost in the midst of these
wide provinces, bristling with castles; and its territory was so small
that, as they said, there were more Savoyards than Genevans who heard
the bells of St. Pierre. The states of Savoy enfolded Geneva as in a
net, and a bold stroke of the powerful duke would, it was thought, be
sufficient to crush it.
The dukes were not only around Geneva, they were within it. By means
of their intrigues with the bishops, who were their fathers, sons,
brothers, cousins, or subjects, they had crept into the city, and
increased their influence either by flattery and bribes, or by threats
and terror. The vulture had plumed the weak bird, and imagined that
to devour him would now be an easy task. The duke by means of some
sleight-of-hand trick, in which the prelate would be his accomplice,
might in the twinkling of an eye entirely change his position--rise
from the hospitable chair which My Lords of Geneva so courteously
offered him, and seat himself proudly on a throne. How was the feeble
city, so hunted down, gagged and fettered by its two oppressors, able
to resist and achieve its glorious liberties? We shall see.
New times were beginning in Europe, God was touching society with his
powerful hand; I say ‘society’ and not the State. Society is above
the State; it always preserves its right of priority, and in great
epochs makes its initiative felt. It is not the State that acts upon
society: the movements of the latter produce the transformations of
the State, just as it is the atmosphere which directs the course of
a ship, and not the ship which fixes the direction of the wind. But
if society is above the State, God is above both. At the beginning of
the sixteenth century God was breathing upon the human race, and this
divine breath worked strange revivals in religious belief, political
opinions, civilisation, letters, science, morals, and industry. A great
reformation was on the eve of taking place.
There are also transformations in the order of nature; but their
march is regulated by the creative power in an unchangeable manner.
The succession of seasons is always the same. The monsoons, which
periodically blow over the Indian seas, continue for six months in one
direction, and for the other six months in a contrary direction. In
mankind, on the contrary, the wind sometimes comes for centuries from
the same quarter. At the period we are describing the wind changed
after blowing for nearly a thousand years in the same direction; God
impressed on it a new, vivifying, and renovating course. There are
winds, we know, which, instead of urging the ship gently forward, tear
the sails, break the masts, and cast the vessel on the rocks, where it
goes to pieces. A school, whose seat is at Rome, pretends that such
was the nature of the movement worked out in the sixteenth century.
But whoever examines the question impartially, confesses that the wind
of the Reformation has wafted humanity towards the happy countries of
light and liberty, of faith and morality.
In the beginning of the sixteenth century there was a living force in
Geneva. The ostentatious mitre of the bishop, the cruel sword of the
duke appeared to command there; and yet a new birth was forming within
its bosom. The renovating principle was but a puny, shapeless germ,
concealed in the heroic souls of a few obscure citizens; but its future
developments were not doubtful. There was no power in Christendom able
to stem the outbreak of the human mind, awakening at the mighty voice
of the eternal Ruler. What was to be feared was not that the progress
of civilisation and liberty, guided by the Divine word, would fail to
attain its end; but that on the contrary, by abandoning the supreme
rule, the end would be overshot.
Let us enter upon the history of the preparations for Reform, and
contemplate the vigorous struggles that are about to begin at the foot
of the Alps between despotism and liberty, ultramontanism and the
Gospel.