PÉCOLAT TORTURED AND BERTHELIER ACCUSED.
(1517.)
Among the best patriots of Geneva was John Pécolat, whom we have
already met at the mule supper. He had not Berthelier’s strength of
character, but he had spirit. A prey by turns to enthusiasm and fear,
at times indulging in the most courageous acts or the most culpable
weakness, subject to the blackest melancholy or to fits of the maddest
humour, Pécolat was at once a hero and a jester. His social position
offered the same contrasts. One of his ancestors had been syndic in
1409, another councillor in 1474; in 1508 his father had exercised the
highest functions in the State, and he was himself one of the Council
of Fifty; he was well instructed, understood Latin, and yet was a
hosier by trade. It is true that at this time we often find traders
invested with the highest offices; it is one of the peculiarities of
democratic manners; and we meet with examples of it in modern society.
An accident which deprived him of the use of his right arm, compelled
him to give up his business, reduced him to poverty, and plunged him
at first into great dejection. However, that did not last long, and
there was no man in Geneva that had such fits of gaiety. At a banquet,
nobody was louder than Pécolat; he laughed and joked; pun followed
pun, in rapid succession. ‘What happy things come into his head!’ said
everybody, and ‘it was these happy things,’ adds the chronicler, ‘that
gave him access to good tables.’[106] When he entered the room a frank
and hearty greeting, an enthusiasm mingled with laughter welcomed his
arrival. But Pécolat had hardly left his friends when dark thoughts
mounted to his brain. Sitting in his narrow chamber, he thought of his
maimed arm, his indigence, his dependent life; he thought frequently
too of the liberties of Geneva, which he saw sacrificed; and this
strange man who made all the city laugh, would burst into tears. It
was not long before Pécolat compromised himself in such a manner as to
furnish arms against the patriots of Geneva.
The Bishop of Maurienne, precentor of the cathedral and canon of
Geneva, who had a suit against the bishop, was then staying in the
city and ‘feasting’ the citizens. Having one day invited several of
his friends, and among others his colleague the Abbot of Bonmont,
who always had a grudge against the bishop for depriving him of the
diocese, he invited Pécolat also. During the dinner the two prelates
worked themselves into a passion against the bastard of Savoy: each
tried who could attack him the most bitterly, and indeed he gave them
a fair handle. Pécolat began to do as the others, and to let fly his
usual epigrams against the bastard. Maurienne had no end of complaints.
‘Pray, my lord,’ said Pécolat, ‘do not vex yourself about the bishop’s
injustice: _non videbit dies Petri_: he will not live as long as St.
Peter!’ This was a saying they were in the habit of applying to the
popes at the time of their coronation; and Pécolat meant to say that
the bishop, who, as everybody knew, was suffering under an incurable
disease, could not live long. Two Savoyards, creatures of the duke and
the bishop, who were of the party, went immediately and repeated these
words to the bastard. ‘At sumptuous tables,’ said the prior of St.
Victor, who was probably one of the guests, ‘there are always gluttons
picking up words that will get them another dinner.’ The episcopal
court concluded from the Latin proverb that the independents were
conspiring against the bishop, and that Pécolat announced the prelate’s
death as near at hand. This speech was not sufficient, however, to send
him to trial: they waited for some act that would serve as a pretence
for the charge of assassination.[107]
The opportunity soon occurred. Not long after, the duke having crossed
the mountains to present his homage to Queen Claude of Brittany,
whom Francis I. had just married, and who was then at Lyons, invited
the bishop to come and see him in this city. The bastard set off
immediately: his steward ordered some fish pasties as provision for
the journey, and the purveyor, whether from hurry or from desire to
make a large profit, used fish that had been kept too long. The bishop
did not touch them, but some of his people having eaten of them,
fell sick; it was asserted that one of them died. The bastard, whose
conscience was none of the easiest, saw an assassin everywhere; and
though in this matter of the pasties there was nothing but what was
very natural, he thought or seemed to think that it was an attempt at
poisoning. The idea occurred to certain Savoyards that they might make
use of this story to accuse Pécolat, and show the cardinals that the
prince-bishop’s subjects were conspiring against him.
Pécolat had so little to do with my lord’s kitchen that at first the
vidame refused to prosecute; but the affair of Messire Gros’ mule
having occurred, and greatly annoyed the judges, they hesitated no
longer. Pécolat was one of the band who had cried ‘The skin of the
gross beast!’ On the 27th of July, 1517, a warrant was issued against
him.
It was necessary to arrest Pécolat; but that was no easy thing, for
the members of the society _Who touches one touches all_, would no
doubt rise and defend him. It was resolved to arrange the matter
carefully. First they would get the most determined of the young men
out of Geneva; then they would entice Pécolat into some lonely place;
and finally, as they knew not what might happen, the bishop should go
and stay in some castle beyond the reach of the Genevese. This triple
stratagem was immediately put into execution. The Count of Genevois,
who played the part of a jovial host, organised a grand hunt of wild
animals, the rendezvous being at Vouache, two leagues to the west of
Geneva; he invited the Abbot of Bonmont, Bonivard, and many young men
of the city, whose names were in the _black book_, that is, whom they
wished to get rid of. While this joyous company was hunting with hound
and horn at the foot of Mont Saleve, the bishop wishing to enjoy a
fresher air (it was said) had repaired, escorted by a few gentlemen,
to his castle of Thiez between the mountains of Mole, Voirons, and
Reposoir, on the road to Mont Blanc, a little above the point where
the Giffre torrent joins the Arve. At the same time one Maule, a
secret agent of the vidame, invited Pécolat to take a walk with him to
Pressinge, a village situated between the lake and the Voirons, where
one of them possessed some property. Ten horsemen setting out from the
castle of Thiez lay in ambush. They surrounded the two pedestrians,
bound and carried them to the castle, where the bishop having released
the tempter, threw Pécolat into prison. When the news of this treachery
reached Geneva, the irritation was directed against Maule still more
than against the bishop. The traitor, who seems to have been a man of
debauched life, was loaded with the people’s maledictions. ‘May the
cancer eat Maule up!’ they cried; and this saying became a proverb
applicable to traitors ever afterwards.[108]
He had however played his part so well that the imprisoned Pécolat
was exasperated not against him but against his most intimate friend
Berthelier. His black fit came over him. He said to himself that
although a man of the most inoffensive character, he seemed destined
to expiate the faults of all his party. With what had they to reproach
him? Mere jokes and laughter.... Berthelier was the real conspirator,
and he was at large.... On the 3rd of April Pécolat was removed from
the dungeon into which he had been thrown, and conducted to the top of
the castle, under the roof. The bishop had ordered him ‘to be examined
and forced to speak the truth;’ and the torture-room was at the top
of the castle. After the usual preliminaries the examination began.
The plot of the _non videbit_ and the salt fish was too absurd; M. de
Thoire, the examining judge, dwelt but little upon it, and endeavoured
particularly (for that was the object of the arrest) to obtain such
admissions as would ruin Geneva and her principal citizens. As Pécolat
deposed to nothing that would inculpate them, he was tied by one hand
to the rope, and, as he still refused to answer, was hoisted four
feet from the floor. The poor fellow groaned deeply and speaking with
difficulty[109] said: ‘Cursed be Berthelier for whom I am shut up!’ He
made no confession, however.
The next day they resorted to another expedient. The bishop gave
himself the pleasure of keeping the wretched man hanging to the cord
while he was at dinner. The servants, as they passed backwards and
forwards waiting on their master, said to Pécolat: ‘You are very
stupid to let yourself be put to such torture: confess everything.
What will your silence help you? Maule has told everything; he has
named So-and-so ... the Abbot of Bonmont, for instance, whom you want
to make your bishop after you have done for my lord.’ All these traps
were useless--he made no confession. It was next determined to expose
Pécolat to a more cruel torture: the executioners tied his hands behind
his back, and then pulled the rope so as to raise his arms above his
head; lastly they lifted him five or six feet from the floor, which was
enough to dislocate his shoulders. Pécolat suffered horribly, and he
was not a Regulus. ‘Let me down! let me down!’ he cried, ‘and I will
tell all.’ ... The judges, delighted at having vanquished the obstinate
rebel at last, ordered him to be lowered. Terror was in his heart, and
his features betrayed the trouble of his mind. The man, usually so
gay and so witty, was now pale, affrighted, his eyes wandered, and he
fancied himself surrounded by hungry dogs. He said all that they wanted
him to say. To the falsest imputations against the noblest of his
friends he answered ‘Yes, yes!’ and the satisfied judges sent him back
to his dungeon.[110]
This was no comfort to the unhappy Pécolat: more terrible anguish
awaited him there. The thought that he had deposed against his best
friends and even incurred the guilt of bearing false witness, alarmed
him seriously: the fear of God’s judgment surpassed all the terrors
which men had caused him. ‘Gentlemen,’ said he to the noble F. de
Thoire and others standing round him, ‘my declarations were extorted
from me only by the fear of torture. If I had died at that moment, I
should have been eternally damned for my lies.’[111]
The bastard, not liking to feel himself within the same walls as his
victim, had removed to St. Joire, two leagues from Thiez, and there
attentively watched the examination and the torture. He had acquired a
taste for it; and accordingly on the 5th of August he ordered another
prisoner to be put to the question. ‘I have some here who say plenty
of good things,’ he wrote to Geneva.[112] These ‘good things’ were the
false witness extorted by pain and which permitted the imprisonment of
the innocent. The terror increased in Geneva every day. People kept
themselves indoors, the streets were deserted: a few labourers only
could be seen in the fields. Bonivard, who feared, and not without
cause, that the bishop and the duke wished to carry him off also, did
not leave St. Victor’s. ‘Things are in such a state,’ he said, ‘that
no one dares venture into the country lest he should be treated like
Pécolat.’ Many of the citizens quitted Geneva. One day two friends
happened to meet in a room of the hostelry of St. Germain on the Jura.
‘Where are you going?’ asked one of them who had just come from Lyons.
‘I am leaving Geneva,’ answered the other, by name Du Bouchet. ‘They
have so tortured Pécolat that his arms remained hanging to the rope,
and he died upon the rack.’ Du Bouchet added: ‘The Church not having
the right of putting men to death, my lord of Geneva will have to send
somebody to Rome to get him absolved. He weeps greatly about it, they
say; but I place no trust in such crocodile’s tears!... I am going to
Lyons.’[113]
The bishop had no notion of excusing himself to the pope: on the
contrary, he thought only of pursuing his revenge. The _decoy_ was in
the cage and some small birds with him; he wished now at any cost to
catch the large one,--Berthelier. Most of the youth of Geneva were
either out of the way or disheartened; the league _Who touches one
touches all_ was nearly dissolved, at the moment when it ought to have
been ready to save its founder. The bishop thought it superfluous to
resort to stratagem or violence and simply required the syndics to
surrender the great agitator to him. At eight o’clock in the evening
of the 28th of July, 1517, the council was sitting, when the president
who was on the bishop’s side said: ‘It is my lord’s pleasure that
we take up one of his subjects against whom he possesses sufficient
informations which he will communicate in proper time and place; and
that when the said subject is in prison, the syndics shall execute
justice, if the affair requires it.’[114] At these words every one
looked at a seat which was empty for the first time. Berthelier’s
friends were uneasy; and as the bishop had adopted a lawful course,
the council answered the prelate that they would take up the accused,
provided that on his part he maintained the liberties of Geneva.
As the councillors left the Hôtel de Ville in the dark, they said to
one another: ‘It is Berthelier.’ The friends he had among them ran off
to tell him the news, conjuring him to escape the vengeance of the
prince by flight. Bonivard joined his entreaties to theirs: ‘The sword
is over your head,’ he said.--‘I know it,’ answered Berthelier, ‘yes,
I know that I shall die, and I do not grieve at it.’ ‘Really,’ said
Bonivard, ‘I never saw and never read of one who held life so cheap.’
The friends of the noble-minded citizen redoubled their entreaties.
They represented to him that there remained in Geneva only a small
number of civic guards, imperfectly trained to arms;[115] that one part
of the burgesses would assent through fear to the plots of the Savoyard
party, and that another part would aid them. Berthelier still resisted:
‘God,’ said he, ‘will miraculously take away their power.’[116] His
friends resorted to another argument. There happened to be just then
in Geneva some envoys from Friburg; Berthelier’s friends begged him to
depart with them. ‘Out of Geneva,’ they said, ‘you will serve the city
better than within.’ That consideration decided him. He went during the
night to the hostelry of the Friburgers. ‘We leave to-morrow,’ they
told him; ‘here is a livery cloak with the arms of Friburg; put it
on, and thus disguised you shall come with us, like one of the state
riders. If you are not recognised at the gates of Geneva or in the Pays
de Vaud, you are safe.’ The Friburgers left the city very early: the
guard looked at them for a moment as they passed the gate, but without
suspecting that the great republican was with them. He was safe.
The next day the syndic Nergaz having delivered the message of the
council to the bastard of Savoy, the latter was exasperated because
instead of seizing Berthelier, they simply told him that they intended
doing so. ‘Do you mean to give him time to escape?’ he asked. The
council immediately ordered a great display of force to arrest the
liberal leader. His friends the councillors, who knew him to be already
far away in the country, let his enemies go on. ‘Shut all the city
gates,’ said they. ‘Assemble the tithing men and the tens; summon
the vidame to assist in executing the law; let the syndics preside
in person over the search for the culprit.’[117] ‘Bravo!’ whispered
some aside, ‘shut the cage ... the bird has flown.’ The most zealous
of the bishop’s partisans hurried off to close the gates. The syndics
and tithing men set out, followed by a great number of citizens, and
all went towards Berthelier’s house. They searched every chamber, they
sounded every hiding-place, but found nobody. Some were angry, others
laughed in their sleeves; the most violent, supposing he had escaped
to one of his friends, put themselves at the head of the troop and
searched every house that Berthelier was in the habit of frequenting.
As a six days’ search led to nothing, they were forced to rest
satisfied with summoning the accused by sound of the trumpet. No one
had any more doubts about his escape: the liberals were delighted, but
anger and vexation prevailed at the castle.