Chapter XX

PHILIBERT BERTHELIER THE MARTYR OF LIBERTY. TERROR AND OPPRESSION IN GENEVA.

(AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 1519.)

The prisoner was soon diverted from these wholesome thoughts by the arrival of the officers of justice. According to the privileges of Geneva, he could only be tried by the syndics; but the bastard suspected this lawful tribunal, and finding no honest man that would undertake to act against the law, he issued a provost’s commission to Jean Desbois, a man of Chambéry, then living at Geneva, and ‘formerly a tooth-drawer,’ say contemporary documents. This extemporised judge, vain of his functions, wished to begin the examination. ‘When the syndics, who are my judges, question me, I will answer them,’ said Berthelier, ‘but not you, who have no right to do so.’--‘I shall come again,’ said Desbois after this futile attempt, ‘and shall compel you to answer me then.’ The provost went and reported to the bishop the unsatisfactory commencement of his high functions.[266]

The emotion was universal in Geneva. The friend of its liberties, the founder of the league _Who touches one touches all_, was about to pay with his life for his enthusiasm in the cause of independence. The bold spirits, who braved the papal tyrant, proposed that they should consider this act of the bishop’s as mere brigandage (which it was in fact), and that they should support the laws by rescuing Berthelier. But the magistrates preferred a more moderate course. The Great Council was hastily assembled, and at their order the syndics waited upon the bishop. ‘My lord,’ said they, ‘Berthelier has been acquitted according to law; and now he is arrested without accuser, and without a preliminary information. If he is innocent, let him be set at liberty; if he is guilty, let him be tried by us; do not permit an infringement of the franchises in your city.’--‘It is true there is no accuser,’ said the bishop, ‘but common rumour stands in his stead; there is no preliminary information, but the notoriety of the deed supplies its place; as for what judges it concerns, the injury having been committed against the prince, it is the business of his officers to prosecute.’ Having thus dragged the sheep into his den, the wolf would not let it go.[267]

When they were informed of this denial of justice, the more energetic party protested loudly. They asked if there was any duty more sacred than to deliver innocence? Could the people see with indifference the rights which belonged to them from time immemorial trodden under foot by a prince who had sworn to defend them? The bishop and his creatures, fearing lest the storm should burst, resolved to put the rebel speedily out of the way. The proceedings did not last two days, as Bonivard writes; all was done in one (August 23) between six and seven in the morning and four in the afternoon.[268] Berthelier saw what was preparing, but his calmness never failed him. He remembered that, according to the sages of antiquity, the voluntary sacrifice which men make of their lives, out of love for their fellow-countrymen, has a mysterious power to save them. Had this not been seen among the Greeks and the Romans? And among those very leaguers whom Berthelier had so loved, was it not by thrusting the lances of the enemy into his bosom that Arnold of Winkelried delivered Switzerland?... But if Berthelier desired to save Geneva, Geneva desired to save him. Good men, the friends of right and maintainers of the sworn franchises of the citizens, felt that the ancient laws of the State deserved more respect than the despotic will of a perjured and cruel prince. The castle where the liberator was confined (a private possession of the house of Savoy) had long since been put into a condition to resist surprise; but Champel, the usual place of execution, was at a little distance from the city; the moment when Berthelier was conducted there would be the favourable opportunity. He will hardly have taken a hundred steps beyond the bridge when the huguenots, rising like one man and issuing from every quarter, will rescue him from the executioners who are nothing but murderers before the laws of men and the justice of God.

These rumours reached the ears of the bastard, who took his measures accordingly. Six hundred men-at-arms were drawn out, and all the mamelukes joined them. The vidame posted a detachment on the side of St. Gervais (right bank) to cut off the inhabitants of the faubourg from all access to the island; he stationed the greater part ‘under arms and in line of battle’ along the left bank, so as to occupy the bridge, the Rue du Rhone, and the cross streets. Among the Savoyard captains who gave the sanction of their presence to this legal murder was François de Ternier, seignior of Pontverre, a violent and energetic man and yet of a generous disposition. The blood of Berthelier, which was about to be shed, excited a thirst in his heart which the blood of the huguenots alone could quench; from that hour Pontverre was the deadliest enemy of Geneva and the Genevans. But (as pagan antiquity would have said) the terrible Nemesis, daughter of Jupiter and Night, goddess of vengeance and retribution, holding a sword in one hand and a torch in the other, was one day to overtake him, a few steps only from the spot where the blood of Berthelier was about to flow, and divine justice commissioned to punish crime would avenge this unjust death in his own blood.[269]

All was ready. Desbois entered the prison with a confessor and the headsman. ‘I summon you a second time to answer,’ said he to Berthelier. The noble citizen refused. ‘I summon you a third time,’ repeated the ex-dentist, ‘under pain of losing your head.’ Berthelier answered not a word: he would reply only to his lawful judges, the syndics. He knew, besides, that these appeals were empty forms, that he was not a defendant but a victim. Then, without other formality, the provost pronounced sentence: ‘Philibert Berthelier, seeing that thou hast always been rebellious against our most dread lord and thine, we condemn thee to have thy head cut off to the separation of the soul from the body; thy body to be hung to the gibbet at Champel, thy head to be nailed to the gallows near the river Arve, and thy goods confiscated to the prince.’ The provost then introduced the confessor, ‘with whom Berthelier did not hold long discourse.’ After that the third personage, the headsman, came forward and pinioned him.[270]

In every quarter of Geneva men’s eyes were fixed on the Château de l’Ile. Its old gates fell back, the guards marched out first, the provost came next, followed by the headsman holding Berthelier. The martyr’s countenance proclaimed the greatness of his soul. There was and still is, between the castle and the river, a narrow space so protected by the Rhone and the fortress, that fifty men could hold it against all the inhabitants of Geneva. The prince-bishop, so learned in the art of tyranny, was not ignorant that if the victim to be sacrificed is loved by the people, the death-blow must be given in prison, in a court-yard, on a narrow beach, or in a castle moat. Berthelier having advanced a few steps found himself between the château and the river. ‘Say thy prayers,’ said the provost. The hero knew he was about to be murdered: he made ‘a short prayer,’ and, rising from his knees, was preparing ‘to utter a few words before dying,’ to give a last testimony to the liberties of Geneva; but the provost would not permit him. Turning to the executioner, he said: ‘Make haste with your work.’--‘Kneel down,’ said the man to his victim. Then Berthelier, whether he desired to express his sorrow at the gloomy future of his fellow-citizens, or was moved at seeing himself sacrificed and none of his friends appearing to defend him, exclaimed as he fell on his knees: ‘Ah!... Messieurs of Geneva’ .... It was all he said; he had no sooner uttered the words ‘than the executioner cut off his head: it was the 23rd of August, 1519.’ The bishop had managed matters well. That cruel man was more like the wild beast that devours the flock than the shepherd who protects them; he had shown himself truly _tremendæ velocitatis animal_, ‘an animal of terrible swiftness,’ as Pliny says of the tiger; but unlike that animal, he was cowardly as well as cruel. The Genevans, whose father he should have been, turned from him with horror, and the avenging angel of the innocent prepared to visit him with a terrible retribution at his death. Vainly would the waters of the Rhone flow for ages over this narrow space--there are stains of blood that no waters can ever wash out.[271]

The bishop intended, however, that Berthelier should be conveyed to the place of execution for criminals; he only found it more prudent to have him taken thither dead than alive, being sure that in this way the ‘youths of Geneva’ could not restore him to liberty. The lifeless body of the martyr was placed on a waggon; the executioner got in and stood beside it, holding the victim’s head in his hand. A universal horror fell upon the people, and many, heartbroken at being unable to save their friend, shut themselves up in their houses to veil their hatred and their shame. The long procession, starting from the castle, moved forward, preceded and closed by foreign soldiers; in the middle was the waggon bearing the dead body, and close behind followed many mamelukes, ‘not the least of their party, in great insolence, mocking at their own calamity; but good men dared not breathe, seeing that when force reigns, the good cause must keep still.’[272] A few huguenots, however, mournful and indignant, appeared in the streets or at their doors. Meanwhile the executioner, parading in his triumphal car, swung derisively to and fro the martyr’s bleeding head, and cried: ‘This is the head of the traitor Berthelier: let all take warning by it.’ The procession continued its march as far as Champel, where the executioner suspended the body of the father of Genevese liberty to the gibbet. Thence, by a singular refinement of cruelty, they proceeded to the bridge of Arve, and the head of the dead man, who had so often terrified the bishop, was fastened up in the place where those of Blanchet and Navis had hung so long. The prelate seemed to take pleasure in reviving the recollection of his former butcheries.

Thus that kind-hearted man whom everybody loved, that heroic citizen around whom were concentrated all the hopes of the friends of liberty, had been sacrificed by his bishop. That death so hurried, so illegal, so tragical, filled the Genevans with horror. The fate of his widow and children moved them; but that of Geneva moved them more profoundly still. Berthelier had fallen a victim to his passion for his country; and that passion, which made many other hearts beat high, drew tears even from the most selfish. The body hanging from the gibbet, the head nailed up near the bridge of Arve, the memory of that sad procession, did not speak to the senses only; men’s hearts were rent as if by a violent blow, and many refused all consolation. There were also some proud firm spirits who, unable to weep, gave vent to maledictions. They might be met silent and frowning in the streets, and their air, the tone of their voice, their gait, their ironical and bitter words, expressed an indescribable contempt for the murderers. They retraced in their minds that strange struggle, between cruel princes and a generous, simple-minded, poor but free man. On one side were the splendours of the throne, the majesty of the priesthood, armies, executioners, tortures, scaffolds, and all the terrors of power; on the other, a humble man, opposing his enemies by the nobleness of his character and the unshrinking firmness of his courage.... The combat was unequal, and the head of the great citizen had fallen. A bishop looked with an ecstasy of joy on the blood of one of his flock, in which he bathed his feet while impudently violating all the laws of the country. But--and it was the consolation of these proud citizens--the blood that had been shed would awaken a terrible voice. Outraged justice and bleeding liberty would utter a long and mournful cry, which would reach the ears of the Swiss League. Then would mountain and valley, castle and cottage, city and hamlet, and every echo of the Alps repeat it one to another, and thousands of arms would one day unite to defend that little city so unworthily oppressed.[273]

Berthelier’s death was to have still more serious consequences. His enemies had hoped to stifle liberty by killing him. Perhaps ... but it was one of those deaths which are followed by a glorious resurrection. In the battle which had just been fought noble blood had been spilt, but it was blood that leads to victory at last. _Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit._ Religious liberty had many victims three centuries ago in all the countries of the Reformation; but the noblest martyrs of political liberty, in modern times, have fallen at Geneva (if my judgment does not mislead me), and their death has not been useless to the universal cause of civilisation. _Cruciate, torquete, damnate ... sanguis christianorum, semen._ The blood of the martyrs is a seed--a seed which takes root and bears fruit, not only in the spot where it has been sown, but in many other parts of the world.

Berthelier’s friends were struck by his contempt of death and assurance of eternal life. They still seemed to hear the noble testimony he had borne to immortality. Hence one of them wrote this noble epitaph for him:--

Quid mihi mors nocuit? Virtus post fata virescit;
Nec cruce nec gladio sævi perit illa tyranni.[274]

As we see, the idea of a resurrection, of a life after death, over which man has no power, seems to have been uppermost in the mind of Berthelier as well as of his friends. This man was not a common martyr of liberty.

‘Verily,’ said some, ‘the maxim lately set forth is a true one: Heroes and the founders of republics and empires have, next to God, the greatest right to the adoration of men.’[275]

The bishop hastened to take advantage of his victory. ‘Berthelier’s death,’ said his friend Bonivard, ‘gives the tyrant great comfort, for the watch-dog being killed, he can easily manage the scattered sheep.’ The bishop began, therefore, to move onwards, and undertook to revolutionise Geneva. At first he resolved to change the magistrature. Four days after the execution he assembled the general council, and, assuming the airs of a conqueror, appeared at it with a numerous train. ‘We John of Savoy,’ said he in the document which has been preserved, ‘bishop and prince of Geneva, being informed of the dissensions of this city, have not feared to come hither at great expense to administer by force of arms the most effectual remedy; and we have behaved like a good shepherd. My lord the Duke of Savoy, who singularly loves this city, having desired to enter it, the syndics and the seditious have with incredible annoyance rebelled against a prince so gentle;[276] and if this illustrious prince had not been touched with compassion, if he had not surpassed by his clemency the charity of the Redeemer[277] ... we should all have been destroyed.’ After these strange words from a bishop, who placed the duke above Jesus Christ, at the very time when this prince had made himself the accomplice in a murder, Master Chappuis, the official, called out: ‘Say is it not so?’ None but mamelukes were present at the assembly, and among them several persons who had no right to be there. Many voices shouted, ‘Yes, yes!’ for it was then the reign of terror. The syndics, ‘more ready to yield the bishop their maces than their heads,’ says Bonivard, laid down before him the insignia of their office. The next day another general council elected four mameluke syndics: P. Versonay, P. Montyon, P. de Fernex, and G. Danel, ‘who everywhere and in everything did what the bishop and the duke desired.’ The same day, all huguenots were excluded from the two councils; and the bishop forbade the citizens to carry arms or to assemble by night, under penalty of a fine of twenty-five livres and ten stripes of the cord.

Sorrow and dismay filled men’s hearts. Geneva lay as it were under one of those funeral palls which are stretched over the dead. No one stirred out, no one spoke; all was motionless and silent; the air of despotism could be felt, as it hung over and benumbed the soul. Besançon Hugues, A. Lévrier, and the other patriots retired to their homes; but they had not lost hope; they waited in silence until God should make the cause of liberty to triumph again in their country.[278] Erelong, however, a few courageous spirits awoke and began to stir. The patriots felt the need of pouring out their sorrows together; and it was told the bishop ‘that several persons of the huguenot sect[279] were in the habit of meeting secretly in various places.’ Then the persecutions began afresh: ‘They spared the good as little as the bad,’ says Bonivard, ‘and accused them of false crimes to be revenged on them.’

A short time before the period we are describing, Amadeus de Joye, one of Berthelier’s friends, had committed an act of little importance in itself, but which was the first sign of opposition in Geneva to the Romish superstitions. Two years earlier Luther had written to Spenlein his beautiful letter on justification by faith; he had expounded the epistle to the Galatians, and probably posted up his theses. Zwingle, who had been appointed preacher at Einsiedeln, was declaiming against pilgrimages, offerings, images, and the invocation of the Virgin and the saints. Had the report of these sermons reached Geneva? It is possible, for, as we have seen, there was constant intercourse between this city and the German cantons. However that may be, many Genevans were already asking if the glory of God ‘was not defiled by so foolish and lifeless a thing as an image?’ Amadeus de Joye, whom we have met before at the Molard assembly, and whom his enemies accused of being the friend of Berthelier, Pécolat, ‘and many other villains,’ felt little respect for the bishop’s _dolls_. Now there was at Geneva a famous black image of wood, between two and three feet high, called St. Babolin. Certain catholics held it in great devotion, carrying it in long processions, and rendering it every sort of honour. One night when the worshippers of St. Babolin had assembled in the house of Ami Motey, one of their number, De Joye, indignant at their idolatry and thinking the ugly figure was more like a devil than a god, carried it off, and, with the intention of giving a lesson to the partisans of the idol, took it to Motey’s house. The window was open; he listened to the conversation of this devout little circle, and taking courage raised the image as high as the casement and flung it into the midst of its worshippers. It must be acknowledged that this was not controversy of the right sort; but it was the sixteenth century, and the Genevans were of a bold and scoffing humour. The startled followers of Babolin looked with astonishment at their saint, which appeared to have fallen from heaven. All of a sudden the door was opened and a loud voice called out: ‘It is the devil ... he will eat you all!’ At these words, Motey jumped up, caught hold of a javelin and prepared to hurl it at the intruder; but De Joye hastily retired. There were no blows given, and no blood was shed.[280]

This incident had been almost forgotten, when the bishop’s agents, who were resolved to be severe upon the friends of liberty, shut up De Joye in the Château de l’Ile, where Berthelier had been imprisoned, and asked the syndics’ permission to question and to torture him in order to get at the truth (7th September, 1519). Besides this affair of the image, he was charged with ‘having been present at illegal meetings where the citizens bound themselves by oath to resist any infringement of their liberties by word or by deed.’[281] The syndics ordered that De Joye should be examined in prison, _pede ligato_, with the feet bound. The proceedings commenced.

‘I was born of worthy, upright, and distinguished parents,’ said De Joye when he appeared before the syndics, ‘and by them trained up virtuously until the age of manhood. Since then I have associated with all the good men of the city, and in the profession which I follow I have always borne a good reputation. Far from picking quarrels, I have carefully avoided them, and have reconciled many. Finally, I have been all my life faithful and obedient to my lord the bishop.’[282] These words, which we transcribe from the documents in the trial, were of a nature to inspire the judges with a certain respect; but they did not. First Claude du Bois, the vidame’s lieutenant, and next the governor of the castle, proposed that De Joye should be put to the torture to force him to confess the crimes imputed to him;[283] but it was decided to begin by examining the witnesses, who told what they had _heard say_ by persons _whose names they could not remember_. Fine evidence on which to put a man to the torture![284] The governor did not abandon his project; the vidame came in person to urge the syndics to _do him this pleasure_.[285] Could they be denied, when it concerned only a contemner of St. Babolin? Amadeus knew not the Gospel; his opposition to the black image proceeded merely from the disgust which superstition inspires in intelligent minds, and there was in his character more fire than firmness, more impetuosity than perseverance. The mild, weak, and infirm man, who was scared by the idea of torture, fancied his limbs already dislocated, and beginning to weep he offered to make oath of his innocence on the relics of St. Anthony. To all the questions put to him he replied only by groans and tears. The vidame, whose heart was hardened, again demanded that he should be put to the torture. ‘My right arm is crippled,’ exclaimed the poor wretch; ‘the sinews are contracted.’ Two surgeons declared, after examination, that he might be able to bear the strappado, but could not support the torture of the _chatte_ without fainting.[286] There were in the executioner’s list punishments for all temperaments, for the sick and crippled as well as for the strong. De Joye, who, after he had sown his wild oats, had become a respectable citizen, was neither a hero nor a revolutionist. The embarrassed judges, not finding sufficient cause in the Babolin joke to put a man to death, helped him to escape during the night, and so saved appearances. The persecutions of the bishop were not limited to a single individual. John of Savoy took delight in power, and wished to show the cardinals that he was strong enough to put down revolt. ‘They imprisoned,’ says Bonivard, ‘they beat, they tortured, they beheaded and hanged, so that it was quite pitiful.’[287] Geneva was crushed.

As it was not enough to lay their hands upon men, the princes of Savoy laid their hands upon the constitution. War was made against principles still more than against persons. It was necessary to stifle those strange aspirations which carried men’s minds towards new ideas, and to put an end to imaginations which denied the lawfulness of absolute power. The duke, in accord with the bishop, published, although he was a foreign prince, an act restricting the liberties of Geneva, which banished from the general council all young men (for they were suspected of independence), and deprived the people of the direct election of syndics. On the 3rd of September, the general council, at which few but mamelukes were present, accepted these articles in silence. Thus did the Duke of Savoy, with the bishop’s help, triumph over principles, rights, and liberties, and think he had strangled in their nest the young eagles whom he had once feared to see soaring into the heavens. Geneva, humbled and silenced by a bad prince and a maimed constitution, was no longer to be feared.

The sorrow was general, and it might have been supposed that the community only possessed strength enough to yield its last breath. But as was seen formerly in Israel, in moments of crisis, how prophets and prophetesses arose, so voices were heard in Geneva--voices of the weakest creatures--proclaiming the ruin of the people and denouncing the awful judgments of God. A poor girl for three days walked up and down the city, neither eating nor drinking, but crying everywhere as she went: _Le maz mugnier! le maz molin! le maz molu! ... tout est perdu._ ‘Wicked miller! wicked mill! wicked meal!.... All is lost!’ The miller was the prince, the mill was the constitution, the meal was the people.... It seems that this monotonous and doleful voice affected everybody, even the mamelukes; the world readily believed in the marvellous in those days; and the vidame dared not arrest the prophetess. Syndic Balard, one of the most enlightened men in Geneva at that time, saw a deep meaning in the poor girl’s mission.[288]