In order to know the constitution of the Republic of Geneva well, it is necessary to go back to its origins. It is necessary to find what the political State of that City was when the present government was instituted.1
It is known that under Catholicism the Bishop exercised sovereignty. To look for how he had acquired it is a labor of pure erudition that is not at issue here. To find the extent of his power and to show where the distribution of his rights came from, is to clarify by means of principles the transmission of this power and of these rights from the Prince to the Republic. After the fall of the western Empire and the extinction of the two Kingdoms of Burgundy several Bishops, alone keeping an independent power, had no trouble extending it over the debris of the one that no longer existed. The people, prey to brigands and no longer being able to do without masters, submitted without trouble to the only men who conserved any rights over it. The ambition of the pastor and the need of the flock cooperated in this change. Reason itself wished peoples—for lack of Princes powerful enough to protect them—to give themselves by preference to leaders whose station took the place of force.
Let us limit ourselves to practice and to the distribution that the Prince made of his rights in order to see the true foundations of the establishment that still exists. It would be superfluous for our object to burrow beyond this.
I do not believe that the Bishops of Geneva ever enjoyed an absolute power, regarding either independence or authority. At first they acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Emperors, before long that of the Popes, and afterward both to some degree at the same time, which often caused revocations, contradictions, and conflicts over competency. They acknowledged in the people some rights and franchises that were not simple voluntary concessions and that they could not revoke. Finally they had as vassals the Counts of the Genevese and the Dukes of Savoy who followed them so that the sovereign himself could not take back the portion of power he had alienated to these princes; in spite of him they were his officers and enjoyed by right of birth a part of the executive power.
But without entering into these discussions of antiquity, let us suppose that at first the sovereignty of the Bishop was absolute and begin from there. We will find in the condition of things alone the reason for all the concessions of the Prince and for all the modifications that his authority susequently received. So that if the Bishop had begun by being a despot he would necessarily have finished by having only a tempered power. The force of things alone would have reduced him to the same point to which the defense and extension of the rights of others could have reduced him.
Geneva is a very old city. Caesar went there and does not speak of it as a recent city. But it is not the history of this city that I am undertaking to expose here.
After the destruction of the Roman Empire, the Allobrogians, of whom Geneva made up a part, fell under the domination of the Kings of Burgundy. After the destruction of the Kings of Burgundy, the conquerors invaded their States. What they could not seize or conserve fell into anarchy. Finally, the power of Charlemagne passed in a flash, all the parts of this vast empire fell scattered into a thousand hands and finished destroying themselves between the hands that sought to wrest them from one another.
Modern Governments have not been, as those of ancient peoples were, formed in one piece and founded so to speak in a single stroke. Formerly States that were new or reborn through sudden revolutions sometimes gave themselves a master and sometimes a Constitution. A single man whose functions were well beyond those of Kings was in this latter case charged with the enterprise, and adopted by the nation, his labor formed a regular system all of whose parts cooperated toward the same end since they were made for each other. This is no longer the case among the moderns, all our governments—built up successively out of pieces related less in accordance with the public needs than in accordance with private aims—in their irregularities show only the peculiarity of the events that caused them. Among us the name of Legislator is no longer anything but an abstract word more fit to represent the one who gives force to the laws than the one who drafts them. There is no longer any other Legislator than force nor other laws than the interest of the more powerful. And if sometimes one sees a body of laws issuing from the same hand being passed by a people, they are no longer anything but civil laws that have no bearing on the government.
It follows from this that in order to study the political laws of a modern State well one must not begin by taking them as a body in order then to analyze them, but on the contrary one must take them at their origin and follow the order of their composition. For one cannot clearly fathom their spirit except with the aid of the circumstances that have produced them and of the effects that those who made them anticipated would arise from them.
This is true above all for small Governments which, like that of Geneva, always agitated but sheltered from violent storms, have lasted in the midst of continual agitations without experiencing great revolutions. And in fact we will see that the most marked revolution experienced by that City and the one that gave birth to the Republic left it in several respects as it was beforehand and raised liberty itself only on the basis of the Episcopal Government. Thus in order to explain the present Government I am obliged to go back to its source and often to clarify what exists by means of what happened a long time ago. My plan is not however to plunge into antiquities; I will leave behind everything that is merely critical or erudite research in order to limit myself to what pertains most closely to my subject.
Geneva was formerly subject to two sorts of authority, between which sovereignty was as it were divided, namely that of the Bishops and that of the Counts. These two authorities equally emanated from imperial concessions; but they differed both in the order of antiquity and in the use the concessionaries made of them. The counts, who were at first only officers of the Emperors and whose high rank was only for life and even revocable, took advantage of the empire’s disorders in order to render it hereditary and independent.
Too weak and too occupied elsewhere to be able to repress this usurpation at that time, the Emperors preferred to alienate to the Bishop the sovereignty that was slipping away from them rather than to abandon it to rebels. Since the favor of the people was for its pastor, at least in the city it was easy for the Bishop to secure a power that he had legitimately acquired; while the count, master of the castles and of the countryside, conserved the one he had usurped no less easily. From that came the natural division of their power. From that came the frequent contentions between the Bishop and the count, from that came the often contradictory judgments of the Imperial Court depending on which one of them was more in favor. For, because the supreme right of the Empire had always been held in reserve, neither of the two competitors ever dared decisively to disregard it, and the weaker always made it into a resource to stop the undertakings of the more powerful.
It seems also that the people had acquired or preserved some rights whose origin one cannot see in history, but which one can find by induction. For it seems to me hardly probable that it would not have lost under so many masters the use of a right that all peoples have naturally.
Thus there was a perpetual dispute among three parties, the best founded of which was ordinarily the weakest. By a sort of compensation, this formed an equilibrium among all of them and prolonged the dissensions without it being possible to see the end of them. Such was just about the political condition of the city of Geneva for almost five centuries from the end of the second Kingdom of Burgundy up to the extinction of the episcopacy.
In a rather simple manner one can acquire an exact conception of this Government without entering into the examination of facts disputed among the parties. To do so it is enough to assume that the Bishops at first enjoyed absolute power. Whether this was by a concession of the Emperors or by their own usurpation, as is more likely, does not matter. It does not even matter that the fact be true. It is enough that from this sole hypothesis well applied one can deduce the whole system of the constitution. If one does not know from this how it was established, at least one will know very exactly what it was, and that is the sole object that I am proposing for myself in this writing.
Let the sovereign authority then have been at first entirely in the hands of the Bishops, I say that it should naturally be divided and tempered as it was: for, since by his station the Bishop was not able to hold either the military sword or the criminal sword by himself, he had to put both into other hands, but always in a manner so that the depositories made use of it only under his authority.
The manner in which this division was made depends on the times, on places, and on the situation of the country. When the temporal authority of the Bishops was established they had for neighbors, not great Princes, but lords powerful enough to make themselves feared without being powerful enough to subjugate them. To protect their territory from these plunderers, they gave the guardianship of it to the one who could protect them or hurt them the most, and in order to make him take an interest in their defense it was necessary to cede him a portion of their rights. From that came those of the Counts, who exercised the executive power in the State; but under the authority of the Bishop, of whom they acknowledged themselves feudatories and to whom they gave homage as to their suzerain, for the Bishop himself was a vassal of the Empire.
The Diocese of Geneva was large, which made the power of the count very formidable, and under the name of defender—that is what was called in other places advocate, advocatus—of the Church, he could easily have been its oppressor. As a matter of good policy it was necessary to give his power a counterweight. This counterweight could only be the City itself, the only refuge where the force of the Count could not be extended under cover of the castles and fortresses he occupied in the country. But the City was small in proportion to the territory. Too weak to hold his own against a Count armed with such a great power, the Bishop was constrained to allow him to exercise it in the city itself. With more limited possessions the Bishops would have maintained themselves better. Once it passed into other hands, their own power was one of the instruments of their ruin.
Another cause was in the difference between the isolated, precarious, and individual state of the Bishop and the state of the count who by his temporal power, by his family and his alliances, had a solid and permanent base which the Episcopacy did not have. If the Bishops had been married, it is to be presumed that then their power, having become hereditary, would have maintained itself better and that they would not have needed the Counts or that they would have kept them in their dependence. But the celibacy of Priests which is believed to be so useful to the clergy has often been harmful to it, above all on the occasions similar to the one at issue: for in opposition to a house forever existing whose interests did not change at all and whose projects and intentions were transmitted from Father to children, the Bishops, taken successively from various countries and from various families, and whose interests, feelings, and maxims changed with each mutation, could not sustain a too unequal competition for very long, and insensibly themselves returned to the dependency in which they had at first put the counts.
It is true that the first counts were for life, as were the Bishops, and even revocable, which the Bishops were not, but the high rank of the counts having become hereditary as a result of the weakening of the Empire, their power increased all the more rapidly since, often having the influence to have the Bishops chosen from among their families, they were then favored by them in their usurpations.
Since this double defect in the sovereign authority, a defect that depended on the one side on the site of the territory and on the other on the episcopal state, could not be corrected, it forced the Prince always to lean on the weaker party against the stronger and to oppose the City to the Count in all the latter’s usurpations. From that came the system rather consistently followed by the Bishops of favoring the people on every occasion and returning to it in small portions what they had usurped all at once under the Emperors. From that came the great concessions they made to it, the franchises they gave or confirmed to it at different times, and which made the City free and almost republican under the authority of a sovereign. Moreover, to me it seems rather unreasonable to make these franchises go back to times anterior to the Bishops, no monument worthy of faith authorizes this opinion. What rights could be claimed by peoples accustomed for numerous centuries to constantly carrying the yoke of the strongest? At that time there were only nobles and villains, that is to say conquerors and conquered peoples. Like all the ancient cities, Geneva was always in the latter class and in those unfortunate times one does not see the vestige of a single Republic. Thus the idea of going to look for some image of liberty under the kings of Burgundy and under Charlemagne is chimerical. Liberty sprang up only under the Episcopacy, and the Bishops, whom the people of Geneva regard as the ancient tyrants of their fatherland, were in fact its fathers and Benefactors.
Nevertheless, neither all the measures of the Bishops nor the sort of league they had with the City could shield them from the usurpations of the Counts whose undertakings, having become unbearable, forced the Bishop to look outside for a support against the Tyranny of his vassal.
Here begins to figure in the history of Geneva the warlike and wise house whose noble origin is lost in the night of times, whose genealogy offers a continuous succession of great men, and which marches with slow and steady steps for eight centuries toward an eminence whose limit is not to be seen.
After long wars almost always to the disadvantage of the counts of the Genevese, the last among them sold his heritage and his rights to the celebrated Amadeus VIII. Fortified by the vicarage of the Empire, the princes of Savoy, longtime rivals and finally successors of the Counts of the Genevese, then knew so well how to extend and make the most of their pretensions that they were on the point of making themselves completely sovereigns of Geneva. That would infallibly have happened in spite of the assistance of the Swiss and above all of the canton of Fribourg, if the unforeseen revolutions brought about by the Reformation had not rescued that city at the moment when it was already under the yoke.
That is the key to the old Government of Geneva; let us now set forth the system it opened up, and let us enter into the details of the administration.
That of the city and that of the territory were always distinct and separate. In them justice was administered neither in the same manner, nor by the same authority. The country was subject to two different powers: that of the Bishop and that of the Count. At first only two authorities were recognized in the City also, namely that of the Bishop and that of the community. Later on the Count also introduced his own and three authorities were recognized there. The Bishop was very much the only sovereign everywhere, but the exercise of power was divided, and he could not claim the parts of it that had been alienated to others.
After having been the most free of all peoples the Romans became the most enslaved; their servitude was that of the whole empire; the very idea of liberty was effaced under the Emperors. It seems that it should have been reborn under the barbarians. Not at all. Only domination and slavery, conquerors and conquered peoples were seen. Aristotle’s division came back in an opposite sense. The Greeks and Romans were low commoners, the Goths and Lombards were the nobles.2 Natural law gave way to the law of the conquerors. The feudal system degraded human nature and there were no longer any men properly speaking.
Between these two classes, the one debased and the other ennobled, a third was formed that served as a connection between them and without which it would have been difficult for this strange division to continue to exist. This intermediate estate was the clergy. Christianity was opportunely established in Europe to moderate the ferocity of the peoples ready to subjugate it. If the Romans, fiercely against the Christians, had had the misfortune to destroy them, they would soon have been destroyed by the barbarians themselves. But this new form of worship that they were persecuting was their safeguard, the law of Christ—which is the law of humanity—was the only thing that could restrain men when governments and their laws no longer existed.
This was one of the causes of the great authority taken on by the Clergy at that time. Mediator between the conquerors and the conquered, they often saved the latter from the cruelty of the others. In times of calamities and aggression the people had no protector other than its priests. They alone could speak for it; such a noble function made their station respectable even to pagans. They abused their influence in order to extend their power, but let us agree that one could not have based it on a finer title. The leaders of the Clergy, more heeded by Princes and more in a condition to protect the peoples, had the trust of both of them. Thus the great authority of the Bishops established itself. Call them usurpers, I consent to it; but admit that under their usurpation the people were a hundred times happier than under the Princes.
In this way was formed the temporal authority of a great number of Bishops in Germany and of those of Basel, Sion, Lausanne, and Geneva in Switzerland.
At first founded solely on the respect one had for them and on the favor of the people, the power of these last maintained itself. It increased under the Kings of Burgundy through the unrest, the murders, the revolutions that often made the interposition of these Prelates necessary. Finally, under Charlemagne and his successors, it acquired a fixed and legal footing from the enfeoffment made to them by these Emperors of the temporal authority over their diocese with which they found themselves vested.
I am speaking only about the temporal here. I am leaving aside the purely episcopal authority common to all Bishops.
The Bishop of Geneva was sole Prince and sovereign in his City and in his diocese, within the immediate jurisdiction of the Empire of which nevertheless his State never formed an active part, because he was never recognized a member of the Germanic body nor admitted to the diet either in person or through his deputies.
His vassalage was even of a rather singular sort: for although he acknowledged the authority of the Empire and of the imperial Bulls, he conferred neither faith nor homage upon the Emperor, did not receive investiture from him, did not render him any obeisance, and did not even take part in his election. This appears to prove in favor of those Genevans who claim that their city has always been free and imperial. In effect the Bishop, considered not as sovereign but as leader of an Imperial City, did not need any investiture and was not any less obligated to acknowledge the Emperor’s authority. If his deputies did not enter into the college of the cities, it is because it was not precisely a member of the Empire, but under its protection.
Not only as Bishop but also as Prince, the Bishop also acknowledged the authority of the Pope, who by his bulls, by his stewards, or by himself rather frequently delivered judgments about his disputes as much with the Count and the neighboring Princes as with the City itself. Often appeal about civil business was brought to the archbishop3 and subsequently to Rome, and these appeals finally became so frequent and so inconvenient that this abuse very much facilitated the progress of the reformation.
Since the power of the Prince was mixed it was not really well known to whom the right of electing him belonged. The clergy, the people, and the Pope claimed it. At first the Bishop was elected by the people, in accordance with the practice of the primitive church, afterward he was by the people and by the clergy jointly, afterward by the clergy alone, and finally the election was made by the canons alone. The consent and the Bulls of the Pope were always necessary, he did not refuse them, but sometimes he named a Bishop himself, and one saw three Bishops at the same time, one named by the Pope, another by the People, and another by the clergy. Influence and intrigue, as one might believe, always played a large part in these elections. It seems that at the beginning the counts were for life and, as officers of the Bishops, were chosen and named by them or at least by the Emperors at their solicitation and then it was natural that the choice of the Bishop fell upon his brother or on one of his relatives. As soon as the Countship, having become hereditary, was the appanage of one family, it was reciprocally natural that the count endeavored to have his son, his brother, or someone from his house elected Bishop. With the aid of this policy, the old counts of Geneva had already usurped very many of the rights of the Prince, but these usurpations became larger and more rapid when the countship of the Genevese, having passed into the house of Savoy, put it in the position to employ all its power to dispose of the Episcopacy. For then, the Bishops, almost all poor or subject to the Dukes, hardly ever failed to favor their enterprises at the expense of their own successors.
Although the real power of the Bishops increased or diminished in accordance with the times, in the City they constantly enjoyed the royal rights4 of sovereignty: that of coining money and that of pardoning criminals. Civil justice was exercised in their name, they had numerous officers whose authority and superiority were acknowledged throughout the city, as Princes and independent of the officiality they had their own private prisons; the lods and confiscations belonged to them in large measure. They had the right to have the general council assembled, to have the matters that pleased them proposed there, and the Syndics could not convoke it without the Bishop’s permission.
But their spiritual authority, which had acquired the temporal power for them, always limited it. They never had a garrison in the city, nor their own troops, nor authority of arms; they never imposed capital punishments either by themselves or by their immediate officers. Their only de facto proceeding was excommunication, and the effect it had against the city in 1309 proves that it was more effective than that of arms; but in the end their sovereignty, which came from ecclesiastic authority, depended enough on it so that at all times the Prince would have been insignificant if the Bishop did not protect him.
It is to be presumed that the Counts of the Genevese received their high rank from the Emperors as all the others did, since the first time these counts are spoken of is to obtain the confirmation of their titles from the Emperor. Nevertheless, far from being above the Bishops, they were their vassals. It is proven by various acts that they gave homage to them from the first times. They even held a portion of their rights from the Bishops. Numerous ancient titles give credence to this and, among others, an act of 1124 between Bishop Wido and his brother Aymon, count of the Genevese.
Formerly the Counts had no authority in the city, and in place of the title of Counts of Geneva, which they took later on, at first they had only that of Counts in the territory of the Genevese: Comes in pago Gehennensi; this part of the Diocese, which they possessed in fief within the jurisdiction of the Bishop, became a special province under the name of Genevese, which it still bears today even though it is independent of the Republic. Even though the lords of this Province sometimes affected to qualify themselves as Counts of Geneva, they were never qualified in the City as anything but Counts of the Genevese.
Continuing to take advantage of the favor of time, their successors little by little acquired some authority in Geneva, and, transmitted to the Counts of Savoy, this authority increased rapidly in their hands. One even sees the counts of Savoy and of the Genevese each have their castle and their garrison in the city at the same time.
It is true that, by an agreement, these two castles were to have been demolished and that the one belonging to the count of Geneva (which was in the Borough of Four) was in fact demolished, but the one belonging to the count of Savoy (which was on the Isle) remained standing and it was there that until the reformation he kept an Officer who is spoken of in the following chapter.
The counts of Geneva had occupied castles and maintained garrisons in the city. But they had never had such officers there. It was only through the treaty of 1290 that the count of Savoy, having become lord of the countship of the Genevese, for which he paid homage to the Bishop, stipulated this new right. And as the name of count had become odious to the people of Geneva, his lieutenant did not take the name of viscount, but that of vidomne,5 vice dominus. The Genevans maintain that it was the count of Savoy himself who bore this title of vidomne, a title that his lieutenant, who at first had only that of castellan, took only a long time afterward. Thus according to the Writers of Savoy, the count was lord of his chief, and according to those of Geneva he was only the lieutenant of the Bishop, and his castellan in Geneva was properly only the lieutenant of the lieutenant.
At first this officer was established only to render justice to the subjects of the Duke who were present in the city. Afterward he was also charged with the custody of prisoners and the execution of criminal judgments rendered by the episcopal judges or by the Syndics. By putting the executive power into the hands of the vidomne, this right, which did not appear very honorable, became the instrument used by the Dukes to extend their power.
Finally, in more recent times the House of Savoy, having added to the ancient rights of the counts those that it held from the bulls of the Emperors, and moreover, having subjugated the Bishops whom it had elected as it pleased, succeeded in leaving them only the name of Princes and in exercising an almost arbitrary power in the city. But since that was never done without opposition on the part of the people, these usurpations were unable to ordain contrary to its franchises nor to abolish its right to liberty.
Consider what peace, what security, what public order could reign in a city whose administration was constantly disputed among four authorities and in which two enemy Princes each had a castle from which—endlessly at war against each other—they cooperated only to lay waste to the inhabitants together.
The origin of the franchises and liberties of the people of Geneva is lost in the mists of time. In the famous act of the Bishop Ademarus Fabri, this Bishop himself acknowledges that these franchises that he sanctions exist from times immemorial. Still, one cannot assume that in the disorders brought about by the fall of the Roman Empire any people or any city preserved the slightest shadow of liberty. The feudal system founded on the enslavement of the conquered was not suited to giving birth to it again. The Bishops, the only protectors of the People, extricated it from its degradation, and the municipal rights of the city of Geneva were established only on those of the Clergy. The Prince who owed his power to the people paid his debt with usury, he founded liberty. It came from the side from which one would least have expected it.
Geneva had just about the same rights under its Bishops as Neufchâtel has under its Princes. The honor and inconvenience of government were for the Prelate, the advantage and security were for the people. Protected from the outside by his sovereign, from the inside by his franchises, the Genevan feared neither his master nor his neighbors, he was much more free than if he had been completely Republican.
His municipal administration was as democratic as possible. The people acknowledged neither classes nor privileges nor any inequality among its members; it acted either by itself in general council, or by its procurators called Syndics whom it elected annually, and who accounted to it for their administration; no intermediary order interposed itself between them and it, and that is the true characteristic of Democracy. We shall see how this characteristic changed little by little by the establishment of a Council.
One can well imagine that by the People I understand only the body of the bourgeoisie, as it also is understood in the Edicts of the Republic in which this word is employed in the same sense. It is not known when the true right of Bourgeoisie began, it is known only that it is extremely old and that the title of Bourgeois of Geneva was very honorable for the Bishops. When Pope Martin V passed through Geneva in 1418 the city gave Letters of Bourgeoisie to four of his cardinals, and the last Bishop, Pierre de la Baume, asked the general council to be admitted to the Bourgeoisie, which was granted him. This fact is one of the most remarkable ones and pertains too much to the subject of this chapter not to be clarified in it.
At first being vassals of the Bishops, the Princes of Savoy, having little by little made the Bishops dependent on them, wished to extend their own authority over the city under cover of the episcopal authority. In spite of some apparent successes, they did exactly the opposite of what they wanted: because they wanted to enhance the sovereignty of the Bishop in order to appropriate it for themselves and on the contrary they weakened it without acquiring it. They wanted to enslave the people by means of the Bishop, and on the contrary by resisting them in this the people also learned to resist the Bishop who supported them, so that the closer servitude was seen to approach, the more steps were made toward liberty. The fact cited above is an example of this. In accordance with ancient agreements the city could not make a treaty with any power without the consent of the Bishop, but near the end of the fifteenth century, pressed by necessity, it made a treaty on its own authority and, once usurped, this right furnished it with the means to maintain itself in it. From this resulted the treaties of co-bourgeoisie with Fribourg and Berne. Not being able to break apart this alliance, and wishing at least to reduce its advantage by dividing it, the Bishop found no other means but to be admitted to the Bourgeoisie. He was, but one sees from the consequences of this step that he had acquired nothing and ceded a great deal.
I have said that there was no inequality of rights in the Bourgeoisie. For at that time the difference between Citizens and Bourgeois did not existR1 and everyone could equally attain offices. Nevertheless there were inhabitants who were not bourgeois; newcomers were not supposed at first to share the rights of the children of the house. But the sons of the inhabitants became bourgeois by their birth, and the word native6 was no more known than that of citizen.
Sometimes even the inhabitants entered into the general Council, above all when it was composed only of heads of families; for then all those who were heads entered it indiscriminately. But if the people was hardly jealous of its exclusive rights, it was very much so of its franchises because it did not lose its rights by sharing them, whereas the slightest inroad on its franchises was one on its liberty. Rights were for the community, the franchises belonged to persons, it is by them that each enjoyed his belongings in peace and slept in safety under his roof.
The various articles of these franchises are expressed in several declarations of the Bishops and notably in that of Ademarus Fabri in 1387. This Document, authentic and regarded by the bourgeoisie of Geneva as the foundation of its liberty, contains a large number of articles that are trivial, but there are some extremely important ones in it. In it the Bishop declares that he is only gathering together or confirming franchises so old that there is no memory to the contrary, he confirms them in such a way that non-usage cannot prescribe against them and that he leaves neither to his successors nor to anyone the right of revoking them. For them to be abolished it would be necessary for the People of Geneva to renounce them by an act as solemn as the one by which they are ensured of them.
The Vidomne, Vice Dominus, officer of the Bishop, receiving orders from him, judging in his name, was nevertheless subject to the Duke of Savoy, named by him, bearing his arms and occupying his castle on the Island. One conceives how under cover of this equivocal State the Dukes of Savoy, little by little making the vidomne to be considered as their own officer, finally passed themselves off as sovereigns in Geneva.
But one does not conceive at first how the Duke named an officer of the Bishop. The vidomnate, whose origin is very obscure, pledged itself, sold itself, and passed from hand to hand like an inheritance. Now it appears that at first this office belonged to the counts of the Genevese. It was pledged for sixty livres to Bishop Humbert de Grammont, it is not known by whom. Bishop Pierre de Sessons wanted to cede it for thirty livres to Pierre de Confignon, who was laying claim to it by right of inheritance, but the Chapter was opposed to it. In 1285, Amé 5, count of Savoy, having entered a league with the city against the count of the Genevese, seized the castle of the Island and that office which was afterward ceded to him in fief by the Bishop Guillaume de Conflans for the expenses of the war, which could not be paid to him. This is how the vidomnate passed into the house of Savoy.
The City had no magistracy for life, but every year the people assembled in general council took back the powers it had given and entrusted them anew to whomever it pleased, and the depositaries of these powers were called syndics.
The Syndics have always been four in number elected annually by the people to be its procurators and to act in its name in all the community’s business. Every year upon leaving office they reported on their administration in general council, standing up and bare-headed in front of the assembly, which was wearing hats and seated.
Their power was great, as will be said below; it is also one of the characteristics of Democracy that the more free the people is, the more the authority of the leaders it elects ought to be extended. Each carried a black stick decorated with silver as a sign of his dignity. These sticks were extremely respected. This custom appears old. Leti says that these sticks were invented in 1450 on the occasion of a procession in which, since all the bodies had some distinctive mark, the canon Montelli imagined this one for the syndics. Although rather an enemy of the Clergy, this author had a singular taste for ecclesiastical ceremonies. The syndics always took them when it was a question of pacifying some insurrection and often the sight of this scepter alone impressed more than the magistrate who was carrying it.
Sometimes syndics were removed from office, even all four of them were in 1519. But that was never done except with violence and in an illegal manner. A syndic cannot be removed from office without giving him a trial, and during the year of his reign—this word is consecrated by custom at Geneva and they say, “the reigning syndics”—he cannot lose his place except with his head.
A Treasurer and a secretary were also elected in general Council, and since these offices involved no jurisdiction, the people gave them for three years and sometimes confirmed them for three more.
The Syndics had Councilors or assessors of their choice, who had only an advisory voice: for, not being named by the people, they were nothing for it but simple private men without Tribunal, without jurisdiction, without authority. Each Syndic chose four or five of them from among the citizens and their functions ended with his. Sometimes there were sixteen of them, sometimes eighteen, sometimes twenty. Their number was not fixed and depended absolutely on the will of the Syndics. Nevertheless since they were the elite of the citizens and they acquired experience in business from their function, it very often happened that the newly elected Syndics kept the councilors of their predecessors. In this way little by little their positions became permanent. Henri called l’Espagne was the first councilor for life in [1487]7 but he was elected in general council.
After having made known the three principal jurisdictions among which the administration was divided, it remains for me to state what this division was and in what each department consisted.
All civil cases passed to the tribunal of the vidomne with the possibility of appeal and they were pleaded and judged summarily in common language, without writings or formal pleading; afterward they passed by appeal to the official, then in things important to Vienna to the metropolitan and even to Rome, very inconvenient appeals that, having become too frequent, were one of the motives for the Reformation.
The vidomne had two canons and four citizens of his choice as assistant judges in his tribunal. He could pass as sentence some small fines, up to sixty sous, one third of which belonged to him.
The syndics, assisted by four citizens named by the former, were sole judges in criminal cases and they alone could order torture. The vidomne had custody of prisoners and it does not even seem that the city had any prisons of its own. After the expulsion of the Bishop, the Bishop’s prisons were made into those of the city, which leads me to presume that it did not have any previously. After having prepared the trial with the assistant judges mentioned, the syndics alone judged the guilty in the midst of the people, on a tribunal set up in the street, and then delivered him to the vidomne, who had the judgment executed in the city when the penalty did not go as far as death; but when it was a question of the extreme penalty, the Vidomne had the condemned man led out of the city and delivered to the castellan of Gaillard, reading him the sentence that the castellan had executed. As sovereign, the Bishop not only had the right of pardoning but that of removing to himself both civil and criminal cases before they were judged.
With regard to Ecclesiastics, they were not under the jurisdiction of the vidomne nor even under that of the syndics; as for criminal jurisdiction, they depended on a judge established by the Bishop who was called the Judge of excesses, from whom the matter was brought to the Episcopal council if it was serious.
The civil order was divided among the three jurisdictions, but the syndics had the greatest share in it. The protection of the city and the right of imprisoning belonged to them alone during the night; during the day this right belonged to the bishop, to the vidomne, or to both, for this article is not very clear. The walls of the city, the gates, the towers, the artillery, the munitions, the bourgeois militias, and in general everything that pertained to the right of arms was also in the department of the syndics, and the fourth of them had the particular direction of it as the first had that of the civil government.
Because of these franchises, one could not either arrest or detain in the city and the neighborhood any citizen, bourgeois, inhabitant, or juryman, except in a judicial manner based on a denunciation that was formal and not ex officio. If one of them was exposed to some violence, from whatever side it came, everyone was permitted and prescribed to protect him or deliver him from it by force, even to close the Gates, to tighten the chains, and to seize the aggressors. Nor could one cite any of said citizens and Bourgeois outside of the city, not even by authority of the Bishop, and if one of them was arrested out of the neighborhood neither the Bishop nor his Council could judge the affair except with the assistance of the citizens. Neither the Bishop nor his vidomne could inflict any personal punishment on any delinquent for the case of rebellion, but could only impose a fine, which could not surpass sixty gros. One could neither deliver a prisoner nor bring him out of the city without formal consent of the citizens. They alone, presiding through their syndics, could order torture and they were obliged to be present. Finally the rate of the price of commodities belonged to citizens alone. One could not impose any tax without their consent. No one’s goods were subject to confiscation, and everything that was not specified by the franchises was supposed to be judged by Roman law.
In addition to all these Jurisdictions, the Dukes of Savoy sometimes exercised one of them in the city over their subjects but always by a particular commission from the Bishop and the citizens, which—being for a term—needed to be renewed every time these princes wished to exercise anew the same jurisdiction.
The expenses of administration were not great either on the part of the Bishop, who paid his ecclesiastical officers by means of benefices and his Vidomne by means of some rights, or on the part of the city, which paid wages to only six magistrates and, having no regular Troops, had almost no other expense than the upkeep of the walls of the city and public buildings. The revenues destined to this use were those of Customs, two thirds of which belonged to the Bishop and the other third to the city.
Nevertheless there did not fail to be several sorts of rights independent of the ecclesiastic revenues that yielded a good profit to the Bishop and of which the city also had some part, such as lods and fishing.
Although the Diocese of Geneva was very extensive, the city’s territory was very small, or to state it more accurately it was nothing; for the private individuals had land, but the city had no power outside its walls. Everything depended on the castles that surrounded it and these very numerous castles belonged to the Bishop, to the counts of Geneva, to the counts of Savoy, and to other lords who looked unfavorably upon a free city and did not treat the inhabitants very considerately.
The Genevans, as if imprisoned in their walls, depended on their neighbors for their subsistence; these neighbors, being precisely the ones who had undertaken to enslave them, were not inclined to facilitate the extraction of commodities for them; in spite of treaties, the dukes of Savoy often interdicted it and perhaps would never have permitted it if it had been less useful to their subjects. It is to this difficulty of subsisting that one must attribute the famines and plagues that so often desolated the city before it had public storehouses and before the importation of provisions was more consistently free because of more secure treaties.
It is not possible for Geneva ever to be truly free because it cannot be self-sufficient and because it will always be at the discretion of someone else for its subsistence. Knowing that the Savoyards cannot do without them in order to pay their tax, the Genevans think that the dependence disappears because it is reciprocal; in which they deceive themselves because it is easier to do without money than without bread.
Geneva was so extremely at the Discretion of the Dukes of Savoy that it was not possible for them not to have some rights over her. They acquired real ones by bringing about and seizing upon all favorable occasions. They lost them by rushing too much to abuse them.
They classified their pretensions under several headings all of which were related to the sovereignty of Geneva.
1. As replacements for the rights of the Counts of Geneva whose heirs they were.
2. As vicars of the Empire.
3. As established on their authority by various bulls of the Emperors and even of the Popes.
4. As assignees of the Bishops with regard to temporal matters.
5. Finally as acknowledged by the Genevans themselves by the fact of a long possession as much on their own authority as by the assignment made to them by the Duke of Zeringhen of the one that he had obtained from the Emperor.
1. As to the first point, which lays down as a fact the sovereignty of the former counts of Geneva, they said they were replacements for these Princes through the sale that Odo de Villars, last count of Geneva, had made to Amé VIII of all his rights for the sum of 800 golden marcs.
2. As to the second, they adduced various bulls of the Emperors who established the counts of Savoy as vicars of the Empire on this side as well as that side of the mountains, in a number of which Geneva was specifically named, and notably that of Charles IV of August 18, 1356, which declares that the appeals of cases in the City of Geneva must be brought to the count of Savoy in his capacity as Vicar of the Empire as if it was to the Emperor himself, and that of Maximilian in 1501, of Charles V in 1527, 1530, which all confirm to the Dukes of Savoy the Vicarage of the Empire with mandates to the Bishop, to the syndics, and to the citizens to acknowledge these princes and to obey them in this capacity.
3. As to the third point, they cited an act of October 14, 1423, by which the Emperor Sigismond conveyed to count Amedée of Savoy the county of Geneva, which had reverted to the Empire by the death of the last count, another act of May 29, 1424, by which the same Emperor removed from the Prince of Orange all equality of rights with the count of Savoy on the subject of said county. And another act of Charles V of December 4, 1528, by which he ordered the Bishop and the Citizens of Geneva to obey the Duke of Savoy as their Prince.
[4.] As proof of the fourth article they adduced the surrender made in 1513 by the Bishop Jean de Savoy to Duke Charles of the temporal power of the Bishopric, approved in 1515 by Pope Leon X and rendered even more authentic by that of the Bishop Pierre de la Baume in [1523].
And as to the exercise of their sovereignty in Geneva they said they had enjoyed it peacefully and legitimately both from the consent of the Bishops and from that of the Syndics and Citizens, sometimes even at their own demand, making use of royal rights, possessing a fortified castle in the city, establishing Governors, officers, sergeants there, administering justice there through their vidomne, setting up their armories there, coining money there, making their public entrances there, holding their court and their council there, and in a word conducting themselves as sovereign Princes in everything there, not only without any opposition, but with the tacit and formal assent of the Bishop, of the people, and of the magistrates.
It always appears peculiar to me to ask a free people why it is free. It is as if one asked a man who has his two arms why he is not one-armed. The right to liberty is born from itself, it is the natural state of man. This is not the case for domination, its right needs to be proved when it exists. When it no longer exists, it no longer has any right.
Thus the Genevans had only to respond to the Dukes of Savoy: You are, you say, the legitimate sovereigns of our fathers. So be it, go then to rule over our Fathers, as for us we are8 born free and we wish to remain so.
That is what they also did say through their behavior; through their writings they said in addition:
1. That Geneva had always been a free and imperial city, acknowledged as such by the Emperors and other sovereigns of Europe, without excepting even the Counts and Dukes of Savoy.
2. That the counts of the Genevese, having never been sovereigns, could not transmit to others a right that they themselves did not have.
3. That the vicarage of the Empire did not at all remove from States that took over from the Empire the sovereignty that they previously enjoyed.
4. That neither the Emperors nor the Popes, being unable to give what did not belong to them, had themselves revoked these abusive donations.
5. That the Bishops of Geneva never had the power to alienate their sovereignty, that this alienation, contrary to their oath, of the rights of the city expressly acknowledged and confirmed by them and even to Papal bulls, was illegitimate and void.
6. And as to the fact, the Genevans denied that the Princes of Savoy ever exercised a sovereign authority in the city, but only some acts of violence proven illegitimate by the very declarations of the Princes who did them.
[1.] To establish their first assertion, they adduced their alleged ancient name of Colonia equestris,9 an inscription on stone, an imperial eagle, engraved over the portal of their Church, and other proofs of similar stuff more capable of harming their case than of supporting it; but in ages of ignorance people always have a rage for imaginary antiquities. The Genevans believed they could not be free unless they had always been so.
[2.] That the counts of Genevese had never been sovereigns of Geneva is proven by their own declarations at all times, by the transactions they had completed with the Bishops, by the homages they had rendered to them. All that is founded on authentic acts from the one of 1124 up to the one of 1346.
And as proof that neither the Duke nor even the Bishop had ever had a Governor in Geneva, they cited the nomination the latter made in 1518 of Master De Salleneuve as his temporal lieutenant, and which the citizens rejected, saying that it was a new and unheard of thing and that they had never had any other governor than their Bishop. Nevertheless Master Sorlin was subsequently acknowledged as lieutenant of his brother Pierre de la Baume.
[3., 4.] The third and fourth Articles are proved both by the example of Italy, of which the Dukes of Savoy had not become sovereign even though they were vicars of the Empire, and by the express revocation made of said vicarage over the City of Geneva by the Emperors Charles IV and Sigismond and by Popes Gregory XII and Sixtus IV as having been obtained by surprise and invalid, since the Emperors could not dispose of someone else’s property, nor despoil of a dependent sovereignty of the Empire those to whom it belonged in order to give it others.R2
5. The Alienation of sovereignty by the Bishop was contrary to right, because this sovereignty did not belong to the Bishop but to the Bishopric, and one did not dispose of an elective sovereignty as one does of one’s patrimony. Moreover, a similar alienation, having been censured by the college of Cardinals as contrary to the constitutions of the Church, could not be adduced as legitimate by a Catholic Prince, since that was simultaneously to admit and reject the right that established it.
6. That the Dukes of Savoy would never have exercised sovereignty in Geneva is proved by the records of the city and of the Bishopric, where the royal rights had always belonged to the Bishop. He alone had enjoyed that of coining money and that of pardoning and the Dukes could not adduce an example of a similar right exercised by them in the city. If the vidomnate belonged to the Dukes of Savoy, it was as vassals of the Bishops, and that is proved by the jurisdiction itself from which one appealed to the Bishop and not to the Duke. As to the frequent sojourns that these Princes had made in Geneva, the councils they had held there, the justice they had sometimes rendered to their subjects there, it was always subsequent to requests made on their part, to permissions granted by the Bishop or by the city and to formal declarations that these permissions would be of no consequence at all and that the acts that resulted from them were from favor and not from right. So that everything that the Dukes adduced to establish their possession invincibly proved that they had never had it.
We have seen that during the Episcopacy Geneva was a free city under the authority of its Bishops, but oppressed and tormented by a powerful neighbor. In their liberty the Genevans suffered all the evils of slavery, and—what is perhaps an example unique in history—they had their own Prince as the defender of their rights and a foreign Prince as usurper.
Everything changed in the sixteenth century. Reduced almost to the last extremity by the most violent crisis, Geneva performed an act of vigor that saved it. After having shaken off the yoke of its terrible neighbor, enticed by this success, it also shook off that of the Church. Having become independent of all foreign power, is it more free than before? It would not seem that that should be a question. Nevertheless it is a question that one must not be in a hurry to pronounce upon.
The Genevans, more struck with the latter revolution than the former, usually mix them up. They believe that the expulsion of the Duke of Savoy and of his vidomne was that of the Bishop and his clergy; they are mistaken. These two revolutions have neither the same dates nor the same causes; they were very close to each other but they were very distinct, and it is important to make that distinction to see clearly the influence of each of them on the subsequent state of the Genevans.
The project of seizing hold of their city had been formed by the house of Savoy almost from its birth. It followed this project without respite for three centuries; the means were different in accordance with the various characters of the Princes but all went toward the same goal and Duke Philibert was finally quite close to attaining it when other concerns caused him to miss the moment.
The first step toward reaching it was to take up the defense of the Bishop and the City against the Count of Geneva. This well-managed step yielded them a castle in the City and the Vidomnate. Then, seeing the House of Geneva in its decline and ready to die out, they took their measures to obtain its inheritance or rather its Rights, for they had already almost entirely despoiled it of its possessions. Having joined to their pretensions those of the counts of Geneva, they put into establishing them the same vigor and the same success that they had put into combatting them. Supported from the outside by great alliances, they seized every favorable moment to obtain bulls and declarations from the Popes and the Emperors which they knew how to turn to account in spite of the revocations with which they hardly troubled themselves. It did not matter whether their titles were legitimate, it was enough for them to have some. Usurpation needs only a pretext, and a poorly founded right serves it as well as a good one. In taking their measures in this way on the outside, they did not neglect the interior of the city and their security was strengthened there day by day. The greatest obstacle came from the Bishops, much more difficult to subjugate than the counts, and whose authority—more powerful than force—defended their state better than soldiers. They adopted the course of opposing the Church to itself and the interest of the Bishop to that of the Episcopate. They won over these prelates by means of rich abbeys whose revenues corresponded to their docility, they gave advancement to their relatives, and they favored their families. This was still not enough. Since the episcopal seat was elective, what they had done for one Bishop was useless for another; they always had to begin all over again. They took care to win over the Electors also. The Chapter was composed of the nobility of the vicinity, and consequently in large part of subjects of the Duke. Through them he succeeded in making himself master of the elections. Then, having the Bishop always chosen from within his family or within his states, he lacked nothing to assure himself of it as far as it was possible and to destroy the rights of the seat by those whom he took care to place in it. Add to this that, since the city had no territory, the citizens could not acquire any land except among their neighbors; and since they did not fail to favor these acquisitions, since three quarters of the citizens’ property was in Savoy, they were very careful not to offend its sovereign, and thus they refused him nothing of what he demanded. They were content to protest that they were granting it freely and not out of duty. They asked him for a similar declaration and he never refused it. For what did it matter to him in what manner he was the master provided he became so in fact?
All these means combined, and followed with the prudence and firmness that have put the house of Savoy in the condition in which it is, seemed to assure the success of this undertaking so much that it appears surprising that it failed just when it neared its end, for it is certain that only the title of sovereign was still lacking to Duke Charles 3; he had all the authority in Geneva.
Two principal causes brought about the revolution that deprived him of it. The first came from the wars that broke out between Charles the Fifth and François the first and that, setting Italy ablaze, forced the Duke of Savoy to bring his attention to bear on that side. The other was the prosperity of the Swiss after the defeat of Charles the Bold. For, seeing themselves then in a condition to resist the Princes who made them anxious, they set themselves to making leagues not only among themselves but with their neighbors, and Geneva took advantage of this.
Thus the liberation of that city came from the wars of the Milanese and from its alliance with Fribourg and Berne, both of which were catholic at that time. Before the reformation was even an issue, Geneva was united with two free cities and was itself free. The Duke and his [vidomne] having been expelled from it, one scarcely knew that there were Lutherans in the world. Thus Religion had no part in its emancipation. If it did, this was in a very contrary sense because all the means that facilitated the establishment of the Republic came to it from the catholics and would have been lacking to it if the citizens had not been catholic. It was the Bishops who, moved by a very natural policy, put the city in a condition to shake off first the yoke of the Duke and finally their own. Wish as it might to assure itself of them, the House of Savoy could not prevent the interest of their authority being contrary to its undertakings, and the less they dared to resist it face to face, the more they needed to put a barrier between its pretensions and their rights. This barrier was the city and its privileges; that explains how one saw these privileges being extended in measure as the danger became more pressing.
This system of the Bishops, remarkable in all their conduct, is the only key to the historical account and to the facts, which, without it, offer only an inexplicable enigma. When the older Bishops resisted the counts of Geneva and Savoy with vigor and forced them to render homage to them, it was only a question of the rights of the Church: the Genevans were scarcely spoken of; but as soon as the house of Savoy disposes of the Episcopacy everything changes. The Bishop scarcely dares to show himself; it is the city that shows itself then. As soon as some Bishop feels himself strong enough to act alone, he resists by himself, the city—which he no longer needs—returns to dependency, and the citizens no longer say anything. Such was the case of Jean Louis de Savoy, so intrepid and proud, who, being too closely related to the Dukes, did not fear them at all and had his own way with them, and who, not needing to make the Genevans act, treated them with little consideration. Nevertheless it was this Prelate who founded the Republic by a treaty that he made with the Swiss in the name of the city and his own, and the Genevans were so stupid at that time that this treaty was made almost in spite of them and they did not want to make it perpetual.
All the Bishops of recent times, people of good sense in spite of their faults, followed the same maxims. They all constantly favored the city and supported its franchises in proportion to the powerlessness they felt in themselves to support their own rights. One must except from this only Jean de Savoy, vile debauched man, servile tyrant, and greedy without ambition, who, far from having the honor of being from the house of Savoy whose name he dared to bear, was only a bastard of a bishop and by his tastes perfectly supported the morals that had caused him to be born.
Pierre de la Baume, his successor and last Bishop of Geneva, was accused of inconstancy. But this so-called inconstancy was less in his character than in his situation. No Bishop more favored the city and its privileges than he did. He approved the alliance with the two cantons, he wanted to be included in it. He had himself received as Bourgeois, he gave the syndics cognizance of civil cases. Every time he acted of his own accord it was always to the profit of his subjects; but, seeing himself through his property and above all through his Abbey of Pignerol at the mercy of the Duke whose power moreover was very frightening, he was often forced to gratify him in spite of himself; still he could not avoid offending this Prince who more than once wanted to have him seized. Piere de la Baume never lost his favorable dispositions toward the Genevans, until he saw them abandoned to the new doctrine and ready to repudiate his authority. It was only then that he abandoned them. Thus it is unjust to attribute to his inconstancy fluctuations that were the product of necessity. But it is true that it sometimes pushed him to very ridiculous measures, to the point of sending two Deputies to the same diet charged with completely opposite instructions and each of which contradicted everything that the other had said.
I have said that it was a Bishop who made the first alliance with the two cities almost in spite of the Citizens; I will add that it was the one with Fribourg that saved the nascent Republic from the hands of the Duke and that forced him to leave Geneva, into which he had entered with a formidable display of force, resolved not to leave it except as acknowledged sovereign. That was the decisive moment. Having left Geneva, the Duke never re-entered it again. Having been set free in this way, at last feeling the utility of co-bourgeoisie with Fribourg, the city took advantage of it until the reformation and always found in the Fribourgeois sure friends and faithful co-bourgeois who served it with more affection, zeal, and disinterestedness than the Genevans have found since in any other ally.
Add that the establishment of the council of the two hundred, of that of the sixty, the settled form and the election of the small council, the institution of the lieutenant and of the auditors, the interdiction of the appeal to Vienna and to Rome, in sum the whole present constitution, existed before the Reformation, and you will admit that these two revolutions, far from being linked in the way people imagine, were so in an opposite sense and that the prior establishment of liberty produced that of the reformation. For, having begun to taste independence, the Genevans wished to have it whole and turned against the Church the arms it had given them against the Dukes.
Without the prior establishment of liberty, that of the reformation could not have been brought about. This latter revolution set against Geneva everything that had favored it in the former. Fribourg abandoned it, France supported it only reluctantly, the Pope did not cease sounding the tocsin against it. The Duke, charmed at no longer having the Bishop between it and him, set himself at ease in his project and, far from acting secretly, again made it into an affair of conscience in which all catholic princes ought to cooperate. From that time Geneva, supported almost solely by one ally, not less to be feared than its enemies themselves, always saw itself within an inch of its ruin until the recent treaties. All it could do in this condition was to maintain its liberty; a more favorable one was needed in order to acquire it.
Why then did Geneva reform itself? For this very thing, to affirm the liberty it had acquired before the Reformation. If Geneva had remained catholic, it is probable that it would have had the fate of Strasbourg,10 for it appears certain to me that the Dukes of Savoy would have had less of an advantage against it than they have had since the Reformation. Reformed, Geneva has remained more united to the protestant Cantons, which is the reason for circumspection on the part of France. The rights of the Bishop having been mixed up with those of the Duke, Louis XIV, in spite of his zeal, not daring to re-establish the former from fear of also re-establishing the latter, preferred to leave Geneva as it was. Thus on the one side the Reform gave more of an advantage to the house of Savoy, which already was no longer to be feared, and on the other it forced France to treat it with more consideration. By favoring the weaker and containing the stronger, it put between these two formidable neighbors precisely the equilibrium necessary to contain both of them. Geneva, which could not have freed itself except as Catholic, could hardly maintain itself except as Reformed, and that is how fortune has always made it adopt the course that was best for its preservation.
But did political liberty increase civil liberty, did the independence of the State extend to all of its members, and was the establishment of the Republic favorable or the opposite to the franchises of the Citizens? This is a question that cannot be resolved except by examining the Government that was established and comparing it with the one that had preceded it. For this I am going to take up again in a few words the historical account of the changes brought about by the revolution.
The first of these changes was the abolition of the Vidomnate, the second was the concession made to the Syndics by the Bishop of the judgment of civil cases that belonged to his officers. The competence of all civil cases had previously been divided between the vidomne and the official in such a way that neither the people nor its syndics had any sort of authority in that regard.
The city having divided itself into two factions concerning the treaty of co-bourgeoisie with Fribourg and Berne, and the Eignots (partisans of the alliance) having the advantage, the Ducals or mammelus were ill-treated, which frightened the Vidomne Verneau so much that he left the City in 1526, leaving only a secretary who did not stay there for long after him. They seized the occasion of this desertion to convey to the syndics the authority of the execution of criminal sentences, which they already alone had the right to pronounce, and to add to it that of judging civil cases, which was previously in the vidomne’s cognizance. The following year, the Bishop having conveyed to the syndics the right of judging all civil cases by a properly formal act, they thus found themselves fully invested with the two jurisdictions.
In order to put some order into the procedures, from the month of February 1529, the council of the two hundred, which will be spoken about immediately below, had named a syndic and six assistants, as many from the small council as from its own body, to make up a Tribunal that was supposed to expedite the small cases and take the place of that of the vidomne. However, since civil cases were a matter in which neither the syndics nor the council were versed at all; since the multitude of pieces of public business deprived them of the time necessary for the investigation of trials; since, moreover, this partial tribunal, not having at all been approved in general council, was not adequately authorized; the same Council of the Two Hundred resolved on September 7 of the same year to propose the fixed and irrevocable establishment of a Court of justice composed of a Lieutenant, the Syndics, and of four assistants or Auditors where justice would be administered in a summary and simple manner in accordance with the franchises. These resolutions were approved in general council, where on the 14th of the same month were elected Claude Richardet, Lieutenant, Nicolin du Crest, Girardin de la Rive, Claude Savoye and Jean Balard, Auditors. They sent a deputation to the Bishop to ask him for confirmation of this institution, which he granted secretly, not wanting the Duke of Savoy to be informed of it.
The second and more considerable change was the institution of the political orders or intermediate bodies between the general council and the syndics. I put these establishments of councils after that of courts of justice. For although the sixty and the two hundred were named previously, they did not have their fixed and precise form until two years after the institution of this Tribunal.
I have said that under the Episcopal government the small Council was a free and precarious establishment dependent almost absolutely on the choice and the will of the syndics, thus the addition of these assessors did not have as its object to diminish the power of those who named them but to clarify its usage. When it was a question of passing resolutions that required longer deliberations than could be made in general council, they formed extraordinary Councils to which the former handed over its power of acting.
Nevertheless one does not see that anything of any significance was ever done in these councils that did not pass afterward in the general council.
Notes
R1 The word citizen, which one finds in ancient acts is only a literal translation of the word cives, and has no other meaning than that of the word Bourgeois, which cannot be rendered in Latin.
R2 Letter of Charles V to the duke of Savoy of April 1, 1527, by which the Emperor orders him to give up his pretensions over Geneva (Spon, t.1, p. 409). In another directly opposed letter from the end of the same year (p. 411), there are strange variations that cast great suspicion on the authenticity of all these acts, which might very well have been fabricated after the fact by one party or the other, or perhaps by both of them.