The atrocities committed by the Savoyard soldiers were numerous and terrible. We read of one prisoner of war being skinned alive; of another who, with his feet amputated, was driven about on a donkey with his face to the tail, and then flung on a dunghill to die. We also read of peasants being hung up to be roasted alive over the fire-places in their own cottages. It is not wonderful that the Genevan soldiers held that this sort of thing gave them the right to retaliate, at least by pillaging, when they gained the upper hand. The wonderful thing is that, when they did pillage, M. de Bèze called them to order, and was listened to. He told them that they were degrading Geneva to the level of a brigand’s cave, and bade them make instant restitution of the plunder which they had taken from the peasantry. It is recorded that they obeyed him, and there could be no better proof that M. de Bèze was a strong man. These hostilities came to an end in 1589, owing to the intervention of Henri IV. of France; but the peril was not conjured. Baffled in the field, Duke Charles Emmanuel fell back upon treachery, and planned the adventure known to history as the Escalade. It is the most notable episode in all the Genevan annals. Fragments of scaling-ladders, kept as memorials of the ignominious failure of the enterprise, are still proudly exhibited in one of the town museums. The story must be told at length. CHAPTER XI THE ESCALADE The time was December, 1602. Duke Charles Emmanuel had secretly crossed the mountains, and established his head-quarters at Etrembières; a sufficient army had been quietly mobilized; there were 800 Savoyards, 1,000 Spaniards, 400 Neapolitans, and 4,000 Piedmontese at Bonne, La Roche, Bonneville, and other places near Geneva. The Duke had also been at pains to allay suspicion by assuring the Genevans, through his agents, that he desired nothing more than to be on friendly terms with them. But at midnight of December 12 he set his troops in motion. A storming-party of some two hundred men led the way, under the command of M. Berlonière, who had extreme unction administered to him ostentatiously before he started. The main body of 4,000 men was to follow under Lieutenant-General d’Albigni. Acting on information received, the storming-party struck the Corraterie rampart at a point where there was no sentinel on the look-out for them. They carried with them faggots and hurdles to help them over the moat, ladders that could be dovetailed together to scale the rampart with, and axes and crowbars for breaking down or forcing gates. A Scotch Jesuit, named Alexander, gave them his benediction as they climbed, and handed to every man an amulet which purported to guarantee him in the first instance against being killed, and in the second instance against being damned eternally if he were killed.