The Grand Council met before daybreak on Monday, April 4. The mamelukes made an excuse for the night affair: it was no doubt a patrol of cavalry which had advanced too far. But Marti did not conceal the danger: ‘The duke is at your gates with his whole army,’ he said: ‘if you comply with his demands, he told me you would be satisfied with him; if not, he will enter by force this very afternoon. Make a virtue of necessity; or, at the least, send him a deputation.’ The syndics started for Gaillard immediately. The duke received them most graciously and affectionately. ‘I will enter Geneva with none but my ordinary retinue,’ he told them; ‘I will take only five hundred footmen for my guard and dismiss all the rest of my army. I will do no injury either to the community or to individuals, and my stay shall not be long.’ His Highness made so many promises and oaths that entrance was at last yielded to him. When this resolution of the council was known, the indignant patriots threw away their arquebuses; all laid down their arms, and a profound dejection came over men’s minds. Cries of vexation and of sorrow were heard, but there still lingered here and there a hope that God would finally deliver the city.[230] On the morning of Tuesday, April 5, the duke set all his army in motion. _All!_... When they heard of this, the Genevans hastened to remonstrate with him. ‘My people will only pass through Geneva,’ he answered; ‘fear nothing, but open your gates.’--‘Certainly,’ added some mamelukes; ‘be easy; they will come in at one gate and go out at another.’ The triumph of violence and craft was about to be achieved. A people, too simple and confiding, were now to be crushed under the feet of a powerful prince and of his numerous satellites. All the gates were opened, and those which had been walled up were broken down. The huguenots, who had voted unhesitatingly against the admission of Charles into the city, looked on with indignation at this sad sight; but they were determined to be present to the end at the humiliation of Geneva. Bonivard was the most provident; he took the alarm: he had no culverins now in his priory, and he could not have resisted the Savoy army with his ten monks. ‘Consent to the duke’s entrance ... what madness!’ he exclaimed. ‘Certainly those who know _his honesty_, of whom I am one, are aware of what will happen.’ And this, in Bonivard’s opinion, was, that he would be the first victim sacrificed by the duke, and that there would be many others. ‘Wishing,’ he tells us, ‘to be wiser and cleverer than the rest,’ he hastily escaped into the Pays de Vaud. Berthelier, who was more exposed than his friend, and who saw clearly his end approaching, was not frightened. He knew that the defenders of law and liberty serve their cause by their deaths as well as by their lives, and determined to await the attacks of Charles and the bastard.[231] CHAPTER XVIII. THE ARMY OF SAVOY IN GENEVA. (APRIL AND MAY 1519.)