At length Wednesday, 6th April, dawned, and that day was not less mournful than its predecessor. The Savoyard soldiers, forgetting that they owed their success to the scandalous violation of the most sacred promises, intoxicated alike with hatred and pride, began to show the insolence of conquerors. We know the disorders in which the undisciplined armies of that period were accustomed to indulge in cities taken by storm. The ducal soldiers, not less cruel but more fantastical, exhibited in the sack of Geneva some of those farces which the imperialists played eight years later at the sack of Rome. The citizens, taking refuge in the garrets, had given up their feather beds to the soldiers. The latter slept soundly, and next morning, to make up for the battle which had not been fought, indulged in one of a different kind. Instead of balls they flung the bolsters at each other’s heads; taking the beds for enemies, they thrust their swords up to the hilt in the feathers:--these were the hardest blows struck in this war by the soldiers of Charles III.--Then, eager to prolong their coarse jests, they shook the beds out of the windows, watching, with roars of laughter, the evolutions made by the feathers in the air. They next called for the keys of the cellars, and forming a circle round the casks, tapped them in various places, singing their loudest as they drank their fill. ‘Lastly,’ says a chronicle, ‘they pulled out the spigots, so that the cellar was filled with wine; and stumbling upstairs again into the house, they insulted everybody they met, ran shouting through the streets, made boasting speeches, and committed a thousand acts of violence.’ At Rome, the imperialists made a jest of the papacy; at Geneva, the ducal soldiers, drunk with wine and joy, trampled independence under foot and exulted over liberty. But on a sudden, an alarm was sounded: the braggarts imagined that the Genevans were going to defend themselves, and, the noisiest talkers being generally the greatest cowards, they all scampered away--some ran to the right, others to the left; many fled towards the river and hid themselves under the mills; the more cunning sought other retreats.[234] It was only a false alarm; the Count of Genevois, being displeased at their behaviour, had given it that it might serve as a lesson to the marauders.