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.