What comforted Pierre de la Baume was the sight of Besançon Hugues at the head of the movement. That great citizen assured the bishop that the alliance with Switzerland was not opposed to his authority; and he did so with perfect honesty.[408] Hugues was simply a conservative. He desired an alliance with Switzerland in order to preserve Geneva in her present position. He desired to maintain the prelate not only as bishop, but also as prince: all his opposition was aimed at the usurpations of Savoy. But there were minds in Geneva already wishing for more. Certain citizens, in whom the new aspirations of modern times were beginning to show themselves, said that the municipal liberties of the city were continually fettered, and often crushed, by the princely authority of the bishop. Had he not been seen to favour the cruel murders which the Savoyard power had committed in Geneva? ‘The liberties of the people and the temporal lordship of the bishop cannot exist together; one or other of the two powers must succumb,’ they said. The history of succeeding ages has shown but too plainly the reasonableness of these fears. Wherever the bishop has remained king, he has trampled the liberties of the people under foot. There we find no representative government, no liberty of the press, no religious liberty. In the eyes of the bishop-prince these great blessings of modern society are monsters to be promptly stifled. Some Genevans comprehended the danger that threatened them, and, wishing to preserve the liberties they had received from their ancestors, saw no other means than by withdrawing from the ministers of religion a worldly power which Jesus Christ had refused them beforehand. Some--but their number was very small then--went further, and began to ask whether the authority of a bishop in religious matters was not still more contrary to the precepts of the Gospel, which acknowledged no other authority than that of the word of God; and whether liberty could ever exist in the State so long as there was a despot in the Church. Such were the great questions beginning to be discussed in Geneva more than three hundred years ago: the present time seems destined to solve them.