The syndics having no doubt that these old documents would be received by the bishop with the profoundest respect, quitted the hôtel de ville, carrying their venerable charters with them, which they laid before the prelate. They pointed out to him the immunities that were secured to them, and withdrew full of hope. But Pierre de la Baume did not care the least for these old papers, and would not give himself the trouble to decipher such disagreeable documents: he was in a hurry to see them restored to the cellar where they had slept so long. He intended to govern after a more modern fashion. The Reformation, on the other hand, was about to be accomplished by maintaining, in opposition to episcopal usurpation, the most lawful rights of the most ancient liberty.[755] [Sidenote: DESPOTIC PLANS.] The bishop no longer hesitated. When he had asked the general council to recognise his sovereignty, the magistrates had replied by limiting it according to the constitutions of the people. It was necessary therefore to renounce all idea of reigning with mildness, and to govern by force. Pierre de la Baume was not the first bishop excluded from his episcopal city, who had reentered it with thoughts of violence. Tales of unheard-of cruelties had been imprinted on the memory of the people. In the tenth century, the bishop of Cambray having been driven from his city by the burgesses who were exasperated against him, had returned with foreign soldiers; and these mercenaries, the ministers of his revenge, had pursued the citizens even into the churches, killing some, cutting off the hands and feet of others, putting out the eyes of some, and branding many on the forehead with a red-hot iron.[756] About two centuries later, another bishop also returning forcibly into his city, his followers had seized one of the most respected and wealthy citizens, notwithstanding the promise to spare his life, and had fastened him by the feet to the tail of a horse, which they forced into a gallop.[757] The bishop of Geneva did not purpose imitating these episcopal proceedings; manners, though rude, were softened; he meant to content himself with less. He would have the principal supporters of the Reformation and of Geneva seized, and would get rid of them simply by the sword—either in Geneva, as in the case of Berthelier, or in some lonely castle, as in the case of Levrier. Then the prince-bishop would exercise, without control and in his own way, that sovereignty which appeared to him absolutely necessary in order to stifle the protestantism of some and the independence of others.