As if starvation was not enough, the unnatural pastor surrounded Geneva with a circle of iron. His castle of Jussy to the east, at the foot of the Voirons; that of Peney to the west, on the banks of the Rhone; the Duke’s castle of Galliad to the south-west, on the heights overlooking the Arve; and to the north on the lake, the village of Versoix, at that time well defended: all these fortresses, filled with mamelukes and soldiers, hemmed in the city, and left no issue but by the lake. ‘In this way no one can leave Geneva,’ they said, ‘except at the risk of his life.’ The bishop followed the example given by dispossessed princes—nay, even by ecclesiastical authorities, and connived more or less at the brigands. Many gentlemen of those districts, returning with delight to a trade their fathers had formerly practised, kept watch in their eyries for the little merchant caravans, to pounce upon them. One day some devout catholics of Valais, on their way to France with a long file of well-laden mules, were stripped by these rough episcopals. Beyond the Fort de l’Ecluse was situated a castle—a thorough den of robbers—belonging to the Seigneur of Avanchi, ‘the cunningest and cruellest man ever known.’ Accompanied by a few savage mercenaries, he would lie in ambush near the high-road, and when travellers appeared, spring from the rocks like a wild beast, ‘tearing out the eyes of some, and cutting off the ears of others.’ D’Avanchi treated in this manner a poor tradesman who had printed some New Testaments;[645] and when the judge of the castle remonstrated with him for his cruelty, the seigneur killed him on the spot. He showed no preference, however, so far as religion was concerned. Having fallen in with some nuns one day, he graciously invited them to enter his mansion under pretence of giving them alms, and then maltreated them. The fierce and sensual wild-boar of the Jura was taken to Dôle, and there put to death by order of a catholic tribunal.[646]