"consubstantiation" as Luther's followers insisted upon. [Sidenote: Geneva secures its independence.] The same complicated political motives that led Francis to relax his excessive rigor against the Protestants of his realm, in order to avoid provoking the anger of the German princes, prompted him to assist in securing the independence of Geneva, which, at the time, he little dreamed would so soon become the citadel of French Protestantism. After a prolonged contest, the city on the banks of the Rhône had shaken off the yoke of its bishop, and had bravely repelled successive assaults made by the Duke of Savoy. The first preachers of the Reformation, Farel and Froment, after a series of attempts and rebuffs for romantic interest inferior to no other episode in an age of stirring adventure, had seen the new worship accepted by the majority of the people, and by the very advocates of the old system, Caroli and Chapuis. If the grand council had thus far hesitated to give a formal sanction to the religious change, it was only through fear that the taking of so decided a step might provoke more powerful enemies than the neighboring duke. The latter, being fully resolved to humble the insubordinate burgesses, had for two years been striving to cut off their supplies by garrisons maintained in adjoining castles and strongholds; nor would his plans, perhaps, have failed, but for the intervention of two powerful opponents--Francis and the Swiss Canton of Berne. [Sidenote: with the assistance of Francis I.] Louise de Savoie was the sister of Duke Charles. Her son had a double cause of resentment against his uncle: Charles had refused him free passage through his dominions, when marching against the Milanese; and, contrary to all justice, he persistently refused to give up the marriage portion of his sister, the king's mother. Francis avenged himself, both for the insult and for the robbery, by permitting a gentleman of his bedchamber, by the name of De Verez, a native of Savoy, to throw himself into the beleaguered city with a body of French soldiers. [Sidenote: and the Bernese.] While Geneva was thus strengthened from within, the Bernese, on receipt of an unsatisfactory reply to an appeal in behalf of their allies, came to their assistance with an army of ten or twelve thousand men. Discouraged by the threatening aspect his affairs had assumed, Charles relaxed his grasp on the throat of his revolted subjects, and withdrew to a safe distance. His obstinacy, however, cost him the permanent loss not only of Geneva, but of a considerable part of his most valuable territories, including the Pays de Vaud--a district which, after remaining for more than two hundred and fifty years a dependency of Berne, has within the present century (in 1803), become an independent canton of the Swiss confederacy.[389] [Sidenote: Calvin the apologist of the Protestants.]