he whole court of Rome
had perished. Immediately there was a rush to the bishop's palace, and a
scramble for the vacant livings in the diocese that had been held by
absentees at Rome. The bishop, delighted at such a windfall of
patronage, dispensed his favors right and left, not forgetting, says
Bonivard, to reserve something comfortable for himself in the shape of
a fat convent that had been held by a cardinal. This was Bonivard's
opportunity, and, times and the bishop having changed, he got back once
more into his cherished quarters as prior of St. Victor. The convent was
there, and the friars, but the estates that had been wont to keep them
all right royally were mostly in the hands of the duke and his minions.
It is in the effort to recover these that Bonivard shines out in his
most magnificent character, that of military hero. The campaign of
Cartigny includes the most memorable of his feats of arms.

Cartigny was an estate about six miles down the left bank of the Rhone
from Geneva, appertaining to St. Victor. "It was a chastel of
pleasaunce, not a forteresse," says our hero, who is the Homer of his
own brave deeds. But the duke kept a garrison there, and to every demand
the prior made for his place he replied that he did not dare give it up
for fear of being excommunicated by the pope. Rent-time came, and the
Savoyard government enjoined the tenants not to pay to the prior.
Whereupon that potentate declared that, being refused civil justice, he
"fell back on the law of nations."

The military resources of his realm were limited. He counted ten
able-bodied subjects, but they were monks and not liable to service. The
culverins of his uncle were gone, but he had six muskets--a loan from
the city--and there were four pounds of powder in the magazine. But this
was not of itself sufficient for a war against the duke of Savoy. He
must subsidize mercenaries.

About this time there chanced to be at Geneva a swashbuckler from Berne,
Bischelbach by name, by trade a butcher, who had found the new regime of
the Reformers at that city too strait-laced for his tastes and habits,
and had come to Geneva, with some vagabonds at his heels, in search of
adventures and a livelihood. Him did the prior of St. Victor, greatly
impressed with his own accounts of his powers, commission as
generalissimo of the forces. Second in command he set a priest, likewise
just thrown out of business by the Reformation in the North; and in a
council