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SWITZERLAND ILLUSTRATED.
'* Oil on est parvenu & joindre la politesse iTAthenes & la simplicity de Lacedemone.”
Volt. L ’ ffist . Gen .
The history of Geneva remounts to a period of remote antiquity, and quotesthe authority of Caesar in testimony of her strength and importance as a townof the Allobroges.* Her strong position, however, was no security against thosewarlike nations who endeavoured to check the progress of Roman conquest.The town was repeatedly burnt, but as often rebuilt and extended, and appearedto acquire fresh stability and beauty from the very means employed for itsdestruction.
In the beginning of the fifth century Geneva was distinguished as the capitalof Burgundy, but passed, successively, into the hands of the Franks, the Germanemperors, the counts of Geneva , and then became the residence of prince-bishops,under whose auspices she maintained a long struggle with the neighbouringdespots, who were incessant in their efforts to crush her independence. Thepersonal sacrifices and privations to which her citizens were subjected in thesecontests were numerous and severe; but, actuated by that zeal which looks uponnothing as a sacrifice which is employed in the purchase of liberty, their self-devotion and fortitude increased in proportion to the difficulties they had toencounter. That independence, however, for which she fought, was but adespotism till the beginning of the sixteenth century, when she threw off herepiscopal allegiance, along with that of Rome , and became a republic. Fromthis period Geneva maintained a proud eminence amidst surrounding states,and was amongst the first to embrace—what she was afterwards so eminentlyzealous in consolidating—the doctrines of the reformed church. Thus regenerated,and stimulated to exertion by the possession of civil and religious liberty, shebecame the nucleus of science, the sanctuary of learned men, a safe retreat fromthe violence of persecution, and a principal strong-hold qf that great moralrevolution which the Council of Constance , by its edicts and martyrdoms, had sovainly attempted to crush.