More than three centuries ago, a woman saved Geneva. You can see her likeness carved from imagination on a bronze relief on a fountain on the rue de la Cité. She is also remembered by a whimsical confection—soup pots made of chocolate!

This heroine's name was Catherine Cheynel. In 1589, Geneva and the King of France waged war on Charles-Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, and occupied some of his territories. In 1602, the Duke chose the longest night of the year, between December 11 and 12, to lead 2000 troops in an attempt to take the city by scaling its walls with ladders, a tactic still known in Geneva as “l’Escalade.”

Catherine Cheynel was a French refugee. She and her husband, Pierre Royaume, were from Lyon and had arrived in Geneva in 1572 fleeing the persecution of the Huguenots that had erupted weeks earlier in the massacre of Saint-Barthélémy. On the fateful December night in 1602, she was doing typical female drudgery, preparing vegetable soup at 2 a.m., and she heard the ladders as they clattered against the city wall.

Strategically located in a dwelling just above the La Monnaie town gate, she threw her cauldron of boiling soup on the invaders, killed one of the attackers, and she then raised the alarm. There was a bloody battle. The Savoyards were repelled and didn’t try again. Part of that city wall is still standing at the very east of the Parc de Bastion.

Catherine Cheynel became a Geneva legend and popular heroine. Now, on the weekend nearest December 11-12, Geneva celebrates the "Fête de l’Escalade." People don costumes and march in parades. They visit the Escalade Fountain where a bas relief shows Catherine Cheynel giving the alarm at her window as the battle rages below. And also in honor of the feisty Catherine Cheynel, they buy soup pots made of chocolate filled with marzipan vegetables.