94 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
Arsent, who had just been executed for abetting the flight of a notorious condot-
tiere from the city.206 But Dufour’s resources were being steadily eaten up by his
legal battle to gain restitution of his property in Annecy and compensation for
wrongful dismissal. As a result, he was compelled to pawn his wife’s jewelry, includ-
ing a gold chain valued at 900 fl, which led to their estrangement.207 She appears
to have retreated to Solothurn, proclaiming her intention of pursuing her own
personal property in Annecy. The Solothurn council thought she had been driven
to the brink of a nervous breakdown and urged Fribourg to order Dufour to restore
(i.e. redeem) her jewellery.208
By then Dufour had succeeded in cutting a figure in Fribourg society. He was
friendly with the famous humanist Peter Falck,209 even inviting him to a banquet
in Arsent’s former house, and married his daughter Giranda into a wealthy Fribourg
family.210 He died in 1513 and was buried in the Franciscan church.211 The guard-
ian of his children reached a settlement with Duke Charles which assured their finan-
cial survival. From that provision a handsome altar was erected in Dufour’s memory
in the church.212 The children also received a one-off donation under the will of
the Bernese councillor Ludwig von Erlach, drawn up in 1522, who seems to have
known Dufour well.213
What are we to make of the Dufour affair? Historians have been baffled by it. How
could Bern and Fribourg have colluded in what was patently a gross deception—
unless Dufour’s venerable and cordial contacts with the two cities caught them
off-guard or blinded them to his duplicity? Dufour, for all his dishonesty, was
neither a lunatic nor a buffoon. Much of what Dufour said in defence of his actions
was, after all, based on events which were not fictitious. Thus emboldened, Dufour
decided to push his luck with the other cantons, knowing that the cash would be
welcome, though the inflationary scale of the second and third forged testaments
must have caused many jaws to drop; perhaps Dufour sensed the bigger the lie the
more likely it was to be believed, or else that his fraud would descend into a shame-
less display of horse-trading. There is no reason why he should have deliberately
sought to sow discord between the two cities and the other cantons, especially
since, as we have seen, he lived out his last years in Fribourg, ostensibly as an
honoured citizen.
206 Castella, Histoire, 212. The condottiere was Georg Supersaxo, an erstwhile official of bishop
Matthias Schiner of Sion, a papal partisan, who had gone over to France and was being sheltered in
Fribourg by Arsent, the leading pro-French councillor. HLS, s.vv. Arsent, Franz; Supersaxo, Georg.
207 Simon-Muscheid, ‘Jean Furno’, 289–90.
208 AEF, Missivale 5, p. 222 (Feb. 1511). 209 HLS, s.v. Falck, Peter.
210 Stephan Gasser, Katharina Simon-Muscheid, and Alain Fretz, Die Freiburger Skulptur des 16.
Jahrhunderts. Herstellung, Funktion und Auftraggeberschaft, 1: Text (Petersberg, 2011), 158; Franz
Adolf Moser, Ritter Wilhelm von Diesbach, Schultheiss von Bern 1442–1517 (Muri/Bern, 1930), 173.
211 Castella, Histoire, 213; Simon-Muscheid, ‘Jean Furno’, 290.
212 Gasser, Freiburger Skulptur, 158. In early 1515 Solothurn lodged a request for payment of
1100 fl plus interest on behalf of Dufour’s children. SASO, Missiven 6, p. 9 (Feb. 1515).
213 Hans-Ulrich von Erlach, 800 Jahre Berner von Erlach. Die Geschichte einer Familie (Bern, 1989),
- His testament is in the Erlach family archive in SABE.