Richard Feller believed that the Dufour affair marked a gradual estrangement
between Bern and Savoy, for so long linked by Burgrechte.216 This argument is
contradicted by his own observation that the city sought to offer help to Savoy,
faced with the depredations of foreign troops, by facilitating an alliance with the
VIII old cantons, provided that its own Burgrecht with Savoy continued to take
precedence.217 It would be more accurate to say that a geopolitical reorientation
towards the western Romandie was under way, in which Bern had closer contact
with Solothurn than with Fribourg. Despite the treaty of Senlis in 1493 Bern
could not be confident that France had abandoned its designs upon the Jura.
In 1495 Bern had stood virtually alone in opposing a Swiss alliance with King
Charles VIII of France,218 and was still refusing to sign nearly a year later.219 Given
the Franche-Comté’s role as shuttlecock between France and the Empire the cantons
made numerous efforts at Confederal diets to secure their own strategic-commercial
interests by seeking a treaty of neutrality for the county. The first overtures had
already been made before Senlis, but they were undermined by periodic sorties.
During the Italian Wars Bern had sought to win the cantons for a western campaign
into the Franche-Comté in 1511, but they rightly feared the danger of a second
front being open up; only Solothurn offered any support.220 Two years later an
expeditionary force from Bern and Fribourg launched another attack, though it
petered out, having barely reached the Franche-Comté.221 In the interim a truce
had been concluded, but it took another decade before a more permanent agreement
on its neutrality was concluded.222
That left Neuchâtel as the Achilles heel of Swiss diplomacy in the west. In 1498
King Maximilian was planning to grant Neuchâtel—it was an imperial fief223—to
a trusted lieutenant, Guillaume de Vergy, marshal of the Franche-Comté, as a
216 Feller, Geschichte Berns, 1, 511. 217 Feller, Geschichte Berns, 1, 524.
218 EA III, 1, 495 (no. 522) (Nov. 1495); Feller, Geschichte Berns, 1, 452 f., 460, 467. Bern was
seconded by Schwyz and Obwalden.
219 EA III, 1, 513–14 (no. 543: a) (Sept. 1496). 220 Feller, Geschichte Berns, 1, 519.
221 Paquier, Pays de Vaud, 2, 231. The army marched through the Vaud, ransoming Payerne (des-
pite its Burgrechte with both cities!), then headed for Yverdon and the Jougne pass.
222 Rudolf Maag, Die Freigrafschaft Burgund und ihre Beziehungen zu der schweizerischen
Eidgenossenschaft vom Tode Karls des Kühnen bis zum Frieden von Nymwegen (1477–1678) (Zürich,
1891), 48; Braun, Eidgenossen, 285. The treaty was regularly renewed.
223 Or, to be precise, it was a fief of the house of Chalon-Arlay, who held it as an arrière-fief from
the Empire. Reutter, Comté de Neuchâtel, 113.