All Unquiet on the Western Front 97
reward for loyal service224 (or in lieu of unpaid wages?) in the king’s campaigns
against Dijon and Burgundy.225 Needless to say, Bern was strongly opposed.
Instead it suggested that Maximilian should grant de Vergy one of Philipp of
Hochberg’s Burgundian lordships, rather than Neuchâtel. Maximilian tried to
call Bern’s bluff by offering to sell the county of Neuchâtel to the Swiss city.226
Bern, familiar with Maximilian’s feints, demurred, knowing full well that the
other cantons would not tolerate it.
Six years later the political constellation had changed once more. In 1504
Margravine Johanna of Hochberg married Duke Louis d’Orléans-Longueville,
leaving the county dangerously exposed to French interference, despite Johanna
having renewed Neuchâtel’s separate Burgrechte with Bern,227 Solothurn,228
Fribourg,229 and Luzern230 the previous year.231 Duke Louis in fact signed his own
Burgrechte with Fribourg,232 Bern,233 and Solothurn234 between October 1504
and July 1505. That should have assured stability for some years, had it not been
for the machinations of King Maximilian, who clandestinely ordered the captain
of his welsche Garde (in effect a band of roving foreign écorcheurs), Louis de Vaudrey,
to seize the castle of Joux, a bastion commanding the defile over the Jura through
the Jougne pass, which was in the possession of Duke Louis. The French king,
Louis XII, was in high dudgeon, since he regarded Joux as a key outpost on France’s
eastern flank. It also placed the western Swiss cities in an awkward position, since
they were all allied to Duke Louis through Burgrechte. They sought to prevent
any escalation which might disrupt the salt trade. Nevertheless, Maximilian
instructed de Vaudrey to maintain a strong garrison in the castle; and even after
de Vaudrey’s death in 1511 Joux was not restored to the rulers of Neuchâtel,
Duke Louis and Margravine Johanna, until 1518 on the orders of Archduchess
Margaret of Austria.235
224 Reutter, Comté de Neuchâtel, 234.
225 Maximilian’s army is supposed to have contained 30,000 Swiss. Bonjour, Offler, and Potter,
Short History, 145. More plausible is the view that the large army contained 3000 Swiss in its ranks, as
Reutter, Comté de Neuchâtel, 234 suggests.
226 Reutter, Comté de Neuchâtel, 235.
227 EA III, 2, 233 (no. 138) (July 1503); Jules Jeanjaquet (ed.), Traités d’alliance et de combourgeoi-
sie de Neuchâtel avec les villes et cantons suisses 1290–1815 (Publications de la Société d’Histoire et
d’Archéologie du Canton de Neuchâtel, new series 1) (Neuchâtel, 1923), 205; Cuendet, Traités, 162.
228 EA III, 2, 235–6 (no. 140) (July 1503).
229 A reference to Fribourg is contained in EA III, 2, 236 (no. 141). See footnote 230.
230 EA III, 2, 236 (no. 141) (July 1503), renewing its Burgrecht with Philipp of Hochberg; EA III,
2, 127–8 (no. 64) (July 1501).
231 Reutter, Comté de Neuchâtel, 60. 232 Jeanjaquet, Traités, 223 (Oct. 1504).
233 EA III, 2, 316–17 (no. 215) (July 1505); Jeanjaquet, Traités, 228.
234 EA III, 2, 295 (no. 192) (Oct. 1504); SASO, Denkwürdige Sachen 29, fo. 129r.
235 Reutter, Comté de Neuchâtel, 84–9, 95–7; EA III, 2, 394–6 (no. 286) (Sept. 1507); 406–9
(no. 293) (Nov. 1507). SABE, Lateinische Missiven F, pp. 376, 377 (Sept. 1507); Ratsmanuale 136,
p. 3. On Louis de Vaudrey see Georges Bischoff, ‘ “Vive Osteriche et Bourgogne!” Un preux Franc-Comtois
au service de Maximilien 1er, Louis de Vaudrey’, in Paul Delsalle and Laurance Delobette (eds),
La Franche-Comté à la charnière du Moyen Âge et de la Renaissance 1450–1550 (Annales Littéraires de
l’Université de Franche-Comté, 759: Cahiers d’Études Comtoises et Jurassiennes, 67) (Besançon,
2003), 161–85, here at 180–2.