134 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
and the Valais communes, though Fribourg assured Bern that it could come to
Bern’s aid if need be, in accordance with its Burgrecht.559 In October that year
Fribourg and the Catholic cantons were nevertheless contemplating an alliance
with Savoy.560 Moreover, Bern had to take into account Fribourg’s sensibilities not
only over the administration of the common lordships, but also the situation of
communes in the Vaud with whom both cities had Burgrechte. A classic instance
was Payerne, which in the space of a week in June 1533 had renewed its treaties
with Bern and Fribourg.561 At that time Bern had reserved the right to encourage
Reforming preaching in the town, but in March 1535 trouble broke out when a
group of evangelicals tried forcibly to conduct a Protestant service in the town
church, despite the town council’s inclination to cling to Catholic observance and
its ties to Fribourg.562 The dispute was smoothed over, but not before Fribourg had
appealed to the bishop of Sion and the Valais communes for help, should a military
confrontation ensue.563
These were not trivial matters, but Bern had in its sights the broader inter-
national ramifications of its involvement with Geneva. Given that Savoy’s siege
of Geneva lasted two years from 1534, it may at first glance seem strange that
Bern took so long to relieve it. Many historians, of course, have been blinded by
their conviction that Bern’s condign intention all along had been to annex the
Vaud, and some have even believed that it planned to crush Geneva’s independ-
ence in a manner no less brutal than Savoy’s.564 Recently, a group of younger
Genevan historians has stressed that Bern was under pressure from the Catholic
cantons, who supported both the bishop of Geneva and Duke Charles II. They
point out that as an imperial city Bern could not lightly attack other princes of
the Empire without putting itself beyond the law and risking the ban of the
Empire (Reichsacht).565 All that is doubtless true, but it ignores the real menace:
France’s designs upon Savoy.
The French king Francis I was no less aware than Bern itself that the house of
Savoy was dilapidated, its walls crumbling, its beams rotting, its roof leaking. One
push and it would fall. The question was: into whose hands? Francis’s hostility
towards Savoy was not of recent vintage: it stretched back before the estrangement
occasioned by Duke Charles’s rapprochement with Emperor Charles V from 1524
onwards. In 1515 Savoy had obtained from the papacy the grant of two new sees,
Chambéry and Bourg-en-Bresse, though the bull was revoked the following year.
Duke Charles persisted, and offered to cede the territories of the bishops of Turin
and Geneva lying on French soil. The French monarch threatened war over the issue,
whereupon Duke Charles besought Bern, Fribourg, and Solothurn to intervene on
559 EA IV, 1c, 236 (no. 126: 1; 2) (Jan. 1534); 237–8 (no. 128: a) (Jan. 1534).
560 EA IV, 1c, 413–16 (no. 221: c) (Oct. 1534).
561 EA IV, 1c, 96 (no. 62) (June 1533); 98 (no. 63) (June 1533).
562 EA IV, 1c, 477–8 (no. 256); 478 (no. 257); 478–9 (no. 258); 479 (no. 259) (March 1535).
563 EA IV, 1c, 481 (no. 262), (March 1535). In May Fribourg renewed its Burgrecht with Payerne,
and also in June with Avenches. EA IV, 1c, 501 (no. 283) (May 1535); 502 (no. 285) (June 1535).
564 Meyer, ‘Geographische Voraussetzungen’, 343.
565 Santschi, Crises et Révolutions, 10–11.