146 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
very same day another envoy, Jean d’Estouteville, seigneur de Villebon, appeared
at St-Julien to confirm the monarch’s settled resolve to occupy Bresse and Savoy, in
which undertaking he trusted he could count on Bernese support.660 Already two
French armies were on the march, one under François II de Bourbon-Vendôme,
count of St-Pol, which was heading north from the Dauphiné into the Maurienne
towards Chambéry and Rumilly, the other under admiral Philippe Chabot, bent
upon capturing Bresse.661 At that point, the Bernese army decided to change tack.
It turned westwards to besiege the Savoy fortress of L’Ecluse, guarding a defile on
the river Rhône. On 14th February L’Ecluse surrendered, with the Bernese troops
deciding to garrison the fortress as a key to control of the western flanks.662 While
at L’Ecluse the army received a command from the French king to venture no further
into Savoy proper.663 This disposes of the notion, once commonplace, that Bern
and France acted in collusion to conquer Savoy.664
France’s conquest of Bresse, Bugey, Savoy, and Piedmont was accomplished as
swiftly as Bern’s march through the Vaud, in part because the marshal of Savoy,
René de Challant, had already given orders to evacuate Chambéry and abandon
Bourg. There was resistance in those areas worst affected by plundering troops, and
a counter-attack in Piedmont by an imperial army, for Emperor Charles V was
Savoy’s (rather Laodicean) ally.665 But Turin fell and Duke Charles was forced to
retire to Vercelli, a Savoy toehold, where he died in exile. The French invasion of
the duchy of Savoy stood in the wider struggle between Valois and Habsburg, in
which the fate of Geneva was ultimately peripheral. The city did lose part of the
bishop’s former mandement of Thiez, which was occupied by the French and
declared to be French territory in 1539,666 but the outstanding territorial disputes
were fought out between Geneva and Bern.
Meanwhile, the Bernese army retreated to the Vaud and set about besieging
Yverdon. On their way Bernese troops took oaths of submission from a string of
Vaudois nobles and levied ransoms on them. Those who resisted were punished.667
Michel Mangerod, captain of the guard at Yverdon, was helpless in his absence to
prevent the razing of his own seat of La Sarraz.668 By 26th February Yverdon had
fallen and a Bernese garrison of 200 volunteers was installed.669 With that, Hans
660 Freymond, ‘Politique’, 134–5; Santschi, Crises et Révolutions, 20.
661 Vasella, ‘Krieg Berns’, B 5, 7–8; EA IV, 1c, 634–5 (no. 385: 1) (Feb. 1536).
662 Vasella, ‘Krieg Berns’, B 99; Gilliard, Eroberung, 90 [146]. Nearby Collonges was ordered to
supply the garrison. The boundary to the west, marching with France, was marked out: 8. Aprilis
haben wir mit dem kung gemarchet, ein holtzine sul uffgricht, ann einer syten des kungs, ann der
andern unnser herren schillt geslagen.
663 Documenti di Storia Sabauda, 119; Santschi, Crises et Révolutions, 20. The army promised not
to go beyond Rumilly.
664 Freymond, ‘Politique’, 133–4.
665 Freymond, ‘Politique’, 141–4, 153–4. In late January 1536 King Francis presented Duke
Charles with a list of territories over which he claimed lordship through his mother, Louise of Savoy.
These included, however, some lands which were not part of her inheritance, some to which he had
renounced claims in 1523, and above all there was no mention of Piedmont. Ibid., 131–3.
666 Santschi, Crises et Révolutions, 40; Monter, Calvin’s Geneva, 19.
667 Vasella, ‘Krieg Berns’, B 11–14. 668 Vasella, ‘Krieg Berns’, B 14.
669 Vasella, ‘Krieg Berns’, B 16–17, 21; Gilliard, Eroberung, 99–100 [163–4]. Yverdon’s oath of
submission, taken at Grandson on 25 Feb. is in ACV, B u 15. In mid-March Yverdon was still hoping
to retain the Catholic mass.