The Romandie Reconfigured 163
north-eastwards from La Tine (the linguistic frontier). The only fly in the ointment
for Bern was Saanen and Château d’Oex. They were assigned to Bern (quite prop-
erly, given that Saanen had sealed the only Burgrecht between a rural commune and
a city at the beginning of the fifteenth century), but resolutely refused to embrace
the Reformation, just as they had done nearly thirty years earlier. That Bern did
not suppress this defiance outright is attributable to Saanen’s renewed geopolitical
importance: it abutted territory which was on the brink of being restored to
Savoy.792 But in the long run attrition wore the Saanen mountain folk down
(though many stole over the passes to attend Catholic services in the Valais).793
The reconfiguration of the Romandie began with the Burgundian Wars.
By occupying the Lower Valais the Valais communes gained 1400 km2 of territory;
Bern’s annexation of Aigle and the common lordships it administered with Fribourg
added another 1200 km2. These acquisitions made up more than a tenth of the
entire area of the Confederation. With the conquest of the Vaud sixty years later
Fribourg gained 500 km2 at the expense of Savoy and the bishop of Lausanne,
while the Valais’s control of the eastern Chablais brought it a further 840 km2.794
The biggest gainer in 1536 was of course Bern. On the eve of the conquest its
territory stretched over 6000 km2, but thereafter around 9000 km2. All told, the
reconfiguration of the Romandie brought the three victors a territorial expansion
of more than 7000 km2. That was more than the Confederates had gained by their
transalpine forays into Upper Italy: the Ticino, Val d’Ossola, Valtellin, and the
Three Parishes covered 6700 km2 (though the 1100 km2 which made up the Val
d’Ossola were lost after the defeat at Marignano in 1515).795
How stable was the reconfiguration? Many years ago Karl Meyer suggested that,
given time, Bern and the Valais communes could have consolidated their hold on
the Chablais, thereby making Lake Geneva into a mare nostrum.796 But it was not
to be. The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis between France and the Spanish Habsburgs
in 1559 rang down the curtain in a dramatic last act by restoring Duke Emmanuel
Philibert, titular ruler since Charles II’s death in 1553, to his principality of Savoy.
It was not immediately clear, however, what that would entail in practice, apart
from France vacating Savoy and Piedmont. Emperor Charles V informed the duke
in 1561 that he intended all the territories occupied by Bern, Fribourg, and the
Valais should be restored.797 But difficult negotiations followed. During talks at
Basel in 1563 Solothurn and the V Catholic cantons proposed that Bern should
return Vevey and the northern Chablais, the barony of Aubonne, the bailiwick of
792 The first intimations date from 1549. EA IV, 1e, 55 (no. 17) (March 1549).
793 Feller, Geschichte Berns, 2, 400–1.
794 Meyer, ‘Geographische Voraussetzungen’, 341, 343.
795 Meyer, ‘Geographische Voraussetzungen’, 347 n 3.
796 Meyer, ‘Geographische Voraussetzungen’, 232.
797 BA, Abschriftensammlung XIX Torino: Archivio di Stato, Negoziazioni con Svizzeri 57 (1483–
1593). Charles V to Emmanuel Philibert, Toledo, 29 April 1561: como proemando de cobrar ciertos
estados tuyos de la tierra de vaux, chablais y otros que le tienen occupados veinte y cinco annos ha los
cantons de berna, friburg y valesanos se tentó y propusó por via de amigos que se renovassen las ligas
y confederatienes antiguas... entre los predecettores del du sus estados... para proponer y facilitar con
esta la restitution de los dichos estados....