164 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
Gex, various Vaud communes, and the lands in the western Chablais.798 Of Fribourg
there was no mention. In fact, the Treaty of Lausanne, signed between Bern and
Duke Emmanuel Philibert in 1564, confirmed the restoration of the Pay de Gex,
the Chablais, and the bailiwicks of Ternier and Gaillard south of the lake to Savoy,
but left the Vaud in the hands of Bern and Fribourg. Further pockets of territory
were restituted by the Treaty of Thonon in 1569.799
The losses were substantial. The Valais communes had to surrender the eastern
Chablais which, at 580 km2, constituted seventy per cent of its entire territory.
Bern’s loss of the western Chablais and the Pay de Gex stripped it of 1100 km2
of territory (around thirty-six per cent of its gains), leaving a territory which,
at just under 8000 km2,800 remained not only the largest city-state in the Swiss
Confederation by a long chalk but also the largest north of the Alps. The tertium
gaudens was Fribourg which, while barely having fired a shot, not only doubled the
size of its city-state but lost not an iota of it, even if its ambition to reach Lake
Geneva had been thwarted.
And what of Geneva, now stranded as an enclave within Savoy territory? Jacques
Freymond argued that neither Bern nor France had abandoned the notion of seizing
Geneva.801 Older accounts (and some modern) claim that Bern had conquered
Geneva ‘en liaison avec une armée française’, an interpretation of events which plays
fast and loose with the truth.802 Nevertheless, Geneva was able to exploit a fluid
situation in the aftermath of 1536 to carve out new administrative districts in the
Chablais and Gex.803 These would, of course, have proved an insufficient buffer
against a sustained assault. The subjection of the city of Konstanz in 1548 came as
a severe shock to Geneva. Although Bern renewed its Burgrecht with the city, that
was hardly much protection against a determined aggressor. Desperately Geneva
urged Bern to sponsor its admission as a full member of the Swiss Confederation.804
These overtures were repeated in 1550 and 1552, but each time ran up against the
opposition of the Catholic cantons.805 Even if they had succeeded, it is hard to see
how the other cantons could have come to Geneva’s aid in any emergency.
Under Emmanuel Philibert’s successor, Duke Charles Emmanuel, a treaty was
finally signed in 1584 in which Bern and Zürich recognized Geneva’s independence,
shortly to be joined by France.806 But there was still trouble ahead. In 1588 Charles
Emmanuel had seized the marquisate of Saluzzo from France. In the Treaty of Lyon
in 1601 France renounced its claim to Saluzzo but received as compensation Bugey,
798 Jacques Cart, ‘Le traité de 1564 et la rétrocession au duc de Savoie du Chablais et du Pays de
Gex’, Revue Historique Vaudoise, 8 (1900), 173–83, here at 182.
799 HLS, s.v. Lausanner Vertrag. 800 Meyer, ‘Geographische Voraussetzungen’, 346.
801 Freymond, ‘Politique’, 222. 802 See Monter, ‘De l’évêché’, 134.
803 Santschi, Crises et Révolutions, 18–19. 804 Monter, Calvin’s Geneva, 81–2.
805 EA IV, 1e, 272–4 (no. 105: I) (April 1550); 594–5 (no. 196) (Jan. 1552).
806 Catherine Santschi, ‘Genève et les Suisses. Mariage arrangé ou mariage d’amour?’, in Wolfgang
Kaiser, Claudius Sieber-Lehmann, and Christian Windler (eds), Eidgenössische ‘Grenzfälle’: Mülhausen
und Genf/En marge de la Confédération: Mulhouse et Genève (Basler Beiträge zur Geschichtswissenschaft,
172 (Basel, 2001), 25–57, here at 41; Robert Oresko, ‘The Question of the Sovereignty of Geneva
after the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis’, in Helmut G. Koenigsberger and Elisabeth Müller-Luckner
(eds), Republiken und Republikanismus in Europa der Frühen Neuzeit (Schriften des Historischen
Kollegs: Kolloquien, 11) (Munich, 1988),77–99, here at 78–80.