Conclusion to Part II 167
read as a straightforward Protestant manifesto, for the Valais communes, resolutely
Catholic, were invoked twice as Bern’s accomplices. The question of sovereign rights
in the Vaud—the conflict with Fribourg—is ignored and the city itself nowhere
mentioned (though the real wrangling was yet to come). A clue to its audience may
be given by the mention of the long-serving Spanish Habsburg governor of Milan,
Antonio de Leyva. In early 1536 the Habsburgs had had some temporary success in
reining in the French advance in Piedmont, which subsequently cleared the way for
Charles V’s invasion of Provence in July 1536.812 Bern undoubtedly wished to avoid
giving the impression of taking sides, hence its friendly tone towards the Milanese
governor and its warning that cisalpine Savoy, come what may, was lost to France
quite independently of Bern’s invasion of the Vaud.813 In short, Bern was indicating
that its occupation of the Vaud need not disturb the international balance of power
and that it was not acting against the Catholic cantons, who entertained cordial
relations with the emperor.
The consensus among Swiss historians, from the nineteenth century to the present
day, is that the conquest of the Vaud fulfilled a predeterminate intention on the
part of Bern which it had harboured since its initial victories in the Burgundian
Wars. From this perspective the Bernese invasion was ‘less a conquest than a
confirmation’; indeed, it was once seen as a ‘liberation from foreign tutelage rather
than a conquest’.814 In particular, the common lordships established in the wake
of the Burgundian Wars secured Bern and Fribourg a lasting territorial stake in the
Vaud.815 While that was incontrovertibly the case, they underscore the fact that
there were two players in the game: however much attention is focused on Bern’s
motives, Fribourg had territorial ambitions of its own in the Vaud, not least its
desire to gain access to Lake Geneva (hence its desperate efforts to cling on to
Vevey).816 From its Burgrecht with Geneva in 1519 to its rescue of the city in 1525
and then the joint mobilization with Bern to break the Savoy blockade of Geneva
in 1530,817 Fribourg was always an active partner, at times indeed the driving
812 Mallett and Shaw, Italian Wars, 232–3.
813 Bern reassured Charles V that it would not allow the passage of troops through its territory to
France, or supply mercenaries to the French king. In mid-June 1536 the Bernese Great Council
declared that it wished to retain the Vaud, but avoid any involvement in the Franco-Habsburg conflict.
Jacques Freymond, ‘Les relations diplomatiques de Berne avec François 1er et Charles-Quint’,
Schweizer Beiträge zur Allgemeinen Geschichte, 3 (1945), 210–28, here at 213–14.
814 Georges-André Chevallaz, ‘Exposé au Colloque International du 5e Centenaire de la Bataille
de Morat’, in La Bataille de Morat. Un événement suisse d’histoire européenne entre le Moyen Âge et les
temps modernes 1476–1976 (Fribourg/Bern, 1976) [Archiv des Historischen Vereins des Kantons Bern,
60 (1976)], 13–18, here at 17: Aussi bien l’entrée des Bernois en 1536, fort différente des incursions
pillardes et sanglantes du temps des guerres de Bourgogne, fut-elle moins une conquête qu’une con-
firmation... ; l’entrée des Bernois devait-elle paraître libération d’une tutelle étrangère, bien plutôt
que conquête.
815 See the discussion on Stettler’s judgement, following de Gingins-La Sarra, in Chapter 16.
816 Niquille, ‘Quand Fribourg voulait’, 340: Le plan de Fribourg était... solidement établi:
il voulait une portion du Léman, s’étendant de Vevey à Montreux, et le chemin pour y arriver. In other
words, it sought to take control of the northern Chablais to prevent encirclement by Bern from its
mandement of Aigle.
817 It is striking that Catherine Santschi, as a Genevan historian, is in no doubt that any repeat of
Savoy’s blockade would lead to the Vaud falling to both cities: [the Vaud] sera remis en toute propriété
à Berne et à Fribourg [despite Fribourg’s Catholicism]. Santschi, ‘Genève’, 39.