Conclusion to Part II 169
What stiffened its resolve to turn the Vaud from a protectorate (or milch-cow)
into a dependency was the threat from France. Bern had long been perfectly aware
of King Francis’s designs upon Savoy: these stretched back to the second decade of
the sixteenth century (though essentially concentrated upon the Mediterranean,
that is, Piedmont and Nice) and were fuelled by Duke Charles II of Savoy’s
rapprochement with Emperor Charles V in the 1520s.820 Given the threat from France
(whose exact intentions were not known: did they include the subjugation of
Geneva?), Bern could only contemplate what it thought it might reasonably hold:
as Richard Feller put it, the Bernese army was not intent on conquering the Vaud
as such (a task involving such recriminations and difficulties with Fribourg that the
march through the Vaud in January 1536 does indeed appear by comparison as a
‘promenade’), but rather with securing Geneva and the north shore of Lake Geneva
from the clutches of the French.821 By contrast, it is perfectly clear that the Bernese
army, fired up by Hans Franz Nägeli, was quite prepared to press onwards, even
though within its own ranks there were dissenting voices. Such boldness caused, as
we have seen, rancour with the Bernese Small Council.
The position of Fribourg was altogether different. It obviously had no direct
interest in the fate of Geneva after 1534, but it had every interest in developments
in the Vaud itself. As a result, its attitude towards Bern’s march on Geneva was
deeply ambivalent (the tensions within the city council retrospectively alluded
to by Gurnel have already been mentioned). Quite apart from its long-standing
Burgrecht with Bern and quite apart from the close family and client ties to Geneva,
Fribourg was both an aggressor and an unwonted beneficiary in the conquest
of the Vaud. Its protestations that it was acting to defend the Catholic faith by
preventing Bern from simply taking over the entire Vaud were not pure humbug:
rather, it was concerned to expand its territory under a Catholic sign in a direction
which was not only to its geopolitical benefit but which also mitigated the threat
of Bernese encirclement (it is sometimes forgotten that Bern only gained direct
territorial access to the Vaud—that is, disregarding transit through the common
lordships—after the absorption of the county of Gruyère in 1555, and then only
via a circuitous and incommodious route).
Only with hindsight does the annexation of the Vaud appear to follow an inexorable
logic. The outcome might have been different, had it not been for the geopolitical
complication engendered by the spread of Reforming doctrines. Yet here the sequence
of events conformed to no predictable pattern. Long before Bern had embraced the
Reformation in 1528 Fribourg had set its face against the new teachings. Even today
Fribourg’s stance is not well understood. Unlike Solothurn, where a Reforming
movement nearly achieved a breakthrough, only to be suppressed in the late 1520s,822
820 Freymond, ‘Politique’, 104, 115.
821 Feller, Geschichte Berns, 2, 372: Die Berner brachten nicht auf, um die Waadt zu erobern,
sondern um Genf und die Ufer des Genfersees vor Franz I. zu schirmen....
822 On the complicated situation in Solothurn see the remarks by Hans R. Guggisberg,
‘The Problem of “Failure” in the Swiss Reformation: Some Preliminary Reflections’, in E. I. Kouri and
Tom Scott (eds), Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on his Sixty-Fifth
Birthday (Houndmills/London, 1987), 188–209, here at 199–201.