64 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
1447–8.7 But alarm at the possibility of an overmighty Savoy persuaded Bern to
renew its perpetual Burgrecht with Fribourg in 1454, despite its having fought on
the opposing side, and to restore joint administration of the lordship of Grasburg,
which they had acquired in 1423.8 Only in the aftermath of the Burgundian Wars
was Fribourg able to gain its independence: in 1477 it was granted the status of an
imperial city, along with Solothurn, and together both city-states were admitted as
full members of the Confederation in 1481, albeit with marginally inferior rights.
The Romandie, especially the Vaud, was therefore prey to a heptagon of com-
peting powers, to which we might otherwise add the cities of Lausanne and
Geneva, were it not that both were sees under the sway of the house of Savoy.
Lausanne only succeeded in ousting its bishop (and Savoy) in 1536, after Bern’s
conquest of the Vaud. In Geneva’s case, until the 1520s all its bishops were drawn
from the ducal family, and even the vacillating and duplicitous Pierre de la Baume,
who held the see from 1522, was a Savoyard councillor. His efforts to pose as a
go-between by attempting to uphold episcopal prerogatives and by extension
Genevan civic liberties over against Savoy ended in humiliating flight in 1533.9
In an open landscape the perennial problem was how to maintain public peace
and stability. The principal instrument deployed by the cities of Bern and Fribourg
was the Burgrecht. At its simplest, a Burgrecht was a grant of citizenship under spe-
cific conditions between a city and surrounding noble families or ecclesiastical
foundations, commonly the right of access to or residence in the city, guarantees of
mutual protection and assistance, freedom of commerce, and exemptions from tolls.10
Similar pacts may be found in other fragmented landscapes in Europe, notably in
northern Italy, where they were known as patti di cittadinatico. In Switzerland the
rural commune of Saanen in the Bernese Oberland was, quite exceptionally,
granted a Burgrecht with Bern itself in 1401/3, a platform from which it strove
unsuccessfully to establish itself as an associated member of the Confederation.11
Burgrechte initially differed from other forms of political or military alliance, inas-
much as they implied a relationship of dependence rather than equality, despite the
language in which they were couched. As their deployment changed over time the
‘protection’ they promised might degenerate into a protection racket.12 Most
Burgrechte were ‘perpetual’, or, more precisely, only the time limit before which
they could not be cancelled was specified. After the mid-fifteenth century, as
7 Willy Schulze, ‘Landesfürst und Stadt: Herzog Albrecht von Österreich und die Stadt Freiburg
i. Ü. 1449’, Freiburger Geschichtsblätter, 72 (1995), 131–73; Willy Schulze, ‘Freiburgs Krieg gegen
Savoyen 1447–1448. Kann sich eine mittelalterliche Stadt überhaupt noch einen Krieg leisten?’,
Freiburger Geschichtsblätter, 79 (2002), 7–55; Stettler, Eidgenossenschaft, 169–70.
8 Pascal Ladner, ‘Politique et institutions du XIIe au XVe siècle’, in Roland Ruffieux (ed.), Histoire
du Canton de Fribourg, 2 vols (Fribourg, 1981), 1, 181–220, here at 198.
9 E. William Monter, ‘De l’évêché à la Rome protestante’, in Paul Guichonnet (ed.), Histoire de
Genève (Toulouse/Lausanne, 1974), 129–83, here at 130.
10 Heinrich Speich, ‘Burgrecht. Deutung und Wandel eines Rechtsinstruments im Spätmittelalter’
(Diss, phil, University of Fribourg, 2013), 207, 221; Claude Cuendet, Les traités de combourgeoisie en
pays romand et entre ceux-ci et les villes de Berne et Fribourg (XIIIe au XVIe siècle) (Bibliothèque
Historique Vaudoise, 63) (Lausanne, 1979), 13.
11 Speich, ‘Burgrecht’, 152–4.
12 Sieber-Lehmann, Spätmittelalterlicher Nationalismus, 283; Speich, ‘Burgrecht’, 212.