The Romandie: An Open Landscape 65
Burgrechte ceased to be concluded with individuals and were confined to juridical
persons or entities, the pacts became increasingly political or diplomatic in charac-
ter. It was only at this late stage that they functioned at times as instruments of
territorial aggrandizement; more commonly they offered a path towards associated
membership for those who might otherwise be denied full membership of the
Confederation.13
If one plots them on a map, it is striking how many Burgrechte Bern (and its
neighbours) concluded with lordships or cities to the north or north-west. Around
1400 Bern forged protective alliances with the counts of Neuchâtel and the lords
of Valangin, with the city of Neuchâtel, and, a decade earlier, with La Neuveville.
In the century to come all these Burgrechte were regularly renewed, indicating where
Bern perceived its geopolitical interests principally to lie.14 Nor did the Jura moun-
tain range constitute a barrier. Already in 1388 Bern, Zürich, Solothurn, and Biel
had concluded a Burgrecht with the counts of Montbéliard in the Franche-Comté.15
In Nicolas Barras’s words, all these places were ‘points d’appui jurassiens, un des
objéctifs constants de sa politique extérieure’.16 That link acquired new strategic
importance when Montbéliard applied to become a co-signatory to the Perpetual
Accord of 1474, sensing that its exposed location on the Empire’s western flank
required political support as the conflict with Burgundy loomed.17 During the
Burgundian Wars Bernese troops in fact seized the town of Montbéliard and even
nursed hopes of retaining it.18 When King Maximilian in the first decades of the
sixteenth century launched his campaigns against France, which harried the valley
of the Doubs, Bern and its Swiss neighbours hastened to conclude fresh Burgrechte
with Montbéliard and with Besançon,19 having taken the precaution in 1512 of
jointly occupying the county of Neuchâtel, lest it fall into the hands of the French.
With the house of Savoy things stood somewhat differently. The Burgrechte
which Bern and Fribourg, singly or jointly, concluded with the house of Savoy
were fixed-term pacts, and these can be traced back to the late thirteenth century.20
Savoy was a major power with which Bern in particular had cultivated long-standing
cordial relations, not least in order to secure access to the Genevan fairs. Strikingly,
the pacts were regularly renewed even in difficult and seemingly inauspicious
13 Speich, ‘Burgrecht’, 103, 137, 205, 207, 212.
14 Tabulation in Gasser, Territoriale Entwicklung, passim; Die Rechtsquellen des Kantons Bern, part 1:
Stadtrechte, vol. 3: Das Stadtrecht von Bern, III, ed. Hermann Rennefahrt (Sammlung Schweizerischer
Rechtsquellen, 2: Die Rechtsquellen des Kantons Bern) (Aarau, 1945), 220, 271–2, 273–4, 347–8,
367–72.
15 Stadtrecht von Bern, III, 275.
16 Nicolas Barras, ‘Des combourgeoisies dans l’ancien Évêché de Bâle’, in Jean-Claude Rebetez
(ed.), La donation de 999 et l’histoire médiévale de l’ancien Évêché de Bâle (Porrentruy, 2002), 139–59,
here at 144.
17 EA II, 492–3 (no. 750: d).
18 The county of Montbéliard, lying on the linguistic frontier between German and French,
became an exclave of the Swabian duchy of Württemberg through inheritance in 1407, and was sub-
sequently ruled by younger brothers of the dukes.
19 EA III, 2, 1132 (no. 764), Dec. 1518; 1134 (no. 768), Dec. 1518; 1134–6 (no. 769), Feb. 1519;
SABE, Ratsmanuale 180, p. 20 (Dec. 1518).
20 Speich, ‘Burgrecht’, 9, 137.