72 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
the landscape remained both productive and populous. Yet those wars between
1475 and 1477 devastated the Vaud, from which it took decades to recover.65 That
raises questions about the motives of the invaders. If Bern and its allies are alleged
to have set their sights firmly on the Vaud as an object of desire, by what logic can
it have been in their interests to turn it into a wasteland?
65 Sieber-Lehmann, Spätmittelalterlicher Nationalismus, 329–30.