The ‘conquest of the Vaud’ is a misnomer. At best it is a convenient shorthand for
the reconfiguration of political allegiance throughout the Romandie, in which
Bern, Fribourg, and the Valais communes were all participants, and which did not
end with the ‘liberation’ of Geneva in 1536. The heptagon of competing powers
may have been reduced to a quadrangle—the two cities, the bloc of V Catholic
cantons, and France—but Emperor Charles V’s Spanish Habsburg rivalry with
King Francis I and his successors continued to affect the Romandie at the margins,
and led ultimately to the restoration of the house of Savoy under Duke Emmanuel
Philibert in 1564, with the loss of some conquered lands to France. The relation-
ship between Bern and Fribourg may have resembled a penny-farthing, the vast
Protestant canton dwarfing its Catholic neighbour, but the large wheel of that
velocipede could not function without the small. Both cities cherished further
territorial ambitions, largely driven by the desire to hold each other in check and
triggered by the financial exhaustion of their prey. After 1536 the flashpoints were
Neuchâtel and Gruyère.
In 1543 lordship in the western Romandie was thrown into turmoil by a double
blow. Magravine Johanna of Hochberg died in September 1543 and was succeeded
by her grandson, François III d’Orléans, who was a minor of eight years of age.
He was placed under the guardianship of his maternal grandfather, Duke Claude
de Guise, and the cardinal of Lorraine, Charles de Guise. Although ruling a terri-
tory which had been evangelized, both Johanna and her late husband, Duke
Louis d’Orléans-Longueville, were staunch Catholics and pro-French, a proclivity
strengthened by the advent of the Guise family. In the same year, Guillemette de
Vergy, the widow of Claude von Aarberg-Valangin,752 ruler of the neighbouring
county of Valangin and energetic opponent of Farel and all his works, also died,
the county passing to her grandson, René de Challant, erstwhile marshal of Duke
Charles II of Savoy, though not without considerable wrangling.
Margravine Johanna had long been in financial difficulties; the bulk of her
income was pawned to citizens of Neuchâtel city. As a means of discharging her
debts, her procurator, the provost of the collegiate church of Valangin, offered to
sell the county to Fribourg in April for 60,000 écus, with 6,000 écus as a down
payment and an annual income of 1,000 écus. If it declined, then the county
should be offered to the four previous protectors of the county during the common
752 On Claude von Aarberg (c.1447–1518) see HLS, s.v. Aarberg, von.