The Romandie: A Commercial Crossroads 71
Vaud arable and sheep farming prevailed, while along the shores of Lakes Geneva
and Neuchâtel viticulture was widespread, stretching up the Rhône valley into the
Valais as far as Sion, where long hours of sunshine on the sheltered slopes compen-
sated for the elevation of the vineyards. The lakes were plentiful sources of fish,
notably perch, char, and various species of whitefish such as féra and bondelle. The
mountain valleys in the Jura offered copious supplies of timber, which could be
floated down the waterways. After 1200, moreover, the Romandie had experienced
a veritable wave of new urban foundations, though few ever developed beyond the
size and significance of dwarf towns, and many subsequently disappeared entirely
from the map.58
The main urban centres remained the sees, namely Lausanne and Geneva,
alongside Fribourg, the one city with a clear manufacturing base. The latter’s
industry depended essentially upon primary resources: hides for tanning and
leather-working, fleeces for woollen textiles. But Fribourg also produced metal
goods such as scythes,59 and it housed several paper mills. Fribourg’s output was
chiefly destined for export, in the first instance to the fairs of Geneva:60 there
developed close commercial and familial ties between Fribourg’s drapers and their
counterparts in Geneva. Nevertheless, after 1450, Fribourg’s economy went into a
gentle decline, chiefly attributable, according to Hans Conrad Peyer, to the reluc-
tance of its artisan guilds to embrace new fashions and technology, but also because
they faced growing competition from rural craftsmen.61 Earlier in the century
Bern had developed as a centre of commerce—two new merchants’ guilds were
founded around 1420.62 The city was home at that time to one of Switzerland’s
richest citizens, Niklaus von Diesbach, a goldsmith who invested heavily in precious
metals and mining. But after his death the headquarters of the trading company,
the Diesbach-Watt-Gesellschaft, moved to St Gallen, and the company itself
was dissolved in 1460.63 Thereafter Bern’s merchants increasingly retired to the
countryside, becoming rentiers on their landed estates.64 Geneva’s adversities as
the fifteenth century wore on have already been noted.
Despite these difficulties, on the eve of the Burgundian Wars the Romandie, and
more especially the Vaud, cannot be said to have succumbed to economic sclerosis:
58 Hektor Ammann, ‘Über das waadtländische Städtewesen im Mittelalter und über landschaftli-
ches Städtewesen im Allgemeinen’, Schweizerische Zeitschtift für Geschichte, 4 (1954), 1–87; Tom
Scott, ‘Kleine Städte, keine Städte. Das so genannte “urbane Netz” in Südwestdeutschland im ausge-
henden Mittelalter’, in Herbert Knittler (ed.), Minderstädte–Kümmerstädte—gefreite Dörfer. Stufen zur
Urbanität und das Märkteproblem (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Städte Mitteleuropas, 20) (Linz, 2006),
181–202, here at 193–7.
59 Bergier, Genève, 74. 60 Peyer, ‘Wollgewerbe’, 80, 81; Bergier, Genève, 68.
61 Peyer, ‘Wollgewerbe’, 84–5, 86–7.
62 Roland Gerber, ‘Umgestaltung und Neubeginn. Der wirtschaftliche und soziale Wandel Berns
im 15. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, 29 (2002), 161–88, here at 166, 182.
63 Gerber, ‘Umgestaltung’, 183, 185. This Niklaus von Diesbach should not be confused with
the eponymous commander of Bern’s army at the onset of the Burgundian Wars. The latter was the
great-nephew of the former. On the Diesbach-Watt Company see Hektor Ammann, ‘Die Diesbach-
Watt-Gesellschaft. Ein Beitrag zur Handelsgeschichte des 15. Jahrhunderts’, Mitteilungen zur vater-
ländischen Geschichte, 37 (1928), 1–133; appendix 1–81.
64 Gerber, ‘Umgestaltung’, 186.