Reformation in Switzerland - Developments in The West

Developments in The West

The Dukes of Savoy had tried already for centuries to gain sovereignty over the city of Geneva, surrounded by Savoyard territory, for the Vaud in the north of Lake Geneva belonged to the duchy. The Reformation prompted the conflicts to escalate once more. Geneva exiled its bishop, who was backed by Savoy, in 1533 to Annecy. Bern and the Valais took advantage of the duke's involvement in northern Italy and his opposition to France. When Francesco II Sforza died in Milan in 1534, the duke's troops were bound by the French engagement there, and Bern promptly conquered the Vaud and, together with the Valais, also territories south of Lake Geneva in 1536.

The alliance of 1560 of the Catholic cantons with Savoy encouraged duke Emmanuel Philibert to raise claims on the territories his father Charles III had lost in 1536. After the treaty of Lausanne of 1564, Bern had to return the Chablais south of Lake Geneva and the Pays de Gex (between Geneva and Nyon) to Savoy in 1567, and the Valais returned the territories west of Saint Gingolph two years later in the treaty of Thonon. Geneva was thus a Protestant enclave within the Catholic territories of Savoy again and as a result intensified its relations with the Swiss confederacy and Bern and Zürich in particular. Its plea for full acceptance into the confederation—the city was an associate state only—was rejected by the Catholic majority of cantons.

Mercenaries of the Swiss cantons participated in the French wars of religion on all sides. Those from Protestant cantons fought on the sides of the Huguenots, supporting Henry of Navarre, while the Catholic troops fought for king Henry III of France. In 1586, the seven Catholic cantons (the five alpine cantons, plus Fribourg and Solothurn) formed an exclusively Catholic alliance called the "Golden League" (Goldener Bund, named after the golden initials on the document) and sided with the Guises, who were also supported by Spain. In 1589, Henry III was assassinated and Henry of Navarre succeeded him as Henry IV of France, and thus the Protestant mercenaries now fought for the king.

Since 1586, the duke of Savoy, Charles Emmanuel I, had placed Geneva under an embargo. With the new situation of 1589, the city now got support not only from Bern but also from the French king, and it went to war. The war between Geneva and Savoy continued even after the Peace of Vervins and the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which ended the wars in France proper. In the night from 11 to 12 December 1602, the duke's troops unsuccessfully tried to storm the city, which definitely maintained its independence from Savoy in the peace of Saint Julien, concluded in the following summer. The rebuttal of this attack, L'Escalade, is still commemorated in Geneva today.

Also in 1586, a Catholic coup d'état in Mulhouse, an associate of the confederacy, prompted the military intervention of the Protestant cantons, which quickly restored the old Protestant order. Strasbourg, another Protestant city, wanted to join the confederacy in 1588, but like Geneva some twenty years earlier, it was rejected by the Catholic cantons. In the Valais, the Reformation had had some success especially in the lower part of the Rhone valley. However, in 1603 the Catholic cantons intervened, and with their support re-Catholicisation succeeded and the Protestant families had to emigrate.