Though Lausanne is so near Geneva, its history, in historical times, has been widely different from that of the neighbouring town. Geneva enjoyed a modified independence from an early date, and became completely independent early in the sixteenth century. Lausanne, until nearly 300 years later, endured the domination, first of Savoy, and subsequently of Berne.

The early history is obscure and full of vexed questions as well as unfamiliar names; but the central fact is that the Counts of Savoy—they were not promoted to be Dukes of Savoy until later—took possession of the Canton of Vaud, as well as of the Chablais and the lower Valais, after the death of the last of the Zaeringen, at the beginning of the thirteenth century. For the next 300 years they exercised overlordship, limited by the charters of the towns, and, in the case of Lausanne, by the jurisdiction of the Bishop—a complicated state of things which the Swiss historical societies may be left to unravel.

It seems clear, however, that the Savoyards were no hard taskmasters. 'The country of Vaud,' says its historian, Louis Vulliemin, 'was happy and proud to belong to them. They exacted little from it, and accorded it their powerful protection. The various States used to assemble at Moudon, the central town, summoned by the Council of Moudon, or by the Governor of Vaud, acting as the representative of the Prince. There was no palace. They met in an inn, or in the house of one of the citizens of the neighbourhood. Often they assembled in such small numbers that, for lack of a quorum, no decision could be taken.... No burdensome or unduly progressive measures were adopted. As a rule, the good old customs were confirmed. When a departure from them was resolved upon, it became law by receiving the sanction of the Prince. The business of the herald was to see that it was proclaimed, in the proper places, in a loud and intelligible voice. The Prince had sworn an oath to impose no new legislation that was not in accordance with the will of the nation as expressed by the estates of the realm.'

The most notable of the Governors was Peter of Savoy—the same Peter of Savoy whom we meet in English history, fighting in the civil wars of the days of Simon de Montfort. His headquarters were in the Castle of Chillon, where he not only dispensed justice, but also amended the criminal law. It was the barbarous rule of the time that an offender who had been fined for a misdemeanour should have his nose cut off if he were unable to pay; Peter compelled even the Bishops to abandon that cruel custom. For the rest, to quote Vulliemin:

'He received his vassals in the great hall of the Castle, where their coats of arms hung on the wall around that of the House of Savoy. The blowing of a horn announced that the meal was served. The ladies arrived in their emblazoned best. The chaplain read the grace from a volume bound in violet and gold—the precious depositary of Divine law and ecclesiastical ritual. After the feast came the hour of merry recreations. The Court fool and the minstrels took their seats by the side of the Prince, and the nobility thus passed their lives in junketing.'

This is the same writer's picture of the lives of the burghers:

'At Lausanne the three estates met in the month of May. In 1398 they submitted to a fresh drafting of the "Plaid gÉnÉral," which defined the respective rights of bishop, canons, and burghers. Three days were devoted to the hearing of suits. On the fourth day the Plaid, accompanied by elders, went the round of the streets, and ordered the necessary repairs. All the citizens were required to follow, carrying axes or stakes, so as to be able to lend a hand when required. The Bishop regaled the artificers with bread, wine, and eggs. In return, the blacksmiths had to shoe his horses, the saddlers to provide him with spurs and bridles, and the coachbuilders to supply him with a carriage. Three times a year the Seneschal passed in front of the cobblers' shops, and touched with his rod the pair of boots which he selected for his lordship. In time of war the prelate's army had to serve the Prince for a day and a night without pay, and as much longer as they might be wanted for wages. The Bishop's business was to ransom prisoners, protect the citizens from all injustice, and go to war on their behalf if necessary.

'Each district of the town had its special privileges. The fine for assault and battery was sixty livres in the city where the Bishop resided, sixty sous in the lower town, and only three sous outside the walls. The Bishop could not arrest a citizen without informing the burghers, or hold an inquest on the body of a dead man. The citizens of the Rue de la Bourg sat in judgment on criminals without assessors. Whenever they heard the summons, though they might be at the dinner-table, glass in hand, or in their shops measuring their cloth, they had to run off and give their opinion on the case. In return, they were exempt from certain taxes, had the sole right of placing hucksters' barrows in front of their shops, of using signboards, and of keeping inns.'

It was the Reformation that terminated this primitive state of affairs. A succession of weak Governors had allowed the hold of the Dukes of Savoy over the country to be relaxed. It was impossible for them to maintain their authority when the people were indoctrinated with the new ideas. The end came when the Duke of Savoy threatened Geneva, and the Bernese marched through Vaud to the rescue, captured Chillon, delivered Bonivard, and kept the Canton for their reward.

From the capture of Chillon onwards, Lausanne, like the rest of Vaud, was a Bernese dependency. Bernese governors (or baillis) were established in all the strong places, and Protestantism became the national religion.

The conversion of the inhabitants was chiefly effected by Viret, a tailor's son, from Orbe, an excellent man, and a persuasive rather than an eloquent speaker. In 1536, after the fashion of the times, he, Calvin, and Farel challenged the Catholic theologians to a great debate. The monks, recognizing him as a formidable antagonist, had previously tried to get rid of him by surreptitious means. One of them had assaulted him at Payerne, and another had attempted to poison him at Geneva. At Lausanne they were obliged to argue with him, and failed still more conspicuously. The argument lasted for a week, and, at the end of the week, the populace, considering that the Protestant case was proved, proceeded to the cathedral to desecrate the altars and smash the images, while the governors confiscated the Church property and offered it for sale. 'It was thus,' writes Vulliemin, 'that Jost de Diesbach bought the church and vicarage of St. Christophe in order to turn the one into a baking house and the other into a country seat, and that Michel Augsburger transformed the ancient church of Baulmes into a stable for his cattle.'

At the same time a disciplinary tribunal, somewhat on the lines of Calvin's theocracy at Geneva, was instituted to supervise the morals of the citizens; and absence from church was made punishable by fine, imprisonment, or banishment. Viret, it is true, was driven to resign his pastorate and leave Lausanne, because he was not allowed to refuse the Holy Communion to notorious evil-livers, and fifty other pastors followed his example; but the pastors who remained drafted a new moral code of sufficient severity, consisting, in the main, of a gloss upon each of the Ten Commandments, giving a list of the offences which it must be understood, for the future, to prohibit. Under the heading of Seventh Commandment, for example, it was written: 'This forbids fornication, drunkenness, baptismal and burial banquets, pride, dancing, and the use of tobacco and snuff.'

A number of Sumptuary Laws were also adopted, to check the spread of luxury; and here again we cannot do better than quote Vulliemin:

'The regulations prescribed the dress materials which each class of society might wear, and permitted none but the nobility to appear in gold-embroidered stuffs, brocades, collars of Paris point lace, and lace-embellished shoes. The women of the middle classes were forbidden to wear caps costing more than ten crowns, or any sort of false hair, or more than one petticoat at a time. One regulation settled the size of men's wigs, and another determined how low a lady's bodice might be cut. There was a continual battle between authority and fashion, and fashion was always contriving to evade the law. The purpose of the magistracy was not only to maintain the privileges of the upper classes, but also to fortify domestic morality against the imperious demands of vanity. A special government department was instituted to stop the use of tobacco. The baillis alone considered that the law did not apply to them; but one day, when one of these officials opened his snuff-box in church, the preacher interrupted him. "Here," he said, "one only snuffs the Word of God." Above all things, however, morality was the object of the jealous care of the magistrates of Vaud. So it was with an outburst of holy wrath that they heard that there was at Vevey "a dancing master, a Catholic, whose presence caused great scandals, at balls, in the evenings, between the two sexes." The stranger was banished, and the town was censured for its criminal toleration.'

Such was the rÉgime, and though, in externals, it resembled the rÉgime at Geneva, there was one very significant difference. The Genevan discipline was self-imposed, and at least expressed the will of a working majority of the people. The Lausanne discipline represented the will of a conqueror imposed upon a subject race, and the conqueror had a rough and heavy hand, and rigorously excluded the subject people from participation in public affairs. The consequences can be traced in their history, habits, and manners.

There was one poor feeble attempt at revolt. A certain Major Davel, after whom one of the steamboats on the lake is called—a Pietist, and perhaps a religious maniac—a soldier of fortune, whose merits had attracted the attention of such good judges as the Duke of Marlborough and Prince EugÈne, mustered the militia of Cully and marched into Lausanne, declaring that he had come to set the Canton free. Asked for explanations, he replied that he had been guided by direct inspiration from on high. The defence did not save him, and he perished on the scaffold in 1723. The revolution at which he aimed was not to be accomplished for another eighty years, and the event constitutes almost the whole of the political history of Lausanne during the period under review.