The dukes of Savoy who succeeded Amedée the Eighth renewed the attempts made by their ancestor. They sometimes succeeded in causing the bishop to be chosen among the princes, the children, and even the bastards of their house. Philip of Savoy, brother of Philibert, was thus elected bishop at the age of seven. Growing older, his childhood was regretted, for he showed a stirring disposition, and a love of arms, which led him to sacrifice his subjects' repose, and urge his brother's taking possession of Geneva. Philibert, wiser and more just, voluntarily abandoned the design, and fixed his residence at Chambéry.
The reign of Charles the Third, who succeeded him in 1504, was that whose oppression and cruelty finally roused Geneva. He proved himself the citizens' open enemy, attacking their liberties in every way, and unweariedly. Seconded by the bishop, who was his relative, he made various pompous entries into the town, winning over some few, intimidating others; seizing the citizens who even faintly opposed his will, and flinging them into dungeons, where they perished by famine or torture.
Berthelier, one of the Genevese council, had obtained letters of "bourgeoisie" at Fribourg, as a safeguard from the duke's tyranny, and found them useful when, in 1517, having become involved in a private quarrel between André Malvenda and a judge named by the duke and bishop, others implicated like himself were punished by a light fine only, while he was attacked with a rancour which obliged him first to conceal himself, and then to escape to Fribourg. The citizens of Fribourg made an appeal in his favour, insisting on his being tried by his proper judges, the syndics of Geneva; and returning thither, he was absolved by them. But during his stay at Fribourg he had negotiated an alliance between that republic and his own country; and as it protected the independence of Geneva, (the inhabitants of each town styling those of the other co-citizens,) the angry duke strove to conceal his disappointment, and to bribe Berthelier to support his interests by the most seducing offers.
Notwithstanding the peril in which his refusal placed him; notwithstanding that an army of seven thousand Savoyards assembled at the gates of an unfortified town, and the inhabitants of Fribourg had sent deputies to declare that the Bernese and the whole of the Swiss confederation pressed them to break through their just concluded treaty, Berthelier, without a chance of flight or a hope of resistance, rejected the duke's offers with disdain; communicated his own courage to the assembled council, and the alliance of Fribourg was confirmed, in the midst of menace and danger. The first of April, 1519, the herald at arms of the duke of Savoy, entering the assembly and seating himself above the syndics, declared war in the name of _his master and theirs_.