Bern

Bern fills a narrow peninsula almost enclosed by a loop of the Aare. Duke Berchtold V of Zähringen founded the town at the end of the twelfth century, with the Cronica de Berno giving 1191, and legend has him naming it after the first animal killed in the surrounding forest, a bear that became the town's emblem in the thirteenth century. When the Zähringer died out in 1218 the Golden Bull made Bern a free imperial city. It chose the protection of Savoy against the Counts of Kyburg, beat Habsburg Fribourg at Dornbühl in 1298, and in 1339, in the Laupen War, defeated the surrounding nobles with the help of the Swiss. In 1353 Bern renewed its alliance with the forest cantons, and the web of alliances with Zürich, Lucerne and the cantons grew into the Confederation.

Bern thought of itself as a state from the fifteenth century. It took part in the Burgundian Wars from 1474 to 1477, gaining its first land in Vaud, and in 1536 it conquered the whole of Vaud, becoming the largest city-state north of the Alps. A great fire in 1405 destroyed much of the old timber town, which was rebuilt in stone. The Reformation was carried through in February 1528 under Berchtold Haller, and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 gave Bern full sovereignty. The Great Council of 200 to 299 members ruled through ever fewer patrician families.

In 1723 Major Davel rose against Bernese rule in Vaud. When French troops invaded in January 1798, Bern was beaten at the Grauholz in early March and lost Vaud and Aargau. From May 1802 to March 1803 it was the capital of the Helvetic Republic, and in 1815 it became one of the leading cantons of the Confederation.