Louis I of Vaud

Louis I (1249/50 – 1302) was the Baron of Vaud. At the time of his birth he was a younger son of the House of Savoy, but through a series of deaths and his own effective military service, he succeeded in creating a semi-independent principality in the pays de Vaud by 1286. He travelled widely in the highest circles of European nobility (the royal courts of London, Paris and Naples), obtained the right to mint coins from the Holy Roman Emperor, and convoked the first public assembly in the Piedmont to include members of the non-noble classes. When he died, his barony was inherited by his son. Youth in Savoy, England and France (1259–81) Louis was the third son of Thomas II of Savoy. He was in the custody of his mother, Beatrice dei Fieschi, on the death of his father in 1259, when his older brothers were hostages of the commune of Asti. His childhood was spent in the dower castles of his mother, especially that of Saint-Genix-d'Aoste on the bank of the Guiers. As a youth, in 1270, he accompanied his brothers, Thomas III and Amadeus V, to England in the hopes of receiving from King Henry III the fiefs (and incomes) which their uncle, Peter II, Count of Savoy, had bequeathed them. Some of these had already been bestowed on the king's son, Prince Edward Longshanks, who was then absent on the Ninth Crusade. Until his return, any Savoyard claims on English territory could not be resolved, so Henry instead granted each of the brothers an annual pension of one hundred marks on the royal treasury. While Louis was living in Paris in July 1281, King Philip III of France drew him into a pro-Angevin alliance with Count Aymar IV of Valentinois and Louis de Forez, sire of Beaujeu, against the bishops of Die, Lyon and Valence. Louis seems to have been induced to join by the promise of marrying Jeanne de Montfort, widow of Guy, sire of Beaujeu and count of Forez. The marriage probably took place in 1283, when Jeanne was still of child-bearing age. Her dowry consisted of the lands held by the sire of Beaujeu in Bugey and Valromey, lands which lay in an area of Savoyard expansion between the Rhône and the Ain. Wars with Geneva, the Dauphiné and the king (1281–84) In the fall of 1282, Louis was back in the service of his family, led by Count Philip of Savoy, when a war with Amadeus II of Geneva and his allies broke out. Louis captured the Delphinal fortress of La Buissière, and then invaded the Grésivaudan, as his brother Amadeus invaded the region south of Grenoble.