The palace the town threw its bishop out of
The Baillival Castle on Chemin de Bouleyres in Bulle was built by the bishops of Lausanne between 1291 and 1331 to hold the town on their behalf. It later served Fribourg's bailiffs, was abandoned by its governor in 1798 when Bulle's townspeople ended outside rule, and became a district administration building with prison cells added from 1854.
Lausanne's bishops built a Savoy-style castle on un-Savoy ground
The Baillival Castle (Bulle) rose at the south side of the market square between 1291 and 1331. The bishops of Lausanne built it to hold the town, not to live in it. Its square plan copies the castles the House of Savoy built in nearby Vaud, at Morges and Romont and Yverdon. That is strange, because Bulle never belonged to Savoy. Lausanne and Savoy fought over the bishop's seat for decades starting in 1239. For a short stretch just before that, Savoy men held the office anyway. A coat of arms of Savoy turned up carved into a castle window during a later renovation. A castellan and a mayor ran the town for the bishop from inside these walls. They did this generation after generation. The market outside grew rich on cheese and grain.
Fribourg quietly took over the bishop's castle and town
The castle almost fell to war twice and never did. In 1476, Bulle allied with the city of Fribourg and escaped being plundered after the Battle of Morat. Sixty years later, in 1536, Bernese soldiers conquered the Vaud next door. Sébastien de Montfalcon fled Lausanne rather than face them, and Fribourg saw its chance. It took Bulle under full protection. It turned the bishop's castle into its own bailiff's residence. It ruled the town through an appointed officer instead of a churchman. Fribourg and the exiled bishop finally struck a formal agreement over the arrangement in 1614. Nearly eighty years had passed since the castle changed hands in practice. The building was expanded and renovated again between 1763 and 1768, still serving as the bailiff's seat and audience hall.
Bulle's people threw the governor out in an afternoon
French troops invaded Switzerland in 1798, and Bulle's people did not wait for anyone to free them. They threw the Fribourg-appointed governor out of the castle themselves, ending centuries of rule by outsiders in a single afternoon. The building never went back to being anybody's palace. It became a district administration building instead, and stayed one. In 1854 the town started adding prison cells inside it. The rooms that once heard a bailiff's judgments became cells for holding people. The castle never burned and never fell to a siege, so it still looks close to how it did when the bishops built it. The moat that once ran with water from the Les Usiniers canal is dry now. A stone bridge has replaced the old wooden drawbridge into the courtyard.
A rebel led a failed revolt against Fribourg's rule
The castle had already survived one attempt to break it open. Seventeen years before the governor left peacefully, Pierre-Nicolas Chenaux led an armed revolt against Fribourg's rule over the district. He would not accept his home as occupied territory. The revolt failed, and Fribourg's men crushed it. Chenaux was executed for leading it. A statue of him stands in front of the castle today, one fist raised toward Fribourg. It faces the same walls the governor would abandon without a fight less than two decades later.
Fire destroyed the town the castle once ruled
Self-rule did not spare the town its next disaster. Seven years after Bulle's people ended episcopal rule, fire broke out on April 2, 1805. Most roofs in town were wooden shingles, called tavillons, and they caught fast. The fire tore through the streets around the castle and destroyed much of the town. Rebuilding took fifty years. The castle itself stood through it. The market town it once ruled had to be raised again from nothing.
Outside rule was built into the castle's first stones
The strangeness went back to the walls themselves. The builders raised a square keep in the style the House of Savoy used at Morges and Romont, on ground Savoy never held. Lausanne's bishops fought Savoy for their own seat for decades before the castle went up. A rule imposed from outside was built into the stone from the very first winter of construction. This happened long before any bailiff, any fire, or any revolt.
The castle still stands over the market square, holding a town that stopped answering to it in one afternoon in 1798.
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