Hans Franz Nägeli
Swiss politician (1500-1579)
Hans Franz Nägeli (c. 1497 – 9 January 1579) was a Swiss politician, military leader and diplomat who was a prominent force in Bern for four decades. He captained the Bernese forces in the campaigns against the forces of the condottiero Gian Giacomo Medici, and the campaign in Valais during the Second War of Kappel. Nägeli is best known for leading the Bernese conquest of Vaud from the Duchy of Savoy in 1536, and also campaigned against the Bishop of Lausanne to free François Bonivard from Chillon Castle. He was the Schultheiß of Bern from 1540 to 1568.
Biography
Nägeli was born around 1497 in Aigle, then in the canton of Bern, into a Bernese patrician family. He was the son of Hans Rudolf Nägeli, the governor of Aigle, and Elisabeth Sommer. His father, who later became a mercenary in Papal and French service, was killed at the Battle of Bicocca in 1522.
Following his father's footsteps, Nägeli became a mercenary and commanded three hundred Bernese troops in Papal service in 1521. He entered the Grand Council of Bern in 1522 and its Small Council in 1529. Nägeli served as Schultheiß (chief magistrate) of Burgdorf from 1525 to 1529, as treasurer of Bern from 1533 to 1540, and as the city's Schultheiß from 1540 to 1568, being elected for a two-year mandate every four years.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hans Franz Nägeli” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.