Katharina Franziska von Wattenwyl

Katharina Franziska von Wattenwyl (December 1645 – 21 November 1714) was a Swiss aristocrat and spy. During the Nine Years' War she served as a spy for Louis XIV, for which she was imprisoned at Käfigturm, tortured, and charged with espionage and high treason by the court in Bern. She was sentenced to death in 1690 but, upon the requests of her family, her sentence was reduced to life in exile. She was released from prison in 1692 and fled to Valangin Castle in the Principality of Neuchâtel, where she lived the remainder of her life. While in exile, she wrote a memoir that she dedicated to her second husband, Samuel Perregaux.

Early life Katharina Franziska von Wattenwyl was born in December 1645 at the Bonmont Abbey in Chéserex. She was from a Bernese patrician family and was the youngest of eleven children of Gabriel von Wattenwyl, bailiff of Bonmont and Oron, and his cousin Barbara von Wattenwyl.

Espionage for the French

Von Wattenwyl was an admirer and supporter of the Bourbon monarchy. During the Nine Years' War, the French king Louis XIV had conquered Alsace, Franche-Comté, and Strasbourg and revoked the Edict of Nantes, which in-turn permitted the persecution of Huguenots. This caused many Huguenot refugees to flee to Bern, where they added to anti-French sentiment in Grand Council of Bern, which caused French sympathizers to lose political influence. While in exile, she wrote a memoir that she dedicated to her husband. Werner was commissioned by Beat Fischer von Reichenbach to create a series of drawings defending von Wattenwyl.

Adolf Frey's 1912 novel, Die Jungfer von Wattenwyl, was based on her, as was Therese Bichsel's 2004 novel Catherine von Wattenwyl.