18 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
nobleman, Bilgeri von Heudorf.53 Once an official of the bishop of Konstanz,
from 1449 onwards he loyally served the Habsburg cause. Indeed, in 1452 he was
knighted by Emperor Frederick III as a member of the entourage which accom-
panied him to his coronation in Rome. His vendetta against Schaffhausen revolved
around a dispute over the lordship of Laufen, strategically commanding the south
bank of the Rhine falls, which was claimed by a patrician family of the city, the
von Fulach.54 In its course von Heudorf contrived to get the imperial ban pro-
nounced on Schaffhausen, with deleterious consequences for its economy. Matters
came to a head in 1467 when von Heudorf captured the mayor of Schaffhausen
and only released him for a ransom which exhausted the latter’s entire wealth.55
The Swiss, having protested in vain to Archduke Sigismund’s wife, Eleanor of
Scotland, the following year laid siege to the Austrian town of Waldshut on the
Hochrhein, in what became known as the Waldshut War. The feud was only ended
in 1476 through the mediation of the Lower Union (the alliance between Austria
and four Alsatian cities). While Bilgeri von Heudorf may have become a byword
for aristocratic violence against both cities and the Swiss, in truth his career was
exceptional.
The territorial nobility of the Hegau, despite its long-famed distrust of the Swiss,
from 1464 onwards on occasion sought alliances with its southern neighbours,
especially those whose high rank, such as the counts of Sulz, allowed them to
pursue their own interests in defiance of Austria.56 They were driven, of course, by
self-interest, for they saw in such pacts a means of hampering the Swiss from
seducing their subjects into foreign allegiance. That was especially the case in the
aftermath of the Swiss War of 1499.57 This gives an inkling of how shifting and
complex relations between Swabians and Swiss might be, without presupposing
any fundamental antagonism.
53 See Hans-Jürgen Erwerth, Ritter Bilgeri von Heudorf (gest. 1476). Ein Beitrag zur wirtschaftlichen
Lage und sozialen Stellung des Adels im westlichen Bodenseeraum (Hegau-Bibliothek, 77) (Singen, 1992).
54 On the lordship of Laufen see Peter Niederhäuser, ‘Adel, Dorfgemeinden und
Herrschaftsstrukturen im Zürcher Weinland im Übergang zur Frühen Neuzeit’, in Thomas Meier and
Roger Sablonier (eds), Wirtschaft und Herrschaft. Beiträge zur ländlichen Gesellschaft in der östlichen
Schweiz (1200–1800) (Zürich, 1999), 203–44.
55 EA II, 368–9 (no. 586); Baum, Sigmund, 118.
56 EA II, 340 (no. 531) (1454). Margarethe Steibelt, ‘Die Eidgenossen und die südwestdeutschen
Territorien 1450–1488’ (Diss. phil. Heidelberg, 1946), 70–1, 73. During the Burgundian Wars some
lesser Hegau nobles sought an accommodation with the Swiss, but the latter showed no interest. Ibid., 80.
Horst Carl, ‘Eidgenossen und Schwäbischer Bund—feindliche Nachbarn?’, in Rück, Eidgenossen,
215–65, here at 223, overstates Steibelt’s cautious argument.
57 Carl, ‘Eidgenossen und Schwäbischer Bund’, 236.