The Burgundian Wars involved the Swiss in a new international conflict in the west
which sucked in foreign powers, first and foremost France, thereby relegating (but
not superseding) their traditional preoccupation with the Habsburgs as an Austrian
territorial dynasty, if not with the Habsburgs as emperors. But at a local or regional
level the problems which had arisen from the annexation of the Thurgau remained
unresolved. On the surface, the VII cantons who administered the common lord-
ship appeared willing to respect the rights which Konstanz had retained, but there
was constant sniping and chipping at the edges. In 1465 a troop of irregulars (at
whose instigation?) had menaced the city. Emperor Frederick’s refusal to counten-
ance any redemption of the mortgage of the territorial court, which he insisted was
an imperial, not an Austrian, concession, indicates that the Swiss were not pre-
pared to accept the status quo. Frederick was right to be apprehensive, but for
another reason. Continually alarmed at the escapades of his cash-strapped cousin,
the wily emperor feared that Archduke Sigismund would simply sell the territorial
court to the Swiss—after all, he had abandoned Winterthur in 1467.85
Konstanz’s own response was significant. In 1468 it appointed the city’s imper-
ial bailiff as judge of the territorial court and designated the council chamber as
seat of the court.86 That did not, however, stop the Swiss from formally petition-
ing for the redemption of the territorial court in 1471.87 When a similar démarche
was discussed at a diet in Luzern six years later, Konstanz went so far as to offer to
increase the mortgage sum by adding arrears of military expenditure from the
Appenzell Wars at the beginning of the century, totalling 4000 fl, in order to
make the court costlier to redeem.88 Massive further pressure even caused Emperor
Frederick in 1480 to consider raising an imperial army against the Swiss, though
nothing came of it; again, the emperor contemptuously brushed aside Archduke
Sigismund’s assurance that he would never surrender the territorial court—since
it was not his to give!89
85 See discussion on Archduke Sigismund and Winterthur in Chapter 3; Dikenmann, ‘Stellung’, 53.
86 Kramml, ‘Reichsstadt Konstanz’, 313; Dikenmann, ‘Stellung’, 50–1; Helmut Maurer, ‘Die
Entstehung der deutsch-schweizerischen Grenze und das Problem der Extradition von Archivalien’, in
Helmut Maurer and Hans Patze (eds), Festschrift für Berent Schwineköper zu seinem siebzigsten
Geburtstag (Sigmaringen, 1982), 489–500, here at 491.
87 Kramml, ‘Reichsstadt Konstanz’, 314, citing StAKN, A IX, 2, fo. 137.
88 Kramml, Kaiser Friedrich, 173; Dikenmann, ‘Stellung’, 62.
89 Kramml, Kaiser Friedrich, 174–6.