Could full-scale war have been averted? On the Swiss side there were few visible
preparations for war.131 Indeed, it has been argued that the Swiss could not have
sustained a long campaign, given their dependence on imported salt for their
stock-rearing and cheese production sourced largely from Austrian mines in the
Tirol.132 Was it not more likely that the war of attrition over rights in the Thurgau
would have continued, with punitive raids against Konstanz and further afield?
For Maximilian and the Swabian League matters were not so clear-cut. As king of
the Romans (he was only crowned emperor in 1508), Maximilian had several bones
to pick with the Swiss. At the great reform diet at Worms in 1495 their envoys had
refused to contribute to the Common Penny, the general tax to be imposed on all
members of the Empire. When Maximilian further demanded that the Swiss muster
10,000 men to halt the Turkish invasion of Croatia and to support his planned cam-
paign to Rome, they played possum.133 Instead, eight of the by now X cantons (that
is, without Bern, Schwyz, or the half-canton Obwalden) forged an alliance with
France.134 The danger that the Swiss might send mercenaries to assist the French king
Charles VIII in his Italian campaign only aggravated the situation.135 There followed
a diplomatic quadrille involving envoys of the pope, Maximilian, the king of Spain,
Venice, and Milan, who sought to wean the Swiss from their French allegiance by
offering more money.136 At the 1498 diet in Freiburg im Breisgau relations deterior-
ated further. Swiss protests that the decree of imperial outlawry which had been
proclaimed against their associated member Rottweil for its refusal to pay the
Common Penny or join the Swabian League fell on deaf ears.137
The real threat, however, lay not at imperial but at regional or even local level.
That applied above all to the situation at the eastern end of Lake Konstanz, where
the Rhine turned sharply southwards into the high Alps, rather than to Swabia.
The earlier conflict between the city and abbacy of St Gallen in 1489/90—in itself
a purely Swiss affair—in which the city had sought to break the shackles of terri-
torial encirclement to construct a city-state of its own, is a prime example. The IV
cantons who were the abbey’s protectors—Zürich, Luzern, Schwyz, and Glarus—
intervened on behalf of their ally, the abbot, whom they were bound to protect,
against the citizens and their supporters from Appenzell. The city in its turn sought
131 Meyer, ‘Thurgau’, 21. 132 Carl, ‘Eidgenossen und Schwäbischer Bund’, 234.
133 EA III, 1, 485–6 (no. 508: a). 134 EA III, 1, 495 (no. 522) (1495).
135 EA III, 1, 496–8 (no. 525: e) (1496). 136 EA III, 1, 504–5 (no. 533: f ) (1496).
137 EA III, 1, 556–7 (no. 590: f ) (1497); 562–3 (no. 598: e) (1498); 565–6 (no. 600: d) (1498);
574–5 (no. 609) (1498); 580 (no. 615: a) (1498).
6
The Swiss or Swabian War of 1499