36 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
recruited from all the urban cantons had within two weeks retaken Tiengen (where
it threatened to kill all nobles), Küssaburg castle, Stühlingen, and Blumenfeld. The
booty garnered in Blumenfeld alone is reckoned to have amounted to 10,000 fl.177
Austrian peasants in the Black Forest to the north were ordered to swear obedience
to the Confederation within three days.178
The advance of the emperor’s army, however, caused disarray in Swiss ranks.
Bern and Fribourg withdrew their troops in late April from Blumenfeld in order to
meet a possible counterattack in the Sundgau. By refusing to join their fellow-
confederates in pressing on to Überlingen they left Zürich, Luzern, and Zug with
little choice but to withdraw from the Hegau. That did not deter the Confederal
diet at Zürich from planning a third campaign into the Hegau in mid-May.179
Zürich led the enthusiasts; Bern remained cool. Although the Swiss intended to
besiege Stockach, the approach of massed league troops caused them to pull
back.180 Bern and Fribourg, who had already been accused of shirking their duty
in the Klettgau, were now roundly abused as Kistenfeger; that is, their soldiers were
only bent on plundering and pillaging the Hegau.181
Both sides were by now war-weary. Maximilian’s plans in mid-July to mount a
three-pronged assault on the Swiss from Vorarlberg, Konstanz, and Basel, as
desperate as they were unrealizable, collapsed in the wake of Dornach.182 In the
peace negotiations there was much jockeying for position among the Swiss.
In early July Zürich had already signalled that it wished to restore the status quo ante
in the Klettgau, but since it had been occupied by a joint army from the cantons,
the diet was keen to convert it into a common lordship.183 It subsequently tran-
spired, after peace had been signed, that Luzern was particularly eager to go down
this path.184 That rivalry may well account for the lack of success, but given the
continuing wrangling over the Thurgau and the Landgericht we are entitled to ask
whether a certain disillusion with the administration of common lordships may
also have set in.
Despite the truce, skirmishes continued throughout the Klettgau. Swiss envoys
meeting in Basel in early September were deliberating whether to besiege Gottlieben,
but Bern suggested it would be better to launch a new attack on the four Forest
Towns.185 Even after the conclusion of the Treaty of Basel on 22 September 1499
the Klettgau remained unsettled. In October Zürich finally agreed to hand back
Küssaburg castle to the counts of Sulz.186 With greater reluctance, the city,
together with Schaffhausen, had to forsake any hope of retaining the bishop of
177 Niederhäuser, ‘Kampf ums Überleben’, 34–5.
178 Meyer, ‘Thurgau’, 60–2; Niederhäuser, ‘Kampf ums Überleben’, 29–34; EA III, 1, 604–5
(no. 645: e).
179 Meyer, ‘Thurgau’, 62–3; Niederhäuser, ‘Kampf ums Überleben’, 35.
180 Meyer, ‘Thurgau’, 66, 73.
181 Meyer, ‘Thurgau’, 75; EA III, 1, 597–600 (no. 640: l); 608–10 (no. 649: l).
182 Meyer, ‘Thurgau’, 77; Niederhäuser, ‘Kampf ums Überleben’, 40.
183 EA III, 1, 620–3 (no. 656: g).
184 Niederhäuser, ‘Kampf ums Überleben’, 41. 185 Meyer, ‘Thurgau’, 92.
186 EA III, 1, 636–40 (no. 666: ww). The city argued that if it were reclaimed by the emperor it
still hoped to maintain its Burgrecht with the counts.