38 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
Helmut Maurer has argued that during the Swiss War the Confederates collectively
sought to subjugate both the Black Forest and the Hegau.197 But what did that mean
in practice? Swiss expansion north of the Rhine may have been a long- cherished
dream,198 but did it entail territorial aggrandizement or, more probably, the secur-
ity which military access to the four Forest Towns would provide, as the Perpetual
Accord of 1474 had laid down? Only Zürich and Schaffhausen had unmistakable
territorial ambitions;199 the latter missed its chances in 1499 and only made up
lost ground in the 1520s. Zürich’s toehold north of the Rhine, the lordship of
Eglisau, comprising four villages which remain part of canton Zürich to this
day,200 offered an obvious launching-pad for further expansion, but the city failed
to convert its Burgrecht with the counts of Sulz into an annexation of the Klettgau:
not only the Habsburgs but the other Confederates, as we have seen, would not
countenance it. On a constitutional level, furthermore, the Swabian League, not-
withstanding its defeat, did not disband; its continued existence provided a forum
for conflict resolution amongst its members which limited the scope of the Swiss
to intervene as mediators in south-west German affairs.201
197 Maurer, Schweizer und Schwaben, 74. 198 Niederhäuser, ‘Kampf ums Überleben’, 31.
199 Niederhäuser, ‘ “Kriegs”-Geschichte’, 161; he also attributes expansionist desires to Solothurn,
but these presumably concerned the Sundgau.
200 They are Rafz, Wil, Hüntwangen, and Wasterkingen. Niederhäuser, ‘Kampf ums Überleben’, 15.
201 Carl, ‘Eidgenossen und Schwäbischer Bund’, 240.