50 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
under the sign of the Gospel, but rather in making common cause with the city’s
winegrowers to topple the Schaffhausen council.293
After the Peasants’ War the religious stance of the city of Konstanz became a live
political and diplomatic issue which could easily have capsized into a regional con-
flagration. The city’s sympathies for Reforming doctrines manifested themselves
from 1522 onwards,294 while Zwingli in his ‘Plan for a Military Campaign’ (now
plausibly dated to 1526), intended to forge a military alliance among the evangel-
ical Swiss cities as a preliminary to liberating the Tirol, had envisaged Konstanz as
a partner in the enterprise,295 but it was the city’s evangelical alliance (Christliches
Burgrecht) with Zürich in late 1527 which brought the crisis to a head. Earlier that
year Zürich warned Konstanz that the Swabian League and Austria were planning
to station troops on Swiss soil, if the Catholic cantons gave permission, as a prelim-
inary to storming Konstanz.296 For their part, the V Catholic cantons (Uri, Schwyz,
Unterwalden, Zug, and Luzern) suspected that Bern and Zürich were plotting to
admit Konstanz as a full member of the Confederation, whereupon Zürich would
seize the Thurgau and return it to Konstanz’s control.297 The mutual distrust was
palpable. Matters were not helped by Konstanz’s eager propagation of the new doc-
trines in the Thurgau, which quickly installed evangelicals in preacherships in
many parts of the landgraviate once Catholic priests had been driven out,298 or by
the rumour that the territorial bailiff of the Thurgau had seized the property of all
such evangelically minded persons.299 The administration of the common lordship
of the Thurgau was thrown into disarray.300 Both jurisdictional lords and the
Thurgau communes expressed distress at the discord, but at least undertook to
prevent anyone crossing the Rhine or Lake Konstanz onto Swiss soil in the event
of war.301 Whether they could successfully have done so is another matter.
When Konstanz’s Great and Small Councils were consulted, according to the
city secretary Jörg Vögeli, they complained that they could expect no help from the
league, which had plundered the city’s estates during the Swiss War and was now
293 Scott, ‘Reformation and Peasants’ War’, 16–17; Scott, ‘From the Bundschuh’, 147; Paul
Herzog, Die Bauernunruhen im Schaffhauser Gebiet 1524/25 (Aarau, 1965), 49–50, 129–31.
294 Bernd Moeller, Johannes Zwick und die Reformation in Konstanz (Quellen und Forschungen
zur Reformationsgeschichte, 28) (Gütersloh, 1961); Hans-Christoph Rublack, Die Einführung der
Reformation in Konstanz von den Anfängen bis zum Abschluß 1531 (Quellen und Forschungen zur
Reformationsgeschichte, 40/Veröffentlichungen des Vereins für Kirchengeschichte in der evangelischen
Landeskirche Baden, 27) (Gütersloh/Karlsruhe, 1971).
295 Dobras, ‘Konstanz zur Zeit der Reformation’, 62; Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation
(Manchester/New York, 2002), 123 (where it is put at early 1527).
296 EA IV, 1a, 1069–70 (no. 431: to g) (1527); SAZH, Missiven B II, 31: Konstanz to Zürich,
21 Feb. 1527.
297 EA IV, 1a, 1078–86 (no. 436: 1; 2; 4) (1527).
298 Dobras, ‘Konstanz zur Zeit der Reformation’, 103.
299 EA IV, 1a, 1180–7 (no. 486: to f+g, I) (1527).
300 Up to 1529 all the territorial bailiffs, whose office ran for two years, were drawn from Catholic
cantons. The situation was made worse by the fact that in the rural cantons appointment to offices was
bought, so that the bailiffs has every incentive to squeeze as much money from their office as they
could. Giger, ‘Gerichtsherren’, 20.
301 EA IV, 1a, 1446–9 (no. 600: c) (1528).