Konstanz’s Dilemma 29
other cantons’ willingness to broker a settlement with the three Forest cantons was
made dependent on the city’s first agreeing to pay the 4000 fl as recompense: their
subsequent assurance that in any failure to pay they would instruct the three
cantons—notoriously unbiddable—to desist from any armed aggression must have
rung exceedingly hollow.128 In the meantime, in a bitter twist, Bishop Hugo, with
whom the city was embroiled in jurisdictional disputes, had appeared in person at
a diet in Zürich in July 1497 to reaffirm his Swiss alliance, including granting
access to his castle at Kaiserstuhl.129 But to no avail. Both he and the cathedral
chapter came under pressure to join the Swabian League, notwithstanding their
known sympathies. The chapter was the first to succumb, in January 1497, fol-
lowed by Bishop Hugo in February, who had to open his castle of Gottlieben to a
garrison from the league.130 In the ensuing conflict they strained every sinew to
remain neutral, with indifferent success.
128 EA III, 1, 525–6 (no. 558: e) (1497). Various proposals were put forward: mediation by the VII
cantons collectively; by the IV cantons; or by Schwyz alone.
129 EA III, 1, 542–3 (no. 575: b); 543–4 (no. 576: a).
130 Meyer, ‘Thurgau’, 19; Peter Niederhäuser, ‘“Kriegs”-Geschichte im Wandel’, in Peter
Niederhäuser and Werner Fischer (eds), Vom ‘Freiheitskrieg’ zum Geschichtsmythos. 500 Jahre Schweizer-
oder Schwabenkrieg (Zürich, 2000), 155–79, here at 173. Some members of the ecclesiastical court
renounced their citizenship. Maurer, Konstanz im Mittelalter, 222.