The Swiss or Swabian War of 1499 31
help from both the Swabian League and also imperial cities on the north shore of
Lake Konstanz, with whom it had long enjoyed cordial relations.138 Thereupon, the
League sent 10,000 men into the Rheintal, though last-minute mediation averted
open warfare.139 It is not hard to see how such conflicts could spin out of
control.140
Worse was to befall at the end of the decade. Archduke Sigismund’s so-called ‘evil
councillors’ (böse Räte), who had been banished by Maximilian after his assumption
of the reins of government in Tirol, had mostly sought refuge in Switzerland, from
where they inveighed against the king and intrigued against their successors in
Innsbruck.141 The Austrian government then became embroiled in a conflict with
the Rhaetian Leagues over control over the Münstertal (Val Müstair) and the Lower
Engadin.142 The implications were grave, because both the Grey League (Grauer
Bund) in 1497 and the League of the House of God (Gotteshausbund) in 1498 had
been admitted to the Confederation as associated members.143
In January 1499 troops of the Swabian League were mobilized, primarily to
defend their own region from any military overspill. Only an expeditionary force
was sent into Vorarlberg. This comprised hired mercenaries from Swabia who, get-
ting wind of a truce at the beginning of February, turned tail. When hostilities
resumed at the end of the month, the mercenaries, thirsting to take revenge upon
the despised ‘cow-Swiss’, suffered a humiliating defeat before the walls of
Bregenz.144 The ability of the league to act was in any case hobbled by protracted
negotiation over its extension—unlike the Confederation, it was not based on a
perpetual alliance but a renewable one. Thereafter, the league took little part in the
hostilities in Graubünden; its activities were largely confined to the Hegau.145
In April 1499 Maximilian, infuriated by the decision of the X cantons to form
an alliance with King Louis XII of France,146 declared what up to then had been a
dynastic-territorial conflict as an ‘imperial war’ (Reichskrieg), under whose provi-
sions all the Estates of the Empire were beholden to participate. The same month
he arrived on the Upper Rhine with troop reinforcements from the Netherlands,
putting the Alsatian imperial cities in the Lower Union under duress to support
138 Bettina Braun and Wolfgang Dobras, ‘St. Gallen: eine Stadtrepublik zwischen Reich und
Eidgenossenschaft’, in Christine Roll, Bettina Braun, and Heide Stratenwerth (eds), Recht und Reich
im Zeitalter der Reformation. Festschrift für Horst Rabe (Frankfurt am Main/Berlin/Bern/New York/
Paris/Vienna, 1996), 397–416, here at 400. On the conflict, centring around the city’s destruction of
the abbot’s proposed new residence at Rorschach (the Rorschacher Klosterbruch), see Philip Robinson,
Die Fürstabtei St. Gallen und ihr Territorium 1463–1529. Eine Studie zur Entwicklung territorialer
Staatlichkeit (St. Galler Kultur und Geschichte, 24) (St Gallen, 1995), 246–68.
139 Carl, ‘Eidgenossen und Schwäbischer Bund’, 228; Meyer, ‘Thurgau’, 7–8. Appenzell was
obliged to surrender the Rheintal, which thenceforth was administered by the VII cantons as a third
common lordship.
140 Carl, ‘Eidgenossen und Schwäbischer Bund’, 229.
141 Niederhäuser, ‘ “Kriegs”-Geschichte’, 171; Carl, ‘ “Schwabenkrieg” ’, 106.
142 Carl, ‘ “Schwabenkrieg” ’, 117.
143 EA III, 1, 589–91 (no. 629: k) (1498); 591 (no. 630): the treaty encompassed the League of
the House of God and the city of Chur, but not the bishop, who demurred. The League of Ten
Jurisdictions (Zehngerichtenbund) joined in the hostilities but never became a zugewandter Ort.
144 Carl, ‘ “Schwabenkrieg” ’, 117–18. 145 Carl, ‘ “Schwabenkrieg” ’, 115, 119.
146 EA III, 1, 601 (no. 641) (March 1499).