32 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
him; only Basel, despite the cities’ threat of a siege, managed to stay neutral.147
With that, a third front was opened up in the west, far removed from the Swabian
League’s sphere of operation.148 Full-scale war had begun.
In effect, the Swiss War was fought as a series of local, and largely unconnected,
battles along the Rhine from the Upper Rhine to the Hochrhein and then to the
Alpine Rhine. The only common denominator was hatred of the Swiss, with the
loudest abuse coming more from Swabia than from Alsace.149 Maximilian’s over-
arching purpose, however, was not so much to punish the Swiss for their manifold
defiance of his wishes as to clear and safeguard a passage for his army over the Alps
into the duchy of Milan, his most powerful ally against France.150 In that sense, it
was the war in Graubünden, rather than Swabia, which could hardly have been
avoided.151 The term ‘Swabian War’ is therefore a misnomer. In Bernd Marquardt’s
scathing verdict, the war in Swabia was ‘ultimately an accidental affair stemming
from a nugatory cause’.152
Maximilian’s campaign was effectively over before it had properly begun. At the
end of April he had reached Überlingen and by June he was preparing to lead an
army of 15,000 men southwards from his headquarters in Konstanz. But by then
his Tirolean troops had been defeated in the Vintschgau (Val Venosta) in late May;
Maximilian’s own expedition over the Alps in June ended in dismal retreat; and in
the west imperial forces had been crushed at Dornach by Basel in late July, leaving
their commander, Count Heinrich of Fürstenberg, dead on the field of battle. With
that, the war was over.153 A truce was declared, with the duke of Milan in August
offering to mediate. Peace was finally achieved in the Treaty of Basel in September.154
Significantly, the treaty was concluded not between the Confederation and the
Empire, but between the Swiss and Maximilian in his capacity as count of Tirol
and archduke of Austria, together with the Swabian League, of which he was a
member.155 To secure the peace, the Milanese negotiator, Galeazzo Visconti, prom-
ised the Swiss that they would be granted—at long last!—the Thurgau territorial
court as a mortgage against a payment of 20,000 fl, which could only be redeemed
by the emperor.156 The cession was deemed not to be the spoils of war but repar-
ations on the part of the aggressor.157 Konstanz itself was obliged henceforth to
147 EA III, 1, 617–19 (no. 654: b). 148 Carl, ‘ “Schwabenkrieg” ’, 121–3.
149 Carl, ‘ “Schwabenkrieg” ’, 128. To give a flavour: in May 1498, a subject of Luzern, Thüring
Scherer, was beaten up at Habsheim near Basel and mocked as a ‘Kühgyer’ (i.e. a cow sodomizer)
because, on hearing a pasquil recited against the Swiss, he enquired, ‘What harm have the Swiss done
to you?’ This matter came before the Swiss diet. EA III, 1, 566–8 (no. 601: e).
150 Peter Niederhäuser, ‘Der Kampf ums Überleben. Die Grafen von Sulz und der Klettgau um
1499’, Schaffhauser Beiträge zur Geschichte, 85 (2001), 9–65, here at 35; Alois Niederstätter, ‘Der
Schwaben- oder Schweizerkrieg. Die Ereignisse und ihre Bedeutung für Österreich–Habsburg’, in
Niederhäuser and Fischer (eds), ‘Freiheitskrieg’, 51–71, here at 54. For a survey of the war see Brady,
Turning Swiss, 57–72.
151 Niederstätter, ‘Schwaben- oder Schweizerkrieg’, 56; Carl, ‘Eidgenossen und Schwäbischer
Bund’, 229, who remarks that the conflict there had gone beyond ‘crisis management’.
152 Marquardt, Alte Eidgenossenschaft, 52: [ein] letztlich zufälliges Ereignis aus nichtigem Anlaß.
153 Details in Brady, Turning Swiss, 61, 66–9.
154 EA III, 1, 628–31 (no. 659: d); 634–5 (no. 664: b). 155 Carl, ‘ “Schwabenkrieg” ’, 124.
156 Maurer, Konstanz im Mittelalter, 250. 157 Carl, ‘ “Schwabenkrieg” ’, 127.