54 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
prepared to march to Rottweil’s rescue they were joined by the Protestant cantons!325
This was not quite the altruistic act it seemed: as Schwyz murmured to Luzern, it
would be better to have the Protestant cantons on board should war break out.326
The captaincy was to revolve weekly between the Catholic and Protestant cantons,
though the ensigns were largely drawn from the Catholic ones. As many as 15,000
men were to be mobilized if required,327 though it is hard to see how an army of
that size could have been kept in the field over any length of time.
Their marching orders spoke a remarkable language. Alongside the usual injunction
to obey their field commanders and to refrain from plunder of acts of vengeance,
the troops were explicitly enjoined to keep the peace within their ranks, not to
wear badges of identity, such as fir branches or cockerel’s feathers, which would
betray their confession, to respect each other’s faith, and not to blaspheme or to
take offence if anyone wore rosary beads!328 This cross-confessional solidarity
shows how far the Swiss had travelled since the Kappel Wars a decade earlier. As
Bern reported to Strasbourg, it could not remember a time when the climate at the
Baden diet had been so cordial.329 It was indeed Strasbourg which finally brought
the feud to an end, ruffling a few feathers among the cantons who complained that
peace had been reached too easily (the troop had headed home on the news) and
that they had not been kept properly informed.330 Several cantons wished to see
Christoph von Landenberg brought before the imperial court of chancery.331
He was declared an outlaw in 1541, but died three years later.332 This was the last
occasion on which the Swiss encroached on what to them had become foreign
t erritory north of the Rhine.
325 Vater, ‘Beziehungen’, 42. 326 EA IV, 1c, 1267–70 (no. 756: a; to a; 6; 13) (1540).
327 EA IV, 1c, 1271–7 (no. 759: b; c; f ). The counts of Fürstenberg and the lords of Schellenberg
(both Catholic) had given permission for free passage.
328 Vater, ‘Beziehungen’, 42; EA IV, 1c, 1280–7 (no. 764: to b) (1540); StARW, Armbruster-Buch,
VI, 24 Nov. 1540, pp. 85a–88a: ¶4: Es soll ouch niemand kein dannast [Tannenzweig], hanenfedern,
paternoster in hosen oder sunst kein tratzliche zeichen nit tragen, sunder allein ein grad wiß krütz, wie
unsere altfordern. Fir branches had become the emblem of the V Catholic cantons (as, of course, were
the rosary beads), while cockerel’s feathers, once a general designation of Swiss allegiance (in contrast
to the Habsburgs’ peacock’s feathers), seem to have become associated with the Protestant cantons.
See the examples in Leo Zehnder, Volkskundliches in der älteren schweizerischen Chronik (Schriften der
Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde, 60) (Basel/Bonn, 1976), 142–7. I am indebted to Guy
Marchal for this reference.
329 EA IV, 1c, 1271–9 (no. 759: note to b) (1540). 330 EA IV, 1d, 3–9 (no. 2: 2) (1541).
331 EA IV, 1c, 1280–7 (no. 764: I; to i) (1540). Rottweil wanted any court case stopped.
332 Vater, ‘Beziehungen’, 43.