Swabian League

The Swiss confederates control most of the territory south and west of the Rhine to the Alps and the Jura mountains by 1460, particularly after victories against the Habsburgs (Battle of Sempach, Battle of Näfels), over Charles the Bold of Burgundy during the 1470s, and the success of the Swiss mercenaries.

The Swiss victory in the Swabian War against the Swabian League of Emperor Maximilian I in 1499 amounts to de facto independence within the Holy Roman Empire.

The Old Swiss Confederacy had acquired a reputation of invincibility during these earlier wars, but expansion of the confederation suffers a setback in 1515 with the Swiss defeat in the Battle of Marignano.

This ends the so-called "heroic" epoch of Swiss history.

The success of Zwingli's Reformation in some cantons leads to inter-cantonal religious conflicts in 1529 and 1531 (Wars of Kappel).

The competition between Swiss (Reisläufer) and Swabian mercenaries (Landsknechte), who both fight in armies throughout Europe, sometimes opposing each other on the battlefield, sometimes competing for contracts, intensifies.

Contemporary chronicles agree in their reports that the Swiss, who are considered the best soldiers in Europe at the time after their victories in the Burgundian Wars, are subject to many taunts and abuses by the Landsknechte; they are called "Kuhschweizer" and ridiculed in other ways.

Kuhschweizer roughly means literally "Swiss cow herders"; although intended as a derogatory term, there is no connection to "coward".

One explanation for the violent response of the Swiss to that and related "cow"-based insults is that these alluded to sodomy and thus heresy.

Incidentally, the Swabians also use the term Schwyzer to denote all the Swiss, who call themselves Eidgenossen at this time, as an insult.

The Swiss, however, assimilated that term and begin to wear it proudly.

Such insults are neither given nor taken lightly, and frequently lead to bloodshed.

Indeed, such incidents will contribute to prolong the Swabian War itself by triggering skirmishes and looting expeditions that the military commands of neither side had ever wanted or planned.

The Swabian War of 1499 (Schwabenkrieg, also called Schweizerkrieg ["Swiss War"] in Germany and Engadiner Krieg ["War of the Engadin"] in Austria) is the last major armed conflict between the Old Swiss Confederacy and the House of Habsburg.

What had begun as a local conflict over the control of the Val Müstair and the Umbrail Pass in the Grisons soon gets out of hand when both parties call upon their allies for help; the Habsburgs demanding the support of the Swabian League and the Federation of the Three Leagues of the Grisons turning to the Swiss Eidgenossenschaft.

Hostilities quickly spread from the Grisons through the Rhine valley to Lake Constance and even to the Sundgau in southern Alsace, the westernmost part of Habsburg Further Austria.

Many battles are fought from January to July 1499, and in all but a few minor skirmishes, the experienced Swiss soldiers defeat the Swabian and Habsburg armies.

After their victories in the Burgundian Wars, the Swiss have battle-tested troops and commanders.

On the Swabian side, distrust between the knights and their foot soldiers, disagreements among the military leadership, and a general reluctance to fight a war that even the Swabian counts consider to be more in the interests of the powerful Habsburgs than in the interest of the Holy Roman Empire, prove fatal handicaps.

When his military high commander falls in the battle of Dornach, where the Swiss win a final decisive victory Maximilian I has no choice but to agree to a peace treaty signed on September 22, 1499 in Basel.

The treaty grants the Confederacy far-reaching independence from the empire.

Although the Eidgenossenschaft is to officially remain a part of the empire until the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the peace of Basel exempts it from the imperial jurisdiction and imperial taxes and thus de facto acknowledges it as a separate political entity.

The Eidgenossen, or Swiss Confederation, when asked in 1488 by Emperor Frederick to also join the Swabian League, had flatly refused: they had seen no reason to join an alliance designed to further Habsburg interests, and they are wary of this new, relatively closely knit and powerful alliance that has arisen on their northern frontier.

Furthermore, they resent the strong aristocratic element in the Swabian League, so different from their own organization, which has grown over the last two hundred years liberating themselves from precisely such an aristocratic rule.

The independence and freedom of the Eidgenossen is a powerful and attractive role model for the common people in Swabia.

Many a baron in southern Swabia fears that his own subjects might revolt and seek adherence to the Swiss Confederacy.

These fears are not entirely without foundation: the Swiss had begun to form alliances north of the Rhine river, concluding a first treaty with Schaffhausen in 1454 and then also treaties with cities as far away as Rottweil in 1463 and Mulhouse in 1466.

The city of Constance and its bishop are caught in the middle between these two blocks: they hold possessions in Swabia, but the city also still exercises the high justice over the Thurgau, where the Swiss had assumed the low justice since the annexation in 1460.

The foundation of the Swabian League had prompted the Swiss city states of Zürich and Bern to propose accepting Constance into the Swiss Confederacy.

The negotiations had failed, though, due to the opposition of the founding cantons of the Confederacy and Uri in particular.

The split jurisdiction over the Thurgau has been the cause of many quarrels between the city and the Confederacy.

In 1495, one such disagreement is answered by a punitive expedition of soldiers of Uri and the city has to pay the sum of three thousand guilders to make them retreat and cease their plundering. (The Thurgau is a condominium of the Swiss Confederacy, and Uri is one of the cantons involved in its administration.)

Maximilian I, like other Holy Roman Emperors before and after him, has to face struggles with other powerful princes in the empire and he thus seeks to secure his position and the imperial monarchy by furthering centralization.

Within the Holy Roman Empire, Maximilian faces pressure from local rulers who believe that the King's continued wars with the French to increase the power of his own house are not in their best interests.

There is also a consensus that in order to preserve the unity of the Empire, deep reforms are needed.

The reforms, which have been delayed for a long time, are launched in 1495 at the Imperial Diet held in Worms.

Maximilian is partly successful at Worms, but he also has to make concessions in favor of the princes.

The imperial reform proclaim an "eternal public peace" (Ewiger Landfriede) to put an end to the abounding feuds and the anarchy of the robber barons and it defines a new standing Imperial Army to enforce that peace, to which each imperial estate (Reichsstand) will have had to send troops.

It also mandates the common penny (Reichspfennig), a new head tax to finance this army.

However, its collection will never be fully successful.

Among the concessions Maximilian has to make is the institution of a new supreme court, the Reichskammergericht, thus separating the highest judicial authority from the person and the whereabouts of the emperor.

As the local rulers want more independence from the Emperor and a strengthening of their own territorial rule, Maximilian also has to agree to the formation of a governmental council of princes called the Reichsregiment, which will meet in Nuremberg and consist of the deputies of the Emperor, local rulers, commoners, and the prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire.

It will never play a significant role: convened for the first time only in 1500, it will be dissolved by Maximilian two years later.

The Swiss have not accepted the resolutions of the Imperial Diet, and they explicitly refuse to pay the common penny.

They have no interest whatsoever in sending troops to serve in an army under Habsburg authority, nor in paying taxes, nor will they accept any foreign court's jurisdiction; and they have succeeded in securing public peace within their territories reasonably well by themselves.

They simply consider the whole proposal a curtailing of their freedom.

The Swiss are by far not the only members of the empire who refuse to accept the resolutions, but Maximilian will use their refusal later as a pretext to place the Swiss Confederacy under an imperial ban (Reichsacht).

Constance finally joins the Swabian League as a full member on November 3, 1498.

Although this does not yet definitively define the position of the city—during the Reformation, it will be allied again with Zürich and Bern, and only after the defeat of the Schmalkaldic League in 1548 will its close connections to the Eidgenossenschaft be finally severed—it is another factor contributing to the growing estrangement between the Swiss and the Swabians.

Open war between the Swiss Confederacy and the Swabian League breaks out over a territorial conflict in the Grisons, where during the fifteenth century a federation similar to the Eidgenossenschaft had developed.

Like the Swiss, the Three Leagues have achieved a far-reaching autonomy, but also are involved in constant struggles with the Habsburgs, who rule the neighboring territories to the east and who keep trying to bring the Grisons under their influence.

During the 1470s and 1480s, duke Sigismund had succeeded in acquiring, step by step, the high justice over most of the communes of the Zehngerichtebund ("League of the Ten Jurisdictions" in the Prättigau, the youngest of the Three Leagues that had sprung up in the Grisons, having been founded only in 1436), and Maximilian has continued this expansionist strategy.

The Habsburg pressure prompts the Three Leagues to sign a close military alliance with the Swiss Confederacy in 1497-98.

At the same time, the Habsburgs had been involved in a major power struggle with the French kings of the House of Valois over the control of the remains of the realm of Charles the Bold, whose daughter and heiress Mary Maximilian had married.

Maximilian's second marriage in 1493 with Bianca Maria Sforza from Milan had then gotten got the Habsburgs directly involved in the Italian Wars, clashing again with the French kings over the control of the Duchy of Milan.

Habsburg troops occupy the valley of Müstair and plunder the Benedictine Convent of Saint John on January 20, 1499, but are soon driven back by the forces of the Three Leagues.

The Grisons, and in particular the Val Müstair have become strategically important to the Habsburgs as a direct connection between Tyrol and Milan.

The Umbrail Pass in the Val Müstair connects the Vinschgau valley (Val Venosta) in southern Tyrol with the Valtellina in northern Italy.

Furthermore, the Habsburgs and the Bishop of Chur had been quarreling over the judicial rights over the region for some time.

 

An armistice is signed on February 2 in Glurns (Glorenza), a village in the upper Vinschgau.

However, the Three Leagues have already called upon the Swiss for help and troops from Uri have already arrived in Chur.