The Swabian War of 1499 Part Two
Actual hostilities of the Swabian War were the result of another cause. The League of God’s house and the Upper League (sometimes called the Graubunden), two Rhaetian Leagues, were resisting the Austrians from the Tryol and asked the Swiss Confederation for help. Everyone began to take sides. A third league, the League of the Ten Jurisdictions, and the Tyroles sided with Austria. By winter of 1488/89, the Swabian league put its powerful army at the disposal of the Emperor. This move by the Swabians infuriated the Rhaetian leagues and the Swiss. The Swabian war erupted in the Alps.
Oddly enough the actual event the triggered the war occurred after a peace treaty had been signed. The main players had met in January of 1499 at Feldkirch and agreed to a peace from all the petty squabbles in the preceding years. It did not last long.
When Tyrol troops invaded the Chur Valley in January 1499, the Swiss asked for assistance from their neighbours. On Feb 2 1499 two hundred men from Urn under Captain Heini Wolleb arrived in Chur after crossing the high snow-covered Oberalp. That same day an armistice was signed in Glurns. When the Urners heard about it two days later they set off back home. As they passed by the Austrian held Castle at Balzers on the 6 Feb 1499, the Austrian soldiers on the walls mocked them for being cattle breeders, calling out “Moo-moo” and “Baa-baa”. The Urners, taking offence, waded the Rhine River, which at this time flowed close to the castle walls. Unable to avenge the insults by attacking the men in the castle, they burned a few houses in the area and then marched off home. But that was not the end of the affair.
On Feb 12 1499, the Swiss, still upset at the insults again invaded the Brandis lands and defeat the Swabian army and the Vaduz militia under Baron Brandis near St. Wolfgang in Triesen. The Swiss then captured Vaduz the following day looting and burning it. Ludwig, the Baron at the time, was apparently not much of a warrior. Hold up in the Castle on the heights over the village of Vaduz, he could have easily held off the invaders with the few troops he had. Instead he let the Swiss march into the castle unopposed and even tried to bribe them to leave him alone. This strategy did not work. The Swiss army looted the castle, setting it on fire and took the Baron as a prisoner. The villages of Balzars, Schaan and Bendern were also looted and the inhabitants forced to swear allegiance to the Swiss Confederation. Baron Ludwig was carried off into Switzerland where it took his lawyers nine months to secure his freedom and the return of his lands. The Swiss also captured the Luziensteig, a mountain pass between the Liechtenstein Valley and the Grissons. They with the Rhaetians also raided and pillaged the Vorarlberg. Only the impregnable Gutenberg Castle held out.
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