The Swabian (Swiss) War of 1499

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 227 – Landsknechte vs. Swiss Mercenaries – The Swabian (Swiss) War of 1499.

Why are the Swiss called the Swiss? After all, Schwyz in only of 26 cantons, and not one of the largest ones. How did the proud and prosperous citizens of Zurich or Berne, mighty city states in their own right, decide they wanted to be named after a mountainous region largely inhabited by peasants tending to their gorgeous brown cattle, the Braunvieh. They even called their national airline Swissair, until my former colleagues at McKinsey let the air out of that one.  

So, why Swiss? The answer goes back to today’s topic, a war that the Swiss call the Schwabenkreig or Swabian War.  This war played a massive role in Swiss historiography, and its main battles at the Caven and at Dornach was mentioned in the same breath as Morgarten and Sempach. It was seen as the moment when Switzerland de facto exited the Holy Roman Empire and  began ploughing its own furrow in European history. Meanwhile in Germany, this war that we called the Schweizerkreig or Swiss War is largely forgotten amongst the hundreds of other military conflicts.

It was also the first of many contests between the two formidable fighting forces of the Renaissance, the Swiss Reisläufer and the German Landsknechte.  These soldiers of fortune have percolated the national consciousness on both sides, their fanciful dress depicted in art on both sides of the Rhine and still providing one of Rome’s most instagrammable photo opportunities.

That on top of the usual incompetence and skullduggery should be incentive enough to listen to this episode.

But before we start let me remind you that this show is advertising free and I have decided to reduce the number of times I do these little sections to only every second episode. Trust me, I do not like doing them and I guess you do not aways enjoy hearing them. But they are weirdly effective. So, if you want them to be fewer or even completely disappear, you can go to historyofthegermans.com/support and add make a generous contribution as Stephen L. Tomislav Z., Inka O., Janet S. Kate F. H., G.J. and Christian T have already done.

And with that, back to the show.

The first thing to say about this war is that nobody wanted it, least of all our friend the still only King of the Romans, Maximilian. As we heard last week, the great Habsburg had made himself the butt of all jokes in Europe, when his grand plan to crush the king of France literally sank to the bottom of the see in the bay of Livorno.

He was politically almost completely isolated. The former members of the Holy Leage had one by one made peace with the new king of France, Louis XII, First Spain, then Venice shook hands with their former enemy in the hope to make some gains in Naples and Lombardy. The pope could be bribed with the promise of a principality for his eldest son, the notorious Cesare Borgia.

The biggest setback for Maximilian was however the peace treaty his son Philip the Handsome, ruler of the Netherlands had signed with king Louis XII on July 20^th 1498. That deal was made whilst Maximilian was fighting on his son’s behalf for the duchy of Burgundy. This was a true stab in the back and Maximilian would forever complain about his only son’s lack of backbone.

Maximilian’s last remaining ally was Duke Ludovico Sforza “il Moro” of Milan. These two guys now clung to each other like two drowning men hoping to survive the wreckage. And the new king of France was about to drive his speedboat right over them.

Louis XII, was the grandson of Valentina Visconti of the Visconti family who had once ruled Milan before the Sforza had replaced them. And that was enough for him to claim the enormously wealthy duchy for himself. He took one look at the handsome Philip and decided that, irrespective his wealthy lands and increasingly greater prospects, that he was not the most important threat. If he could keep him calm, he would have his back free to go down to Italy. Which is precisely why Maximilian was so upset about Philip the Handsome’s deal with Louis XII. Maximilian came up to see his son and his new wife, Juana of Spain, professed his delight at their joyous union and the imminent prospect of a child. He even started another campaign against Gelders as a way to convince Philip that a more assertive stance against the French was affordable. But Philip and his advisor as well as the Estates General remained unimpressed. They would not stop Louis XII from going down to Italy. Maximilian’s friend the duke of Milan was running out of time fast.

Louis XII personal badge and royal beast was the porcupine, a large nocturnal rodent with a coat of sharp spines or quills.  He decorated his castles, paintings, tapestries, coins, liveries and manuscripts with images of porcupines, as a symbol of both defense and aggression, since people at the time believed porcupines could shoot quills at adversaries.

Despite this lack of understanding of the animal’s anatomy or the importance of biscuit tins when it comes to porcupines, it was a most suitable sigil of the times. A porcupine’s back looked very much like the squares or Haufen of massed pikemen the Swiss Mercenaries were so famous for.

And this brilliant segue gets us now closer to today’s subject. The Swiss mercenaries played an important role in the political equation. French military doctrine had focused very much on a standing cavalry army. Infantry had been seen as cannon fodder by the French Aristocrats during the Hundred year’s war and was hence recruited as mercenaries. As we mentioned multiple times, throughout the 15^th century infantry had continuously risen in military importance, until they had now become absolutely crucial.  And by 1499 Europe’s most revered mercenary troops were the Swiss. Their success in the battles of Grandson, Murten and Nancy against what was then believed to be the greatest military force in Europe. Charles the Bold’s army, had made sure of that. Episode 215 if you want to check back.

Hence what Louis XII needed for his Italian campaign was access to Swiss mercenaries. And in turn Maximilian wanted to prevent that.

The hiring of Swiss army contingents was a well regulated process. Most cantons maintained a militia who were trained in the unique fighting style of the Swiss Gewalthaufen, the pike squares. They had their officers and petty officers and members of the militia owned their necessary equipment, namely a pike or halberd, swords, knives and some pieces of armor.

They were in effect readymade regiments, able to be deployed within just a few weeks. These  regiments could only be hired from the Canton’s administration,  be that the Eldermen, the city council or occasionally a bishop.

There were however restrictions to these contracts, namely that these contingents could not be used to fight other Swiss contingents and that they could be recalled at any time if their homeland was in danger.

These conditions meant that over time the Swiss lined up with one side in any of the major conflicts. And given the largest conflict at the turn of the 15^th century were the Italian Wars, the decision of the cantons who to send their militia to was often decisive.

And this decision was not just a function of money. If it had been this, the king of France would have always had first dibs. But on occasion the eternally skint Maximilian was able to recruit Swiss contingents. The canton’s political authorities would take into account non-monetary benefits like the opportunity to extend their territory or long standing political alliances. Allegiance to the emperor and ancient feudal obligations even played a role. Making a deal with the French was not a given.

Hence Maximilian had been cultivating friendly relationships with the Swiss Confederacy. One of his first acts after he had been elected king of the Romans was to confirm the generous peace treaty his uncle Sigismund of Tyrol had signed. And throughout the build-up to his grand plan he had encouraged his allies, in particular Ludovico il Moro to hire the Swiss. Even when the Swiss signed a contract with king Louis XII in 1498 whereby the French were given exclusive access to Swiss mercenaries in exchange for a generous pension paid irrespective of actual deployment, Maximilian still kept being super friendly hoping things may turn around at some later stage.

Now Maximilian may be doing a lot of schmoozing, but how warm and fuzzy did the Swiss feel about him, his family, the Habsburgs in general, and the empire more broadly?

Historically the Habsburgs had been the archenemy of the Confederacy. As we heard in episodes 150 and 205, this unique political structure had been created specifically to defy the Habsburgs. And it was not so long ago that Friedrich III had brought the Armagnacs in to end this “abomination” as he called them. But more recently Sigismund of Tyrol had joined the Swiss in their war against Charles the Bold (Episode 214) and a perpetual peace had been signed and confirmed between the two sides.

But from a Swiss perspective, there were still some serious issues here. When Maximilian married Marie of Burgundy, the two traditional opponents of the confederacy, Habsburg and Burgundy had joined forces. Sure, the low Countries were exhausted, the duchy of Burgundy had gone to France and Maximilian was perennially broke. But thinking long term, this could become a very uncomfortable situation. Moreover, Maximilian’s closest ally was Milan, the Swiss neighbor to the south. That makes a firm alliance with Maximilan and his family and friends a worrying consideration. Nothing imminently problematic, but you know the Swiss, they think long term.

And there was a political move that had irritated the Swiss further, and that was the formation of the Swabian League, the Schwäbische Bund. This association was founded by Friedrich III in 1488, mainly as a counterweight to the Wittelsbach and a tool to recover the Tyrol and further Austria as we discussed in episode 221.  But it did irritate the Swiss. The Swabian league pooled together the fragmented political entities on their northern border, the various counts and imperial knights of Swabia as well as cities like Konstanz, Ulm, Lindau, Ravensburg and Rottweil. Previously some of these places had shown interest in becoming what was called “zugewandte Orte”, a sort of associated members of the confederacy. The creation of the Swabian League blocked the expansion of the Confederacy into these regions.

Then, more recently, the empire had agreed the reform package that included the Ewige Landfrieden, the Reichstag, the Reichskammergericht, and the Common Penny we discussed in episodes 223 to 225

The Swiss were and understood themselves to be part of the Holy Roman Empire. Zurich, Berne and the others were free imperial cities, the rural cantons, estates of the empire. There were bishops and abbots here who enjoyed immediacy.

But these new imperial institutions were a headache. For one, they did not offer any benefit. The confederacy had already successfully eradicated feuding. There were courts and enforcement mechanisms in place that were widely accepted. Decision making in the Tagsatzung, the annual gathering of the cantons was much more effective and egalitarian than the Reichstag. Taxation on Canton level existed and proceeds were deployed as prudently then as they are now. Raising an additional tax to fund a court system that interfered with their existing structures was not popular. And it became even more unpopular when the Reichskammergericht in one of its earliest decisions imposed the imperial ban over St. Gallen and Appenzell.

But what caused the biggest rift was something Maximilian was indeed responsible for.

The Swiss with their peculiar provision that they would not fight other Swiss had left a huge gap in the market for mercenary forces. If the Swiss had turned you down, you knew that their pikemen were coming. And that meant now you really, really need some equivalent fighters and quick.

Enter stage left – the Landsknechte. They were created out of exactly such desperation by Maximilian in around 1482 to stand up against the Swiss contingents the king of France deployed in the war of the Burgundian succession. Though the word Knecht had been used to denominate soldiers and mercenary soldiers since the High Middle Ages, the term Landsknecht first appeared in 1486 in a Swiss official document. They were defined as mercenaries recruited outside the confederacy. Basically the term was made to denote that they were the fake ones, much like the made in Germany label was initially designed as a warning to customers. And much like that, Landsknecht became a successful brand name in its own right.

Initially and up to the period we are talking about now, the fighting style of Swiss and German mercenaries was largely identical.  Maximilian simply copied the style and techniques he had seen either when fighting them or on the few occasions he had been able to hire them.

This basic technique consisted in forming a tight square of a few thousand men with pikes and halberds sticking out and then marching relentlessly and fast straight into the enemy’s center. It was the speed and the pressure that made them so effective. These guys would literally run uphill or at artillery positions in the belief that rapidly overwhelming the enemy may be costly, but less costly than being shot to pieces down below. Cavalry found it almost impossible to penetrate a wall of pikes that were 4.5 to 5 meters long. Discipline was so highly developed, they would on occasion open a path for the enemy cavalry to get inside the square, only to close it again behind them and have the guys with halberds dragging the riders off their horses and massacre them. It was that cohesion and discipline as well as their refusal to give any quarter that got enemy forces to occasionally run even before contact was made.

As I said, Maximilian tried to get his own infantrymen to copy these techniques. And he did achieve some success here, namely at the battle of Theroanne against Louis XI and then on several other occasions. And he massively elevated the social standing of his infantrymen in a world that was used to revere the armed man on horseback. You may remember that when he entered Ghent in triumph he and his senior officers walked with his pikemen on foot, rather than on a horse as had been the tradition.

As we go into the very end of the 15^th century, the Landsknechte had already gained a solid reputation and had turned into serious competition, which the Swiss did not like one bit.

Whilst their tactics were very similar in the beginning, there were a number of fundamental differences between the Swiss and the Landsknechte beyond the place where they were recruited.

The Swiss soldiers were part of a militia that was trained to defend their home canton. That meant they were usually fighting alongside their friends and family and the motivation was in part pay, but also the honor of their community. As mentioned before, the militia was raised, organized and administered by the leadership of the canton who were also the ones agreeing contracts with foreign powers.

The Landsknechte were individual soldiers who were recruited by an Oberst, a colonel. The colonel was a war entrepreneur who raised and operated his forces solely for compensation. His recruits were professional soldiers, who were also almost entirely coin operated.

This fundamental difference drove a number of further differences between the two forces.

The Swiss were known as the more disciplined force. They did of course loot and pillage, but within some set rules. They were less prone to general rowdiness and uncontrolled behavior, largely because the members of the regiment all knew each other and would return back to their hometowns and villages. And though what happens on campaign stays on campaign, bits and bops one might not want everyone to know tended to seep through to the local gossip mill.

The Landsknechte on the other hand were hired ad hoc and from a wide range of places, meaning there was a lot less social control. Basically nobody would tell your mum what you did at the sack of Rome in 1527, because nobody knew who your mum was.

This lack of coherence amongst the Landsknechte then required a much more draconic discipline in the camps and during campaign. Punishments were famously harsh and often imposed not by officers but by their fellow comrades.

The most famous of those was the Spießrutenlauf or running the gauntlet that dealt with accusations of particularly serious crimes that tarnished the honour of the entire mercenary company or regiment.

An officer acted as the provost or public prosecutor and the mercenary community as judge. The mercenary community appointed three juries, which each independently recommended a verdict which could be either acquittal, pardon or death. The provost would lay out the case for the prosecution. The accused could then protest his innocence or beg for mercy.

If the mercenaries advocated the death sentence, they proceeded to the place of execution and formed a corridor in an east-west direction, with the pikemen lining up on either side in two tightly closed rows of three. If a pike bearer left a gap to allow the condemned man to escape, he was threatened with having to run through the lane in place of the delinquent. At the end of the lane stood the ensigns with their flags lowered in disgrace. The condemned man had to confess before his comrades and forgive them for their judgement. Accompanied by the provost, the ‘poor man’ now walked through the lane three times to bid farewell to his comrades and ask their forgiveness for his shameful deed, then the ensigns rolled up the flags and stuck them upside down into the ground, the provost struck the sinner three times on the shoulder, and the condemned man entered the alley and marched towards the flags. In this case, the judges and executioners were the Landsknechte themselves, who punished the disgraceful deed with their spears and thus restored the honour of the flag.

A pretty gruesome punishment for men used to committing acts of almost unspeakable violence and bravery.

Both the Swiss and the Landsknechts were professional soldiers and in the 16^th century that was a honourable profession, even if one fought for money rather than king and country. It required skill and a certain amount of wealth. Soldiers were expected to bring their own equipment, their pikes, swords, knives, armour and helmet. Hence the lowest classes were rarely able to join the regiments. In particular in the early days, the ranks of the Landsknechte were made up of the sons of prosperous farmers and burghers, even lower nobility, who may have had a sense of adventure or were given the kit as a way to pay them out of their inheritance. The Swiss tended to be from more modest backgrounds. Mercenary work had been a family tradition in many of the alpine valleys going back to the 14^th century when emperor Henry VII relied on them for his journey to Rome. Hence arms and armour could be handed down from father to son, rather than having to buy it anew.

Pay differed too. The Swiss thanks to their stronger brand name, offer of exclusivity and richer patrons were paid more, usually 4 to 6 gulden per month, whilst the common Landsknechte were paid just 4 gulden. However, about 10 to 20% of the Landsknechte were on double pay, aka 8 gulden per month. These were men who had special expensive equipment like firearms, the double hander swords and took the most exposed positions in the front and corners of the fighting square.

This was looked like generous pay. A labourer or journeyman would earn about 1 to 2 gulden a month, meaning a soldier starts on more than double the pay of a labourer which could go up to 8 times and then multiples of that when elected into officer rank. However work tended to be seasonal, i.e., regiments were usually dissolved after campaign season had ended, so that on a per year basis the average Landsknecht weren’t necessarily that much better off.

Though the pay level for the Landsknechte was lower, that did not show. If the Swiss Reisläufer dressed for war as fight, the Landsknecht dressed for war as spectacle.

The signature feature was slashing — the deliberate cutting of outer garments to allow billowing puffs of contrasting fabric beneath to push through. Applied to doublets, hose, sleeves, and caps with what can only be described as evangelical enthusiasm, slashing transformed the Landsknecht into something resembling a very angry and well-armed piñata. The effect was achieved by men who were, let us remember, professional killers, and who apparently saw no contradiction between disemboweling their enemies at dawn and spending the previous evening carefully translating their mood boards into wearables fashion statements.

The puffed and padded hose deserve special mention — great ballooning garments of slashed velvet and silk that made the wearer’s legs look like a pair of prize-winning marrows and prominently displayed their codpiece. Combined with the broad, flat bonnet adorned with extravagant feathers, the overall silhouette suggested less a hardened veteran of the Italian Wars than a Dubai influencer with a pike.

This was not, however, mere vanity — or rather, it was exactly mere vanity, but with a legal justification attached. Maximilian had granted the Landsknechte an explicit exemption from sumptuary laws — the regulations that normally restricted ostentatious dress to the nobility — as compensation for the exceptional dangers of their profession. The Landsknechte took this exemption and ran with it at considerable speed, dressing in a manner that suggested they intended to extract maximum value from every moment they might have left before a Swiss halberd settled the matter permanently.

The Katzbalger — their distinctive short, broad sword with its S-shaped guard — was worn with studied nonchalance at the hip, a nicely lethal counterpoint to all the silk and feathers above it. It was perhaps the one element of the Landsknecht ensemble that needed no embellishment to make its point.

In a way these differences between the sober Swiss army attire and the Landsknecht bling reflected an ever deeper social rift between the members of the Swiss confederacy and their southern German neighbours. By the end of the 15^th century Swiss society had become comparatively egalitarian. There were no princes or mighty counts here. The nobles that did exist had become vassals of the major cities, or had joined their ranks as patricians.

Meanwhile the opposite shore of the Rhine, was dominated by the Habsburgs, the dukes of Württemberg and  the margraves of Baden, as well as the dozens and dozens of counts and imperial knights who happened to be free agents only subject to the emperor. The patricians in the major cities, Konstanz, Ulm, Lindau, Ravensburg, Rottweil copied the habits and clothing of the nobility. The lower classes aspired to be part of this upper echelon, which is one of the reasons the Landsknecht attire was so appealing.  They all looked down on the Swiss, in particular those from the rural canons in central Switzerland as peasants devoid of any nobility.

As the rift deepened the two sides began calling each other names. The Germans referred to the Confederates as Kuhschweizer, Cow Swiss, pointing out their rural roots, lack of sophistication and insinuating unnatural attachments. In return the Swiss called their neighbours Sausschwaben, literally Sow Swabians, meaning roughly the same, only dirtier.

All these differences, the clothing, the social structures, the competition for military commissions, the imposition of imperial courts and taxes, the encirclement by Habsburg lands and allies, the creation of the Swabian league and the deep rooted antipathy to the Habsburgs left the border region a loaded howitzer waiting for the casual drop of a fuse.

And so, though nobody really wanted a war, a war started in January 1499. One of Maximilian’s advisers, the banker Georg Gossembrot had been attacked and mistreated by what he claimed had been the Swiss. In response Tyrolean troops occupied the abbey of Munster, a property disputed between the canton of Graubünden and the Habsburgs.  That triggered a call for help from Graubünden to the whole Swiss Confederacy, at which point Tyrol called on the Swabian League to honour their alliance.

Immediately the bells rang, calling men to their arms. The Landsknechte boasted that they would scorch and burn so that the lord himself on his rainbow would have to pull in his feat to get away from the heat. Graubünden alone raised a force of 12,000 men who instantly attacked along the border between Lake Constance and Arlberg. They declared it to be a Böser Krieg, an ugly war, where no quarter was to be given, all prisoners to be killed, no ransom to be collected. Soon after the war engulfed the other leg of the border along the Rhine between Constance and Basel. The administrators in Innsbruck who had triggered all this chaos wrote to Maximilian and called for him to abandon his campaign in Gelders and come south asap.

Maximilian called on the imperial estates to raise an army to fend off this attack by uncouth peasants and received the usual response, which was deafening silence. Meanwhile the Landsknechte suffered one defeat after another, at Hard on Lake Constance in February 1499, in Bruderholz near Basel in March and in April in Schwaderloh where the artillery fell into the hands of the Swiss. A particularly awful skirmish happened near Feldkirch where a combined force of Swabian and Tyrolians was driven into the river Ill by a smaller Swiss contingent. 3,000 men drowned. No Quarter given. All the fancyful dressed dudes had to show for themselves was some large scale cattle rustling and raiding. People started to say that these Swabian colonels were more suited to be highwaymen than soldiers. Parts of the local peasant population on the border were encouraged to raise up, hoping to join the Swiss in their commoner’s paradise.

When Maximilian finally got to lake Constance, he once again leant on his friend Ludovico il Moro to help him out with money and material that he could ill afford. The army Maximilian gathered and led against Graubünden was wiped out at the battle on the Calven. 2,000 armed riders refused to come to the aid of the Tyrolean infantry, they simply ran away. Another 4,000 men lay dead and the lands on the border were devastated for a generation. Maximilian sent his men to do the one thing they seemed to be able to, rustle 10,000 cattle from the Engadin, making sure their people would suffer from hunger too.

Meanwhile some sort of imperial army had finally gathered in Swabia, but their commanders refused to engage. The soldiers collected berries and enjoyed the sunshine before going home without having thrust their swords even once.

The whole thing turned into even more of a farce than the actions before Livorno.

One Swabian noble was however hell bent on taking action. Heinrich von Fürstenberg gathered a couple of thousand men and besieged the fortress of Dornach near Solothurn. But his force was undisciplined and failed to put up sentries. A Swiss contingent appeared on their back, rolled them up and cut them down. Another 3,500 dead, including Heinrich von Furstenberg. No Quarter given.

That was it for the military side. Plus king Louis XII of France who had now become the Swiss Canton’s preferred client and had marched into the duchy of Milan intent on ousting Ludovico. Maximilian was open to agree terms. These boiled down to – depending on viewpoint – an awful lot or nothing at all.

There were no territorial concessions and Switzerland remained part of the Holy Roman Empire. A few years later, Basel and Schaffhausen joined the Confederacy but they were the last ones. Attempts to bring in Konstanz, Rottweil, Strasburg or Colmar were abandoned. In fact the border as set around that time has remained the border between Switzerland and Germany to this day. 

On the other hand, Switzerland was kept out of the authority of the Reichskammergericht, had no representation but also no obligations to the Reichstag, the Swiss did not have to pay the common penny and were left out of the Reichsmatrikel. So, for all practical purposes, they had left the Holy Roman Empire, a fact that was formalised in 1648, at the end of the 30 Years’ War.

The other thing they took away from this war was their name, the Swiss. The term Schwyzer or Swiss had circulated in the neighbouring regions for a while already, namely since the battle of Morgarten in 1315 where the men from Schwyz played an important role.  But the various cantons preferred the term Eidgenossen, “oath-fellows”, which made sense since for instance Berne was much larger and too had a extremely distinguished military tradition. In fact the term Swiss was often used by the supporters of the Habsburg as an insult, suggesting they were all simple peasants. In the Swabian war that turned into the derogatory term Kuhschweizer, cow Swiss that added a suggestion of bestiality.

No wonder the Eidgenossen reacted ferociously to the term. But after the war where they had comprehensively trousered or ee-trousered their opponents, they began to use the term back at their enemies. In a sort of “who is mooing now” sort of a way. It became a positive term reminding them of their great victories at Morgarten, Sempach and now the Claven and Dornach. Around the same time the foundation myths of Wilhelm tell and Andreas Winkelried took hold, forging a national identity that in common parlance became Swiss. Though the official name of the country is Confoederatio Helvetica abbreviated as CH, a fancy latinised term going back to a Germanic tribe from the time of the Ancient Romans.

So much for the term Swiss. But what about the Landsknechte?

This defeat was catastrophic in the extreme. The Swiss forces had cut through their imitators not even like butter, more like goats cheese or yoghurt. But they did contain the source of their recovery within their organisational set-up.

The fundamental difference between the two forces was that the Swiss were at heart a local militia trained and managed by their Cantons, whilst the Landsknechte were fighting as ad hoc armies under the command of a war entrepreneur.

The Swiss cantons coordinated their training, tactics and deployment between each other to ensure that customers received a consistent quality of service. That made them coherent, but at the same time slowed down their response to technical innovations.

The war entrepreneurs who were based in southern Germany, the Götz von Berlichingen, Franz von Sickingen, Ulrich von Hutten and Georg Frundsberg, they had no need or interest to coordinate their activities. In fact the opposite. They competed with each other, encouraging them to constantly innovate. So they adopted the double handed sword, introduced heavier firearms, the Arquebuses, quicker and in larger numbers. They were prepared to coordinate closer with cavalry and artillery in combined arms operations. It was a slow process of trial and error, but as we will see, the devastating defeats in the Swabian, aka the Swiss war of 1499 did not repeat. 

Next week we will finally march across the great threshold into the 16^th century. I announced that several weeks ago, thinking it was imminent, but – as usual – I got distracted. But this time it will happen, I promise. After all we have to accompany our friend Maximilian to one final humiliation – in his favourite imperial city, in Augsburg. I hope you will come along.

And remember, if you want to keep me in slashed doublet and prominent codpieces, all you have to do is go to historyofthegermans.com/support, where many options to express your generosity await you.