The Old Zurich War and the struggle for the eastern route

The Toggenburg inheritance

The central political crisis of fifteenth-century Zurich was, at its root, a struggle over the eastern trade corridor. Count Friedrich VII of Toggenburg, born around 1370, had built up a considerable territorial complex between Lake Zurich and the Rhine valley. The HLS describes him as one of the most successful noble military entrepreneurs of his time. By 1406 he held in pledge Sargans, Windegg, Freudenberg and Nidberg, in 1417 he acquired Feldkirch and in 1424 Rheineck and Altstätten.¹ His lands included the key positions of the Walensee corridor: the Gaster with Windegg and Weesen, the county of Uznach at the upper end of Lake Zurich, and Sargans at the eastern end of the Walensee. Whoever inherited them would control the route from Zurich to Chur.

Friedrich died childless at Feldkirch on 30 April 1436, leaving what one account calls many partly contradictory promises regarding his estate.² Zurich, which had concluded a Burgrecht with him, claimed the parts of the inheritance that would secure its access to the east. These claims were contested by Schwyz and Glarus, which had concluded a Landrecht with him. The HLS article on the war, by Martin Illi, notes that Zurich had the stronger legal position, but that Schwyz and Glarus prevailed, receiving the Austrian lordships of Uznach and Windegg in the Gaster and, indirectly, Sargans.³ According to the same article, the city had turned eastwards and become involved in a conflict of interests with rural Schwyz, whose own interest in the Linth plain, the upper lake and the pilgrims’ road to Einsiedeln was just as strong.⁴ The division of the inheritance, concluded at Feldkirch on 14 November 1437, left Zurich with nothing of what it had sought.

The grain embargo and the war

Zurich’s response was economic before it was military. In 1438, a year of poor harvests, the city restricted grain exports and then imposed a trade embargo on Schwyz and Glarus.⁵ The measure exploited the fact that the Alpine cantons depended on grain from the lowlands and that the Zurich market was their main source. It was the most direct possible demonstration that control of a market and a route was a political weapon. It was also counterproductive. It confirmed the rural cantons in their view that Zurich was pursuing its own interests at their expense and hardened their determination to hold the eastern corridor. Hostilities began in May 1439 at the Etzel. After the Zurich forces had been routed near Pfäffikon in the autumn of 1440, the peace of Kilchberg, concluded late in 1440, obliged Zurich to cede the Höfe and the island of Ufenau to Schwyz.⁶

Isolated within the Confederation, Zurich turned to the Habsburgs. On 17 June 1442 the city concluded an alliance with King Frederick III, in which it ceded the northern part of the county of Kyburg and received in return the promise that the king would obtain the Toggenburg and the county of Uznach for Zurich.⁷ It was in this context that Frederick III granted Zurich the privilege of toll-free navigation down the Limmat and the Rhine in 1447.⁸ The alliance with Austria was regarded by the other Confederates as a betrayal. In the renewed war, the Zurich forces were defeated at St. Jakob an der Sihl on 22 July 1443, where Burgomaster Rudolf Stüssi was killed. The Confederates then besieged Greifensee in 1444 and executed its garrison, besieged Zurich without success and were destroyed by the Armagnacs at St. Jakob an der Birs on 26 August 1444.⁹

The war was fought partly on the water. Zurich maintained its superiority on the lake by means of armed boats and war rafts, supplying besieged Rapperswil and the city itself, and a naval engagement off Männedorf on 29 October 1445 confirmed that superiority. The boatmen’s guild and its vessels thus became instruments of war. The lake, whose trade the city had sought to control, became a front line. The same account emphasises that the scale of destruction and the years-long interruption of trade flows between Basel, Zurich and the Graubünden passes contributed decisively to war-weariness and to the willingness of both sides to settle.¹⁰

The settlement and its commercial consequences

A cessation of hostilities was reached in 1446. The final settlement came through arbitration. After preliminary proceedings, the Bernese Schultheiss Heinrich von Bubenberg delivered the decisive arbitral award at Einsiedeln on 13 July 1450, which obliged Zurich to renounce the Habsburg alliance and to accept the terms of the Kilchberg peace. On 24 August 1450 the Confederates and Zurich renewed their alliances by oath at Einsiedeln.¹¹ Zurich recovered its territory apart from the Höfe, which remained with Schwyz.¹²

For the trade routes the outcome was decisive. Uznach and the Gaster remained with Schwyz and Glarus, which meant that the entire Zurich–Chur route passed into the hands of the two rural cantons.¹³ Walenstadt was separated from Habsburg control by an arbitration of 1462 and placed under the Confederate cantons other than Bern. In 1483 the Confederates acquired the county of Sargans, which they then administered as a common lordship until 1798.¹⁴ Zurich thus never achieved the exclusive control of its eastern corridor that it had sought in 1436. The corridor became a Confederate route, in which Zurich shared rights and responsibilities with its neighbours. The shipping ordinance for the Linth and the Walensee agreed by Schwyz, Glarus and Zurich in 1498 was the practical expression of this new order.¹⁵

The long-term significance of the war for Zurich’s economic development was considerable. The HLS article on the canton concludes that the peace of 1450 established that Zurich had no political options outside the Confederate system.¹⁶ The HLS article on the war stresses the paradox that the conflict, contrary to the original intentions of several of its protagonists, led to a consolidation of the political situation in the Swiss area.¹⁷ For a trading city, this meant that access to the routes would henceforth be secured by alliance, arbitration and treaty. The city lost the dream of a territorial corridor to the passes but gained a stable political framework within which trade could be conducted. In the long view of this book, the second was worth more than the first.

Notes

1. Erwin Eugster, “Toggenburg, Friedrich VII. von”, in: HLS, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/029257/: “einer der erfolgreichsten adligen Militärunternehmer seiner Zeit”. ↩
2. “Alter Zürichkrieg”, German Wikipedia, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alter_Z%C3%BCrichkrieg. Cited for orientation; the date of death is confirmed by Eugster, “Toggenburg, Friedrich VII. von”, HLS (as above). ↩
3. Martin Illi, “Zurich, ancienne guerre de”, in: DHS/HLS (French version), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/008877/. ↩
4. Illi, “Zurich, ancienne guerre de”, HLS (as above): “La ville se tourna donc vers l’est et s’engagea dans un conflit d’intérêts” with Schwyz. ↩
5. Illi, “Zurich, ancienne guerre de”, HLS (as above), on the grain export restrictions of 1438 and the subsequent commercial embargo. ↩
6. Illi, “Zurich, ancienne guerre de”, HLS (as above). The German Wikipedia article gives 1 December 1440 as the date of the Kilchberg peace. ↩
7. “Alter Zürichkrieg”, German Wikipedia (as above); Illi, “Zurich, ancienne guerre de”, HLS (as above), for the date of the alliance. ↩
8. Illi, “Limmat”, HLS (as above). ↩
9. Illi, “Zurich, ancienne guerre de”, HLS (as above); for the date of St. Jakob an der Sihl, “Geschichte der Stadt Zürich”, German Wikipedia (as above); for St. Jakob an der Birs, “Alter Zürichkrieg”, German Wikipedia (as above). ↩
10. “Alter Zürichkrieg”, German Wikipedia (as above). ↩
11. “Alter Zürichkrieg”, German Wikipedia (as above). An earlier arbitral decision of 28 February 1447 by the Augsburg mayor Peter von Argun had established that Zurich’s Confederate alliances had never lost their legal force. ↩
12. Illi, “Zurich, ancienne guerre de”, HLS (as above). ↩
13. “Alter Zürichkrieg”, German Wikipedia (as above), which speaks of the whole Zurich–Chur trade route lying in the hands of these two cantons. ↩
14. Gubser, “Walenstadt”, HLS (as above). ↩
15. “Linth (Fluss)”, HLS (as above); Kuratli Hüeblin, “Walensee”, HLS (French version, as above). ↩
16. Suter, “Zürich (Kanton)”, HLS (as above). ↩
17. Illi, “Zurich, ancienne guerre de”, HLS (as above): the war “amena, contrairement aux intentions originelles de plusieurs de ses protagonistes, une consolidation de la situation politique dans l’espace suisse”. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of September 2025.