The next few years were marked by a series of strenuous efforts on the part of Berthold to carry through in practice what had already been accepted in name. Max’s need for money soon gave him his chance. The Diet was summoned to meet the Emperor at Chiavenna; and, when the princes refused to cross the Alps, its meeting-place was fixed for Lindau on the Lake of Constance. The remote and inconvenient little island city was, to the great disgust of the Estates, selected because of its nearness to Italy. The princes were ordered to bring with them their share of the Common Penny and their quota of troops to support the Emperor in Italy. But the Diet, which was opened in September, 1496, was very scantily attended. The princes who appeared came to Lindau without either^ money or men. In Maximilian’s absence Berthold of Mainz stood forth more conspicuously than ever as the leader of the Estates. He passionately exhorted the Germans to follow the example of the Swiss, who through union and trust in one another had made themselves respected and feared by all the world. His special object was to insist upon the execution of the Edict of Worms in the Austrian hereditary dominions, where but slight regard had hitherto been paid to it. He also secured the passing of a resolution that the Common Penny should be paid to the imperial Treasurers by March, 1497, and that its disposition should be determined by a new Diet to be summoned for the spring. By promptly providing for the salaries of its members, Berthold also prevented the dissolution of the Kammergericht, which the Diet now transferred to Worms, because that city was regarded as a more accessible place than Frankfort for the doctors of the Rhenish Universities.
The Diet reassembled in the spring of 1497 at Worms; but again the Emperor did not appear. Despite the Landfriede the Elector of Trier waged a fierce war against Boppard, and with the help of his neighbours reduced the town to his obedience. The Swiss refused to recognise a decision of the Kammergericht. The Common Penny came in but slowly. But external political complications once more helped forward the schemes of the German reformers. Louis XII succeeded Charles VIII as King of France. Before long he had occupied the Milanese and forced Maximilian’s own son Philip, as ruler of the Netherlands, to make a separate peace with him by which the young Archduke formally left Burgundy in French hands for Louis’s life. Reduced to desperation by these troubles, Max was again forced to have recourse to the Estates. The Diet, which had been dragging on its lengthy and unimportant sittings at Worms, was transferred at the Emperor’s request to his own city of Freiburg in the Breisgau. Max complained bitterly that the Estates were indifferent to his foreign policy and careless of the glories of the Empire. “I have been betrayed by the Lombards,” he declared, “I have been abandoned by the Germans. But I will not again suffer myself to be bound hand and foot as at Worms. I will carry on the war myself, and you can say to me what you will. I would sooner dispense myself from my oath at Frankfort; for I am bound to the House of Austria as well as to the Empire.” With King and Estates thus utterly at variance, no great results were to be expected. Maximilian desired to carry out his spirited foreign policy: the Estates wished to secure the peace and prosperity of Germany. It was to little purpose that Berthold and many of the cities brought in their contributions towards the Common Penny. Max betook himself to the Netherlands to wage war against Charles, Count of Egmont, the self-styled Duke of Gelderland, who upheld the French cause on the Lower Rhine. With war everywhere it was useless to go on with the farce of assembling the Estates. In 1499 an attempt to hold a Diet at Worms broke down, and, though Max went back from Gelderland to Cologne to meet the Estates, the rump of a Diet assembled at Worms refused to transfer its sittings to Cologne. Berthold lay dangerously sick. The helplessness and disorder of the Empire were as great as ever.
A trouble that had long been imminent now came to a head. The Swiss Confederacy, though still nominally a part of the Empire, had long been drifting into independence. It now refused to be bound by the new policy of strengthening the links that connected the various parts of the Empire with each other. The Swiss who had recently given great offence by declining to join the Swabian League, now forbade the collection of the Common Penny and rejected the jurisdiction of the Kammergericht. They renewed their connexion with France at the very moment when France went to war with the Empire, and threatened to absorb the confederated towns of Elsass, as in 1481 they had absorbed Freiburg and Solothurn. The eagerness of Max’s Tyrolese government now forced him into open war with the Swiss. But the princely champions of reform would not lift a hand against the daring mountaineers who defied the authority of the Empire. Only the Swabian League gave Max any real help. Before long his armies were beaten and there was no money to raise fresh ones. In despair Max concluded the Peace of Basel (1499) in which he gave the Swiss their own terms. They were declared freed from the Common Penny and from the imperial Chamber and all other specific imperial jurisdiction. A vague and undefined relationship between the Swiss and the Empire was still allowed to remain until the Peace of 1648. And in the following years matters were made worse by the constant tendency of the south German States to fall away from the Empire and attach themselves to the Confederacy, of which in 1501 Basel and Schaffhausen, and Appenzell in 1513, were formally admitted as full members. It was the mere accident of some unsettled local disputes as to criminal jurisdiction over the Thurgau that prevented Constance from following in their steps. Such of the Estates of Upper Swabia as had hitherto preserved their freedom now hastened to become “confederate” or “protected” or “allied” to the strenuous Confederacy, which now dominated the whole region between the Upper Rhine and the Alps, and had also established friendly relations with the Rhaetian Leagues that were now taking shape.
It cost Maximilian little to renounce the rights of the Empire over the Swiss. He looked upon the Confederates as most useful to him in helping his designs on Italy, and now trusted with their assistance to restore his father-in-law to Milan. But in 1500 came the second conquest of Milan by the French, and Ludovico’s lifelong captivity in a French dungeon. In the same year the agreement between Louis and Ferdinand of Spain for the partition of Naples still further isolated Maximilian. He was as unsuccessful in his schemes of foreign conquest as was Berthold in his plans of internal reformation. Within a few years he had fought against Florentines and French, against Gelderlaiid and Switzerland, and on each occasion/ had lost the day. And each failure of Maximilian threw him more and more completely on the mercy of the German reformers.
In April, 1500, the Diet assembled at Augsburg. Maximilian himself now offered important concessions. Everybody hated the Common Penny, and neither the princes nor the cities were so rich or public-spirited as to submit permanently to the waste of money and time, and to the withdrawal from their own proper local work, involved in the assembling of annual Diets. As an alternative to the first of these hitherto necessary evils the King revived a proposal made at Frankfort in 1486, by which the Estates were to set on foot a permanent army of 34,000 men, and to provide means for its maintenance. In place of the annual Diets a permanent committee might be established. On this basis the Estates began to negotiate with the King, and by July 2 an agreement was arrived at. In this, instead of the standing army suggested by Maximilian, &n elaborate scheme was devised for setting on foot an army for six years. Every four hundred property-holders or householders were to
combine to equip and pay a foot-soldier to fight the King’s battles. For the assessment of this burden the parochial organisation was to be employed, and the sums levied were to be roughly proportionate to the means of the contributor. The clergy, the religious Orders, and the citizens of imperial towns were to pay one florin for every 40 florins of income. The Jews were taxed at a florin a head. Counts and barons of the Empire were to equip a horseman for each 4000 florins of income, while knights were to do what they could. The princes of the Empire were
to provide at least 500 cavalry from their private resources. It was hoped that these arrangements would give the King an army of 30,000 men; and the leaders