Barbara von Fuchstein struggled to recover property lost to her cousin Ulrich Schweikert during the Peasants’ War. Her tenacity in the sequel to armed conflict illustrates the responses of ordinary lay women to the challenges posed by Reformation events. She shows the capacity of a lay woman to navigate a system of property transfer that privileged men, after she was swept into the ferment of German lay spiritualities appearing in the mid-1520s. And she illustrates the flux of religious identities at ground level in the early Reformation, among people whose interest in religious debate was secondary to, perhaps inseparable from, family business. If we wish to understand the Reformation not only among its principal protagonists, who were in most instances clerical partisans in the debate over Luther and the papacy, the saints, and the Mass, but also among ordinary people, we must pay close attention to people like Barbara, who were deeply affected by the Luther affair without choosing to participate in it.

While many alliances existed in the Empire during the late Middle Ages, the Swabian League became the model par excellence for subsequent leagues. It achieved this standing by offering something unique to all members. It allowed small territories to secure political and military backing from their more powerful neighbors while enabling larger territories to institutionalize spheres of influence. This chapter investigates these dynamics by analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of leagues as tools for military action. The Swabian League fielded one of the most effective fighting forces the Empire had ever seen. Its 1499, 1504, 1519, 1523, and 1525 campaigns established it as a force in imperial politics. They also pushed its members and other Estates to develop in ways that produced later alliances. Ultimately, the League’s operation promoted a vision of the Empire based on collaboration between its territories and the imperial crown that broke down during the early Reformation. Despite its collapse in the early 1530s, the ideal of the Swabian League lived on as the standard to which later alliances aspired. Instead of being rendered redundant, the League’s legacy helped ensure that the politics of alliance remained an essential political strategy long after the League itself disappeared.