Conflict Escalation Done Wrong? The Free City of Regensburg Seizes Ehrenfels Castle, 13 April 1417

Abstract

This article examines the various modes of conflict management used by the free city of Regensburg and the local nobleman Hans I Staufer of Ehrenfels during a prolonged dispute over revenues from 1413 to 1418. In the early years of this feud, both parties utilized nonviolent methods such as legal action and arbitration, which were occasionally accompanied by minor military interventions. In April 1417, however, the Regensburg councilors broke with convention and decided to escalate the conflict with their feud opponent by capturing his ancestral castle, Ehrenfels, near Beratzhausen in the Upper Palatinate region. Using both urban account books and documentary evidence, the case study investigates the reasons behind the councilors' decision to launch this ostentatious military attack, their objectives in seizing Ehrenfels castle, and the impact of their show of force on the ongoing conflict. It portrays late medieval Central European towns as potent military actors and argues for a more systematic integration of economic considerations and cost-benefit calculations into our picture of late medieval feuding.

Introduction

Between 1413 and 1418, the only free city in Bavaria, Regensburg, fought a protracted feud against Hans I Staufer of Ehrenfels, a nobleman from the neighboring Upper Palatinate.¹ This was far from unusual. Medieval towns were, after all, potent military actors that resolutely defended their—perceived—rights against noble contenders.² Upper Germany, furthermore, is well known for the numerous armed conflicts unsettling the region during the Late Middle Ages.³ At first glance, the “enmity”⁴ between Regensburg and Hans Staufer is just another example of the countless small-scale conflicts that characterized the politically fragmented southern regions of the empire.

A closer look, however, reveals a striking anomaly. Usually, conflicts between Regensburg and its noble neighbors took the form of litigation at various local and regional courts and of appeals to regional and supraregional authorities—including the king or emperor of the Romans—to protect the city's privileges. These nonviolent modes of conflict management routinely alternated with small-scale military interventions, such as the mounting of armed patrols to safeguard the city's traveling merchants or the hiring of mercenaries to ambush a feud opponent on the road.⁵ In their conflict with Hans Staufer, however, the Regensburg councilors went markedly beyond the established pattern: on 13 April 1417 a Regensburg host marched on Staufer's ancestral castle Ehrenfels close to Beratzhausen in today's Landkreis Regensburg, seized the stronghold, took several of his relatives and servants prisoner, and carried them off to Regensburg, together with Staufer's personal belongings and his private archive.⁶

This seizure of a feud opponent's castle is unique in Regensburg's early fifteenth-century history and already struck contemporaries as remarkable.⁷ It raises questions: why did the Regensburg councilors decide to escalate the conflict with Hans Staufer militarily at precisely the time they did; what did they hope to gain by doing so; and how did their demonstrative show of force impact the ongoing conflict?⁸ In this contribution, I will address this set of questions by applying an actor-centered and process-oriented approach to the analysis of the Staufer feud. Like the articles of Christina Lutter and Herbert Krammer in the present volume, my primary focus will be on the dynamics of conflict escalation. However, unlike Lutter and Krammer, I will concentrate on the conflict's financial rather than its prosopographical aspects. This is mainly due to the favorable archival situation. In Regensburg, a number of urban account books survive, which shed an intriguing light on the financial dimension of the conflict.⁹ This article will use these sources to investigate the monetary cost of the feud together with the—less tangible—political cost. It will connect these expenses with the course of events and assess the impact of both the tangible and intangible costs on the Regensburg councilors' decisions. Based on these findings, the article will then reflect on the questions of whether the expedition against Ehrenfels castle can be called a success, and how the Regensburg councilors' expectations related to its political and financial fallout.¹⁰

The Actors

Engaged in the Staufer feud were two actors who differed greatly in terms of their financial and military power. With its approximately 12,000 inhabitants—governed by a sixteen-member council recruited from the city's traditional elite of wealthy long-distance merchants—and its strong walls, the free city of Regensburg was economically and militarily vastly superior to its feud opponent Hans Staufer. However, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the once prosperous city was already, to a certain degree, a giant with feet of clay.¹¹ After a period of prosperity in the High Middle Ages based on international long-distance trade along the Danube, in the fourteenth century Regensburg's political and economic power began to dwindle due to the shifting of major European trade routes, the curtailing of Danube trade by newly established staples (Stapel) in Vienna and Passau, and the rise of other Bavarian towns such as Ingolstadt, Landshut, or Munich, which were promoted heavily by the Wittelsbach dukes. The burghers were also still ailing financially from Regensburg's less than happy engagement in the so-called Town War of 1387–89.¹² Further stress was put on the politically dominant long-distance merchants by late medieval Bavaria's extreme territorial fragmentation. The country's division between no less than six rival Wittelsbach lines resulted in frequent infringements of the peace and in the insecurity of roads. These problems were further aggravated by the fact that, unlike the city of Nuremberg for instance, Regensburg never managed to acquire a substantial territory of its own. Rather, the city formed an island amid the territories of the Wittelsbach princes, the bishop of Regensburg, and various small local lords, such as the Staufer of Ehrenfels.¹³

In contrast to Regensburg's ruling elite, whose social and economic history is well documented, our second actor, Hans Staufer, is not easy to grasp. He came from a family belonging to the upper stratum of the middling Bavarian nobility.¹⁴ During our period of investigation, Hans' elder brother Dietrich IV was the head of the family. Dietrich was an eminent member of the local nobility who held various offices in service of the Wittelsbach dukes and acted as creditor for the same princes, as well as for King Rupert.¹⁵ His son and successor, Dietrich V, was enfeoffed with Ehrenfels castle by King Sigismund in 1418; one year later he received a royal annuity for his services to the monarch.¹⁶ Hans pursued a different career. He became a retainer of Burgrave John III of Nuremberg, who held territories northeast of Nuremberg and enjoyed close connections to the house of Luxemburg.¹⁷ As we will see, he had a well-developed personal network. He bore the title of “knight” and held office as custodian (pfleger) of Weißenstein castle.¹⁸ He must have had significant financial resources at his disposal as well, because in 1415 he received the castle of Beheimstein (west of Pegnitz) in pledge from his lord for the sizable sum of 900 fl.ung.¹⁹ An internal communication in a Regensburg town book labeling him “a poor knight” (ein armer ritter) thus obviously reflects the town clerk's exasperation rather than Hans Staufer's actual social and economic standing.²⁰

The Staufer Feud until April 1417

Like most “enmities,” the conflict between Regensburg and Hans Staufer originated in a dispute over revenues.²¹ Staufer claimed that the city withheld a share in the ordinary tax of the Regensburg Jews that appertained to him through inheritance.²² Upon his complaint, in late 1412 the Nuremberg landgericht ²³—which was then controlled by Staufer's lord, Burgrave John of Nuremberg—found the city of Regensburg guilty of depriving him of his due and proscribed its burghers.²⁴ The Regensburg councilors refused to acknowledge this verdict, claiming that the city's traditional privileges exempted its burghers from foreign jurisdiction, save only the authority of the king or emperor of the Romans.

In the ensuing conflict, the opponents initially pursued different conflict management strategies.²⁵ The Nuremberg verdict granted Hans Staufer the right to assault Regensburg merchants and seize their properties until his claims had been satisfied. We do not have any documentary evidence, but it seems highly likely that he immediately proceeded to action once he held a legal title in his hands. Also, he further escalated the conflict by assembling feud helpers, who declared enmity to Regensburg on his behalf.²⁶ A list compiled by the Regensburg town clerk registers no less than 134 individuals who sent enmity-letters to the city between early 1413 and April 1417.²⁷ Judging from their names, they came mostly from the Upper Palatinate, but also from Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia, and probably Western Bohemia, i.e., regions crucial for Regensburg's long-distance trade. Though their activities left no traces in the sources, these men seem to have put considerable pressure on the city's merchants. In Hans Staufer's case we even have indirect evidence that the seizing of Regensburg merchandise paid off for him economically as well as socially—as we have seen, he was able to lend money to John of Nuremberg in 1415, two years after the feud against Regensburg started, and to take a castle in pledge in return.²⁸

Even though the conflict evidently struck a vital nerve of Regensburg's political elite, the councilors at first decided to handle it in their usual, primarily defensive way. On the one hand, they sought the arbitration of regional authorities, especially of members of the local nobility.²⁹ On the other, they lobbied extensively at the royal court.³⁰ The learned jurist Conrad of Hildesheim was sent on the city's behalf to the Council of Constance, where King Sigismund held court. From there, Conrad reported dutifully on all developments concerning the conflict with Hans Staufer.³¹ Even before that, the councilors had their city's privileges confirmed by the monarch, including Regensburg's traditional exemption from foreign courts.³² When Staufer refused to give up his claims, the councilors had Sigismund officially void the Nuremberg verdict and the proscription of Regensburg's burghers in June 1415.³³ Also, they widely publicized the royal charters supporting their legal viewpoint.³⁴ After this Regensburg success, the conflict seems to have cooled off for about a year. The urban account books show that municipal expenditures on the conflict dropped considerably,³⁵ and no more enmity-letters arrived. From June 1416 onward, however, new declarations of enmity flooded the municipal chancery, probably accompanied by new assaults on merchants. The turning point came when the councilors realized that their previous attempts at extinguishing the feud had failed. Thus, they decided to apply a new strategy and to escalate the conflict with Hans Staufer militarily.

The Expedition against Ehrenfels Castle

The expedition against Ehrenfels castle breaks the mold of Regensburg's conventional policy toward noble feud opponents in a spectacular way. As we will see in the section “Monetary Cost, or: the Staufer Feud by the Numbers,” the expedition was financially very costly. Besides that, the decision to assault the castle outright presented the councilors with considerable legal problems. First, it is not entirely clear if the city ever formally declared enmity to Hans Staufer. We know from the account books that Regensburg paid for the delivery of enmity-letters issued by members of the local nobility to Hans Staufer.³⁶ There is no indication, though, that the city itself sent a similar letter. It is therefore perhaps not by chance that after the news of the castle's capture had reached Lake Constance, Conrad of Hildesheim felt the need to report to his employers that nobody in Constance was complaining about the seizing of the castle, even though there was, as we will see, a lot of uproar about other aspects of the Ehrenfels affair.³⁷

Second, an attack on Ehrenfels was complicated considerably by the fact that its ownership was divided among different members of the Staufer family. A 1417 charter shows that Hans Staufer held one part of the castle (seinen tail an der vestt Ernvels), and he seems to have usually resided there.³⁸ The rest belonged to his brother and nephew, who both lived at Ehrenfels with their families. Neither of them, though, figures among Hans' known feud helpers, and there is no evidence that they ever became involved in his conflict with Regensburg. This fact sheds interesting light on the complications created by the very common co-ownership of medieval estates. It also throws into relief complex family strategies and warns against simplistic narratives of family based loyalties.³⁹ On a more practical level, the decision by Dietrich IV Staufer and his family to stay out of the feud meant that the Regensburg councilors could not strike against Ehrenfels without infringing on the rights of innocent bystanders, including those of a well-respected man like Dietrich.

Third—and even worse—the councilors faced similar problems with regard to the expedition's practical execution. Ehrenfels lay 29 km northeast of Regensburg, which meant a two days' march for the city's host. As we have seen, Regensburg lacked an urban territory. In order to reach their goal, the city's expedition force thus had to cross through the lands of no less than three Wittelsbach dukes, namely Ernst and William III of Bavaria-Munich and Henry XVI of Bavaria-Landshut. That this caused the councilors no small headache is revealed by Conrad of Hildesheim's obvious relief when he was able to report back to Regensburg that Duke Henry was ready to bet “one or two of his best geldings” that the city's action against Hans Staufer and the seizure of Ehrenfels castle were not meant to hurt his rights as the lord of the lands surrounding Beratzhausen.⁴⁰ Even more telling, though, is the timing of the assault itself.

Faced with the obstacles discussed above, the Regensburg councilors had to wait for the opportune moment for their strike against Hans Staufer. This window of opportunity presented itself in early April 1417. Earlier that year, Dietrich IV Staufer had died, making his relatively young son Dietrich V the new head of the family.⁴¹ More importantly, though, King Sigismund had called for a general tag, wishing to assemble all the leading figures of the Empire in Constance at Easter 1417.⁴² All of the Wittelsbach dukes followed his invitation and traveled to the shores of Lake Constance. According to the chronicler Ulrich of Richental, Ernst and William of Bavaria–Munich as well as Henry of Bavaria–Landshut arrived at Constance together and were solemnly received on Easter Tuesday, i.e., 13 April 1417.⁴³ Given the circumstances, it is hardly a coincidence that the Regensburg host took Ehrenfels on exactly the same day.⁴⁴

The expedition itself clearly was a short and swift undertaking.⁴⁵ Its outcome, however, turned out to be somewhat less than perfect. Like similar displays of force in other feuds, the Regensburg councilors probably aimed at taking Hans Staufer prisoner and forcing him to accept a settlement.⁴⁶ Unfortunately for them, their expedition was only partially successful. The assailants captured Dietrich V and his wife as well as Dietrich IV's widow, Praxedis, and her underage children.⁴⁷ Hans Staufer himself, however, escaped the attack. What was almost certainly intended as a decisive blow against Regensburg's principal feud opponent thus actually further prolonged and complicated the conflict.

Cost to Reputation, or the Intangible Cost of an Adventure

As the seizure of Ehrenfels castle unfolded, Hans Staufer fled to Constance, where he took refuge with his lord, John of Nuremberg, who was also attending the imperial tag.⁴⁸ Once safe, Hans immediately began lobbying extensively against Regensburg, in which he was greatly helped by an accidental side effect of the Ehrenfels attack. Most probably unbeknownst to the assailants, sojourning at Ehrenfels castle at the time of the attack was Henry V Nothaft of Wernberg, deputy (viztum) of Duke John III of Bavaria-Straubing-Holland and an eminent member of the Bavarian nobility.⁴⁹ Nothaft had ties to noble families from all over Bavaria and Western Bohemia, including the Staufer of Ehrenfels. Before his death, Dietrich IV had appointed him as guardian for his wife and children; Hans Staufer may have been in his service as custodian of Weißenstein castle.⁵⁰ These connections may explain why Henry Nothaft was at Ehrenfels when it was attacked. However that may be, his presence obviously slipped the notice of the Regensburg spies, resulting in the general assumption that Nothaft had been captured by the city's host. Even though this rumor was most probably false,⁵¹ Hans Staufer was quick to use the situation to his advantage. Exploiting the extraordinary communication situation created by the ongoing Council of Constance and the parallel tag, Staufer obviously denounced the unlawfulness of Henry Nothaft's alleged captivity to influence Bavarian and other opinion leaders against the city. Conrad of Hildesheim reported to his employers how ritter and knechte in Constance were irritated by the viztum's fate⁵²; he also warned repeatedly of possible negative reactions by the royal court, the bishop of Regensburg, and the Wittelsbach princes.⁵³

The actual captivity of Dietrich Staufer and his family—including the recently widowed Praxedis and her children—cast additional poor light on Regensburg. We know that Dietrich's brother-in-law lobbied his lord, Duke John of Pfalz-Neumarkt, who controlled large parts of the Upper Palatinate, against Regensburg.⁵⁴ The affair also caught the eye of the chronicler Andrew of Regensburg, who lived in the Augustinian friary of St. Mang just across the river from Regensburg and was well informed about the events in Constance. In his Chronica pontificum et imperatorum Romanorum (Chronicle of the Pontiffs and Roman Emperors), Andrew decided to comment on, of all things, the Ehrenfels expedition, explicitly mentioning that the miles Dietrich Staufer was taken captive by the city.⁵⁵ That this is the author's only comment on a local Regensburg event in the entire chronicle is indicative of the commotion the Ehrenfels affair created in Constance as well as in Regensburg.

Worried by all these unforeseen complications, the councilors hurried to douse the fire caused by the Ehrenfels expedition. Their diplomatic correspondence, as well as the account books, paints a vivid picture of their fear for their city's reputation and honor, which they made haste to defend through official legations, backstage bargaining, and gifts.⁵⁶ However, at least in the case of John of Nuremberg, these efforts failed. Six days after Ehrenfels castle had been seized, the burgrave officially declared enmity to Regensburg on behalf of his retainer, further complicating the flow of Regensburg's long-distance trade.⁵⁷

Under the impact of these repercussions, ending the conflict with Hans Staufer as quickly as possible obviously became the councilors' top priority. The situation was not completely unfavorable: Staufer's position was weakened by the loss of his castle—and his archive!—and he had not yet filed another lawsuit against Regensburg.⁵⁸ The councilors once again turned to King Sigismund, now asking for his arbitration rather than the mere confirmation of privileges. Negotiations started in June 1417 under the aegis of the king, and in August of the same year, Hans Staufer indeed submitted to an arbitration award pronounced by the two ranking Regensburg magistrates, giving up all of his claims against the city.⁵⁹ In return, the Ehrenfels prisoners were released, and the castle returned to the Staufer family, together with Hans' personal belongings. The city also paid for the prisoners' board and lodging and even made repairs for the damages its men had inflicted on the castle and a nearby mill during the attack.⁶⁰ The conflict was still not resolved, however. Hans Staufer soon tried to reverse the arbitration award, claiming that the Regensburg magistrates had broken their promises toward him.⁶¹ This prolonged the Staufer feud for another year, until the Nuremberg councilors in 1418 pronounced another arbitration award, which eventually settled the conflict for good.⁶²

Monetary Cost, or: the Staufer Feud by the Numbers

The repairs just mentioned highlight how closely interlinked the political and financial fallout of the Ehrenfels affair was. In what follows, I focus on the monetary cost of the conflict as a whole and assess how the Ehrenfels expedition related to it. Before doing so, however, it is necessary to briefly discuss the structure of the main source, the Regensburg account books.

Like other late medieval German towns, Regensburg managed its revenues and expenditures through several different coffers.⁶³ Each of the city's offices kept its own account books to document its activity. One of these series, the so-called Ausgebbücher, survives almost in its entirety in the Municipal Archives of Regensburg.⁶⁴ They register the city's diplomatic and military spending. Taxes and revenues as well as repayments of loans, interest, and certain types of gifts and fees were recorded in other account books, which do not survive. As a result, we do not know Regensburg's overall budget in the first half of the fifteenth century and cannot calculate how the spending on the Staufer feud related to it. However, the seven Ausgebbücher covering the accounting years 1412/13 to 1418/19⁶⁵ draw a nuanced picture of the various types of expenditures incurred as a result of the different strategies the councilors employed to manage the conflict.

For the purposes of this analysis, these entries were grouped into eight categories discussed in detail in the Appendix. This extensive breakdown allows for a much more nuanced, process-oriented assessment of the costs incurred from the Staufer feud than a focus on expenses explicitly labeled as “military,” as is common in scholarship on the financial dimension of urban warfare.⁶⁶ Nevertheless, it is important to note that the picture here is far from complete. The total sum of the expenses for the conflict, for instance, must have been considerably higher than the Ausgebbücher show. As we have seen, royal privileges played a crucial role in the first phase of the feud.⁶⁷ The Ausgebbücher, however, do not register chancery fees, gifts, and other remunerations connected to the acquisition or confirmation of royal privileges. These fees must have been substantial, judging from the fact that Regensburg spent more than 300 lb d (1,200 fl.rh.) on the general confirmation of the city's privileges in July 1414 alone;⁶⁸ however, this type of expense cannot be factored into the present calculations.

In the Ausgebbücher themselves, expenses related to the conflict with Hans Staufer account for 15 percent of the recorded expenditure (Appendix A1). As is usual for this type of extraordinary spending, this percentage varies greatly between the individual accounting years. In 1416/17, the feud accounted for 55 percent of the unusually high annual expenditure of 1,420 lb d, while in other years it only made up between less than 1 percent and a little over 11 percent of the city's spending (Appendix A2). The unusually high total expenses of 1413/14 are explained by the cost incurred for two separate delegations negotiating with King Sigismund about the confirmation of the city's privileges.⁶⁹ The conspicuously low expenses for the conflict with Hans Staufer in 1415/16 and the first half of 1416/17, on the contrary, are most probably related to Sigismund's absence from the empire between July 1415 and late January 1417, which prevented Regensburg from seeking further support at the royal court during this time. Of the 1416/17 expenditures related to the conflict, a mere 1.5 percent were spent before the attack on Ehrenfels castle on April 13, 1417. The rest of 768 lb d pertain to the Ehrenfels expedition and its immediate aftermath. Out of this spending, 56 percent originated directly from the military expedition, whereas the remainder pertained to the diplomatic damage containment, the Constance negotiations, and the repairs paid to the Staufer family (Appendix A3).⁷⁰ Despite the intense military spending of spring 1417, diplomatic expenses outweighed the strictly military expenses about 3:2 when related to the entire duration of the conflict (Appendix A4).

Appendix A1. Expenditures related to the conflict with Hans Staufer compared to Regensburg's total expenditures, 1412/13–1418/19. Source: StadtA Regensburg, Cam., no. 8 and 9; N = 7,322 lb d = 29,288 fl.rh.

Appendix A2. Expenditures related to the conflict with Hans Staufer compared to Regensburg's total expenditures, 1412/13–1418/19: chronological distribution. Source: StadtA Regensburg, Cam., no. 8 and 9; N = 7,322 lb d = 29,288 fl.rh.

Appendix A3. 1416/17 expenditures related to the Ehrenfels expedition and its aftermath: cost structure. Source: StadtA Regensburg, Cam., no. 8; N = 768 lb d = 3,072 fl.rh.

Appendix A4. Expenditures related to the conflict with Hans Staufer: overall cost structure. Source: StadtA Regensburg, Cam., no. 8 and 9; N = 1,128 lb d = 4,512 fl.rh.

What catches the eye more than anything else, though, is how expensive the Ehrenfels expedition and its immediate aftermath were in comparison to the previously employed nonviolent conflict management strategies. In the four years prior to the attack, Regensburg had spent a total of 250 lb d on the conflict with Hans Staufer, i.e., an average of 7 percent of the total spending of an accounting year. These expenses tripled in 1416/17, when costs increased to 775 lb d (see Appendix A5). The diplomatic settlement of the conflict required another 95 lb d in 1417/18, which was above the average annual cost of 62.5 lb d in the years before the expedition. This means that more than two-thirds of the total cost of the conflict was incurred as a result of the councilors' decision to attack Ehrenfels castle and that expenditures remained above average in the following year. Part of this striking anomaly can be explained by the fact that the 1417 negotiations with Hans Staufer took place at the very public venue of the Council of Constance, as opposed to earlier and later—much cheaper—negotiations in Regensburg or Nuremberg.⁷¹ Nevertheless, the financial data underline once again how extraordinary the Ehrenfels expedition was.

Appendix A5. Expenditures related to the conflict with Hans Staufer: chronological distribution. Source: StadtA Regensburg, Cam., no. 8 and 9; N = 1,128 lb d = 4,512 fl.rh.

The Ehrenfels Expedition—a Failure?

The Regensburg councilors' strategic escalation of the conflict with Hans Staufer turned out to be quite costly on multiple levels. Some of the undesirable consequences, such as the reputational cost incurred by the city's spies' failure to warn against attacking the castle while Henry Nothaft was there, or the monetary cost of the damage control made necessary by Staufer's escape, could not have been foreseen. Military undertakings, though, were part of everyday urban policy. The councilors therefore must have been well aware that the expedition itself would be costly, even if everything went according to plan.⁷² In spite of this knowledge, they decided on a calculated escalation. What might have motivated this decision?

Unfortunately, there are no enmity-letters, diplomatic correspondences, or narrative sources that would help us shed light on the councilors’ reasoning. But, to quote Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz, “[c]hoices for one strategy or tactic above the other are not made in a void.”⁷³ Even if we do not have direct evidence, we may try to infer from the context what the Regensburg policy makers could have hoped or expected from the Ehrenfels expedition, before we attempt to assess if the operation achieved its desired outcome.

The first and foremost goal was certainly to stop the physical attacks of Hans Staufer and his feud helpers on Regensburg merchants and their properties and instead compel negotiations. Here, strategic considerations as well as personal interests come into play. Ehrenfels castle was located on an important road connecting Regensburg with Nuremberg. Through its capture, this road could be made safe again for Regensburg merchants, including the sitting councilors of 1417.⁷⁴ That some of them profited from selling wine and other commodities to the city during the expedition and the subsequent negotiations was without doubt a pleasant side effect.⁷⁵

More important, though, was the expedition's political dimension. Regensburg was part of the specifically interconnected political culture of late medieval Upper Germany recently described by Duncan Hardy.⁷⁶ In this highly fragmented, polycentric political landscape, loyalties as much as enmities constantly overlapped, simultaneously straining and strengthening the underlying system of social, legal, and economic bonds. In this highly competitive environment, actors had to relentlessly pursue or defend their respective claims over contested rights, possessions, and incomes in order to assert their political standing, and armed conflict formed a widely accepted strategy employed to this end. At the time of the Staufer feud, Regensburg's power had begun to dwindle, subtly for the time being, but still palpably.⁷⁷ Caught between the Wittelsbach princes, the bishop of Regensburg, and the local nobility, the city faced the same struggle as many other medium- to small-scale political actors of the time, who had to deal with competitors bent on consolidating and expanding their power at the expense of their neighbors. The councilors' choice to employ violence could thus have been motivated by the hope that the attack would display resolve and fighting power without risking much militarily, a benefit that may have been increased further by the opportunity to position themselves as defenders of the peace. The idea of “peace” was at the core of the contemporary political discourse; imposing this peace on the roads could be used strategically to expand one's sphere of influence and to denounce one's opponent as a disturber of the same peace.⁷⁸ Even more relevant to the Regensburg councilors, however, seems to have been the defense of their burghers' autonomy from foreign courts. If Hans Staufer succeeded in enforcing the Nuremberg landgericht's verdicts, this could have set a dangerous precedent for future legal disputes. Capturing his archive—including the physical gerichtsbriefe—and forcing Staufer to accept that the city's magistrates were the only authority entitled to judge the validity of his claims could both be achieved by attacking Ehrenfels castle and taking him prisoner.⁷⁹ This is presumably what—in the councilors' eyes—justified the risks of the expedition more than anything else.⁸⁰

Of these likely short-term goals, the Ehrenfels expedition achieved pitifully few. Most critically, Hans Staufer could not be apprehended. As a consequence, Burgrave John of Nuremberg, together with half of the general public in Constance, turned against the city. The castle had to be restored to the Staufer family and hefty reparations paid, along with hundreds of florins for public representation, negotiations, and bribes. In the middle term, however, the results do not look all that bleak. Hans Staufer eventually did submit to the authority of the Regensburg magistrates (even though he retracted his promises almost immediately), and the city's legal viewpoint was vindicated. Furthermore, the documentary evidence shows that practical support for Hans Staufer dwindled almost immediately after the seizing of Ehrenfels castle.⁸¹ This fact, together with King Sigismund's public support for Regensburg, was probably what compelled Staufer to defer to the Constance negotiations.⁸² As for the castle itself, it is important to realize that keeping it was never an actual option for the Regensburg councilors, even though they deployed a garrison to the castle for a couple of weeks to maintain pressure on their opponent. It was clear from the start that Ehrenfels would have to be restored to its rightful owners. Given its strategic location, though, it was essential to make sure that the castle was in friendly hands. Together with Regensburg's fairly questionable legal position concerning the imprisonment of Dietrich Staufer and his family, this might be one of the reasons for the somewhat surprisingly generous reparations.⁸³

Can Regensburg's expedition against Ehrenfels castle thus be called a success, i.e., was it, unlike the title of this contribution suggests, actually “conflict escalation done right”? I am not entirely sure of that. The analysis of the urban account books shows clearly at what high monetary cost the resolution of the conflict with Hans Staufer came, and a large part of this was due to the councilors' decision to march on Ehrenfels castle, no matter the cost. Recent scholarship has tended to highlight in particular the socio-political functions of late medieval feuding. These mechanisms clearly informed the Staufer feud as well—otherwise, we would be hard pressed to explain why the Regensburg councilors decided to ostentatiously seize the castle of a high-profile noble family and devote almost one-third of their city's annual spending to this one operation. There is no reason to question the prevalent socio-political reading of feuding and to advocate instead a simplified functionalist approach that merely asks for material gains and losses. However, I think that the present case study shows clearly how closely intertwined military, political, and economic considerations were and how none of these aspects can be examined independently of the others. Reintegrating cost–benefit calculations into our picture of late medieval feuding more often than is usually the case can sharpen our understanding of how and why political actors chose certain strategies for handling conflict over others and how they evaluated their choices. The historical actors themselves appear to have done precisely this kind of calculation, and they obviously came to a very clear conclusion: in the decades following the Ehrenfels expedition, no assault against a feud opponent's castle was ever mounted by the city of Regensburg again.