All Gone to the Dogs: Peasant and Aristocratic Masculinities in a Late Medieval Swiss Revolt

This article examines chronicle accounts of the so‐called ‘Waldmann Affair’, a revolt within the territories of the city–state of Zurich in 1489 directed against its mayor, Hans Waldmann. The revolt was partly the consequence of failed economic and political reforms which put pressure on the countryside, but was provoked by the command issued by Waldmann for the slaughter of peasants’ dogs. The article analyses the accounts of the affair through the lens of masculinity, arguing that it provided a means for chroniclers to integrate it into a larger political narrative of the Swiss Confederation's emergence. Masculinity was thus integral to understandings of what the Confederation itself was, as well as to interpreting events in its tumultuous history throughout the late Middle Ages.