Biography
Ludwig Tschudi, known as the Younger to distinguish him from his father, was born in Glarus on 19 April 1495, into one of the great families of the country. His father, Ludwig the Elder, was a notable of the valley; his mother, Margaretha Kilchmatter, belonged to the Aebli family. He was the brother of Aegidius Tschudi, the future chronicler of the Confederation, and the half-brother of Jost. In 1514 he married Agatha Gallati, daughter of Captain Fridolin Gallati. The sources consulted say nothing of his studies; his education was that of a young gentleman destined for arms and public office.
His career was first of all military. Still a teenager, he fought at Novara in 1513 and at Marignano in 1515, before becoming captain of the Milanese guard under Gian Giacomo Trivulzio. He fought at La Bicocca in 1522, then from 1524 commanded Swiss mercenaries in the service of Francis I, who rewarded him generously. Taken prisoner at Pavia in 1525, he was released against ransom in 1526 and then left the soldier's trade. He was also a man of negotiation: he arranged a capitulation with the King of France at Dijon in 1521 and, as a French agent, helped bring about the alliance concluded in 1522 with the Three Leagues. From 1520 he was bailiff of Werdenberg.
Between two campaigns, he made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1519, at the age of twenty-four. He travelled with Peter Falck of Fribourg and other Confederates: they passed through Venice, sailed east and reached Jerusalem, where Tschudi was dubbed a knight of the Holy Sepulchre. The account he kept of this journey, titled in the German of the period Reyß und Bilgerfahrt zum Heyligen Grab, appeared only almost a century later, in 1606, at Rorschach, from the printer Bartholomäus Schnell. It was prepared for the press by a Melchior Tschudi the Younger, whom bibliographical notices present as a close relative of the author.
In those years Tschudi belonged to a network that went beyond Glarus: he frequented courts and war leaders, and it is said that for a time he was a friend of Zwingli before turning away from the Reformation, remaining faithful to the old faith, like his brother Aegidius. Around 1523 he bought the castle and lordship of Ortenstein, which he sold again in 1527; in 1528 he acquired Gräpplang near Flums, of which he became the first baron, with the rights of justice at Tscherlach inherited from his father. The pilgrimage account remains the only writing known by him.
He died at Gräpplang on 12 January 1530, aged thirty-four. The place where his papers are kept and the existence of modern editions of his account are not established by the sources we were able to consult; the entry in the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland refers, for his life, to scholarly works of the twentieth century. His book, for its part, has kept its value: specialists in Islamic architecture still cite his description of the Temple esplanade in Jerusalem.
