of its prestigious status as immediate imperial abbey, while consequently the abbot would lose his title as prince-abbot. In consequence, the abbey gave up its alliance with France, called home its mercenaries in the French army and allied with Austria - unlike the rest of the Swiss Confederacy, which stayed allied with France. So the abbey was politically isolated in Switzerland, one of the causes of the Toggenburg War of 1712. The new alliance did not improve the situation of St Gall's Breisgau possessions, as France occupied Freiburg in 1677 and the region was from then on de facto French controlled. The government of Anterior Austria was moved to Waldshut. Most of Ebringen's people left the village between November 1677 and summer 1678 and returned in 1679 after the Treaties of Nijmegen. In these treaties Freiburg became also de jure a part of France. The church records for 1678/79 listed only nine baptisms, no marriages and no deaths. In 1678 the forest at the Herrenbuck, south of the Schoenberg summit, was felled for the French fortification of Freiburg by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban. Allegedly oak logs worth 20,000 guilders were taken. The vintage of 1678 was robbed by French mercenaries. In 1679 the vineyards lay fallow. In 1689 the new forest around the Schoenberghof was cut down, the yard rebuilt, the area became farmland again. In 1697 France had to make restitution of Freiburg to Austria in the Treaty of Ryswick and the government of Anterior Austria returned to Freiburg. In 1700 the Protestant territories in the Holy Roman Empire finally adopted the Gregorian calendar, so the date confusion between Ebringen and its Protestant neighbour villages ended. In the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) France attacked the Austrian Breisgau. Ebringen's old manor house was sacked on 8 April 1703 by French mercenaries despite a salva guardia. The plunderers killed two men from Ebringen, who tried to resist them. So the people fled into the Schoenberg forest. From 1705 to 1709 the war was fought in other areas all over Europe, but then the fighting returned to the Breisgau. In 1705 Lukas Grass became St Gall governor of Ebringen. Grass visited Naples in 1700 noting in his diary the famous sentence Vedi Napoli e poi muori (I've seen Naples, now I can die), 87 years before Goethe noted the same in his Italian Journey. During his rule, Grass strengthened