an associate, he placed himself at the head of the
league, which he was able to direct for the aggrandizement of his house
of Austria. He desired that the Confederates, also, should enter the
Swabian League. The Swiss again refused, preferring to remain by
themselves as before.

The Emperor was irritated at this, and at Innspruck he said to the
deputies of the Confederates: "You are refractory members of the empire;
some day I shall have to pay you a visit, sword in hand." The deputies
answered and said: "We humbly beseech your imperial majesty to dispense
with such a visit, for our Swiss are rude men, and do not even respect
crowns."

The boldness of the Confederates wounded the Swabian League no less. Many
provocations and quarrels took place, here and there, between the people
on the borders, so that the city of Constance, for her own security,
joined the Swabian League. For, one day, a band of valiant men of
Thurgau, incited by the bailiff from Uri, had tried to surprise the city,
in order to punish her for her bravadoes against the Swiss.

Neither were the Austrians good neighbors to the Grisons. The Tyrol
and Engadine were constantly discussing and disputing about markets,
privileges, and tolls. Once, indeed, in 1476, the Tyrolese had marched
armed into the valley of Engadine, but were driven back into their own
country, through the narrow Pass of Finstermunz, with bloody heads. Now
there was a fresh cause of quarrel. In the division of the Toggenburger
inheritance, the rights of Toggenburg in the Ten Jurisdictions had fallen
to the counts of Matsch, Sax, and Montfort, and afterward, 1478-1489, by
purchase, to the ducal house of Austria. Hence much trouble arose.

As the Grisons had equal cause with the Confederates to fear the power
and purposes of Emperor Maximilian, the Gray League, 1497, and that of
God's House, 1498, made a friendly and defensive alliance with Zurich,
Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, and Glarus. The Ten Jurisdictions
dared not join them for fear of Austria.

Then the Emperor restrained his anger no longer. And, though already
burdened with a heavy war in the Netherlands, he sent fresh troops into
the Tyrol, and the forces of the Swabian League advanced and hemmed in
Switzerland from the Grison Pass, near Luziensteig, between the Rhetian
mountains and Germany, along the Lake of Constance and the Rhine, as far
as Basel.

Then Switzerland and Rhetia were in great danger. But the Gr