Three Leagues
Open war broke out over a territorial conflict in the Grisons, where during the 15th century a federation similar to the "Eidgenossenschaft" had developed. Like the Swiss, these Three Leagues had achieved a far-reaching autonomy, but also were involved in constant struggles with the Habsburgs, who ruled the neighbouring territories to the east and who kept trying to bring the Grisons under their influence. During the 1470s and 1480s, Duke Sigismund had succeeded in acquiring step by step the high justice over most of the communes of the "Zehngerichtebund" ("League of the Ten Jurisdictions" in the Prättigau, the youngest of the Three Leagues that had sprung up in the Grisons, having been founded only in 1436), and Maximilian continued this expansionist strategy. The Habsburg pressure prompted the Three Leagues to sign a close military alliance with the Swiss Confederacy in 1497-98.