Open war between the Swiss Confederacy and the Swabian League breaks out over a territorial conflict in the Grisons, where during the fifteenth century a federation similar to the Eidgenossenschaft had developed.

Like the Swiss, the Three Leagues have achieved a far-reaching autonomy, but also are involved in constant struggles with the Habsburgs, who rule the neighboring territories to the east and who keep 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 has continued this expansionist strategy.

The Habsburg pressure prompts the Three Leagues to sign a close military alliance with the Swiss Confederacy in 1497-98.

At the same time, the Habsburgs had been involved in a major power struggle with the French kings of the House of Valois over the control of the remains of the realm of Charles the Bold, whose daughter and heiress Mary Maximilian had married.

Maximilian's second marriage in 1493 with Bianca Maria Sforza from Milan had then gotten got the Habsburgs directly involved in the Italian Wars, clashing again with the French kings over the control of the Duchy of Milan.