Rudolf dies suddenly at Milan in 1365, aged twenty-five.

His and his wife's mortal remains are buried at the Ducal Crypt underneath the Stephansdom in Vienna.

In spite of the high-flying (and maybe sometimes megalomaniac) character of his plans, he has managed to modernize his territories and his city, the prominence of which is considerably increasing.

His untimely death without issue halts further progress, however.

His younger brothers Albert III and Leopold III, who are to rule jointly under the Rudolfinische Hausordnung (Rudolfinian House Rules), will begin to quarrel ceaselessly and ultimately agreed to divide the Habsburg territories between them according to the 1379 Treaty of Neuberg.

The fruit of Rudolf's efforts will be reaped by Leopold's descendant Frederick V of Austria, elected King of the Romans in 1440 and sole ruler over all Austrian lands from 1457, who will lay the foundations of the Habsburg Monarchy.

Lord Enguerrand VII de Coucy, the thirty-five-year-old son-in-law of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault, and a nephew of the Duke of Austria, claims (as the right of his mother, Katharina von Habsburg) the Swiss territory of Aargau held by his Habsburg cousin Duke Leopold III of Austria.

Having obtained both permission and gold from the French crown to gather a ten thousand-man army of French and English mercenaries, joined, at de Coucy’s invitation, by knights, he engages a number of Free Companies, including one led by Owain Lawgoch, to seize the Aargau.

Advancing across France to Alsace, the mercenary army ravages areas while marching south to Basel, crosses the Jura Mountains, and in November 1375 enters the lower Aargau, which forms part of a great tableland to the north of the Alps and the east of the Jura.

The mercenaries wear heavy cloaks with pointed hoods, called “Güglers” in Swiss-German, and become known by this name (as does the associated conflict).

Duke Leopold, installed comfortably at Breisach to the north, refuses to engage de Coucy’s invaders and instead orders a systematic destruction of Aargau.

This leaves no villages, people, booty, or food for the invaders, but also earns Leopold the intense enmity of his Swiss subjects.

Graz, situated on the Mur River at the foot of the Styrian Alps, has become the principal city of Styria; the Leopoldine Habsburgs make it their seat in 1379.

The city’s name is derived from the fortress that is located on top of the Schlossberg (1,558 feet/475 meters high), a defensive site since ancient times.

The city of Trieste, located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste on the Adriatic Sea, had developed into a free commune at the end of the twelfth century.

The burghers of Trieste, after two centuries of war against the nearby major power, the Republic of Venice (who had occupied Trieste briefly from 1369 to 1372), petition Leopold III von Habsburg, Duke of Austria, to become part of his domains.

The agreement of cessation is signed in October 1382, at the St. Bartholomew's church in the village of Šiška (apud Sisciam), today one of the city quarters of Ljubljana.

The citizens, however, will maintain a certain degree of autonomy well until the seventeenth century.

Attempts by Habsburg duke Leopold III of Austria to gain territory in Swabia in southern Germany spill over into Swiss Confederation territory.

By the end of 1385, Lucerne’s forces occupy the Habsburg-controlled towns of Rothenburg and …

...Sempach.

Habsburg duke Leopold III of Austria leads an invasion of Switzerland to counterbalance the occupation of his territories by Swiss Confederation troops.

On July 9, 1386, near the village of Sempach, a column of Austrian heavy cavalry dismounts and rapidly forces the Swiss vanguard from Lucerne.

Legendary Swiss hero Arnold Winkelreid reputedly throws himself against the Austrian line, drawing many of its spears to his breast.

Although he is killed, he thus creates an opening in the line that enables the main forces of the confederation—infantry armed with pikes and halberds‚ to defeat the dismounted column, then slaughter a second dismounted column before it can organize and advance.

A third Austrian column flees, and Leopold, together with all his dismounted knights, dies in the battle.

The disintegrating Holy Roman Empire’s landholding nobles have established themselves as individual entities with private armies and the system of secret courts known as the Holy Vehm, or Veme.

The nobles, their strengths deriving from ancient feudal privileges, war frequently between and among themselves, as do Imperial (free) towns, cities and even units of the church.

Nobles and church units fight to stop annexations by the oligarchical towns, whose increasing wealth draws many rural workers; the towns fight to halt excessive and illegal tolls on their trade in raw materials and manufactured commodities.

The ineffective Emperor Wenceslas, king of Germany and Bohemia, a weak and lazy ruler made weaker by alcoholism, attempts to reign from Bohemia, but finds it nearly impossible to control the private powers.

One of these, the exceptionally oppressive Duke Leopold of Austria, had provoked the large Swabian League of Cities, whose forces, allied with those of the Swiss Confederation, had fought and defeated Leopold’s forces at Sempach in 1386.

A general war between towns and had nobles ensued.

By 1389, the towns, especially in southern Germany, have had the worst of it, being isolated pockets of autonomy surrounded by feudal territory.

Wenceslas, who sides with the nobles, arranges an unsatisfactory peace, which tones down the so-called German Town War but does not completely end it.