Count Rudolf at the time of his election was a middle-aged man of considerable military experience, kindly, simple, and resolute. He had won the affection of his own vassals by helping them in their struggles against the unjust demands of local tyrants, such as feudal bishops or the barons who built castles amongst the crags and sent out armed retainers to waylay merchants and travellers. One tale records how, with an apparently small force, he advanced boldly against a robber fastness, thus encouraging the garrison to issue out and attack him. When the robbers approached, however, they found to their horror that each of their mounted opponents had another armed man seated behind him, and so, hopelessly outnumbered as well as outwitted, they were forced to surrender or fly. Rudolf needed all his military ability when he was chosen Emperor; for the most powerful ruler in central Europe at that time, King Ottocar of Bohemia, refused to recognize him, being furious that he himself had not received a single vote, while an obscure count from the Swiss mountains had been elected his master. The truth was that Ottocar was well known to be arrogant and bad-tempered, so that all the Electors were afraid of him; and there was general rejoicing when, in a battle against King Rudolf near Vienna, he was killed and the throne of Bohemia passed to his son, a boy of twelve. This victory was the real beginning of the Habsburg fortunes; for Rudolf by the confiscation of the Austrian provinces of Carinthia, Styria, and Carniola, that had belonged to his rival, established his family as one of the great territorial powers of the Empire. Unfortunately his character seemed to deteriorate with success, and his greed for lands and power to increase with acquisition. Instead of finding Rudolf the protector of their liberties, his sturdy Swiss vassals now had to defend themselves against his encroachments; and in the year 1291 some of them in self-defence formed what they called a ‘Perpetual League’, whose covenant, drawn up a few years later in a simplified form, is just as sacred a charter of liberty to the Swiss as Magna Charta to the English. ‘Know, all men,’ it began, ‘that we, the people of the Valley of Uri, the Community of the Valley of Schwyz, and the mountaineers of the Lower Valley, seeing the malice of the times, have solemnly agreed and bound ourselves by oath to aid and defend each other with all our might and main, with our lives and property, both within and without our boundaries, each at his own expense, against every enemy whatever who shall attempt to molest us, whether singly or collectively.’ This was the first ‘Confederation of the Swiss’, the union of the three provinces of Uri, Schwyz, and the ‘Lower Valley’, or ‘Unterwalden’; but Rudolf died in the same year 1291, so that the Swiss struggle for liberty really began against his son, Albert of Austria.