Different, however, was the experience of Graubünden, then a separate free state, and a connection only of the Confederation. In truth, the history of that old Rhætian land at that time forms a striking pendant as it were to the great drama of the European struggle. The Latin-German inhabitants, combining northern prudence with southern passion, had since the middle of the sixteenth century been steeped in internal dissension, owing to the religious divisions caused by the Reformation. The Protestant party under Von Salis, and the Catholics headed by Von Planta, were at deadly enmity with each other, and sided with France and Venice, and with Austria and Spain respectively. John von Planta, head of his clan, and solicitor-general of the Papal see, was suspected of intending to reintroduce Popery into the Grisons. The mountaineers accordingly descended from their Alps in crowds, and flocked to Chur. There they brought to trial Planta and sentenced him to death, and his fall struck the keynote to the tragedy that followed. With the opening of the seventeenth century the conflict grew fiercer, national interests and foreign policy being now inextricably mixed. Mistress of the beautiful Italian Signory Valtellina, Bormio, Chiavenna, and the Alpine passes commanding the entrance into the Tyrol and Italy, Graubünden became the apple of contention between the southern states of Europe. Austria and Spain possessing Milan were not without hopes of joining hands across Graubünden, and France was sanguine of her success in preventing it. This latter state with Venice had effected an alliance with Protestant Bünden, and that party strongly opposed the Spanish union for which the energetic but headstrong Rudolf von Planta was working. Fuentes, a Spaniard, Governor of Milan, furious at the resistance offered, erected a chain of strong forts on Lake Como, with the view of cutting off the Valtellines. Before long, George Jenatsch from the Engadine, Tschusch, and other high-minded and patriotic Protestants, began to decry the Spanish scheme, and tumults arose. An attack on Planta's manor, Zernez (1618), having failed through the escape of Rudolf, Zambra, Landammann in Bregaglia, and Rusca, a priest in the Valtellina, both greyheaded old men, were seized. They were sentenced to death by a new court which had been set up at Thusis, a court which raged against popery and spread terrorism for some months. In the Engadine a strange thing happened. The respective chiefs of the hostile clans were the two brothers Von Travers, and a hand-to-hand fight between the opposing parties having begun, suddenly the wives, daughters, and sisters of the combatants rushed amongst them like the Sabine women of old, and checked them. Foremost amongst these noble women was the spirited Anna Juvalta. The Plantas were now in exile, and were conspiring with Austria. Their cousin Robustello (Valtellina) at a given signal broke into the houses of the Protestants, and, with the