The Italian war was a fairly short war that spanned March 23, 1192 to September 6, 1193. The war was mainly caused by Byzantine lust for power, which drove it to declaring war and taking direct control of its vassal, the Holy Roman Empire. Modern scholars have also suggested economic reasons, the control of the Polish-Gallic trade route, for example, but this seems unlikely as Poland was undergoing a bloody civil war, and was not very open to trading of any type. The main battle was the Battle of Tyrol, in which king Epheserus and his army crushed a militia force raised by Duke Hilbert I.