Toward the end of the 13th century, the House of Habsburg coveted the area around the Gotthard Pass as it offered the shortest passage to Italy. But the Confederates of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, who had formalized the Swiss Confederacy in 1291, held imperial freedom letters from former Habsburg emperors granting them local autonomy within the empire. In 1314 tensions between the Habsburgs and Confederates heightened when Duke Louis IV of Bavaria (who would become Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor) and Frederick the Handsome, a Habsburg prince, each claimed the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor. The Confederates supported Louis IV because they feared the Habsburgs would annex their lands, which they had tried to do in the late 13th century. War eventually broke out after the Confederates of Sch