The Grisons had no such luck. The Three Leagues were a loose federation of 48 individual communes that were largely independent; their common assembly held no real powers. While this had helped avoid major religious wars during and following the Reformation, feuds between leading clans (e.g. between the "von Planta" and the "von Salis") were common. When such a feud spilled over into the Valtellina in 1619, a subject territory of the Three Leagues, the population there responded in kind, killing the Protestant rulers in 1620 and calling Habsburg Spain for help. For the next twenty years, the Grisons was ravaged by a war known as the Confusion of the Leagues. For the Habsburgs, the Grisons was a strategically important connection between Milan and Austria. The Valtellina became Spanish, and other parts in the north-east of the Grisons were occupied and re-Catholicised by Austria.