the opportunity to seek the assistance of Friedrich V in his eighteen-year-long legal wrangling with Hans von Villanders over bonds Oswald had given his cousin to hold. When the guardianship of Sigismund ended on July 25, 1443, and Friedrich, now King Friedrich III of the Holy Roman Empire, decided to prolong it for another six years, the Landstände of Tyrol organized an open revolt. Oswald became one of five military commanders and was tasked with the defense of the most important of all positions, the Mühlbacher Klause (Mühlbach fortress), which blocked the most likely invasion route from Styria, where King Friedrich had taken up residence. The cities of Merano and Bolzano provided funds and troops to reinforce the fortress, and all other passes and entrances into Tyrol were blocked by troops. As the city of Trento backed the King, an army of 3,000 men was sent south to besiege the city. On December 10, a Tyrolean delegation arrived in Graz to demand the release of Sigismund and the return of the county's treasures, taken by Friedrich in 1440. Friedrich refused and threatened war. The Tyroleans responded by sacking Trento and electing Johann Röttel as the new bishop on January 4, 1440. Röttel's first declaration was to fully support the Landstände against the King. Oswald was one of the electors and the main instigator of this election. The next session by the Landstände began in Merano on May 16, 1445, and as it was now clear that King Friedrich was not planning an attack, options were discussed on how to bring Sigismund to Tyrol. Oswald died on August 2, 1445, in Merano, succumbing to an intense heatwave. His offices were taken over by Ulrich von Matsch. His body was brought to Neustift Monastery in Vahrn and buried near the font in the monastery's church, where his grave was rediscovered in 1973. Oswald's right eye All extant portraits of Oswald depict him with a closed right eye. An examination of his skull from a 1973 exhumation revealed that this was due to a congenital defect: his right eye socket was smaller than the left, which meant that his right eyeball was under constant pressure, resulting in ptosis, or a withering of the right eyelid muscles. However, Franz Daxecker concludes that the ptosis was probably caused by an injury sustained in childhood. Dieter Kühn's biography of Oswald, which attributes the "loss" of the