Political and military leader of the Grisons (now Graubünden, the most easterly of Swiss cantons) during the complex struggles of the Thirty Years War.
He was the son of the Protestant vicar of Samaden and became the vicar of Scharans in 1617. Ambition and thirst for action led him into politics.
The Grisons were loosely attached to the Swiss confederation and at that time controlled the Valtellina with its roads and passes, a region over which Spaniards (from their duchy of Milan), the Austrian habsburgs, France and Venice all sought paramount influence.
Opposing the Spaniards, 150 of whom his "penal court" at Thusis executed he narrowly escaped the bloodbath of July 19-23, 1620 in which 600 Protestants perished.
He left the ministry, murdered (Feb. 25, 1621) the head of the Spanish party Pompeius Planta and had to flee abroad.
In 1624 he achieved a French-Grisons alliance which led to the expulsion of the Spaniards and Austrians from the Grisons. After the Franco-Spanish Treaty of Mozon (1626) the Valtellina was virtually abandoned to Spain. Jenatsch took service with Venice while the Austrians reconquered the Grisons (1629-31).
In 1631 Jenatsch successfully assisted Henri, duc de Rohan, dispatched to the Grisons by Richelieu but then negotiated with Austria and Spain (he had become a Roman Catholic in 1635) and established himself as a ruthless dictator in the Grisons.
He resumed contact with the French when the Spaniards refused to cede the Valtellina. Suspected by all he fell victim to a vendetta of the Planta family and was murdered.
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