Just as the enemy crossed the narrow Eisack gorge, the command was given, ‘Release the stones!’ With a great heave, the Tyroleans rolled huge boulders down the gorge. The Saxons, allies of the French, found themselves in a tight spot. It was 1809, and the Tyrolean fight for freedom was well underway. Riflemen from all over Tyrol fought to free their homeland from Bavarian and French foreign rule. They won three battles on Bergisel hill but were defeated in the fourth: their leader Andreas Hofer was captured by the French and shot in Mantua. Two hundred years later, the founding stone of the AH-Bräu was laid in the so-called ‘Sachsenklemme’ (Saxon tight spot).