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from above, but in connection with the Monastery of St. Bernard and Abbey St. Maurice, holding alike Burgundian, Swiss, and Saracen powers at bay, beyond the Castle of Chillon.

And I must remind the reader that at the time when Swiss history opens, there was no such country as France, in her existing strength. There was a sacred “Isle of France,” and a group of cities,-Amiens, Paris, Soissons, Rheims, Chartres, Sens, and Troyes,-essentially French, in arts, and faith. But round this Frank central province lay Picardy, Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, Aquitaine, Languedoc, and Provence, all of them independent national powers: and on the east of the Côte d’Or,* the strong and true kingdom of Burgundy, which for centuries contended with Germany for the dominion of Switzerland, and, from her Alpine throne, of Europe.

36. This was, I have said, at the time “when Swiss history opens”-as such. It opens a century earlier, in 773, as a part of all Christian history, when Charlemagne convoked his Franks at Geneva to invade Italy, and dividing them there into two bodies, placed Swiss mountaineers at the head of each, and sending one division by the Great St. Bernard, under his own uncle, Bernard,† the son of Charles Martel, led the other himself over the Cenis. It was for this march over the Great St. Bernard that Charlemagne is said to have given the foresters of the central Alps their three trumpets-the Bull of Uri, the Cow of Unterwald, and the Horn of Lucerne;¹ and, without question, after his Italian victories, Switzerland became the organic centre of civilization to his whole empire. “It is

* The eastern boundary of France proper is formed by the masses of the Vosges, Côte d’Or, and Monts de la Madeleine.

† Don’t confuse him with St. Bernard of Annecy, from whom the pass is named; nor St. Bernard of Annecy with St. Bernard of Dijon, the Madonna’s chosen servant.

¹ [See Gaullieur’s Suisse Historique, p. 76. For other references to the Horn of Uri, see Vol. XII. p. 194, and Vol. XXXIII. p. 58 n.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]