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Peter (died 1392) was the fourth of five sons of Count Amadeus III of Geneva and succeeded his brother John I as Count of Geneva in 1370. When he died without a son to succeed him in 1392, the county passed to the fifth of the brothers, then Antipope Clement VII.
Peter led a contingent of Genevans in an invasion of the Kingdom of Naples in 1382. The invasion was led by his lord, Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy, and by Louis I, Duke of Anjou, the adopted son and heir of the imprisoned Queen Joan I of Naples, all supporters of his brother's claim to the papal throne. He was present at the deathbed of Amadeus at Castropignano on 1 March 1383. The Savoyard treasurer Pierre Voisin, in his final account, described Amadeus' death as occurring "on [the] first day of the month of March ... at about midnight, in the presence of Louis, duke of Calabria and Anjou, Lord Pierre, count of Geneva. . ."
Around 1377 Peter was employing a Jewish physician, Isaac de Portis.
Amadeus IV (died 1369) was the Count of Geneva from 1367 until his death. He was the second son of Amadeus III and Mahaut d'Auvergne. He succeeded his childless brother Aymon III in August 1367. He reversed the policy of his father and brother respecting the House of Savoy, and supported the bishops of Lausanne and Geneva against his cousin Amadeus VI of Savoy.
Amadeus seems to have come to terms with his Savoyard cousin by 13 May 1368, the date on which he performed the act of homage to him for the county of Geneva. He then travelled with the count of Savoy into Italy for the campaign to bring Philip II of Piedmont to submission, and was present at Philip's trial by a stacked Savoyard court at Rivoli in September–October 1368. It is possible that the real reason for his accompanying Amadeus into Italy was to have an opportunity to speak with the Emperor, who was also in the region at that time. In February 1369 the Emperor repeated his revocation of Amadeus VI's vicariate. Amadeus IV died later that year.
Rudolf or Rudolph (French: "Raoul" or "Rodolphe de Genève") was the Count of Geneva from 1252 until his death in 1265. He was the eldest son of William II, and was described by a Renaissance historian as “the more quarrelsome son of a quarrelsome father.” He was a constant warrior, and his most frequent foes were of the House of Savoy.
In 1250, when the Savoyards appeared to be engaged in a concerted effort to expand their territory, William II and Rudolf again went to war, this time mainly in defence of the Albert III of La Tour-du-Pin, who was William's brother-in-law and Rudolf's father-in-law, and whose lands were threatened by both Peter and his brother Philip. In the war Savoy defeated Geneva, and Philip imposed a “Carthaginian peace” on the losers. The indemnity had never been paid and was mercifully halved, and more castles were taken. It was a reduced patrimony that Rudolf inherited two years later.
In November 1252 William II died at Domène. Rudolf immediately acted to expand his shrunken county of Geneva. By arms he forced Simon of Joinville, the lord of Gex and son of Simon, lord of Joinville, to do him homage. He seized the castle at Charousse and expelled a creditor of “the Little Charlemagne”, who was holding it as security on a loan. For this castle he steadfastly refused to do homage to any Savoyard. When his aunt, Margaret, the dowager countess of Savoy, died in 1258, Rudolf took over the lands at Cornillon and the Val des Clefs that formed her dowry.
Rudolf died in 1265 and was succeeded by his son Aymon II, who was later succeeded by his brother Amadeus II.
Amadeus I of Geneva (1098–1178) was count of Geneva. He succeeded his father in the county's government in 1128, and remained count of Geneva until his death in 1178. Amadeus was the son of Aymon I of Geneva (the preceding count) and of Ida Faucigny.
During his lifetime Amadeus I added the city of Annecy to his territories, thereby increasing the power of his County.
He also sought the protection of the House of Zähringen, after losing the rights to the dioceses of Sion, Lausanne and Geneva. Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1156 granted the rights to Berthold IV of Zähringen instead. However, Pope Alexander III took the bishop of Lausanne under his protection and superseded all claims to Lausanne, thereby reducing the power of the Duke of Zähringen. The three bishops of the dioceses in question, however, wanted to maintain autonomy from all parties concerned.
In 1162, Amadeus permitted the use of the land of Vaud, and the forests that belonged to him, by the Abbot of Haut-Crêt.
In 1178 Amadeus donated the vineyards and tithes collected in Bossey to the canons of the chapter of St. Pierre Cathedral in Geneva.
Amadeus was the son of Aymon I of Geneva (f. 1128) and Ida Faucigny, daughter of Sir Luís I of Faucigny. For two years Amadeus was married to the Lady Matilde of Cuiseaux, daughter of Hugo I of Cuiseaux, with whom he had:
In a second marriage (1137), with Lady Beatriz de Domène, daughter of Pierre Ainar of Domène, he had:
Aymon III or Aimon III (died 30/31 August 1367), a soldier, statesman and Crusader, was the twelfth Count of Geneva between January 1367 and his death seven months thence. He was the eldest son and successor of Amadeus III and Mahaut d'Auvergne. He pursued a policy of alliance and cooperation with the House of Savoy begun by his father. By all contemporary accounts, he was "handsome [and] possessed great charm of person and of manner."
On 23 May 1366, shortly before leaving on Crusade, Aymon made a written agreement to marry Margaret, eldest daughter of the late Henri de Joinville, Count of Vaudémont, but the marriage never took place because of his death.
William II ("floruit" 1208–1252) was the Count of Geneva, originally a usurper, from 1225 until his death. He fought a long series of wars with the House of Savoy and lost control of all of his county outside of the traditional Genevois and saw his influence over the city of Geneva proper and the Bishop of Geneva severely reduced.
William was the second son of Count William I of Geneva (died 1195) and younger brother of Count Humbert I of Geneva. When Humbert died in 1225, William seized the county and expelled Humbert's sons, his nephews, Peter and Ebal, who eventually found protection under Peter "le Petit Charlemagne", who had brought them with him to England by 1244. That year Peter, the elder, married a rich English heiress, Mathilda de Lacy. Peter "le Petit Charlemagne" was in fact William's nephew, a son of his sister Margaret.
In September 1229 at Tournon William was one of the arbiters of a dispute between the Bishop of Valence, William of Savoy, who was a brother of "le Petit Charlemagne", and the citizens of Valence. In 1234 he had his second son, Amadeus, installed as a canon in the Diocese of Lausanne. In 1239 Amadeus was successful in leading the pro-Genevan party over he pro-Savoyard in the episcopal election which placed Jean de Cossonay on the bishop's seat.
William II died at Domène in November 1252 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Rudolf, while his younger son, Henry, received the fortresses of Vuache and Ternier. Besides his sons Rudolf, Amadeus and Henry, William II had four others. One Savoyard Renaissance historian described William II as “quarrelsome”.
Aymon II (died 1280) was the Count of Geneva from 1265. He was the son and heir of Count Rudolf, but died heirless himself and was succeeded by his brother Amadeus II. According to one modern historian, he was “overawed by the power of the count of Savoy”, and did little during his fifteen-year reign to recover the lands and jurisdictions lost to the Savoyards by his father and grandfather.
In 1279 Aymon married Constance, a daughter of Gaston VII of Béarn and viscountess in her own right of Marsan and Bigorre. The marriage was arranged by Gaston's second wife, “la Grande Dauphine” Beatrice, who as a daughter of Peter II of Savoy and widow of Guigues VII of Viennois, was related to two traditional rivals of the counts of Geneva. Constance was twice widowed herself, having been married very briefly to Alfonso, a son of James I of Aragon, and to Henry of Almain, son of Richard, King of Germany. She bore him no children.
Late in his life, Aymon may have become involved an anti-Angevin alliance under the auspices of the Crown of Aragon. In 1280, Peter III of Aragon (James's son), who had a claim on the Kingdom of Sicily, then ruled by an Angevin, sent a secretive message, "to treat of certain affairs", to several princes who were threatened by Angevin power in the County of Provence and the Piedmont. Dalmau de Villarasa, the ambassador bearing the letters, was accredited to, among others, the count of Geneva.
William III of Geneva (, 1280 - 1320) was the Count of Geneva from 1308 to 1320. He was the son of count Amadeus II of Geneva, and Agnès, daughter of John, Count of Chalon.
William was the oldest son of the Count of Geneva, Amadeus II, and Agnès de Chalon, daughter of Jean I of Chalon from the House of Ivrea. He was born in the Region of Savoy-Maurienne, he had two other brothers Hugues, a layman, and Amédée who will become bishop of Toul from 1320 to 1330. His sister Jeanne married Guichard VI of Albon, nicknamed LeGrand, lord of Beaujeuet, his other sister Marie, married Jean II de Chalon-Arlay son of John I of Chalon-Arlay (1259-1316).<br>
In 1297, married Agnes of Savoy, daughter of Amadeus V, Count of Savoy, with issue:
William also had an illegitimate son with Emeraude de La Frasse, lady of Montjoie:
William III accession to the throne, his father Count Amadeus, establishes his will at the castle of La Balme, September 24, 1306. In this act, he designates him as his successor and specifies that these brothers, Amédée and Hugues, will receive the castles of Varey, Mornex, , Rumilly-sous-Cornillon, and Cornillon, for the vicedominus des Bornes, for the rights on the market of La Roche, and for the lands and rents which he possesses in Vaud, all under the condition that they will be able to alienate these castles and rights only in favor of the heirs of Count. His father dies on May 22, 1308, near the Vuache castle.
The actual entry in function of Count William III is not known, Pierre Duparc gives the hypothesis of Jules Vuy who considered that the new count became sometime before the death of Amadeus. This observation is based on the analysis of a charter, not original, of 1308. The historian Matthieu de la Corbière; however, indicates "by a transaction concluded on May 29, his eldest son Guillaume took over".
Death and succession, on April 11, 1319, Count William establishes his will at the castle of Annecy naming heir his son Amédée. In the event that his son disappears, he makes his brothers, Hugues and Amédée his successors. In his will, he leaves a rent to his brothers, his mother, Agnès of Chalon, and his wife Agnès of Savoy, his dowry and the Valley of the Keys and the castle of Charousse. The act is supplemented by donations to the Church and its institutions.
Amadeus II (died 22 May 1308) was the Count of Geneva, which included the Genevois, but not the city of Geneva, from 1280 to 1308. He was the second son of Count Rudolf and succeeded his heirless brother Aymon II.
Amadeus died 22 May 1308 "apud lu Bacho", and was buried the next day (23 May) at Montagny.
Amadeus married Agnes, daughter of John, Count of Chalon, and his second wife, Laurette de Commercy, by a marriage contract drawn up 1 June 1285. She bore him three sons and two daughters who were still living at his death:
The Genevois is a former province of the Duchy of Savoy. Its capital is Annecy and other centres include Faverges, Thônes, and La Clusaz. It was bordered by the provinces of Carouge to the north-west, Faucigny to the north-east, and Savoy proper to the south-east and south-west.
Although the province took its name from the city of Geneva, the Counts of Geneva were never able to exercise their authority in the city itself, which was ruled by the Bishops of Geneva. The County of Geneva, having passed to the de Thoire et Villars family on the death of Count Robert (the Avignon Pope Clement VII) in 1394, was sold in 1401 to the Counts of Savoy. It was subsequently conceded in appanage to several Savoyard princes before being joined to the Duchy of Savoy in 1659.
The Valais witch trials consisted of a witch-hunt including a series of witch trials which took place in the Valais (the House of Savoy and the prince-bishopric of Sion), today part of Switzerland, beginning in 1428.
The Valais witch-hunt is the first of the systematic campaigns which would become much more widespread in the decades to come, initiating the period of witch trials in Europe.
The persecutions started in French-speaking Lower Valais (House of Savoy and prince-bishopric of Sion) and spread to German-speaking Upper Valais and to nearby valleys in the Western Alps.
They subsided after six to eight years (c. 1434/6), but the phenomenon spread further afield from here, to Vaud, Fribourg, Neuchatel, and beyond.
Although occasional burning of witches ("hexen") is recorded in Switzerland since the beginning of the 15th century, the Valais trials of 1428 are the first event in which the accusation of sorcery leads to systematic persecution with hundreds of victims executed.
The main contemporary account of the event is the short report by Johannes Fründ of Lucerne, written in c. 1430, possibly on the request of Christoph von Silenen, at the time castellan in Siders. It is extant in two versions, one in Lucerne (Zentralbibliothek BB 335, pp. 483-488), the other in Strasbourg (BNU Ms. 2. 935, ff. 162-164). The Lucerne version is older, and a probable autograph. This is the oldest known account of the incipient systematic witch-hunts of the 1430s to 1440s. A critical edition was published along with four other early texts on the topic by Ostorero et al. (1999).
The witch-trials emerged before the background of the persecution of the Waldensians in Fribourg (1399–1430), due to which a functioning inquisition with a seat in Lausanne had been established. Additionally, the Valais was at the time politically fragmented, in the wake of the rebellion of 1415–1420 and the weakening of Savoyard rule in Vaud.
The events began in Val d'Anniviers ("Enfis") and Val d'Hérens ("Urens"), the valleys south of Siders and Sion, respectively. Still, in the same year, the witch-hunt spread first throughout the French-speaking ("walche") Lower Valais and then to the German-speaking ("tutsche") Upper Valais.
By the summer of 1428, the entire Valais was affected. On 7 August, the authorities in Leuk issued a formal proclamation of the necessary procedures for a witch trial. According to this document, the "public talk or slander of three or four neighbours" was enough for arrest and imprisonment, even if the accused was a member of the nobility. The use of torture was reserved for victims "slandered by five, six, or seven or more persons, up to the number of ten, who were qualified to do so and not under suspicion themselves", but also those "accused by three persons who had been tried and sentenced to death for the practice of sorcery".
According to Fründ's account, the victims were accused of murder, heresy, and sorcery, being in pact with the devil. They were supposedly paying tribute to the devil, who appeared as a black animal such as a bear or a ram. The devil asked his followers to avoid holy mass and confession. Fründ relates that some of the accused were tortured to death without issuing a confession, while others did confess a variety of evil deeds, such as causing lameness, blindness, madness, miscarriage, impotence, infertility, and killing and eating their own children.
He also alludes to the topos of flying witches - saying that they would apply a salve to their chairs, and then ride the chairs wherever they wanted - and the witches sabbath, saying that the witches would meet in people's cellars at night and drink their wine, and meeting to listen to anti-Christian sermons by the devil in the form of a schoolmaster, with a mock-confession of any good-deeds they might have done, which would gain much influence in the early modern period. He even reports some of them being werewolves, killing livestock in the shape of a wolf, and knowing the recipe of an invisibility potion.
Others confessed to ruining crops (wine and grain) and causing livestock to give no milk and plowing teams to stand still.
The trials continued for several years more, well into the 1430s.
The number of victims is unknown, but ranges in the hundreds. Fründ speaks of a conspiracy of "700" witches of which "more than 200" had been burned two years into the trials (c. 1430).
Contrary to the later phase of the European witch-trials, when the majority of those accused were women, the victims in the Valais witch trials are estimated to have been two-thirds male and one-third female.
After the witch trials had subsided in Valais and Savoy, the phenomenon spread further in the decades leading up to the Reformation, to Fribourg and Neuchatel (1440), Vevey (1448), the bishopric of Lausanne and Lake Geneva area (c. 1460–1480) and Dommartin (1498, 1524-1528).
The influence of the Valais on the much larger phenomenon of the witch trials in the early modern period, lasting throughout the 16th and 17th centuries in much of Western Europe, may have been amplified by the Council of Basel which took place during the same period, during 1431–1437.
Here, theologians discussed the evidence for the new phenomenon of witchcraft and collected the court proceedings from the Valais, Vaud, and Savoy region. These documents were perused by the first generation of authors on witchcraft, such as Johannes Nider, the author of "Formicarius" (written 1436–1438).
Italian-occupied France was an area of south-eastern France and Monaco occupied by the Kingdom of Italy between 1940 and 1943 in parallel to the German occupation of France. The occupation had two phases, divided by Case Anton in November 1942 in which the Italian zone expanded significantly. Italian forces retreated from France in September 1943 in the aftermath of the fall of the Fascist regime in Italy, and German Wehrmacht forces occupied the abandoned areas until the Liberation (Operation Dragoon, 1944).
The initial Italian occupation of France territory occurred in June 1940; it was then expanded in November 1942.
The German offensive against the Low Countries and France began on 10 May and by the middle of May German forces were on French soil. By the start of June, British forces were evacuating from the pocket in Northern France. On 10 June 1940, Italy declared war against the French and British. Ten days later, the Italian army invaded France. On 24 June 1940, after the Fall of France, Italy and France signed the Franco-Italian Armistice, two days after the cessation of hostilities between France and Germany, agreeing upon an Italian zone of occupation.
This initial zone of occupation annexed officially to the Kingdom of Italy was and contained 28,500 inhabitants. The largest town contained within the initial Italian zone of occupation was Menton. The main city inside the "demilitarized zone" of from the former border with the Italian Alpine Wall was Nice.
In November 1942, in conjunction with "Case Anton", the German occupation of most of Vichy France, the Royal Italian Army ("Regio Esercito") expanded its occupation zone. Italian forces took control of Toulon and all of Provence up to the river Rhône, with the island of Corsica (claimed by the Italian irredentists). Nice and Corsica were to be annexed to Italy (as had happened in 1940 with Menton), in order to fulfil the aspirations of Italian irredentists (including local groups such as the Nizzardo Italians and the Corsican Italians). But this was not completed because of the Italian armistice in September 1943 when the Germans took over the Italian occupation zones.
The area of southeast France actually occupied by the Italians has been disputed. A study of the postal history of the region has cast new light on the part of France controlled by the Italians and the Germans (Trapnell, 2014). By studying mail that had been censored by the occupying power, this study showed that the Italians occupied the eastern part up to a "line" joining Toulon - Gap - Grenoble - Chambéry - Annecy - Geneva. Places occupied by the Italians west of this were few or transitory.
The Italian Army of occupation in southern France in November 1942 was made up of four infantry divisions with 136,000 soldiers and 6,000 officers, while in Corsica there were 66,000 soldiers with 3,000 officers. There was virtually no guerrilla war against the Italians in France until summer 1943. The Vichy regime that controlled southern France was friendly toward Italy, seeking concessions of the sort Germany would never make in its occupation zone.
Many thousands of Jews moved to the Italian zone of occupation to escape Nazi persecution in Vichy France. Nearly 80% of the remaining 300,000 French Jews took refuge there after November 1942. The book Robert O. Paxton's "Vichy France, Old Guard, New Order" describes how the Italian zone acted as a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution in Vichy France during the occupation.
The Italian Jewish banker Angelo Donati had an important role in convincing the Italian civil and military authorities to protect the Jews from French persecution.
In January 1943 the Italians refused to cooperate with the Nazis in rounding up the Jews living in the occupied zone of France under their control and in March prevented the Nazis from deporting Jews in their zone. German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop complained to Mussolini that "Italian military circles... lack a proper understanding of the Jewish question."
However, when the Italians signed the armistice with the Allies, German troops invaded the former Italian zone on 8 September 1943 and initiated brutal raids. Alois Brunner, the SS official for Jewish affairs, was placed at the head of units formed to search out Jews. Within five months, 5,000 Jews were caught and deported.
In August 1940, the Italian Royal Navy ("Regia Marina") established a submarine base at Bordeaux, outside Italian-occupied France.
Operating from "Bordeaux Sommergibile" ("BETASOM") as it was known, thirty-two Italian submarines participated in the Battle of the Atlantic. These submarines sank 109 Allied merchant ships (593,864 tons) and 18 warships (20,000 tons) up to September 1943. Eleven of these submarines were lost.
The Bishopric of Courland (, Low German: "Bisdom Curland") was the second smallest (4500 km2) ecclesiastical state in the Livonian Confederation founded in the aftermath of the Livonian Crusade. During the Livonian War in 1559 the bishopric became a possession of Denmark, and in 1585 sold by Denmark to Poland–Lithuania.
In ancient times a Baltic tribe, the Curonians, inhabited Courland and had strong links with the maritime tribes in both sides of the Baltic sea. In 1230, Lamekinas, Duke of West Courland, signed an agreement with the vice-legat Baldwin of Alna ("Baudoin d’Aulne") of the Pope Gregory IX about the voluntary conversion of his people to Christianity and receiving the same rights as the inhabitants of Gotland.
In 1234 Dominican friar Engelbert was appointed to be the first bishop of Courland. In 1242 the area of Courland passed under the influence of the Teutonic Knights owing to the amalgamation of this order with that of the Brethren of the Sword in 1237. In 1253 the territory of Courland was divided between the Bishopric of Courland and the Livonian branch of the Order of Teutonic Knights. After severe defeat of knights in the Battle of Durbe the Bishop Heinrich von Lützelburg left Courland in 1263 and the new bishop returned in his bishopric only after suppression of Curonian and Semigallian insurgencies in 1290.
During the Livonian War (1558–1582), under the increasing pressure of Muscovy, the Livonian Confederation dissolved.
In 1559 the Bishop of Courland and Ösel-Wiek sold his lands to King Frederick II of Denmark for 30,000 thalers. The Danish king gave the territory to his younger brother Duke Magnus of Holstein. Duke Magnus was crowned King of Livonia in 1570. In 1577, having lost Ivan's favor and receiving no support from his brother, Magnus called on the Livonian nobility to rally to him in a struggle against foreign occupation. He was attacked by Ivan's forces and taken prisoner. On his release, he renounced his royal title.
Magnus spent the last six years of his life at the castle of Pilten, where he died as a pensioner of the Polish crown. He promised to transfer it to the Duchy of Courland after his death, but this plan failed and only later Wilhelm Kettler did regain this district. After Magnus of Livonia died in 1583, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth invaded his territories in the Duchy of Courland and Frederick II of Denmark decided to sell his rights of inheritance.
The valleys of the Alps have been inhabited since prehistoric times. The Alpine culture, which developed there, centers on transhumance.
Currently the Alps are divided among eight states: France, Monaco, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany and Slovenia. In 1991 the Alpine Convention was established to regulate this transnational area, whose area measures about .
The Wildkirchli caves in the Appenzell Alps show traces of Neanderthal habitation (about 40,000 BCE). During the Würm glaciation (up to c. 11700 BP), the entire Alps were covered in ice.
Anatomically modern humans reach the Alpine region by c. 30,000 years ago. MtDNA Haplogroup K (believed to have originated in the mid-Upper Paleolithic, between about 30,000 and 22,000 years ago, with an estimated age here of c. 12,000 years BP), is a genetic marker associated with southeastern Alpine region.
Traces of transhumance appear in the neolithic. In the Bronze Age, the Alps formed the boundary of the Urnfield and Terramare cultures.
The mummy found on the Ötztaler Alps, known as "Ötzi the Iceman," lived c. 3200 BC. At that stage the population in its majority had already changed from an economy based on hunting and gathering to one based on agriculture and animal husbandry. It is still an open question whether forms of pastoral mobility, such as transhumance (alpiculture), already existed in prehistory.
The earliest historical accounts date to the Roman period, mostly due to Greco-Roman ethnography, with some epigraphic evidence due to the Raetians, Lepontii and Gauls, with Ligurians and Venetii occupying the fringes in the southwest and southeast, respectively (Cisalpine Gaul) during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC.
The Rock Drawings in Valcamonica date to this period. A few details have come down to modern scholars of the conquest of many of the Alpine tribes by Augustus, as well as Hannibal's battles across the Alps.
Most of the local Gallic tribes allied themselves with the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War, for the duration of which Rome lost control over most of Northern Italy. The Roman conquest of Italy was only complete after the Roman victory over Carthage, by the 190s BC.
Between 35 and 6 BC, the Alpine region was gradually integrated into the expanding Roman Empire. The contemporary monument Tropaeum Alpium in La Turbie celebrates the victory won by the Romans over 46 tribes in these mountains. The subsequent construction of roads over the Alpine passes first permitted southern and northern Roman settlements in the Alps to be connected, and eventually integrated the inhabitants of the Alps into the culture of the Empire. The upper Rhône valley or "Vallis Poenina" fell to the Romans after a battle at Octodurus (Martigny) in 57 BC. Aosta was founded in 25 BC as "Augusta Praetoria Salassorum" in the former territory of the Salassi. Raetia was conquered in 15 BC.
In the 7th century, much of the Eastern Alps were settled by Slavs. Between the 7th and 9th century, the Slavic principality of Carantania existed as one of the few non-Germanic polities in the Alps. The Alpine Slavs, who inhabited the majority of present-day Austria and Slovenia, were gradually Germanized from the 9th to the 14th century. The modern Slovenes are their southernmost descendants.
The successive emigration and occupation of the Alpine region by the Alemanni from the 6th to the 8th centuries are, too, known only in outline. For "mainstream" history, the Frankish and later the Habsburg empire, the Alps had strategic importance as an obstacle, not as a landscape, and the Alpine passes have consequently had great significance militarily.
Between 889 and 973, a Muslim community existed at Fraxinetum in the Western Alps. These "Saracens", as they were known, blocked the Alpine passes to Christian travelers until their expulsion by Christian forces led by Arduin Glaber in 973, at which point transalpine trade was able to resume.
Not until the final breakup of the Carolingian Empire in the 10th and 11th centuries is it possible to trace out the local history of different parts of the Alps, notably with the High Medieval Walser migrations.
Later Medieval to Early Modern Era (1200 to 1900).
The process of state formation in the Alps was driven by the proximity to focal areas of European conflicts such as in the Italian wars of 1494–1559. In that period the socio-political structures of Alpine regions drifted apart. One can identify three different developmental models: one of princely centralization (Western Alps), a local-communal one (Switzerland) and an intermediate one, characterised by a powerful nobility (Eastern Alps).
In the Central Alps the chief event, on the northern side of the chain, is the gradual formation from 1291 to 1516 of the Swiss Confederacy, at least so far as regards the mountain Cantons, and with especial reference to the independent confederations of the Grisons and the Valais, which only became full members of the Confederation in 1803 and 1815 respectively. The attraction of the south was too strong for both the Forest Cantons and the Grisons, so that both tried to secure, and actually did secure, various bits of the Milanese.
In the 15th century, the Forest Cantons won the Val Leventina as well as Bellinzona and the Val Blenio (though the Ossola Valley was held for a time only). Blenio was added to the Val Bregaglia (which had been given to the bishop of Coire in 960 by the emperor Otto I), along with the valleys of Mesocco and of Poschiavo.
In the case of the Western Alps (excluding the part from the chain of Mont Blanc to the Simplon Pass, which followed the fortunes of the Valais), a prolonged struggle for control took place between the feudal lords of Savoy, the Dauphiné and Provence. In 1349 the Dauphiné fell to France, while in 1388 the county of Nice passed from Provence to the house of Savoy, which also then held Piedmont as well as other lands on the Italian side of the Alps. The struggle henceforth was limited to France and the house of Savoy, but little by little France succeeded in pushing back the house of Savoy across the Alps, forcing it to become a purely Italian power.
One turning-point in the rivalry was the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), by which France ceded to Savoy the Alpine districts of Exilles, Bardonnèche (Bardonecchia), Oulx, Fenestrelles, and Châtean Dauphin, while Savoy handed over to France the valley of Barcelonnette, situated on the western slope of the Alps and forming part of the county of Nice. The final act in this long-continued struggle took place in 1860, when France obtained by cession the rest of the county of Nice and also Savoy, thus remaining sole ruler on the western slope of the Alps.
For the modern era it is possible to offer a quantitative estimate of the population of the Alpine region. Within the area delimited by the Alpine Convention, there were about 3.1 million inhabitants in 1500, 5.8 in 1800, 8.5 in 1900 and 13.9 in 2000.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries several important changes occurred. First, the Alpine population was now characterised by a particular growth rate, which was increasingly differentiated from that of the more dynamic non-mountain areas. Second, the migratory fluxes became ever more important and ever more directed toward extra-European destinations. Beginning in the early twentieth century, several regions were affected by depopulation. This process amplified the imbalanced distribution of the population within the Alps, because the urban centres at lower altitudes experienced strong growth and clearly became the most important dynamic localities during the twentieth century.
In general, it is noteworthy that even if modern industry – tourism, the railway and later the highway system – represented opportunities for the Alps, complementing its traditional openness to new challenges, it also produced negative consequences, such as the human impact on the environment.
Like other parts of Europe, the Alpine region was affected by the formation of the nation states that produced tensions between various groups and had consequences for border areas. In these regions, the coercive power of the state was felt much more strongly that it had been before. Borders lost their permeability and now bisected areas formerly characterised by a shared sense of community and ongoing exchanges. During World War I the eastern Alpine region was one of the epicentres of the conflict.
The fascination that the Alps exerted on the British has to be related to the general increase in charm and appeal of this mountain range during the eighteenth century. Yet British particularities were involved as well. Traditionally, many Englishmen felt the attraction of the Mediterranean, which was associated with the practice of the Grand Tour, and thus had to cross Europe and the Alps to reach it. From a place of transit, the Alps turned into a tourist destination as the flow of people and means of transport increased. Moreover, with the invention of new sports the Alps became an area of experimental training. The Alps offered many mountain climbers a degree of difficulty that fit their expectations.
The convergence of these phenomena granted to Alpine tourism a central position. It intensified from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards and, in spite of fluctuations, would never lose its importance. Railway companies, travel guides, travelogues and travel agents joined forces to make the Alps a prestigious tourist destination. With Thomas Cook in particular, the Alps appeared, as early as 1861, in the catalog of tourist offers and were instrumental in the establishment of a “truly international industry” of tourism. This industry developed the infrastructure: railway lines, hotels and other services such as casinos, promenades, improvements, and funiculars.

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