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Updated: May 1, 2025
The gray crest of the summit towers above the ledge of fertile soil which lies around it, a domain sometimes narrower, sometimes wider, and altogether about a hundred acres in extent. Here, through a vast break in the line of the hills to the south, the eye sees French Maurienne, Dauphine, the crags of Savoy, and the far-off mountains of the Lyonnais.
In 1250 we find the Rapins established near Saint-Jean de la Maurienne, in Savoy, close upon the French frontier. Saint-Jean de la Maurienne was so called because of the supposed relic of the bones of St. John the Baptist, which had been deposited there by a female pilgrim, Sainte Thècle, who was, it is supposed, a Rapin by birth.
His trousers, like his shirt, were of coarse gray linen, his waistcoat, of rough blue cloth with horn buttons much worn and a jacket of the cloth so oddly called Maurienne velvet, with which the Savoyards like to clothe themselves, stout hob-nailed shoes, and no stockings.
It embraces Syracuse, Marsala, Catania, Petralia, and Trapani, the circumference of the island being six days' journey. In Trapani coral is found, which is called Al Murgan . Thence people pass to the city of Rome in ten days. And from Rome they proceed by land to Lucca, which is a five days' journey. Thence they cross the mountain of Jean de Maurienne, and the passes of Italy.
Not to the early part of the nineteenth century, when the rebound from revolutionary chaos did not suffice to denationalise the Kings of Sardinia, but sufficed to ally them with reaction, ought we to turn if we would seize the true bearings of the development of the Counts of Maurienne into Kings of Italy. At that moment the mission of Piedmont, though not lost, was obscured.
The Counts of Maurienne in the kingdom of Burgundy had collected in their hands a variety of fiefs east of the Rhone extending from Geneva on the north over into the borders of Italy to Turin on the south until they commanded all the best passes of the western Alps. The reigning count, Humbert, had as yet no son.
A word not unlike the 'Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento' of Virgil was breathed over the cradle at Maurienne. If it did not send forth sons to rule the world, its children were, at least, to be enthroned in the capital of the Cæsars, and to make Italy one for the first time since Augustus. From April to August 1849, the peace negotiations dragged on.
If France were invaded by a foreign foe, Butifer at the head of a hundred young fellows would keep a whole division busy in Maurienne for a month; but in a time of peace the only outlets for his energy are those which set the law at defiance. He must wrestle with something; whenever he is not risking his neck he is at odds with society, he lends a helping hand to smugglers.
The more probable and reasonable objects of his diplomacy seemed about to be attained at once. At Montferrand in Auvergne in February he met the Count of Maurienne, who brought his daughter with him, and there the treaty between them was drawn up and sworn to. At the same place appeared his former ally the king of Aragon and his former opponent the Count of Toulouse.
Behind him, at a table covered with a white cloth, two captains on furlough had already made their breakfast. They also were pilgrims, drawn by the love of Jeanne d'Arc to Domremy. They talked of nothing else but of her. Yet their points of view were absolutely different. One of them, the younger, was short and swarthy, a Savoyard, the son of an Italian doctor at St. Jean de Maurienne.
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