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We know that Augustus drank only Rhetian wine; that is, of the Valtellina, one of the valleys famous also to-day for several delicious wines; we know that Livia drank Istrian wine. I have said that Italy exported much wine to Gaul, to the Danube regions, and to Germany; to this may be added another remark, both curious and interesting.
Napoleon, on the contrary, in speaking of the Rhetian Alps, said that "an army could pass wherever a man could put his foot."
And, though already burdened with a heavy war in the Netherlands, he sent fresh troops into the Tyrol, and the forces of the Swabian League advanced and hemmed in Switzerland from the Grison Pass, near Luziensteig, between the Rhetian mountains and Germany, along the Lake of Constance and the Rhine, as far as Basel. Then Switzerland and Rhetia were in great danger.
Austria is perhaps not so fortunately situated, on account of the directions of the Rhetian and Tyrolean Alps and of the river Danube. Lloyd, however, considers Bohemia and the Tyrol as two bastions connected by the strong curtain of the river Inn, and regards this frontier as exceedingly well suited for parallel movements.
Their invasion of Italy in 255, when they poured through the passes of the Rhetian Alps, and penetrated as far as Ravenna, was repelled by Aurelian, afterwards emperor. In North Germany, between the Elbe and the Rhine, were the Saxons. The Burgundians, between the Saxons and the Alemanni, made their way to the same river near Worms.
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