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Updated: June 15, 2025
The lecturer's explanation had conveyed to Susan's mind the idea of the Switzers going with long strings of carts to the top of Mont Blanc for supplies of ice to meet the European demand, and she admitted that it was a grand idea, and asked if the ice and snow lasted long into the summer. "Long into it!" exclaimed her teacher. "Why, you foolish thing, its lasts all through it."
From Bellagio, from Varenna, from Bellano he drove forth his enemies, rolled the cannon of the Switzers into the lake, regained Lecco, defeated the troops of Alessandro Gonzaga, and took the Duke of Mantua prisoner. Had he but held Como, it is probable that he might have obtained such terms at this time as would have consolidated his tyranny.
His father was Eugene Maurice, of Savoy, count of Soissons, colonel of the Switzers, and governor of Champagne and Brie: his mother was the celebrated Olimpia de Mancini, niece of Cardinal Mazarine.
Louis' abasement at Peronne was, however, amply avenged by the battle of Granson, when the mighty host of "invincible" Charles was overwhelmed by the Switzers in 1476. A year later, the whole fabric of Burgundian ambition was shattered and the great duke lay a mutilated and frozen corpse before the walls of Nancy.
Were the Switzers less free, or less secure, because, after their defection from the house of Austria, they had never been declared independent before the treaty of Westphalia? Is the king of France less a sovereign, because the king of England partakes his title?
They held themselves open and ready for any master. They lived not so much by religion or by loyalty as by the fates of worldly fortune. In his secret despatches Diabolus was wont to address Captain Anything as My Darling; and be sure you recruit your Switzers well, Diabolus would say; but when the real stress of the war came, even Diabolus cast Captain Anything off.
But by long-continued habit the view, that what was passing on the other side of Gotthard could not be indifferent to their own land, took firm root in the minds of the Swiss statesmen, and therefore it was, that the scandalous game of intrigue and bribery, begun by Louis XI, by which France aimed at the destruction of the Swiss national character, had a good opportunity of unfolding itself on Italian ground, where France under Charles VIII and Louis XII, contrived to increase her own power, by arraying Switzers against Switzers.
Let him arrange an agreement between us, so that presto he may see me there with my brave nobles, with infantry and with plenty of Switzers. Tell him that I am his friend: Begone. Be diligent."
A consideration of the actual state of affairs at the end of January, 1803, will perhaps guide us to an explanation which is more consonant with the grandeur of Napoleon's designs. At that time he was all-powerful in the Old World. As First Consul for Life he was master of forty millions of men: he was President of the Italian Republic: to the Switzers, as to the Dutch, his word was law.
That Power had now gained the Rhine boundary; her troops garrisoned the fortresses of Holland and Northern Italy; her chief dictated his will to German princelings and to the once free Switzers; while the Court of Madrid, nay, the Eternal City herself, obeyed his behests.
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