Savoyard

“ If, now that a prince of Savoy was born in Geneva, the duke failed in his projects, everything would be lost for many a day. The cue was therefore given to all the Savoyard nobility. The beauty of their gold pieces dazzled the shopkeepers; sports, dinners, balls, masquerades, plays, tournaments, pomp, finery, pleasures, luxuries, and all the allurements which seduce men (say contemporary writers) , captivated the worldly and particularly the youth. Some few huguenots talked loudly of independence; some old Genevans still strove to retain their sons ”

“ The house of Savoy had still many adherents in Geneva, capable of opposing the desire for independence and truth. There were old Savoyard families devoted to the duke; persons who were sold to him; young men of birth, enthusiasts of absolute power; priests and laymen enamoured of Rome; traders averse to a war that would injure their business; weak men, trembling at the least commotion, and many low people without occupation, who are easily excited to riot. ”

“ I think I saw quite as many women as men at work in the fields throughout Savoy. A girl of fourteen driving a yoke of oxen attached to a cart, walking barefoot beside the team and plying the goadstick, while a boy of her own age lay idly at length in the cart, is one of my liveliest recollections of Savoyard ways. Nut-brown, unbonneted women, hoeing corn with an implement between an adze and a pick-axe (and not a bad implement, either, for so rugged an unplowed soil) , women driving hogs, cows, &c., to or from market, we encountered at every turn. ”

“ When in Paris and other large cities, the Savoyards contrive, by the most indefatigable industry and incredible frugality, to return to their native village after a certain lapse of time, with a little fortune that is amply sufficient for their comfort. The poorest Savoyard in Paris never fails to remit something for the support of his parents. Both Voltaire and Rousseau have rendered justice to the good qualities of this honest people. It is a thousand pities that this country (Savoy) is not either incorporated with France, or made to form part of the Helvetic confederacy. ”

“ The lands of Faucigny and the Genevois were thus altogether surrounded by the Savoyard territory. ♦Faucigny held by the Dauphins of the Viennois.♦ Faucigny had passed to the Dauphins of the Viennois, who were the constant rivals of the Savoyard counts, down to the time of the practical transfer of their dauphiny to France. ♦Savoy acquires Faucigny and Gex. 1355.♦ Soon after that annexation, Savoy obtained Faucigny, with Gex and some other districts beyond the Rhone, in exchange for some small Savoyard possessions within the Dauphiny. ”

“ It would be impossible to chronicle here the history of the Savoyard dukes, who were advanced to the title of Kings of Sardinia after the acquisition of that island. Savoy lay in the way of the three fighting nations, France, Spain, and Austria. The plain of Piedmont was an admirable fighting-ground, and [Pg 343] the combatants chose it on all possible occasions, but it would not be fair to charge the whole blame upon those three nations. The Dukes of Savoy were ambitious men, full of all sorts of schemes for increasing their dominions and their personal glory. ”

“ We have staid here long enough to become accustomed to the place and people, and I am sorry to go away. The landlord’s pretty daughter is an accomplished singer, and her good old aunts tell me stories in the hot evenings on the terrace. The fat civil waiter, Ambrose, is a Savoyard, and was a private in the regiment of Savoy at the time when the present King of Sardinia, then Prince of Carignan, conspired against the last monarch, his uncle; and when all the Sardinian troops went over to the Prince, the Savoyard regiment disbanded itself and the men returned to their mountains. ”

“ Neither Francis nor Bladys had seen or heard anything of the Savoyard and his monkey. The sudden vision in the carriage before them turned their hearts to stone. They conceived that an evil spirit was before them.
Instantly recovering himself somewhat, Luke threw open the window on his side, and yelled to the post-boy, "For God's sake, stop! Stop!" ”

“ This left the city of Geneva altogether surrounded by Savoyard territory, a position which before long altogether changed the relations between the Savoyard counts and the city. Hitherto, in the endless struggles between the Genevese counts, bishops, and citizens, the Savoyard counts ... had often been looked on by the citizens as friends and protectors. ”

“ Savoy itself was so far favoured as to be allowed to keep its ancient name, and to form the departments of High and Low Savoy, instead of being condemned, as in the former temporary annexation, to bear the names of Leman and Mont Blanc. The Burgundian Counts who have grown into Italian Kings have thus lost the land under whose name their House grew famous. ♦Aosta spared.♦ Aosta alone remains as the last relic of the times when the Savoyard Dukes, the greatest lords of the Middle Kingdom, still kept their place as the truest representatives of the Middle Kingdom itself. ”

“ Savoy, as every body knows, was once a part of France, and it still retains all of its original characteristics. I have not heard ten words of Italian since I arrived here, and, judging from what I do hear and from the tone of the newspapers, it would like to become a part of France again. The Savoyards are a religious, steady-going people, and they have little love either for the weak and dissolute monarch who governs them, or for the powerful, infidel prime minister who governs their monarch. ”

“ A Savoyard with a hurdy-gurdy and a monkey arrived and formed a nucleus around which the young congregated, and not the young only. The sallies of the red-coated ape, its grimaces, produced general mirth and some disturbance.
"Now then! Make room! Now then! Do you want to be run over?"
Clack! clack! went the whip of a post-boy, and a yellow-bodied carriage was brought out of the yard, drawn by two horses, and mounted by a boy in a yellow jacket, white hat, and breeches and top-boots. ”

“ Now that they had become immediate neighbours of the city, they began before long to be its most dangerous enemies. The acquisition of the Genevois took place in the reign of the famous Amadeus, the Eighth, the first Duke of Savoy, who received that rank by grant of King Siegmund [1417] , and who was afterwards the Anti-pope Felix. See PAPACY: A. D. 1431-1448. In his reign the dominions of Savoy, as a power ruling on both sides of the Alps, reached their greatest extent. But the Savoyard power was still pre-eminently Burgundian, and Chambery was its capital. ”

“ Both these last lay within the kingdom of Burgundy, and stretched into both its divisions, Transjurane and Cisjurane. In no part of our story is it more necessary to avoid language which forestalls the arrangements of later times. ♦Popular confusions.♦ A wholly false impression is given by the use of language such as commonly is used. We often hear of the princes of Savoy holding lands ‘in France’ and ‘in Switzerland. They held lands which by virtue{278} of later changes have severally become French and Swiss; but those lands became French and Swiss only by ceasing to be Savoyard. ”

“ Pierre's, and, notwithstanding the opposition of the canons, accomplices in the conspiracy, he ordered the great bell to be rung. A rumour had already spread on the other side of the Arve that the plot had failed, and that the bishop had escaped on his mule. The men-at-arms of Savoy were disconcerted; the village bells were not rung, the nobles remained in their castles, the peasants in their fields. 'Our scheme has got wind,' said the Savoyard captains; 'all the city is under arms ”

“ It is a pity the Savoyards are not rich: though, perhaps, it would be a still greater pity if they were so, for altogether they are the best, the most sociable people that I know, and if there is a little city in the world where the pleasures of life are experienced in an agreeable and friendly commerce, it is at Chambery. ”

“ To lunch at the Savoy makes one feel not so much that one is among the rich as among the well-to-do on short leave. The Savoy is sober; its luxury is quieter than that of the Joseph Lyons restaurant; in a way, with its top lights, its flowers, it recalls the Joseph Lyons civilisation; the flowers are real, but not much more so; the band is more discreet, but it plays the same tunes. Its population, too, is different; at the Savoy, you do not see the young clerk, but you do see what some of the young clerks will become if they are lucky; many foreigners in a state of gormandise and bejewelment ”

“ Then the young couple had gone to seek solitude among unknown faces in that other part of Savoy, whose matchless beauty is a miracle of softness, sweetness, and grace—the green plain of Chablais, fringed by the blue waters of Lake Leman and bounded by mountains with their lazy curves wooded to the summit, and further off outlined by rugged peaks which raise their barren whiteness to the blue of the sky and in the evening seem like flagstaffs that reflect on their banners the light of the setting sun. Autumn above all gives this enchanted country its fullest power to stir the emotions. ”

“ I passed through Savoy and when I saw the mountains of Dauphiny loom up against the distant horizon my heart beat wildly, my eyes filled with tears, and I felt like a returning exile, and know not what false pride restrained me from springing to the ground and kissing the soil of France!
Hail! noble and generous land, the home of intelligence and of liberty! On touching thee the soul swells within us, the mind expands; no child of thine can return to thy bosom without a throb of holy joy, a feeling of noble pride. I passed along filled with delirious happiness. ”

“ And Harvey's arms and the Leete house ready to receive her.
However, a ray of hope opened for her at the Savoy—not much, a prospect.
The Savoy was crowded. Men in uniform, a sprinkling of anxious-faced wives and daughters, and more than a sprinkling of gaily dressed and painted women, filled the lobby or made their way slowly up and down the staircase. It was all so utterly different from what she had expected—so bright, so full of life. These well-fed people they seemed happy enough. ”

“ Now, Savoy is a fine country, and the people are a very good people, very much like other people who live amongst rocks and stones,—not quite so wise as serpents nor so innocent as doves. "Poor, patient, quiet, honest people," says Sterne, "fear not. ”

“ In you we cherish friends and brothers; never more shall you be separated from us.’” Savoy was ever more French in spirit than Italian in spite of its variable alliances.{279}
Leaving the resorts like Aix-les-Bains, Annecy and Évian behind, and following the turbulent Isère to its icy cradle beneath the haunches of Mont Saint Bernard, one may literally leave the well-worn travel track behind, the railway itself striking off Italy-wards via a gap in the mountain chain to the southeast, where it ultimately burrows through the massif of the chain of which Mont Cenis forms the most notable peak. ”

“ The migratory minstrels of Savoy caught the strain, and pealed it down the long vistas of quiet streets, till their innermost and snuggest apartments re-echoed with the sound. Men were obliged to endure this crying evil for full six months, wearied to desperation, and made sea-sick on the dry land. ”

“ It delights me to see the precision of the action on the Stage of the Savoy, the result of a carefully-thought-out plan and well-regulated drill. The principals have been judiciously selected for the work, and they are suited by the two clever fellow-workers who, having taken their measure to a nicety, give them just what they can do, and no more; and who insist on their original conceptions being executed exactly according to their ideas. ”

“ Savoy is almost entirely watered by tributaries of the Rhone, and so might be said to belong naturally to France rather than to Italy, regarding the crests of the Alps as the proper line of demarcation between them. Its trade, small at any rate, is of necessity mainly with France; very slightly, save on the immediate sea-coast, with Genoa or Piedmont. Its language is French. Though peopled nearly to the limit of its capacity, the whole number of its inhabitants can hardly exceed Half a Million, nine-tenths of its entire surface being covered with sterile, intractable mountains. ”

“ The majestic walls of the Savoy are in the dust, and not merely all trace, but all idea of its radiant gardens and sunny bowers, its sparkling fountains and verdant lawns, is lost even to the imagination in the matter-of-fact, business-like demeanour of the myriads of plodders who are ever traversing the dusty and bustling environs of Waterloo-bridge. In our closets we may perchance compel the unromantic realities of the present to yield beneath the brilliant imaginations of the past ”

“ As the transition from day to night grew more palpable, the hamlets of Savoy became gray and hazy, the shades thickened around the bases of the mountains in a manner to render their forms indistinct and massive, and the milder glory of the scene was transferred to their summits. Seen by sun-light, these noble heights appear a long range of naked granite, piled on a foundation of chestnut-covered hills, and buttressed by a few such salient spurs as are perhaps necessary to give variety and agreeable shadows to their acclivities. ”