The Alps - History
Practically nothing is known of the early dwellers in the Alps, save from the scanty accounts preserved by Roman and Greek historians and geographers. A few details have come down to the present of the conquest of many of the Alpine tribes by Augustus, though not much more than their names. The successive emigrations and occupation of the Alpine region by divers Teutonic tribes from the 5th to the 6th centuries are, too, known only in outline, while to them, as to the Frankish kings and emperors, the Alps offered a route from one place to another rather than a permanent residence. It is not till the final break up of the Carolingian empire in the 10th and 11th centuries that it becomes possible to trace out the local history of different parts of the Alps.
In the case of the Western Alps (minus the bit from the chain of Mont Blanc to the Simplon, which followed the fortunes of the Valais), a prolonged struggle for the Alpine region took place between the feudal lords of Savoy, the Dauphinc and Provence. In 1349 the Dauphine fell to France, while in 1388 the county of Nice passed from Provence to the house of Savoy, which too 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, thus forcing it to become a purely Italian power. One turning-point in the rivalry was the treaty of Utrecht (1713), by which France gave up to Savoy the districts (all forming part of the Dauphinl, and lying on the Italian slope of the Alps) of Exillcs, Bardonneche, Oulx, Fencstrcllcs, and Chateau Dauphin, while Savoy handed over to France the valley of Barcclonnette, situated on the western slope of the Alps and forming part of the county of Nice. The final act in the long-continued struggle took place in i860, when France obtained by cession the rest of the county of Nice and also Savoy, thus remaining sole .mistress on the western slope of the Alps.
In the Central Alps the chief event, on the northern side of the chain, is the gradual formation from 1291 to 1815 of the Swiss Confederation, 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. The former, in the 15th century, won the Val Leventina (down which the St Gotthard train now thunders) as well as BelHnzona and the Val Blcnio (though the Ossola Valley was held for a time only), while the latter added to the Val Brcgaglia (which had been given to the bishop of Coirc in 060 by the emperor Otto I.) the valleys of Mcsocco and of Poschiavo.
Further, in 1512, the Swiss Confederation as a whole won the valleys of Locarno with Lugano, which, combined with the 15th century conquests by the Forest Cantons, were formed in 1803 into the new Canton of Ticino or Tcssin. On the other hand, the Grisons won in 1512 the Valtellina, with Bormio and Chiavenna, but in 1797 these regions were finally lost to it as well as to the Swiss Confederation, though the Grisons retained the valleys of Mcsocco, Brcgaglia and Poschiavo, while in 1762 it had bought the upper bit of the valley of Mtinslcr that lies on the southern slope of the Alps.
In the Eastern Alps the political history is almost monotonous, for it relates simply to the advance or retreat of the house of Habsburg, which ultimately held all but the whole of the northern portion (the exception was the small bit in the north-west that belongs to Bavaria) of that region. The Habsburgers, whose original home was in the lower valley of the Aar, where still stand the ruins of their ancestral castle, lost that district to the Swiss in 1415, as they had previously lost various other bits of what is now Switzerland. But they received a rich compensation in the Eastern Alps (not to speak of the imperial crown), for they there gathered in the harvest that numerous minor dynasties had prepared for them, albeit unconsciously.
Thus they won the duchy of Austria with Styria in 128?, Carinthia and Carniola in ^335. Tirol in 1363, and the Vorarlbcrg in bits from 1375 to J 523, not to speak of minor " rectifications " of frontiers on the northern slope of the Alps. But on the other slope their progress was slower, and finally less successful. It is true that they early won Primicro (1373), as well as (1517) the Ampczzo Valley and several towns to the south of Trent. In 1797 they obtained Venctia proper, in 1803 the secularized bishoprics of Trent and Bnxcn (as well asthat of Salzburg, more to the north), besides the Valtellina region, and in 1815 the Bcrgamasquc valleys, while the Milanese had belonged to them since 1535.
But, as is well known, in 1859 they lost to the house of Savoy both the Milanese and the Bergamasca, and in 1866 Venetia proper also, so that the Trentino was finally their chief possession on the southern slope of the Alps. The gain of the Milanese in 1859 by the future king of Italy (1861) meant that Italy then won the valley of Livigno (between the Upper Engadine and Bormio), which is the only important bit it holds on the nonItalian slope of the Alps, besides the county of Tcnda (obtained »n 1575, and not lost in i860), with the heads of certain glens in the Maritime Alps, reserved in i860 for reasons connected with hunting.
Thus the Alpine states (Italy, Switzerland and Austria), other than France and Bavaria, held bits of territory on the slope of the Alps where one would not expect to find them. Roughly speaking, in each of these five lands the Alpine population spoke the tongue of the country, though in Italy there were a few French-speaking districts (the Waldensian valleys as well as the Aosta and Oulx valleys) as well as some German-speaking and Ladin-speaking settlements. In Switzerland there are Italian-speaking regions, as well as some spots (in the Grisons) where the old Romance dialect of Romansch or Ladin survived; while in Austria, besides German, Italian and Ladin, there was a Slavonic-speaking population in the South-Eastern Alps.
The higher region of the Alps were long left to the exclusive attention of the men of the adjoining valleys, even when Alpine travellers (as distinguished from Alpine climbers) began to visit these valleys. It is reckoned that about 20 glacier passes were certainly known before 1600, about 25 more before 1700, and yet another score before 1800; but though the attempt of P. A. Arnod (an official of the duchy of Aosta) in 1689 to "re-open" the Col du Geant may be counted as made by a non-native, there seems not to be another case of the kind till the last quarter of the 18th century.
Nor did it fare much better with the high peaks, though the two earliest recorded ascents were due to non-natives, that of the Rochemclon in 1358 having been undertaken in fulfilment of a vow, and that of the Mont Aiguille in 1492 by order of Charles VIII. of France, in order to destroy its immense reputation for inaccessibility— in 1555 Conrad Gesncr did not climb Pilatus proper, but only the grassy mound of the Gnepfstein, the lowest and the most westerly of the seven summits. The two first men who really systematically explored the regions of ice and snow were H.B. de Saussure (1740-1799), as regards the Pennine Alps, and the Benedictine monk of Disentis, Placidus a Spescha (1752-1833, most of whose ascents were made before 1806), in the valleys at the sources of the Rhine.
Mont Blanc, the highest peak in Europe, is 15,739 feet above the level of the sea — 7000 feet down either side is clothed with perpetual snow. The early writers, such writers as Fatio de Duillier and Bishop Burnet, knew of no Mont Blanc, but only of an Accursed Mountain; the name Mont Blanc appearing, for the first time, in Martel's pamphlet, in 1744. In 1760 De Saussure announced, at Chamonix, that he would reward any one who could find a way to the summit; but fifteen years passed before any Chamoniards took up the challenge. In August 1786, Jacques Balmat took a single companion with him, Dr. Paccard, of Chamouni village. The first day brought them to the Grand Plateau. On the following day the inhabitants of Chamouni assembled in crowds, watched breathlessly with their glasses these two figures toiling their way up the steep and icy sides of the mountain monarch, and at length beheld them reach the summit, and stand upon the peak which for a quarter of a century had defied every effort of man to reach.
It is told of Balmat that he went without spectacles. Nothing much was known about climbing then. It was not understood how the snows affected the sight. When Balmat came down he found himself almost blind, and his skin was peeling off his face, his eyes were quite bloodshot, and people hardly knew him. The next explorers took spectacles, and ever since mountain spectacles have been one of the trades of Switzerland.
In the early fifties of the 19th century the taste for mountaineering rapidly developed for several very different reasons. A great stimulus was given to it by the foundation of the various Alpine clubs, each of which drew together the climbers who dwelt in the same country. The first was the English Alpine Club (founded in the winter of 1857-1S58), followed in 1862 by the Austrian Alpine Club (which in 1873 was fused, under the name of the German and Austrian Alpine Club, with the German Alpine Club, founded in 1869), in 1863 by the Italian and Swiss Alpine Clubs, and in 1874 by the French Alpine Club, not to mention numerous minor societies of more local character. It was by the members of these clubs (and a few others) that the minute exploration (now all but complete) of the High Alps was carried out, while much was done in the way of building club huts, organizing and training guides, &c, to smooth the way for later comers.
After seven unsuccessful attempts. the British climber Edward Whymper and several partners first climbed the Matterhorn in I865 and became major celebrities in the process. Whymper not only first climbed the Matterhorn, but also became the world's most famous mountaineer. Since Edward Whymper and team first climbed the Matterhorn in 1865, at least sixty thousand people have summitted the mountain, including a seventy-six-year-old man and an eleven-year-old girl on the same day.
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