7. Political History and Modern State of the Inhabitants of the Alps.—We know practically nothing of the early dwellers in the Alps, save from the scanty accounts preserved to us by Roman and Greek historians and geographers. A few details have come down to us 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 to us 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 Dauphiné and Provence. In 1349 the Dauphiné fell to France, while in 1388 the country 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