32 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



on the southern bank offers a ready-made bridge-head, taken 

 advantage of even in the earliest times. Here, before the Romans 

 came and the passes of the Pennine Alps had been brought into 

 frequent use, was the spot where tribes and traders, moving south- 

 wards from Central Europe and the Rhine towards Italy or 

 Provence, would seek to cross the barrier of the Rhone. Here, at 

 a later date, armies issuing from the defiles of the Western Alps 

 might strike northwards for Central Gaul, or eastwards across the 

 lowlands of Helvetia and past Aventicum to the Rhine. Caesar 

 found Geneva ' the farthest town of the Allobroges and the 

 nearest to the boundaries of the Helvetians ' ; he recognised its 

 strategic importance and introduced its name into history. 1 



The Roman and Burgundian towns both kept exclusively to 

 the high ground on the left bank of the Rhone. But under the 

 rule of its bishops (1050-1535) the first walls, some of the towers 

 of which still exist embedded in more modern buildings, took a 

 wider circuit, and the streets and alleys began to stretch down 

 to the lake and river-shore. Before the period with which we 

 are concerned the latter half of the eighteenth century these 

 limits had again been exceeded and Geneva had lost, externally 

 at least, the mediaeval aspect still fortunately retained by several 

 of the smaller towns in the low country between the Alps and the 

 Jura. Its ancient towers and many -gated walls had been replaced 

 by formidable bastions and broad grassy ramparts in the new 

 style of military architecture which followed on the use of cannon. 

 These fortifications, more adequate than the former walls to protect 

 the citizens from any sudden attack on the part of their formidable 

 neighbours, the Duke of Savoy or the French king, were planned 

 and carried out early in the sixteenth century. They encircled 

 both the city and St. Gervais, a considerable suburb, connected 

 by bridges with the old town, that had grown up on the 

 right bank of the Rhone, and in the sixteenth century was 

 the seat of a famous fair. The lake-front was guarded by 

 chains, and the river barricaded below the town with piles. In 

 place of the many issues of the old walls the new ramparts were 



1 A long list of Roman inscriptions found in or near Geneva, given in Spon's 

 History of Geneva (London, 1687), attests the early importance of the town. 

 One of them, recording the death of C. Julius Caesar Longinus, a freedman of 

 Julius Caesar, runs thus : ' Praeruptis montibus hue tandem veni ut hie locus 

 meos contegeret cineres.' 



