Frontiers oj France 65 



forraei'ly divided among small states and Uerman bishoprics, 

 was annexed to France at the close of the thirty years' war, 

 and by the wise treatment of 200 years became thoroughly 

 French in spirit. The language was not interfered with in the 

 German-speaking districts, and it was Alsatian-Strassburg in 

 1792 that Kouget de I'lsle, a young captain of Engineers, 

 composed and sang for the first time verses that he called A 

 song of the Army of the Khine." That army had flung back 

 the coalised Prussians and Austrians to the natural edge of 

 France, and the song, renamed the Marseillaise, remains the 

 anthem of the great French Eepublic. 



France in 1870 paid the price of a rash attempt to cross the 

 Rhine in arms, and the frontier was Ijroken by the counter- 

 onslaught of Bavarians and Prussians, who swept their opponents 

 into Metz and northward along the Meuse vale to Sedan, where 

 the second French empire fell, five weeks after the opening of the 

 war. The n&w frontier that was exacted by the victors in 1871 

 was determined strategically, and was designed to secure the 

 iron mines of Lori'aine as well as to keep back France from 

 contact with the Rhine. From unconquered Belfort, the Juras 

 provide a region very difficult to traverse, ^vhere the ^'alleys run 

 south-westward, parallel with the axes of folding in the range ; 

 and then we reach, ranging from Mont Blanc to the Mediterranean, 

 the unrivalled frontier of the Alps. 



The nature of the suyierb Init little visited region of Haute 

 Savoie and Dauphine may be illustrated by the traverse of 

 seventy miles from Grenoble across the Lantaret Pass, and 

 through the frontier-fortress of Brian 9on to the wall of Italy at 

 Mont-Genevre. Right down to the Maritime Alps, equal 

 difficulties must be encountered by an invader, and Charles V. 

 lost two armies in his attempts across the hills on Toulon. Again, 

 in 1707, Prince Eugene and the Due de Savoie lost 10,000 men 

 before Toulon and in their enforced retreat. At Njce and Monte 

 -Carlo, the range is cut across by the sea, so that the road and 



