Count of Savoy. Renowned for his wisdom, courage, and political
foresight, Amadeus, when still in the meridian of his glory, abdicated,
and with six of his former companions-in-arms and trusty counsellors,
retired to the hermitage of Ripaille, near the lake of Geneva. The
asceticism here practised does not appear to have been very severe,
since _faire Ripaille_ has passed into a proverb in Switzerland, to
indicate good cheer and easy living; but be this as it may, the duke
was some years afterwards summoned from his retirement, having been
elected pope under the title of Felix V.

For nearly a century following, the prosperity of the duchy was
overcast; feeble princes, alternating with feebler regencies and their
attendant evils, held the reins of government, and Piedmont became
the arena on which the French and Imperialists contended. The Dukes of
Savoy, alternately forced into alliance with Francis I. of France and
the Emperor Charles V., the position of their territories rendering it
impossible for them to preserve neutrality, lost equally from friend
and foe. Far from being able to follow up the cherished policy of their
family, and as the reward of their allegiance obtain “a few leaves of
that artichoke Lombardy,” to the possession of which they had ever
aspired, they saw themselves gradually stripped of their ancestral
dominions, till a single town in Piedmont was all that remained in
their hands.

The singular firmness and energy of character which distinguishes
these Highlanders of Italy, as they are termed, seems but to have
gained strength from these vicissitudes. In the reign of Duke Emmanuel
Philibert, “the Iron-headed,” we find the House of Savoy restored
to more than its pristine lustre, and reinstated in its former
possessions, with the single exception of Geneva, which in the general
turmoil had succeeded in establishing its independence. At a later
period this prince, to strengthen his position in Italy, exchanged
with Henri Quatre, Bourg en Bresse, Val Romey, and Bugey in Savoy,
against 