Savoy

"Starting from little Lower Savoy, the small nation of warlike mountaineers of the entire province concentrated themselves into a state and then descended into the Italian plain and, by conquest and policy, annexed Piedmont, Monferrato, Nice, the Lomellina, Sardinia and Genoa, one after the other. The dynasty settled in Turin and became Italian, but Savoy remained the cradle of the state, and today the cross of Savoy is the coat of arms of North Italy from Nice to Rimini and from Sondrio to Siena. ...Savoy, separated from Piedmont by the main chain of the Alps, supplies almost all its needs from the north, from Geneva and in part from Lyons, just as on the other hand the canton of Ticino, which lies south of the Alpine passes, draws on Genoa and Venice. If this circumstance is a motive for separation from Piedmont, it is not one for annexation to France, for the commercial metropolis of Savoy is Geneva; that was taken care of, apart from the geographical situation, by the wisdom of the French tariff laws and the chicanery of the French customs."