L'Equipement de l'Alpiniste 1900

The 6 February 1934 crisis was an anti-parliamentarist street demonstration in Paris organized by multiple far-right leagues that culminated in a riot on the Place de la Concorde, near the seat of the French National Assembly. The police shot and killed 15 demonstrators. It was one of the major political crises during the Third Republic (1870–1940). Frenchmen on the left feared it was an attempt to organize a fascist coup d'état. According to historian Joel Colton, "The consensus among scholars is that there was no concerted or unified design to seize power and that the leagues lacked the coherence, unity, or leadership to accomplish such an end."

As a result of the actions of that day, several anti-fascist organisations were created, such as the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes, in an attempt to thwart the rise of fascism in France. After World War II, several historians, among them Serge Bernstein, argued, while some leagues had been indisputably pushing for a coup, François de La Rocque had, in fact, turned in a liberal direction, toward a respect for constitutional order. However, if the lack of coordination among the fascist leagues undermined the idea of a fascist conspiracy, the fascist actions on 6 February were an uncoordinated but violent attempt to overthrow the Cartel des gauches government elected in 1932.

Édouard Daladier, who was president of the Council of Ministers, replaced Camille Chautemps on 27 January 1934 because of accusations of corruption (including the Stavisky Affair). Daladier, who had been a popular figure, was nonetheless forced to resign on 7 February. He was replaced by the conservative Gaston Doumergue as head of the government; this was the first time during the tenure of the Third Republic a government fell because of pressures from the street.

The mountain village of Zermatt first gained major recognition in Europe in light of the inaugural ascent of the Matterhorn by Edward Whymper in 1865. From then onwards, the number of overnight visitors rose steadily, even though the village itself was only reachable by a lengthy march on foot through the barren valley of Zermatt. Even the simple mule ride as far as St. Niklaus took a long time. Nevertheless, by the 1880s there were already as many as 12,000 tourist visits to Zermatt each year. To promote tourism in the valley, and especially in Zermatt itself, plans soon emerged to build a railway line intended to connect the emerging spa with the Rhone Valley.

On 21 September 1886, the Swiss Federal Council granted the banking house Masson, Chavannes & Co. in Lausanne and the Basler Handelsbank an initial concession. The original request was for a 750 mm (2 ft 5 1⁄2 in) narrow gauge railway from Visp to Zermatt, using a mixture of adhesion and rack railway line. At the insistence of the Bundesrat, the gauge was finally altered to metre gauge. The railway was at the outset to be operated from the start of June to the end of September, as the promoters did not wish to take on the risks of operating the line in an alpine winter. Additionally, it was only in summer that there were prospects of significant numbers of passengers, as in those days winter tourism was still of no great importance. Nevertheless, the Bundesrat reserved the right to extend the operating season, and similarly stipulated that concessionary fares be offered to locals.

Planning and construction of the line was entrusted by the participating banks to the railway company Suisse Occidentale-Simplon (SOS), which, in the summer of 1887, conducted extensive survey work in the Mattertal. On 10 October 1888, the Compagnie du Chemin de Fer de Viège à Zermatt SA emerged as the operating company.

The exact route and mode of operation was initially the subject of intense debate. The Suisse Occidentale-Simplon proposed a pure adhesion line, with a maximum gradient of 4.5%, while the engineer Ernest von Stockalper, who was working on the construction of the Gotthardbahn, proposed a combined adhesion and rack railway, as originally planned. A Special Commission established to investigate the ideal mode of operation visited, for the purpose of its investigations, numerous rack railways in Switzerland and Germany, including the Brünigbahn and the Rübelandbahn in the Harz, which was equipped with the Abt rack rail system. These visits led to a decision to equip the line with the system used on the Rübelandbahn, and using a maximum gradient of 12.5%. A total of six sections of track were to be laid out with a total of 7450 m of rack railway.

Construction began on 27 November 1888 in Visp. The work was entrusted to the western Swiss contractors Julius Chappuis, while the SOS undertook the purchase of land and the procurement of rolling stock. Acquisition of the necessary land turned out to be difficult, particularly in the municipalities of Stalden and St. Niklaus, as the local population was not interested in selling. Tedious expropriation procedures therefore became necessary. Also, land in the entire valley was divided into a myriad of tiny plots, and usually the actual owners of the plots were not recorded in official documents. The absence of a road made it necessary to transport the building materials almost exclusively over the already completed parts of the railway tracks to the construction sites.

On 3 July 1890, rail traffic on the first part of the line, between Visp and Stalden, could finally be introduced. By 26 August of the same year, the first trains reached St. Niklaus. In the following months, however, an unusually severe winter delayed the completion of the remaining sections. Only on 18 July 1891 could the entire line as far as Zermatt be handed over to traffic.

Tschingel still today remains the most famous tailed-mountaineer of all the times! Indeed the star of Tschingel will shine forever in the history of alpinism, in reason of her value and her challenging mountain climbs. Tschingel become famous as the dog that climbed the Alps, following her master up peak after peak. During her lifetime she made sixty-six major ascents, including eleven first ascents, as well as about a hundred minor ones. She never climbed to gratify her master, being herself a true passioned mountaineer, beaming with joy when she was getting to a summit, crying when the difficulties had been stopping her!

Tschingel was a middle-height she-dog, maybe a crossbreed between a beagle and a spaniel, maybe having something of the dachshund, anyhow extraordinarily nimble and clever, born in a high alp of the Berner Oberland and grown-up in the shadow of the Eigerwand. “Hazel-brown big eyes, expressive and sweet, long ears, grave voice, brown coat and white breast, as well as her paws, short but strong”. This was the nice description written in 1891 by Jean Veneon on a rare pamphlet, published on the “Alpine Journal”. When Tschingel climbed the Mont Blanc with her own paws, she was observed from Chamonix with the telescope and her arrival on the summit was celebrated with a cannon shot. When she returned to the town, she was greeted at the hotel as a true diva of mountaineering.

Tschingel had her baptism of fire on September 1865: at the age of six months she did her first ascent, a true record for that era, crossing her first glacier and climbing a steep snow-slope getting the summit of Tschingel Col - from which she took her name - with her first master, the swiss alpine-guide Christian Almer. After this exploit, Tschingel produced thirty-four puppies at Almer’s home in Grindelwald and acted as a watchdog; it was not until the summer of 1868 that she embarked on her outstanding career.