The real importance of the house of Savoy in Italy dates from much the same time as the great extension of its power in Burgundy. ♦The largest dominions cut short in the twelfth century.♦ During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, partly through the growth of the cities, partly through the enmity of the Emperor Henry the Sixth, the dominions of the Savoyard princes as marquesses of Susa had been cut short, so as hardly to reach beyond their immediate Alpine valleys. ♦Grants to Count Thomas. 1207.♦ In the beginning of the thirteenth century, when Count Thomas obtained his first royal grant north of the lake, he also obtained grants of _Chieri_ and other places in the neighbourhood of Turin. These grants were merely nominal; but they were none the less the beginning of the Italian advance of the house. ♦First homage of Saluzzo. 1216.♦ In the same reign _Saluzzo_ for the first time paid a precarious homage to Savoy. ♦Italian dominion of Charles of Anjou. 1259.♦ Later in the thirteenth century, Charles of Anjou, now Count of Provence and King of Sicily, made his way into Northern Italy also, and thus brought the house of Savoy into a dangerous neighbourhood with French princes on its Italian as well as on its Burgundian side. Through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Savoyard border went on extending itself. But the Italian possessions of the house, like its possessions north of the lake, were separated from the main body of Savoyard territory to form a fief for one of the younger branches. ♦Counts of Achaia in Piedmont. 1301-1418.♦ This branch bore by marriage the empty title of Counts of _Achaia_ and _Morea_—memories of Frank dominion within the Eastern Empire—while, as if to keep matters straight, a branch of the house of Palaiologos reigned at Montferrat. ♦Advance in the fourteenth century.♦ During the fourteenth century, among many struggles with the marquesses of Montferrat and Saluzzo, the Angevin counts of Provence, and the lords of Milan, the Savoyard power in Italy generally increased. ♦Reunion of Piedmont. 1418.♦ Under Amadeus the Eighth, the lands held by the princes of Achaia were united to the possessions of the head of the house. ♦Acquisition of Biella, &c. 1435.♦ Before the end of the reign of Amadeus, the dominions of Savoy stretched as far as the Sesia, taking in _Biella_, _Santhia_ and _Vercelli_. Counting Nizza and Aosta as Italian, which they now practically were, the Italian dominions of the House reached from the Alps of Wallis to the sea. ♦Relations with Montferrat.♦ But they were nearly cut in two by the dominions of the Marquesses of _Montferrat_, from whom however the Dukes of Savoy now claimed homage. ♦Claims on Saluzzo; its doubtful homage.♦ _Saluzzo_, lying between the old inheritance of Susa and the new possession of Nizza, also passed under Savoyard supremacy. But it lay open to a very dangerous French claim on the ground of a former homage done to the Viennese Dauphins.