St. Dévote is the patron saint of Monaco. The celebration held every year in her honour is very picturesque and impressive; for then a long procession winds down from Monaco to the little chapel to do homage to her memory. The legend of St. Dévote takes many forms. The version here given is that which appears to be generally accepted in Monaco.^[31]

In the reign of the Emperor Diocletian there lived in Corsica a Christian maiden whose name was Dévote. She was bitterly persecuted for her religion; but found a friend in Euticius, a senator, who concealed her in his house. Her hiding place was discovered by the Roman prefect who was engaged in the hunting down of Christians. Euticius was killed by poison. Dévote was dragged forth into the street, was mutilated with the utmost brutality and finally expired while undergoing the torture of the “chevalet.” She died praying for the soul of her friend and protector, the noble Euticius.

During the night the body of the martyr was carried down secretly to the seashore by her fellow Christians and placed, with solemn reverence, on board a ship. As the day dawned the ship set sail for the coast of Africa; but, after a while, a storm burst upon it and drove it, helpless and hopeless, before a fierce wind towards the shores of Gaul.

The captain—one Gratien—felt that the ship was lost. His strength was spent and he gave way to utter despair. As he clung wearily to the helm, dazed and exhausted, a vision of the dead maiden appeared before him as a small, white figure against a curtain of black cloud. She opened her mouth to speak.

“Up! Gratien,” she said, “the tempest is passing away; your ship will sail safely into the blue. Watch by me and when you see a dove fly forth from my mouth, follow it with a good heart. It will take you to a quiet haven, called in the Greek, Monaco, and in the Latin, Singulare. There you will find peace and there, by the beach, bury my body.”

Her words came true. The wind ceased; the savage waves dropped into a rippled calm and under an azure sky, made glorious by the sun, the battered boat—bearing the wan maiden on its deck—sailed, like a radiant thing, into a harbour of enchantment. At the mouth of the glen, where the rosemary grew and by the side of the laughing stream the body of the little maid was buried.

MONACO is a bold, assertive mass of rock—long, narrow and blunt—which thrusts itself out into the sea, as if to show that it held the ocean in contempt and cared nothing for either winds or waves. The sea has tried its strength against it since the world began, but Monaco has ever remained bland and indifferent. The rock is cut off from the mainland by a gorge through which the road to Nice slinks by as if glad to escape. The sides of Monaco are everywhere precipitous, except towards the east. It is from this side only that it can be approached. Its fortifications are very massive and consist of high, unbroken walls which cover the cliff from base to rampart like a cloak. The palace end of the rock has, indeed, the appearance of one gigantic keep. The walls which surround the palace gardens date from 1552 to 1560, while the fortifications that surmount the Rampe belong to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The flanks of Monaco, when neither sheer cliff nor iron wall, are covered with lavish green, for there is not a ledge nor a slope nor a cranny that does not lodge some flower or some shrub.

Access to the town is gained by the Rampe Major, a broad and steep, paved path which has been, in large part, hewn out of the side of the rock. Up and down this path there is an endless procession of townfolk and harbour folk, soldiers and priests, schoolboys and girls, hurried officials and gaping visitors. Below the Rampe lies a carriage road up to the town, traversed by a tram line. This way, the Avenue de la Porte Neuve was constructed in 1828. Before that date Monaco could only be reached on foot or on horseback.

Three gates are met with in ascending the Rampe. The first is a ceremonial gate rather than a defence work. It was built in 1714 and affects a faintly classical style, being fashioned of narrow bricks and white stone. The Rampe beyond bends upon itself and, skirting a platform surmounted by a sentry tower as yellow as old parchment, comes face to face with the great battery (now bricked up) which stands at the foot of the palace walls. It can be seen how perfectly this gun emplacement commanded not only the Rampe but also the entrance to the harbour. On the east side of the battery is an immense military work in the form of a rounded buttress, very like the fold of a hanging curtain turned to stone. This is the oreillon which served to mask the battery from the land side.

Below the battery the Rampe turns again upon itself and so reaches the second gate. It is a gate in white stone, frail and ghostlike, and inscribed with the date 1533. Beyond it was the drawbridge. Here the Rampe bends sharply in its course for the third time and passes through the main gateway by a vaulted passage of great solidity. This was the famous Mirador or post of the guard.

The Rampe now ends in a bald square with the palace on one side and the town on the other. On the remaining sides of the square are only a parapet and the winds of heaven.

There are trees and seats in the square, for it is a place for idleness where old women knit and young women sew, where children play and ancients ruminate. There are cannon in the square pointing towards innocent Cap d’Ail. They were presented to the reigning prince of the time by Louis XIV. They are quite innocuous, but serve to remind the careless that the place is a stronghold and to provide a plaything for small boys who—with the happy imagination of the young—regard these implements of war as horses (or more probably as donkeys), sit astride of them, strike them with whips and urge them to “get up.”

The palace covers the whole of the northern extremity of the rock. It is disappointing in that it fails to realise the emotional past of the place, its dramatic and picturesque history, the dire assaults and bloody frays without its gates, the tragedies within its walls. It has been so mutilated in the past and so improved and modernised in the present that it has become inexpressive. The strong, rigid lines, the grim wrinkles, the determined frown have been so smoothed away that the face has become vacuous. The new clock tower and the rows of modern windows do not recall the stern halberdier who held the place against all odds, nor the bull-necked men in armour who yelled damnation to the Genoese.

The battlements are more suited for the display of flowers than for a line of determined faces under steel caps glaring along the barrels of their muskets. As the official residence of a prince it is becoming and appropriate, but it is not that palace on a rock that bid defiance to the world for flaming centuries. Monaco has a great and a glorious history, but it is not written on the walls of the palace of to-day.

By the generosity of the prince the palace is thrown open to visitors on certain days but it presents little that is of interest. It has been so ruthlessly treated in days gone by and subjected to such base uses that there is little left to recall the stirring days of the old Grimaldi. In, or about, 1842 the palace was completely restored, so that it assumes now all the characters of a modern structure. It is of little concern to know that the south wing was built in this century or the north wing in that, since the traces of age have been nearly all removed. A full account of the lines of the palace, both old and new, is given in M. Urbain Bosio’s excellent treatise “Le Vieux Monaco.”^[32] Between the gate that leads from the Rampe and the gate of the palace itself is a curved wall, with machicolations of an unusual type. This wall (now much restored) is said to date from the fourteenth century and behind it was the hall for the main guard.

The palace is entered by a fine gateway bearing the Grimaldi arms and erected in 1672. It leads into a court which is rather bare and cold. Here is to be found a double staircase of marble which is a little out of keeping with its surroundings. There are frescoes in the arcades which line the court, but they have been recently and rather crudely restored. The little chapel at the north end of this Cour d’Honneur is simple and dignified and in a modest way beautiful. It was built in 1656 and restored in 1884. The long range of reception rooms, with their lavish gilt decorations and their florid frescoes, fulfil the average conception of “royal apartments.” There are a few pictures of interest but none of especial worth. There is an old renaissance chimney-piece of carved stone which is, however, memorable.

The garden is very fascinating with its deep shade, its solemn paths, its palm trees and its little orange grove. In one corner of the garden are the ruins of an old defence work which surmounts the northern wall and which may claim to be part of the palace in its fighting days.

Behind the chapel is an ancient tower with battlements of a forgotten type upon its summit. It is square and plain and covered with ivy upon one side. It has no windows, but presents a few square openings, about 18 inches in width, which are the soupiraux which alone admitted light and air into the interior. This tower is the only substantial part of the original palace that is left and is said to date from 1215. According to M. Bosio^[33] it has two stories above the ground floor. On each story is a single room lit and ventilated solely by means of the small, square vents (soupiraux) already mentioned. He states that these two rooms were used as prisons and that on the walls are to be seen names cut in both Italian and in Spanish. The Italian would pertain to the time of the wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines and the Spanish to the period of the Spanish occupation (1549-1641).

On the other side of the square and directly facing the palace is a large official building known, at one time, as the House of the Governor. It has seen many changes. It was the headquarters of the Revolutionists during the Terror. On the restoration of the Grimaldi it became the seat of the Civil Tribunal and of the schools. It later was occupied as a large hotel and café and finally by the Gambling Rooms pending the completion of a casino at Monte Carlo in 1860.^[34] On the west side of the square is the Promenade Ste. Barbe, so called after the chapel of Sainte Barbe which stood here. The chapel has been converted into a dwelling house, but its door still stands and over the portal are still the initials S.B. By no little ingenuity this entry has been converted into a shop for the sale of picture postcards.

The town is pleasant, clean and orderly. It has the aspect of a place of much content. Its few streets are parallel and follow the line of the rock. They are narrow, so narrow, indeed, that the notice at the entrance of the Rue des Briques to the effect that no motors are admitted would seem to be an official jest based upon the more ancient estimate of the camel and the eye of the needle. There are some picturesque houses and fragments of old buildings in the town. In the Rue du Milieu are certain beautifully carved doorways in stone of the seventeenth century or earlier.

Opposite the side door of the cathedral is the Rue des Carmes. It was so called because it contained a figure of the Madonna of Mount Carmel. “On the eve of the fête of Notre Dame du Mont-Carmel the old Monégasques surrounded this hallowed figure with flowers and lighted candles and sang hymns before it.”^[35] The place of this figure is indicated by a painting of the Madonna of Mount Carmel on a wall of one of the houses.

The Rue des Briques is worth following to the end. It leads to the Mairie—a modern building of no interest—but just beyond the Mairie, on the right side of the road, is a humble-looking old house with a wide, round-arched doorway and square windows fitted with grilles. This was the Mint where money was struck when the Principality of Monaco had its own coinage. The use of the Mint appears to have been abandoned about 1840, although the currency of Monaco was not abolished until some years after.

A little farther down the street, and still on the right hand side of the way, is a long wall. This shuts in the famous Giardinetto or Little Garden. It belonged to a house built by Charlotte de Grammont, wife of Prince Louis I, who left the Court of France and retired to Monaco in order to be near her daughter, who had taken the veil in the convent adjoining. This convent—the Convent of the Visitation—is a large, yellow, barrack-like building which occupies one side of the Place de la Visitation, having on the other side the Hôtel du Gouvernment. The convent was founded by Charlotte de Grammont in the middle of the seventeenth century and here her heart is buried. On the chapel—which is singularly plain—is an inscription to note that it was built in 1663 and restored in 1870.

The south-eastern extremity of the rock is occupied by the gardens of St. Martin, which were designed by Prince Honoré V in 1816 to give employment to the people during a year of dearth. These gardens are most enchanting. They occupy the edge of the cliff and even climb some little way down the side of the cliff by hesitating paths. They are represented by a maze of shady walks with, here and there, a terrace overhanging the sea or a sheltered look-out on a point of rock. It is a wild garden partly tamed, a wilderness where every path is made smooth. Its vegetation is partly Italian, partly African. Here are pine trees, olives and palms, with prickly pear, aloes and agave, pepper trees and mimosa, eucalyptus and the mastic bush, jasmine and myrtle, hedges of choisya, banks of rosemary, beds of violets and cascades of scarlet geranium. Below at the foot of the glowing cliff is the cool purple of the sea with a fringe of white foam to show where the rock and the waters meet.

Just beyond the Oceanographic Museum is a wide, paved platform on the brink of the cliff with parapet and sentry house. Beneath it is the Great Casemate built about 1709 to provide shelter for the people during bombardment and to accommodate a cistern for the storing of water when the outer world was cut off. This great underground “dug-out” is now used as a prison.

At the end of the garden is the rugged old fort built by Prince Antoine over 200 years ago. It is looking towards the casino of Monte Carlo, just as a toothless, old brigand might look at a dancing girl. It is a romantic spot with its winding stairs, its great gun embrasures, its mysterious doorways and its deserted sentry walk. It no longer bristles with armed men; it no longer thunders, with flashes of flame, across the sea; it no longer awakens an echo that shakes the astonished hills; for it is now a kind of “Celia’s Arbour,” a place of whispers where lovers meet and ruffle the silence with nothing more unquiet than a sigh.

NOT many years after the building of the citadel or fort in 1215 (page 145) Monaco became involved in the war between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. The Guelphs were represented by the Grimaldi, the Ghibellines by the Spinola. Each party twice besieged the other, when entrenched within the citadel, and each was twice supplanted by its opponents. Indeed such were the changes that a ship returning to Monaco after a voyage of no more than a month or so did well to inquire, before entering the harbour, whether the rock was in the hands of the Grimaldi or the Spinola.

In 1306 the Ghibellines, or Genoese, held Monaco and felt sure of their holding, for they had long remained undisturbed. They were represented by the head of the Spinola family who had taken up his residence in the citadel or, as it would by this time be termed, the palace.

On Christmas Eve 1306 a small party of men left Nice after sundown and made their way to Monaco by way of certain paths across the hills. It was not a conspicuous party, being formed only of a few armed men and a monk. They would be taken for a body of retainers moving from one castle to another. It might have been observed that they treated the monk with great respect and deference. He himself was not notable, except that he was an agile and powerful man and that he seemed rather more hilarious than is becoming to a priest.

When they reached Monaco the night was at its darkest, the harbour deserted and the rock merely a towering black mass. They then did a curious thing. Without a word they parted. The armed men crept along the foot of the cliff and were at once lost to sight. The monk, left alone, sat down by the water’s edge and listened. He was listening for the sound of a church bell. It would be the bell of St. Nicolas in Monaco rung to announce the midnight Mass. As he waited he drew something from the folds of his gown. It was not a rosary nor a crucifix. It was a dagger with a long blade which he fingered affectionately.

When the first sound of the bell rang over the sea he rose and commenced to ascend the steep path which led to the gate of the town. He walked with his head bowed and with leisurely steps. His habit was that of the Priory of St. Dévote, the little church which looked across the harbour. Any who went by passed him unnoticed. If he stumbled on the path in the dark he swore which is unusual among men of his cloth. Before the gate was the sentinel, who recognising the garb of the priest, merely inclined his head with a gesture of respect. The monk responded by commending him to God. Before long this guardian of the gate had need of that commendation. The monk, apparently deep in thought, passed through the courtyard occupied by the guard. They were sitting around a small fire on the ground and were playing at minchiate or tresetti or some such game of cards.

The Spinola who were in the church at the time of the attack managed to reach the harbour and escaped in their galleys to Genoa.^[36] It was thus that the great family of Grimaldi obtained a final hold upon Monaco and it was by reason of what happened on this Christmas Eve that the figure of a monk with a sword appears upon their coat of arms.

From this period, with the exception of an interval of eleven years, 1327-1338,^[37] Monaco has remained in the hands of the Grimaldi who can thus claim to have been masters of the stout little territory for no less than six hundred years.

Francis Grimaldi—often spoken of as Francis the Crafty—was killed in a fight in 1309.

IT is needless, and indeed impossible within the limits of this book, to follow the history of the long line of adventurous men who were in turn Lords of Monaco. They lived through years of trouble and unrest with varying fortune. They fought and schemed with varying success. They mounted high and circled far. They came near to be draggled in the dust and yet through all vicissitudes, through storm and calm, they kept the red and white flag of the Grimaldi afloat over the tower of Monaco.

One of the most brilliant holders of the seigneurie of Monaco was Carlo I, otherwise known as Charles the Seaman. He was a restless and violent man, as wild as a hawk, with an ambition as boundless as his daring and with an ability of mind which raised him to the position of a great power on the seas.

He began by choosing a wife from the family of his direst enemy; for he married Lucinetta Spinola. The marriage, so far as the records tell, was fortunate and Lucinetta bore him six children.

The great purpose of his life was to make Monaco a naval power and in this aim he succeeded, for by his indomitable energy he raised the Monégasque fleet to a position of high rank not only in the Mediterranean but in the remoter waters of Europe. Although the harbour at his command was small he was able, on one occasion, to collect a fleet of no fewer than thirty galleys and a force of ten thousand men-at-arms.

He devoted his fleet, in the first instance, to advance the prestige of Monaco, to consolidate his territory and to expand his commerce. When these needs were satisfied he went further afield. He was a free lance and was prepared to offer his services to any prince who was in need of help and was prepared to pay liberally for his assistance. Indeed when any war, large or small, was impending it was desirable, as a preliminary, to secure the strong arm of Charles the Seaman. He was indifferent as to the merits of the quarrel or as to the side on which he served so long as he saw his way to make a good thing out of it.

He began his fighting career in a quite modest fashion in the year 1331. The Catalans, being unfortunately not aware of the character of the Lord of Monaco, had the audacity to make a blundering attack upon that citadel. Carlo fell upon them, scattered them, drove them back panic-stricken and, dashing after them, sacked their town of Barcelona as a warning not to meddle with the Grimaldi again.

Having a fine fleet and a period of leisure he now turned his forces against his old enemies, the Genoese, harried them without mercy and blockaded their city. He was doing well and likely to do better when war broke out between France and England, between Philip of Valois on one side and Edward III on the other. Philip at once sent to Monaco to beg the help—on terms—of Carlo against the English. The invitation was too attractive to be ignored; so the fleet of Monaco turned westward and set sail for the remote and almost unknown island of England. It was a venture of no little peril. The Gulf of Lyons and the Bay of Biscay are not to the liking of seamen even at the present day, and to cross these wastes of water in mere galleys was a venture that needed a stout heart—such a heart as that of Carlo Grimaldi.

The Monégasque fleet, having joined with that of France, came up with the English off the Channel Islands. A sea battle followed in which Carlo and the French, aided very opportunely by a storm, defeated the naval forces of England. This was in the year 1343. Charles the Seaman gained from this expedition not only glory but profit; for he received from Philip a very substantial recompense in money as well as certain rights to trade in the Mediterranean which brought considerable additions to his treasury.

Having disposed of the English navy Grimaldi’s services were no longer needed by the French; so he returned to Monaco to resume his interrupted fight with the Genoese. Fighting with the Genoese had become a habit with the Lords of Monaco, an abiding passion, a kind of disorder which would be described as chronic. Carlo was getting on extremely well, was doing great damage to Genoa and inflicting still more gratifying injury upon her fleet, when once more the King of France called for his aid and this time gave the order—as a contractor would express it—for an expeditionary force.

This force was to be employed in France in fighting the English. It appears to have been a joint force of Genoese and Monégasque under the combined command of Carlo Grimaldi and a Doria of Genoa.

The force arrived on the scene of action too late. Edward III of England had already ravaged the coast of France and had advanced to within a few miles of Paris. The battle of Crécy followed. The Genoese—as every schoolboy will remember—wearied by forced marches, were sent to the front by the French king. There had been a storm of rain and, having no cases for their bows, the catgut that strung them was rendered soft and useless. The men—thus hampered—were unable to withstand the English archers and began to retreat. The king, seeing them waver, ordered his own troops to set upon them. “Or tôt,” cried he, “tuez toute cette ribandaille, car ils nous empêchant la voie sans raison.” A general rout followed and the victory of the English was complete. The battle was fought on August 26th, 1346. Both Doria and Grimaldi were wounded, but whether by the English archers or the French pikemen, is unknown. In spite of his wounds Carlo hastened to Calais which was hard pressed by the English. His efforts, however, availed nothing and Calais fell. Carlo Grimaldi, having completed his engagement, returned to Monaco.

Neither he nor his navy could be long idle. There was always lucrative work for them somewhere, together with substantial pay and good prospects of loot. Thus we find him fighting Greeks and Venetians, going to the assistance of Don Jayme II of Majorca in his war with Pierre IV of Aragon, and, later on, fighting on the side of this same Pierre of Aragon against the Moors of Gibraltar. This last-named expedition was in 1349. Before that date, viz. in 1346, he had made peace with Genoa and, as a compliment, the command of the Genoese fleet was given to his brother.

The more impetuous of her suitors seem to have proceeded to actual excess in their efforts; for the faithful historian states that “they endeavoured to secure her person by ruse or force.”^[38] It may be trying to be adored by one irrepressible young man, but to receive declarations of love and offers of marriage from a hustling mob must have been alarming. A love-sick man, as an individual, may be simply depressing, but a crowd of love-sick men reproduces the nauseous features of an out-patient room at a hospital.

In the end Claudine married her cousin, Lambert Grimaldi the son of Nicolas, the Lord of Antibes, on the excellent grounds that both her father and her grandfather had named this gentleman as a suitable husband in their last wills and testaments.

Claudine and Lambert had children and among them two sons, Jean and Lucien. Jean succeeded his mother as the ruling prince, but was unfortunately murdered by his younger brother Lucien. This was a regrettable episode in Lucien’s life; but he did something to repair it. In 1506 Monaco was once more besieged by the Genoese. It was a great and desperate assault, but Lucien defended the rock with such consummate skill that the attack failed. The siege was memorable since it represented the last occasion on which this much tried citadel was beleaguered and it exalted Lucien to the position of a great military leader.

Now Lucien had a nephew, Bartolomeo Doria by name, to whom he was much attached and to whom he had shown great kindness. On a certain day in August 1524 Bartolomeo was about to proceed from Ventimiglia to Lyons. Lucien, wishing to do his nephew honour, placed a fine ship at his disposal and begged him to stay at Monaco on his way westwards. Doria accepted both the ship and the invitation with effusion for it occurred to him that it afforded an excellent opportunity to murder his genial old uncle.

In due course Bartolomeo landed at Monaco where he was given a hearty welcome and was received by the prince with demonstrations of affection. He was attended by an exceptionally large suite and this the indulgent uncle ascribed to the natural swagger of youth. On reaching the palace Lucien begged young Doria to accompany him to Mass. He declined; so the prince went alone. During Lucien’s absence at the church it was noticed that Bartolomeo was engaged for long in a whispered conference with those who had accompanied him.