Until about the end of the twelfth century Monaco was merely a lonely rock, almost inaccessible, uninhabited and waterless. Projecting as it does into the sea it afforded so good a shelter for ships that the little bay in its shadow became famous as a harbour of refuge. Fringing the bay was a pebble beach where a galley could be hauled up or a caravel unloaded.
Monaco was known as a port in Roman days. Indeed it was from this unpretentious haven that Augustus C?sar embarked for Genoa on his way to Rome when his victories in southern Gaul had been accomplished. The departure of the Emperor was, no doubt, a scene of much pomp, made brilliant by many-coloured standards and flashing spears. As the Emperor stepped on board his ship the blare of trumpets and the shout of the troops drawn up on the plain must have been heard far beyond La Turbie.
The boats of Greek and Ph?nician traders have made for this harbour and have deposited their strange cargoes here to the amazement of gaping natives. Here in Monaco Bay wild Saracens have tumbled ashore with such unearthly shouts as to cause the sea birds on the rock to rise in one fluttering cloud. The beach too has been lit often enough by a camp fire around which a company of pirates would be drinking and singing, while they waited for the return of the marauding party that had left at dawn.
Although the harbour was often alive with men the rock remained untenanted. I should imagine that the first adventurer to set foot on Monaco would be a Ph?nician cabin boy. He would climb the cliff and gaining the summit would explore it with all the curiosity and alert imagination of a boy landed on a desert island.
It is said that in 1078 two pious men, who lived at La Turbie, built on Monaco a tiny chapel to St. Mary. They built it with their own hands and employed, in the making, stones from the Roman monument in their native town. If this be true the only building that for a hundred years stood upon this barren plateau was the child-like chapel, a speck of white on the dark expanse of rock.
CAP D’AIL NEAR MONACO.
In 1191 the Emperor Henry VI granted Monaco to the wealthy and prosperous town of Genoa. The Emperor’s rights over this fragment of territory might be questioned, but there was none to gainsay him. His gift was coupled with the requirement that a fortress should be built on Monaco which should be ready to serve the Emperor in his wars with the pestilential people of Marseilles and of other towns in Provence.
In the same year an official party of noble Genoese came to Monaco and formally took possession of the place in the name of their city. It was a solemn occasion; for those who represented Genoa made a ceremonial tour of the rock, carrying olive boughs in their hands. It was, moreover, a trying occasion for the visit was made in the stifling month of June.
Some of the noble commissioners who were stout and advanced in years (as commissioners often are) must have been hauled, dragged and pushed up the cliff side, like so many bulky packages. Burdened as they were with official robes and olive branches, which had to be carried with decorum, they would have found the ceremony very exacting. They did more than merely stumble about on the top of the rock, panting and perspiring and trying to look official under sweltering conditions. They laid down the lines of a fort. It was to be a square fort and very large, with a tower at each of the four angles, and it was to be designed in the Moorish style.
This fort or castle was erected in the year 1215 on the site of the present palace and was provided with a garrison by the Genoese. Outside the fort the rudiments of a town appeared—the first huts and houses of Monaco. That town, therefore, has already passed the seven hundredth anniversary of its foundation.
The harbour of Monaco of to-day is a model harbour as perfect as the art of the engineer can make it. Two stone piers guard the entrance and at the end of each is a lighthouse. There are two wide quays where feluccas and other rakish-looking ships land barrels of wine; while the basin itself can accommodate a fleet of yachts.
This haven which has sheltered the very earliest forms of sea-going ship now shelters—during the regatta season—the latest development of the motor boat and the racing launch. History repeats itself. There was amazement at Monaco when the first hydroplane dropped on to the water by the harbour’s mouth: there was amazement also, centuries ago, when the loungers about the beach saw enter the new ship, the astounding vessel that was propelled not by paddles or oars, but by sails.
Above the pebble beach is a modest promenade and a road—the main road to Nice. On the other side of the highway are genial hotels where people lunch and dine out of doors, amid a profusion of white tablecloths and green chairs and where the menu of the day is suspended from the railings.
At the far end of this Boulevard de la Condamine are an avenue of trees and the old Etablissement des Bains de Mer which, even as late as Hare’s time, was “much frequented in summer.” The Etablissement is now little more than a ghost. The sound of its gaiety has long since been hushed into silence. There is a somewhat frivolous-looking building by the water’s edge which has a rounded glass front and some suggestion that it may once have been a palace of delight. It has now fallen into a state of decrepitude and shabbiness and is given up to quite commonplace commercial uses. It is like a dandy in extreme old age who, dressed in the thread-bare clothes which were the fashion a generation ago, still sits on a parade which once was rustling with happy people and which is now as sombre as a cemetery lane.
Opening on to the margin of the harbour is a great gorge, a sudden breach in the earth which serves to separate the sober town of Monaco from the frivolous town of Monte Carlo. It is a strange thing—this ravine. It is deep and full of shadows. Its walls, lit by the sun, are sheer precipices of biscuit-coloured rock, tinted faintly with red as with rust. From every crack and cranny on its towering sides something green is bursting; while, here and there, a flower, yellow or blue, clings to a ledge like a perching bird.
From the balustrade of a garden on its summit there hang festoons of scarlet geraniums and a curtain of blue heliotrope. Along the bottom of the chasm runs a fussy stream, with a noise like that of many flutes and by its side—among a jumble of rocks, bushes and brambles—an inconsequent path creeps up, out of pure curiosity, since it leads nowhere.
This ravine, as wild and savage as it was a thousand years ago, is a strange thing to find in the middle of a town, for houses crowd about it on either side and press so far forward on its heights that they appear likely to topple into the abyss. A huge railway viaduct crosses its entrance, while its floor slopes to a road where motors and tramcars rattle along, without heed to this quiet nook in the mountain side. It is as incongruous and out of place as a green meadow with buttercups and cows spread out by the side of the blatant traffic of Fleet Street.
There are other anomalies about this Ravin des Gaumates. It is so reckless-looking and so theatrical a chasm that one is convinced that duels have been fought here and that here conspirators in cloaks have met, and buccaneers have stored their surprising spoils. At the present day, however, the sea rover’s camp is occupied by a laundry shed, where unemotional women, with red arms and untidy heads, are busy; and where, in the place of brigands’ loot, sheets are spread upon the rocks to dry, together with white articles of underclothing.
At the mouth of the gorge—standing quite alone—is the little chapel of St. Dévote. It is a humble church, modern, plain as a peasant, and of no intrinsic interest. It is notable only in its position. The building seems to be as surprised at the place in which it finds itself as is the visitor who finds it there. Possibly no more strangely situated house of prayer exists in Europe. Behind it is a wild, disorderly glen; on each side is a precipice and in front is a gigantic railway viaduct of such immoderate proportions that it towers above the very steeple of the church.
The building viewed from the road where the tramcars run looks like a small shrinking figure enshrined in a niche provided by a vulgar, overbearing and irreverent railway arch.
MONACO.
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.
[31]
“Monaco et ses Princes,” par Henri Metivier, 1862.