A Book of The Riviera

The Mussulman has a legend of Creation. According to that, when God was creating man, He took a pellet of clay in His left hand, moulded it into human shape, cast it aside to the left, and said, “This goes to hell, and what care I?” In like manner He worked another ball of clay with His right hand, flung that aside, and said, “And this goes to heaven, and what care I?”

Now the master mind of Western Christendom, Augustine of Hippo, had devised the same theory of caprice in the Most High, predestinating to good or ill without reason, and that before Mohammed was born. Divine Grace, he held, was paramount and irresistible, carrying man to happiness or damnation without man being able to determine his course one way or the other. Man, according to Augustine, was a mere “Lump” of sin, damnable, utterly damnable. But God, in His inscrutable providence, indistinguishable from wantonness, chose to elect some to weal, and leave the rest to woe. This was a doctrine that did away with the necessity of man making the smallest endeavour after righteousness, from exercising the least self-control; of man feeling the slightest compunction after committing the grossest sins. Augustine sent his treatise to Abbot Valentine of Adrumetium. Valentine, in calm self-complacency, sitting among the ashes of dead lusts, highly approved of this scheme of Predestination. But a monk, Felix, when he heard it read, sprang to his feet and uttered his protest. This protest was reported to Augustine, who boiled over with bad temper at any opposition; and he wrote a violent rejoinder “On Grace and Freewill,” in which he insisted again on his doctrine of Fatalism.

The theses of Augustine reached Lerins, the nursery of the Bishops of Gaul, and were read there with indignation and disgust. The monks drew up a reply to Augustine that was temperate in tone and sound in argument. Grace, they said, was mighty, but man had freewill, and could respond to it or rebel against it.

Augustine answered. He attempted to browbeat these insignificant monks and clergy on a petty islet in the sea. But they were not men to be intimidated by his great name and intellectual powers, not even by his sincere piety.

They argued that if his doctrine were true, then farewell for ever and a day to all teaching of Christian morality. Man was but a cloud, blown about by the wind, where the wind listed to carry it.

But for these stubborn monks of Lerins it is possible enough that Western Christendom would have accepted a kismet as fatal as that of Mohammedanism, and that, indeed, it would have differed in name and certain outside trimmings only from the Moslem religion. Rome was much inclined to accept Augustine’s view, and give it definite sanction. But the Gaulish bishops, bred in the nursery of Lerins, would not hear of this. Finally, in the Council of Orange, in 529, they laid down the main principle: “We do not believe,” they boldly said, “that God has predestined any men to be evil.”

S. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, was at one time a pupil at Lerins. The “Confessions of Augustine” are indeed a beautiful picture of the workings of a human soul; but not more tender and beautiful than that revelation of a noble heart given to us in the “Confession of Patrick.”

Lerins – that is, especially Saint Honorat – was the refuge of the intellect, the science, the literature, of a civilised world going to pieces into utter wreckage.

As Guizot well said: —

“For culture of mind, one thing is requisite, and that is quiet. When the social condition of the world is in convulsion, and all about is barbarity and misery, then study suffers, is neglected and declines. Taste for truth, the sentiment for what is beautiful, are plants as delicate as they are noble. For their cultivation a sweet atmosphere is necessary; they bow their heads and are blighted by storm. Study, literature, intellectual activity, could not battle against general discouragement, universal disaster; they must have a holdfast somewhere, attach themselves to popular convictions, or perish. The Christian religion furnished them with the means of living. By allying themselves to that, philosophy and literature were saved from the ruin that menaced them. One may say, without exaggeration, that the human mind, proscribed, storm-tossed, found its only possible refuge in churches and monasteries. It clung as a suppliant to the altars, and pleaded to be allowed to live under their shelter, and at their service, till better times should arrive, when they would expand in the open air.”

Lerins suffered repeatedly and frightfully from the Saracens. Again and again was it ravaged. In 725, Porcarius, the abbot, and five hundred monks, were butchered by the Moors.

The interesting fortress, with its cloister and quadrangle in the centre, was erected by the monks as a place of refuge from the Moors and Algerine pirates.

But worse times were in store, when the Crown came to look on the great abbeys as fiefs, to be given in commendam to laymen, to bastards, to favourites, to harlots, who might enjoy the revenues and ignore the duties. Naturally enough, in such a condition of affairs, Lerins declined. It became a place to which younger sons were relegated, vicious monks were banished; it was resolved into a bastille for evildoers, and sank to so low an ebb that, as a scandal, the abbey was suppressed the year before the Revolution came, and swept all monastic institutions away.

To the west of the Île Ste. Marguerite, in the sea pours up a copious spring of fresh water. When the surface of the sea is calm, the upflow can be easily distinguished by the undulations. There are other such springs in the Gulf of Jouan, near Antibes, also at the mouth of the Var; near the shore at Portissol, west of S. Nazaire; another again near Bandol. In 1838, a M. Bazin tapped this latter when sinking a well at Cadière, and such an abundance of water poured forth that the well had to be abandoned. Off Cassis is a very considerable spring in the sea, so strong that it carries floating bodies for a couple of miles from its source. But the largest of all is in the Gulf of Spezzia, and is called La Polla. This has been enclosed by the Italian government, and vessels supply themselves with fresh water from it.

The rain which falls on the limestone causses, that form the terrace to the Maritime Alps, is at once absorbed, and descends through fissures to deep channels, where the accumulated water flows and breaks forth in what are locally called foux, often in large volume, and feed the rivers. Sometimes the streams drop into pot-holes; these are called embues. The Siagne has its source in the Place de la Caille, an ancient lake bed, but sinks, and comes forth 1,500 feet below in the foux of the Siagne. This river receives the Siagnole, which derives its water from a number of these springs that spout out of the rock. But in some cases the rain-water sinks to a level still lower, and then breaks forth in the sea itself.

CHAPTER XIII

NICE

A shifted site – Ancient Nike – Cemenelium – History of Nice – Saracens at Cap Ferrat – Bertrand de Balb – The barony of Beuil – The Castle – Internecine strife – Truce – The marble cross – Catherine Ségurane – Destruction of the Castle – Annexation of Nice to France – Cathedral – Church of the Port – Masséna – Garibaldi – General Marceau – Rancher – Story of Collet – Cagnes – Painting by Carlone – Eze – David’s painting – Puget Teniers – Touët-de-Beuil

NICE is a town that has uneasily shifted its seat some three or four times. Whether it were directly settled from Phocœa or mediately from Marseilles, we do not know. But a Greek city it was, as its name implies, Nike, Victory, speaking of a fight there, engaged either against the Phœnicians, who resisted their settling into quarters already appropriated, or else against the native Ligurians.

Anciently, the river Paillon flowed into the tiny bay of Lympia, but it brought down so much rubble as to threaten to choke it, and huge embankments of stone were built to divert the course of the river to the farther side of the calcareous rock of the Château. These have been discovered in the process of excavations in the Riquier quarter. When the Greeks settled here, they found the conditions perfect for their requirements. The Port of Lympia then extended inland to where is now the rue du Paillon. It was flanked on the east by the steep heights of Mont Boron, on the west by the crag of the Château, which latter served as acropolis and was crowned by a temple dedicated probably to Artemis. The site is thought to be where now stands the chapel of the Ste. Suaire, which is square and on old foundations. The Phocœan town lay in the lap of the port of Lympia.

But when the province became Roman, then the town occupied by the great families of consular origin, the officials of government, and all the hangers-on, was at Cemenelium, now Cimiez, on the high ground above modern Nice, and dominating the ancient port. Here had been an older Ligurian fortified town, of which some remains exist in the huge blocks laid on one another without cement that formed the defending wall, and on top of which the Romans built their ramparts. The citadel was at the extreme south point of the plateau. In Cemenelium the principal monuments were the palace of the governor of the province, a temple of Diana, another of Apollo, an amphitheatre and baths. All have been destroyed and have disappeared save the wreckage of the amphitheatre, traversed by a road. Roman sepulchral monuments, urns, mosaics, fragments of marble columns, statuettes, have been unearthed in considerable numbers. The Phocœan colonies established on the littoral of the Maritime Alps fell into complete decay when the Romans occupied the country, and towards the end of the third century Nice dwindled to almost nothing.

In 578 the Lombards, under the ferocious Alboin, swept over the country and destroyed Cimiez and Nice. The Franks drove back the Lombards into Italy. Cimiez remained a heap of ruins, but Nice was repeopled and rebuilt, not, however, near the port, but on the height of Le Château. The population of this part of the old province revolted against the Franks; and Nice entered into a league with Genoa and other important towns on the Italian Riviera. In 741, however, the province again returned under the domination of the Franks, and it was governed by counts appointed by the sovereign, who resided at Nice in the castle. Here, hard by on the rock, was the cathedral, and down the north-west slope, that was least precipitous, were lodged the private houses. In 775 the abbey of S. Pontius was founded by Siagrius, Bishop of Nice, and Charlemagne, who is supposed to have been his uncle, gave the funds for the building and endowment. This abbey was erected on the rock on which, according to tradition, S. Pontius had suffered martyrdom by decapitation.

Profiting by the break-up of the Carolingian dynasty, in 880, Boso, whose sister was married to Charles the Bald, seized on that part of Burgundy which is on this side the Jura, and along with Provence constituted a kingdom, with himself at its head.

In 889 the devastations committed by the Saracens extended along the coast, and one town after another was sacked and burnt by them. These ravages continued till 973, when William, Count of Provence, and Gibelin Grimaldi freed the land from this plague. The Saracens had a fortress at Saint Hospice, a curious spur which strikes out from the peninsula of Cap Ferrat, whence they had harassed the neighbourhood of Nice, but had been unable to storm the fortified town on the rock.

Grimaldi destroyed the Saracen citadel, and left of it nothing standing save the tower that remains to this day. The captured Saracens were quartered in a portion of Nice still called lou canton dei Sarraïns, and were employed by him in strengthening or rebuilding the walls of the town.

To the Saracens are attributed the subterranean magazines, or silos, that are found at S. Hospice, S. Jean, Trinité-Victor, and elsewhere, to contain the plunder they acquired in their marauding expeditions. These are vaulted over, and are still in some instances used as cisterns or store places; but the evidence that they were the work of the Moors is inconclusive.

Among those who assisted the Count of Provence against the Saracens was one Bertrand de Balbs, and in reward for his services he was given in fief the barony of Beuil, a vast territory stretching from the Estéron to the Alps, and comprising twenty-two towns and townlets. His descendants kept the barony till 1315, when William de Balbs made himself so odious to his vassals by his tyranny that they murdered him. A brother of the Grimaldi of Monaco had married the only daughter of William de Balbs, and as there was no son the fief passed to him, and he became the founder of the family of Grimaldi of Beuil. The barony remained in the Grimaldi family till 1621, when it was united to the county of Nice.

They ran, however, a chance of losing it in 1508.

Towards the close of 1507, George Grimaldi, Baron of Beuil, his son John, Augustine Grimaldi, Bishop of Grasse, and Nicolas Grimaldi, seigneur of Antibes, formed a plot to deliver over the county of Nice to Louis XII. The Duke of Savoy was warned, and he summoned George and his son to appear before him. They replied with insolence and defied him, relying on French support. But at that moment Louis XII. and the Duke of Savoy had arranged their little quarrel, and when John Grimaldi asked for aid from the Governor of Provence, he was refused. Meantime the garrison of Nice marched against Beuil. The castle, built on a height and surrounded by strong walls, could have stood a long siege, when a tragic event put an end to the struggle. The Baron de Beuil was murdered by his valet, who cut his throat whilst shaving him.

The Duke of Savoy outlawed John, the son, and gave the barony to Honoré Grimaldi, brother of George, who had steadily refused to be drawn into the conspiracy.

But to return to Nice.

In 1229 a party in the town revolted against the Count of Provence, and expelled those who were loyal to him. Thereupon Romeo de Villeneuve marched on Nice, took the town, and set to work to strengthen the fortifications of the castle, which in future would control it. At that time the castle consisted of a donjon, with an enclosure that had four turrets at the angles. Outside this Romeo built a strong wall that enclosed within the area the cathedral and the houses of the nobility; he cut deep fosses through the rock, and furnished the gates with drawbridges. Later, after the invention of powder, the fortress was further transformed in 1338.

After the death of Joanna I. of Naples, Nice took the side of Charles of Durazzo, and in 1388 was besieged by Louis II. of Anjou. The Niçois, unable without help to hold out against him, offered the town to Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, and he entered and took possession.

The desolating wars of Charles V. and Francis I. made a desert of Provence. Nice, as a town of the Duke of Savoy, met with only the temporary annoyance of the Spanish and German and Italian troops passing through it to cross the Var. In 1538 Pope Paul III. proposed a meeting between the two sovereigns at Nice, and he met them there on June 18th, 1535; a truce was concluded, to last for ten years. A cross of marble marks the spot where the conference took place. It was thrown down in 1793, in the Revolutionary period, but was again set up some twenty years later.

Paul III., in proposing the meeting of the two rival monarchs, had not only an eye to the welfare of the people of Italy, harassed by incessant and desolating war, but also to the interest of his own family. He had been elected Pope in 1534, and at once created Alexander, child of one of his illegitimate sons, Cardinal at the age of fourteen, Archbishop of Anagni when the boy was only fifteen, and Archbishop of Mont Real and Patriarch of Jerusalem when aged sixteen. Another grandson, Ranncio, he created Archbishop of Naples when aged fourteen, and Archbishop of Ravenna at the age of nineteen. Now, when meeting the two sovereigns, he negotiated with Francis to have his granddaughter united to a prince of the house of Valois; but Francis procrastinated, and the marriage did not take place. He was more successful in marrying his grandson Octavio to Margaret of Austria, natural daughter of Charles V.

But that Paul did use his utmost endeavours to obtain a truce of ten years is shown by the testimony of the Venetian ambassador who was present at Nice on the occasion of the meeting. He could find no words sufficiently strong in which to eulogise the zeal and patience displayed by the Pope on this occasion.

Paul, however, never lost sight of the advantage of his family. At the time of the Conference he succeeded in getting Novara from the Emperor, for his illegitimate son, Pier Luigi, for whom he had already alienated Parma, and raised it into a Duchy, at the expense of the States of the Church.

The implacable jealousy entertained against one another by the two monarchs led to the war breaking out again; Francis I. entered into alliance with the Turks under Barbarossa, and a combined army laid siege to Nice in August, 1543. The Turkish cannons completely destroyed the Convent of Ste. Croix, in which Pope Paul had lodged in 1538, and broke down large portions of the city ramparts. It was then that occurred an incident that has never been forgotten in Nice. Catherine Ségurane, commonly called Malfacia (the misshapen), a washerwoman, was carrying provisions on the wall to some of the defenders, when she saw that the Turks had put up a scaling ladder, and that a captain was leading the party, and had reached the parapet. She rushed at him, beat him on the head with her washing-bat, and thrust down the ladder, which fell with all those on it. Then, hastening to the nearest group of Niçois soldiery, she told them what she had done, and they, electrified by her example, threw open a postern, made a sortie, and drove the Turks back to the shore. According to one version of the story, Catherine gripped the standard in the hand of the Turk, wrenched it from him, and with the butt end thrust him back.

The story first appears in a “Discours sur l’ancien monastère des religieuses de Nice,” 1608. Honoré Pastorelli, the author, merely says that a standard of the Turks was taken from the ensign by a citizeness named Donna Maufaccia, who fought at the Tour des Caïres, where were the Turkish batteries. A second authority, in 1654, Antonio Fighier, says that the event took place on the Feast of Our Lady in August; that the woman seized the staff of the standard and flung it into the moat.

Some weeks later the Turks penetrated into the town and carried off 2,500 prisoners to their galleys; but these were retaken by the Sicilian fleet.

The war between Charles V. and Francis I. was terminated by the Treaty of Crépy in 1544. By it the House of Savoy recovered all the places in the Duchy taken by the French. Duke Charles III. ordered the complete restoration and remodelling of the defences of the town and castle. In the wars of Louis XIV., Nice was attacked again and again, and in 1706 was taken by the Duke of Berwick. By order of Louis, the castle was then completely destroyed by gunpowder. Thus disappeared this noble fortress after twenty centuries of existence; and now of it almost nothing remains. By the peace of Utrecht in 1713, Nice was restored to Savoy. In 1748 Charles Emanuel of Savoy had the port of Lympia cleared out and made serviceable. It had been choked up for some centuries. It was not till 1860 that the county of Nice was definitely annexed to France. Hitherto the Var had been the boundary between Italy and France, now the delimitation is the Torrent of S. Louis. The natural demarcation is unquestionably the col of La Turbie and the Tête du Chien, and Monaco, about which more presently. I have given but a meagre sketch of the history of Nice; but the reader would have no patience with all the petty troubles – great to those who endured them – which afflicted Nice and its vicinity through many centuries. Now it enjoys peace, and thrives, not only as a city, doing a large business, but also as a vestibule to Monte Carlo. The cathedral, that once stood near the castle on the rock, was demolished in 1656, and the present building – a rococo construction in the barbaric taste of that period – was erected below the rocky height. On December 16th, the Bishop Désiré de Palletier was contemplating the dome that was in process of construction, when some of the material fell on his head and killed him. In 1705, on March 16th, a bomb fell in the cathedral and exploded, killing many people. If it had blown the whole church to atoms it would have caused no loss to art.

Curiously enough an accident happened of a somewhat similar character to the church of the Port. The design for this monstrosity was sent by a Turin architect. The cupola was to be of wood, covered with lead. But the clerk of the works, in carrying out the design, substituted stone for wood. The result was that, one Sunday morning, just after the consecration of the church, the cupola fell in. Happily it was during the first mass. The priest at the altar, hearing a cracking above him, bolted into the vestry. An old woman, who was the sole assistant, fled into the porch, and no lives were lost when the whole structure collapsed.

Nice has produced some men of note – as Masséna, “L’enfant chéri de la victoire” – whose real name was Menasseh; he was the son of a petty Jewish taverner, and was born in 1756. What a simmering cauldron that was in Europe, which brought to the surface Bernadotte, the saddler’s son! Murat issued from a little public house. Augereau, the child of a domestic servant; Masséna, the Hebrew waif and stray. Masséna was gifted by nature with a powerful frame of body, and with indomitable resolution. He was considered the most skilful tactician among Napoleon’s generals, and on the field of battle he was remarkable for coolness. He had, moreover, the invaluable quality in a commander of not being dispirited through defeat. His faults were primarily rapacity and avarice. In Italy, when commanding the French army of occupation, he “behaved in such a way,” as Miot de Melito informs us, “that the French troops, left without pay in the midst of the immense riches which he appropriated to himself, revolted, and refused to recognise his authority. His pilferings, his shameless avidity, tarnished the laurels with which he had covered himself.” He brought down on himself repeatedly the censure of Napoleon. But the greed was born in the bone. He could not keep his fingers off what was of money value, and might be turned into coin.

When Bonaparte assumed the command in Italy, he employed Masséna actively on all occasions of importance, and so justly appreciated the brilliancy and military talents he possessed, that he surnamed him “the favoured child of victory.” In 1798 he was appointed to the command of the army, which under General Berthier was to occupy Rome and the Papal States. His appointment was as distasteful to the soldiers as to the inhabitants of the subjected country, for they both became victims of his insatiable avarice, and the multiplied complaints made of his peculations at last forced him to resign the command and to return to Paris. Whilst Masséna was in Rome stuffing his pockets, a paper was affixed to the statue of Pasquin, with this dialogue inscribed on it: —

“What is the time of day, Pasquin?”
Pasquin: “The time of thieves.”

Although Masséna had exposed his person in so many battles without receiving a wound, he had the misfortune to lose an eye whilst in a sporting party, some shot having accidentally struck it.

That which redounded most to the fame of Masséna was his gallant defence of Genoa, in 1800, after the garrison had been reduced to eat their boots. The defence had made the Austrian army lose valuable time, and afforded Bonaparte the requisite time to collect sufficient forces to cross the Alps and crush the Austrians at Marengo. After that decisive day, the first Consul who desired to return to France, remitted the command of the troops to Masséna; but only for a while. A certain feeling of hostility reigned between the Republican General and the future Emperor. Masséna was envious of the fame of Napoleon, and resented the distance that separated him from an old comrade in arms. After the coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire, he was admitted to the legislative corps, and voted against granting the consulate for life to Napoleon, and persistently sided with the opposition; – not out of principle, for of that Masséna did not possess a particle, but because he was jealous of Napoleon’s greatness and increasing power.

However, Napoleon could not afford to overlook him when conferring honours, and Masséna was content to accept these, along with the money granted him to maintain his honours. He was created Duke of Rivoli and Prince of Esslingen. But he was not grateful, and of all the marshals of France he showed himself most eager to rally to the Restoration and to recognise Louis XVIII. He had sufficient keenness to see that Napoleon’s star was in decline, and all that he really was solicitous for was to keep hold of his hoarded treasures. He died at Ruel, his country seat near Paris, in 1817.

This upstart family still flourishes on the accumulated plunder, and still retains the titles of Duke of Rivoli and Prince of Esslingen, but is no longer of the Jewish persuasion.