Monaco was known as a port in Roman days. Indeed it was from this unpretentious haven that Augustus Cæsar 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 Phœnician 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 Phœnician 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.