A Book of the Riviera

by S. Baring-Gould

The princess, looking at him steadfastly, replied, “I cannot kiss you in that Austrian dress. Oh, Napoleon, what have you done?”

The ex-Emperor at once retired, and having substituted a greatcoat of his Old Guard for the Austrian suit, entered the chamber of his sister, who ran to him and embraced him tenderly. Then, going to the window, he saw a crowd in the court in a very uncertain temper. He descended at once, and noticing among them an old man with a gash across his nose and a red ribbon in his button-hole, he went up to him at once, and asked, “Are you not Jacques Dumont?”

“Yes, yes, Sire!” And the old soldier drew himself up and saluted.

“You were wounded, but it seems to me that it was long ago.”

“Sire, at the battle of Tebia, with General Suchet. I was unable to serve longer. But even now, whenever the drum beats, I feel like a deserter. Under your ensign, Sire, I could still serve whenever your Majesty would command.” The old man shed tears as he said, “My name! To recollect that after fifteen years!” All hesitation among the crowd as to how they would receive Napoleon was at an end. He had won every heart.

Napoleon, as it happens, had a very bad memory for names. What is probable is, that Pauline pointed the old soldier out to her brother from the window, and named him, before Napoleon descended.

The English frigate, the Undaunted, was lying in the Gulf of Fréjus. The fallen Emperor manifested considerable reluctance to go on board. However, on April 28th he sailed from S. Raphael, and after a rough passage disembarked at Porto Ferrajo, the capital of Elba, on the 4th of May.

The great Roman road, the Via Aurelia, left the capital of the world by the Janiculan Gate, made for Pisa, Lucca, followed the coast the whole way, passed above where is now Monaco, over a spur of the Maritime Alps by Nice, Antibes, Cannes, came to a little town in the lap of the Gulf of Fréjus, and thence turned abruptly away from the coast and made direct for Aix and Arles. Thence roads radiated: one, leading up the left bank of the Rhone, took troops and commerce to the Rhine. Thence also the Domitian Way conveyed both by Narbonne into Spain.

This bay was the last harbour on the Mediterranean for troops that were to march into the heart of Gaul, to Britain, or to the Rhine. Hitherto the road, hugging the coast, offered innumerable facilities for provisioning soldiery and supplying them with munitions of war. But from the Bay of Fréjus this advantage ceased. Julius Cæsar saw the great strategical importance of the harbour, and he resolved to make of it an important haven, a naval station, and an emporium for stores. Marseilles he did not choose. It was a commercial town, a Greek town, and he was out of temper with it for having sided with Pompey against him. Accordingly he settled here some veterans of his favourite Tenth Legion, to become the nucleus of a colony. But Cæsar overlooked what was a most important point—his port Forum Julii was planted at the mouth of the Argens, and the river brought down a vast amount of fluviatile deposit, mud and sand, and inevitably in a few years would silt up his port. It had a further disadvantage—it was a fever trap. To the south the town had a wide tract of fetid marsh, breeding malaria and mosquitoes. He would have done well to have swallowed his resentment against Marseilles and to have taken the opinion of so observant a man as Vitruvius, or even to have studied the conditions himself more closely. Now all the harbour is buried in silt, and grass grows where galleys floated. The lap of the bay, which was once at Fréjus, begins now at S. Raphael and extends to Cap S. Aigous. In time S. Raphael also will be inland, and the Lion de Mer will become, like its fellow, a Lion de Terre.