A Book of the Riviera

by S. Baring-Gould

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.