Wintering at Mentone

by William Chambers

So closely do the mountains infringe on the shore of the eastern bay, that in this quarter there is space on the level ground for only a single range of hotels, with a roadway in front of them. On the western bay, the level ground is much broader; it allows space for a public promenade along the beach, also a succession of hotels and villas, not very symmetrically arranged, and a long street, in which the chief business of the town is conducted. Besides this degree of accommodation, the western bay offers some scope for building in certain lateral valleys, reaching to the base of the mountains. The valley first crossed is the Gorbio, and then the Borigo and Carei, the two last mentioned being the principal. They take their names from the torrents from the north which empty themselves into the sea—that is to say, when they have any running water in them, which is not very often the case. The valley of the Carei is the most spacious, and has already been built on to a considerable extent on both sides. The thoroughfare on the right bank, overshadowed with plane-trees, is known as the Route de Turin, and conducts to the railway station.

The grand thing in the scenery of Mentone is the picturesque hilly ground behind it. Standing on the bridge which crosses the Borigo at the entrance to the town, we are presented with an amphitheatre of almost matchless beauty. In the foreground is a series of round-topped hills, detached from each other, and mostly laid out as groves of olive, orange, and lemon trees, interspersed with vine terraces, and dotted here and there with the cottages of the peasant proprietors. The height of these hills, or collines as the French call them, is from four hundred to six hundred feet above the sea-level, an altitude that admits of our seeing over and immediately beyond them that wonderfully striking range of peaked limestone mountains towering in fantastic masses, and prominently relieved against the clear blue sky. The scene is one which we are never tired looking at, and leaves impressions which no length of time can obliterate. I have often thought with pleasure on that singularly picturesque landscape.

As now seen, Mentone is of comparatively recent date. Its reputation as a resort for health-seekers is only of ten or twelve years’ standing, and the larger part of its extensions has taken place within that period. At the end of last century, the town consisted of little more than a dense cluster of antiquated buildings, covering a conical hill, which rises from the sea-shore; the whole hemmed in by defensible walls, with the remains of a castle crowning the summit (since transformed into a cemetery), and a kind of sea-port claiming protection from the bastion on the projecting reef. While in this antiquated condition, there was no road through it fit for wheeled carriages. The only thoroughfare was the old Roman road, about twelve feet in width, sufficient alone for foot-passengers or mules, which wound its way as it best could along the coast—sometimes creeping up hills, at other times diving into ravines, and when arriving at towns, getting through them by narrow passages, well guarded at each end by gates. Such was the sole means of communication along the shore of the Western Riviera till within the memory of persons still living.

Good reasons for this backward state of things might be found in political distractions, and more specially in the fact, that the whole of this part of the coast was for ages so much beset by predatory bands of Moors or Saracens, that it was advantageous to make every place as inaccessible as possible. Villages were placed far up the mountains, with a good outlook to the sea, and were approachable only by scarcely distinguishable tracks. While the towns were walled, the palazzos of the gentry adjoining the ancient route resembled the larger kind of fortified Border keeps, and could be entered only by drawbridges and strongly barred doors, protected by shot-holes. Several specimens of these bastel-houses still survive, though in a decayed condition, and are well worth investigation. The Saracens, however, established themselves on various parts of the coast; one of their strongholds being Eza, a small fortified town, already referred to as being seen on the road from Nice to Mentone. According to tradition, the person chiefly concerned in expelling these intruders was a noble Genoese, named Grimaldi, who, for his bravery and public services, received a gift of the territory of Monaco, in which his descendants afterwards bore rule. As this event is said to have taken place in the year 980, the House of Grimaldi must be reckoned one of the very oldest in Europe.

Except as being involved in the wars of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, little is heard of the Grimaldis for two or three hundred years. They were known as seigneurs or counts, holding some local sway, but always under the protection of superior neighbours, to whom they stood in the relation of vassals. Any one curiously disposed regarding their intermarriages and ongoings, will get full particulars in the recent work of Mr Pemberton (History of Monaco, Past and Present), also in the French work of M. Abel Rendu (Menton et Monaco); but it is not easy to burden the memory with the annals of this noble and not always well-behaved family. But for their instinctively clinging to France, they would long since have disappeared. By Louis XIII., the family were raised to the rank of Princes of Monaco, and they were likewise invested with the Dukedom of Valentenois in the peerage of France. From this time, they fought in the French wars, and were occasionally employed in diplomatic missions. At the middle of the seventeenth century, the principality had the honour of supporting the extravagances of Lewis I., a prince who, in his ardent desire to shew off with becoming splendour as an ambassador, accepted a mission to Rome from the court of France. We are told that his prodigal outlays led to a system of taxation of hitherto unexampled severity. The most idiotic of his acts consisted in causing his carriage-horses to be shod with silver, each shoe fastened only by a single nail, in order that it might be easily lost, and ostentatiously replaced. In Anthony, the son of this madcap, the male line of the Grimaldis terminated. With only daughters to succeed, there arose a grand family consultation how Louise Hyppolyte, the eldest of these female heirs, should marry some distinguished personage, sufficiently rich to discharge certain heavy debts and obligations. If we could extract any drollery from the history of the Grimaldis, it would be in the straits to which they were put at this memorable juncture. In a sense, the girl was put up to auction. It was made generally known that the highest bidder, with the longest purse and pedigree, might have her; one thing, however, being stipulated, that he should sink his own identity, and assume the name and arms of Grimaldi. After a good deal of looking about and chaffering, Louise Hyppolyte was assigned to Count de Matignon, whose wealth was pronounced adequate, and his ancestral rank in no respect impeachable. The marriage took place in 1715, and from it sprung the present family.

The old town of Mentone with Quai Bonaparte, as seen from Eastern Bay.

It does not appear that the new branch of the clan Grimaldi was a marked improvement on the old one. When the revolution of 1789 broke out in France, it spread to the principality; and so much was Honore III. disliked for his arbitrary measures, that he had to flee for his life, leaving his patrimony to its fate, which consisted in being absorbed into the French republic. Unfortunately, the change of masters produced only some new varieties of oppression. There was, to be sure, a very distinct proclamation of liberty and equality; but it was associated with relentless taxation and conscription, along with an assiduous search for victims for the guillotine. Recesses in the mountains above Mentone are pointed out where suspects took refuge in these terrible times, and to whom food was under great difficulty taken by their families. With the fall of the Convention in 1793, and the rise of Bonaparte, the Mentonians experienced a gratifying relief, although the conscription continued as severe as ever. In the course of Napoleon’s marvellous military feats in Italy, he visited Mentone; and observing the imperfect character of the old road along the coast, gave orders to construct that entirely new carriage-way, the existing Corniche, an engineering exploit which was the making of Mentone. Previously, the old road in proceeding eastwards ascended to a vaulted gateway, and was thence continued in the Rue Longue, a curious narrow passage environed by tall antique buildings on each side, the exit being by a gateway at the farther extremity, whence the road descended to the eastern bay. For this inconvenient thoroughfare, the French engineer substituted an artificial terrace-road, raised within the sea-margin, and skirting the backs of the gaunt old houses of the Rue Longue. All who have travelled along the Corniche, will remember this ingeniously constructed part of the route, styled the Quai Bonaparte, and how, after getting clear of the town, it ascends to the Pont St Louis, on the front of the rugged cliffs which overhang the Mediterranean.

After having been connected with France for more than twenty years, the principality of Monaco was assigned, by the treaty of Vienna, to its hereditary claimants, who were to be under the protection of Piedmont. Delivered up to Honore V., as the reigning Grimaldi was designated, the unhappy people, to their dismay, soon felt themselves in the grasp of a rapacious tyrant. Honest, industrious, and confiding, they were willing to render loyal obedience to the old family; but so far from being sympathised with, they were viewed as mere objects of the most uncompromising extortion. What now occurred in the communes of Monaco, Roccabruna, and Mentone—such being the entire territory—would, if minutely told, form a history unexampled for despicable selfishness on the part of the ruling authority. The account given by Pemberton, and also by local French writers, regarding the fiscal abuses of Honore and his successor, raises the deepest emotions of compassion. It is painful even to allude to matters of this kind, and I do so only because a knowledge of what took place enables us to understand why Mentone has been absorbed into the French empire. The story—fit to form the subject of a romance—is also not without interest, as revealing to what lengths a despotic ruler may go when unchecked by considerations either of mercy or public policy.

Living at a safe distance in Paris, and governing by deputies, Honore V. maintained a fair face to the world while issuing ordinance after ordinance calculated to reduce his patrimonial territory to utter poverty and ruin. Plausible and refined in manners, his hypocrisy was equalled only by his intense avarice. What he wanted was money, and that he was resolved to wring by every available means from his helpless subjects. He began operations by taking possession of all property belonging to communes, hospitals, and ecclesiastical establishments, all of which were in future to depend on his bounty. Next, he imposed duties on every article entering or going out of the country, or which was consumed as food. The principal produce consisting of olives, oranges, lemons, citrons, figs, and grapes, these were all placed under rigorous surveillance, and subjected to heavy imposts. There had long been manufactures of oils, essences, perfumes, and confections from one or other of these fruits, for purposes of export, and the taxes now levied upon them rendered the trade not worth carrying on. Then were issued ordinances assigning to the prince an entire monopoly in the manufacture and sale of linen, gunpowder, pipes, and tobacco. No one dared to purchase linens for clothing or domestic use, or to be used as sails for boats and shipping, unless they came from the prince’s factories at such prices as he was pleased to impose. Following on these arbitrary measures came the monopoly of selling vermicelli. This was a hard blow on the poor, but nothing in comparison to the next financial device, which was a monopoly in the importation of corn, meal, and flour. As it happened that the territory produced scarcely any cereals, the people depended on imports, and under this new policy they were placed at the mercy of a prince who cared not though his subjects should perish of hunger.