One Such Point Was Undoubtedly The Headland Of Monaco, Where The Greeks Of Marseilles, Long Enough Before Augustus, Built A Temple To Hercules Monoecus.

The Grimaldi family which gave Genoa many doges, came early into the sovereignty of Monaco, by the hook or

Crook those days, but whether it was they who fostered its piracy in the fourteenth century, does not distinctly appear, though it seems certain that one of the Grimaldi princes served against the English under Philip of Valois, and was wounded at Crecy. In 1524 a successor went over to the empire under Charles V. Still later the principality returned to the sovereignty of France, and in 1793 the French republicans frankly annexed it, but it was given back to the Grimaldi in 1814.

The Grimaldi on the whole were a baddish line of potentates, and only lacked largeness of scene to have left the memory of world-tragedies. They murdered one another, at least in two cases; in another, the people killed their ruler by publicly drowning him in the sea for insulting their women; the princes were the protectors of piracy, and in the very late times following their restoration by the Congress of Vienna, the reigning prince confiscated the property of the churches for his own behoof, and took into his hands the whole trade of the principality. He alone bought and ground the grain, and baked the bread, which he sold to his people at an extortionate price; he bought damaged flour in Genoa and fed it to his subjects at the same rate as good.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 337 of 353
Words from 92811 to 93073 of 97259