To Repair It Would Be A Very
Unnecessary Expence, As It Is Commanded By Montalban, And Several
Other Eminences.
The town of Nice is altogether indefensible, and therefore
without fortifications.
There are only two iron guns upon a
bastion that fronts the beach; and here the French had formed a
considerable battery against the English cruisers, in the war of
1744, when the Mareschal Duke de Belleisle had his headquarters
at Nice. This little town, situated in the bay of Antibes, is
almost equidistant from Marseilles, Turin, and Genoa, the first
and last being about thirty leagues from hence by sea; and the
capital of Piedmont at the same distance to the northward, over
the mountains. It lies exactly opposite to Capo di Ferro, on the
coast of Barbary; and, the islands of Sardinia and Corsica are
laid down about two degrees to the eastward, almost exactly in a
line with Genoa. This little town, hardly a mile in
circumference, is said to contain twelve thousand inhabitants.
The streets are narrow; the houses are built of stone, and the
windows in general are fitted with paper instead of glass. This
expedient would not answer in a country subject to rain and
storms; but here, where there is very little of either, the paper
lozenges answer tolerably well. The bourgeois, however, begin to
have their houses sashed with glass. Between the town-wall and
the sea, the fishermen haul up their boats upon the open beach;
but on the other side of the rock, where the castle stood, is the
port or harbour of Nice, upon which some money has been expended.
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