noa, and the
Genoese Commune erected a fort which became a refuge alternately for its
Guelf or Ghibelline exiles, its Spinolas or its Grimaldis. A church of
fine twelfth-century work is the only monument which remains of this
earlier time; at the opening of the fourteenth century Monaco passed
finally to the Grimaldis, and became in their hands a haunt of
buccaneers. Only one of their line rises into historic fame, and he is
singularly connected with a great event in English history. Charles
Grimaldi was one of the foremost leaders in the Italian wars of his day;
he passed as a mercenary into the service of France in her combat with
Edward III., and his seventy-two galleys set sail from Monaco with the
fifteen thousand Genoese bowmen who appear so unexpectedly in the
forefront of the battle of Crecy. The massacre of these forces drove him
home again to engage in attacks on the Catalans and Venetians and
struggles with Genoa, till the wealth which his piracy had accumulated
enabled him to add Mentone and Roccabruna to his petty dominions. It is
needless to trace the history of his house any further; corsairs,
soldiers of fortune, trimming adroitly in the struggles of the sixteenth
century between France and Spain, sinking finally into mere vassals of
Louis XIV. and hangers-on at the French Court, the family history of the
Grimaldis is one of treason and blood--brother murdering brother, nephew
murdering uncle, assassination by subjects avenging the honour of
daughters outraged by their master's lust.

Of the town itself, as we have said, there is no history at all; it
consists indeed only of a few petty streets streaming down the hill from
the palace square. The palace, though spoilt by a gaudy modern
restoration, is externally a fine specimen of Italian Renascence work,
its court painted all over with arabesques of a rough Caravaggio order,
while the State-rooms within have a thoroughly French air, as if to
embody the double character of their occupants, at once Lords of Monaco
and Ducs de Valentinois. The palace is encircled with a charming little
garden, a bit of colour and greenery squeezed in, as it were, between
cliff and fortress, from which one looks down over precipices of red
rock with the prickly pear clinging to their clefts and ledges, or
across a rift of sea to the huge bare front of the Testa del Cane with
gigantic euphorbias, cactus, and orange-gardens fringing its base. A
bribe administered to Talleyrand