Baring-Gould Sabine
A Book of The Riviera
CHAPTER XII
CANNES
History – Ægitna – Quintus Opimus – Admiral Matthews takes Ile Ste. Marguerite – La Californie – Climate – S. Cassien – Arluc – Legend – La Napoule – Antibes – The Terpon stone – Cult of rude stones – Utriculares – Lerins – Ste. Marguerite – The Man in the Iron Mask – Mattioli – Fabricated pedigree for Napoleon – Marshal Bazaine: his escape – S. Honorat – The stand made against Predestinarianism – S. Augustine – Lerins a home of culture – Decay – Suppressed – Springs of fresh water in the sea
CANNES does not possess much of a history. It was but a fishing village occupying a rock above a little port, built about a ruined castle and a church, when “invented” by Lord Brougham, as already related.
Its history may be summed up shortly. Old Cannes possibly occupies the site of the Ligurian town of Ægitna, destroyed B.C. 154 by the Consul Quintus Opimus. The Ligurian natives had annoyed the Greek settlers and traders on the coast, who were monopolising their delectable seats, and the Greeks complained to Rome of their ill-humour and rough deeds. Opimus was sent to their aid; he subdued the natives without much trouble, and was accorded a triumph, which meant the leading of a train of captives in chains behind his chariot through Rome, followed by the butchery of the prisoners, whose carcases were thrown down the Gemonian stairs, and drawn by hooks to the Tiber. Opimus was notorious for his riotous living, and for his brutality. He was as handsome as he was infamous – “formosus homo et famosus.” Cicero speaks of his disreputable life, and records a jest he made. The Romans gave Ægitna to the citizens of Marseilles. In the tenth century it pertained to the abbey of Lerins, and in the Middle Ages maintained incessant contest with the tyrannical abbots, in efforts to obtain municipal freedom. Not till 1788 – the year before the Revolution – did the town become free from its ecclesiastical masters.
From Cannes in 1580 the plague spread which ravaged Provence. It was brought there by a ship from the Levant. To plague succeeded war. In 1746 Cannes succumbed to the Piedmontese and German forces that had crossed the Var. After taking and sacking Cannes, where they got little beyond fishing-nets, they plundered Grasse.
A little before this Admiral Matthews, who had taken Ventimiglia, captured the Ile Ste. Marguerite. The war which led to the blockading of the Ligurian coast by the English was occasioned by a trifle.
In 1738 the English were thrown into a paroxysm of indignation by a tale that circulated, which was characterised by Burke as “The Fable of Jenkins’s Ear.” Jenkins was master of a small trading sloop in Jamaica, which seven years previously had been overhauled by a Spanish coastguard boat. The captain, disappointed at finding nothing contraband in the vessel, tore off one of Jenkins’s ears, and bade him carry it to King George, and inform his Britannic Majesty that if he should come that way he would serve him in the same manner. This ear Jenkins carried about with him wrapped up in cotton wool. For seven years Jenkins kept his ear, and produced it in taverns and to all he met, as an instance of the indignities to which freeborn Britons were exposed at the hands of Spain. Of course much correspondence took place between the two governments relative to this bit of dried ear, but not till 1737 was he called before a committee of the House of Commons, when he appeared at the bar, exhibited his ear, that looked like a dried mushroom or a truffle. War was proclaimed amidst great rejoicing among the English. Church bells were rung. Walpole said bitterly, “You are ringing your bells now; before long you will be wringing your hands.”
The English fleet in the Mediterranean blockaded the ports of Spain. But the death of Charles of Austria in the following year led to a general scramble to get hold of portions of his vast possessions, and the war assumed a more complicated character. The Spaniards, assisted by the French, landed on the Italian coasts, and Admiral Matthews was sent to drive them thence.
The story of Jenkins and his ear had roused all England. Pulteney declared that England needed no allies – that Jenkins’s story alone would raise volunteers anywhere. It was, however, more than hinted at the time, that Jenkins had lost his ear in the pillory, and not through the violence of a Spanish custom-house officer.
The war fizzled out. Matthews was badly served with men and ships from England, and the Ile of Ste. Marguerite was speedily abandoned.
Compared with Nice, Cannes enjoys certain advantages. It is less towny and commercial. It does not savour of Monte Carlo. It possesses on the east the wooded height of La Californie, studded with hotels and villas, commanding one of the most beautiful evening views in Europe. When the sun goes down beyond the Estérel range, standing up in royal purple against an amber sky, it may well be thought that this is a scene of unsurpassable beauty.
Nice has to the East Mont Boron and Mont Alban, but they do not serve for a residential suburb, as does La Californie. They are cut off from Nice by the port, and they do not command so incomparable a view.
For the depth of winter, in gloom and cold, then no place for shelter can be compared with Beaulieu, or Mentone, or Alassio. But when the months of December and January are passed, then Cannes. Lastly, to cool off before encountering the chills of spring in England, S. Raphael. Cannes further has at its door, for a run of a day, Estérel, easily reached, and never to be exhausted or forgotten. Then, again, from Cannes, also accessible, the isles of Lerins, where the fresh breezes blow.
“Verily,” says Leuthéric, “no country in the world possesses a climate comparable to that of Cannes. There no extremes of temperature are known, as in other parts of Provence. The belt of hills which enclose the gulf form a screen intervening between the bay and the towering mountains; and when the cold winds blow down from the Alps, they sweep over the littoral, which lies always sheltered. Thanks to this natural protection, they fall at some distance out to sea, and one can mark the ruffle of the surface on the horizon, whilst that near the beach gently undulates like the face of a tranquil lake. The nightly loss of heat, favoured by the limpidity of a sky always cloudless, is compensated for by the proximity of the sea, always slow to give up its heat, and which bathes this coast with an atmosphere ever temperate. The mean temperature is superior to those of Nice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa, Rome, and even of Naples; it never falls below freezing point, and never rises as high as in most of the towns of Europe.
“This equilibrium of temperature is manifest in the simultaneous development of vegetations apparently contradictory. At Cannes, above every spot on the coast of Provence, the vegetations of opposite climes melt into one another in an admirable promiscuity. The landscape is veritably unique, and one feels there as if one were transported into a vast conservatory, in which artificially are united growths, the most different in character. The plain is covered with oranges and lemons, from among which shoot up at intervals the fans of palms trees and the spikes of aloes. The hills are crowned with umbrella pines, whose majestic heads recall classic sites in the Roman campagna. In the background of the picture are dark and dense forests of pines, like a gloomy drapery above which rise the pure and gleaming heights of the Alps in their eternal snows. Thus, as in a single framework, one can see grouped together the great conifers of the north, the olives of Provence, the golden fruits of the Balearic Isles, the oleanders of Asia Minor, and the thorny vegetation of the Algerian Tell.”
I must, however, in all fairness, add, as a qualification to this picture, that in the early months of 1905, frost and hail did so smite and blast the oranges, the lemons, the eucalyptus of the plain of the Siagne, that the glory of the glossy leaves was gone, the country had assumed the aspect of a withered orchard. The golden fruit were shed, and the leaves were bleached and pendant.
If Cannes has gone up in the world, her neighbours have gone down. About four miles from Cannes, in the Plain of the Siagne, is an outcrop of the Estérel red sandstone, crowned by magnificent pines, cypresses, cork trees and ilexes, that embower a chapel of S. Cassien and a farm. Here, till recently, lived a hermit. These gentry are becoming scarce. Possibly the prognostication of M. Anselme Benoît, in Jules Fabre’s novel Mon Oncle Celestin, is accomplishing itself:
“Va au diable avec tes médailles et tes chapelets. Je te le prédis depuis longtemps: à force d’embrasser les filles, tu finiras par embrasser les gendarmes au detour de quelque chemin.”
In 1661 Bishop Godeau found a vagabond hermit at S. Jeanette, and tried in vain to dislodge him; but the man hung on, and Godeau found him still there in 1667.
These men pick up a subsistence by the sale of sacred medals, pictures, scapulars, rosaries; sometimes manufacturing the latter themselves. Very often they are simply lazy loons who can subsist on such sales and occasional alms; but some have been as great scamps as Jacopo Rusca in Fabre’s delightful story – which is a graphic picture of country life and country people in the South, full of delicious word painting.
Formerly S. Cassien was the fortress to the town of Arluc. Castle and town have disappeared wholly. Arluc, Ara lucis14 as the place is called in old deeds, was a shrine in a sacred wood. The Provençal Troubadour Raymond Ferand tells a story of it.
Here lived once on a time a sorcerer named Cloaster; he had an altar in the wood, at which he practised all kinds of diableries. There was a bridge over the Siagne crossed by the people who came there to worship. Now S. Nazarius was abbot of Lerins. One day, a youth named Ambrose was sacrificing to idols at Arluc, when the devils laid hold of him, raised him in the air, and flew away with him, in spite of all his protests and kicks, to convey him to hell. But as they were thus transporting him over the island of Lerins, Ambrose heard the chanting of the monks, and he cried out to S. Honorat to help him. Then the devils let go, and he came fluttering down like a feather into the midst of the cloister of Lerins, where S. Nazarius received him; and thenceforth Ambrose lived with the monks as a good Christian.
The Lerins Chronicle tells us that the Abbot Nazarius destroyed a temple of Venus that was at Arluc, and built a church on its site, which he dedicated to S. Stephen in A.D. 616, and attached to it a convent of women. But in 730 the Saracens destroyed church and convent and town, and sacked Lerins, where they massacred the abbot and five hundred of his monks.
The town of Arluc was rebuilt by Pepin le Bref, but in 890 the Saracens again destroyed it. It again struggled into existence, but was finally utterly ruined and effaced by the Tard-Venus in 1361, under their chief, who called himself “The Enemy of Man.” These Tard-Venus were one of the Free Companies that ravaged the country, gleaning after others had reaped.
The chapel was rebuilt, and when given to the abbey of S. Victor at Marseilles, was dedicated to S. Cassien. The fête is on July 23rd; religious services take place in the morning and a pleasure fair and merrymaking in the afternoon.
A pretty watering place is La Napoule, that once enjoyed a prosperity of which Cannes had no thought. It was the Roman station Ad Horea, where vast stores of provisions were collected in magazines, for transmission to the troops. The name Napoule has been supposed to be the same as Naples, Neapolis, signifying the New Town, but no text gives colour to this derivation, and it is more probable that La Napoule comes from Epulia, Provisions, as it was a store place; excavations made there when the railway was in construction laid bare immense underground magazines and granaries, divided systematically into compartments by pillars, and vaulted. These were originally well ventilated. Remains of Roman constructions may still be seen by the shore, and although no mention is made in the Itinerary of Antoninus of a port there, it cannot be doubted that there was one for the disembarkation or embarkation of stores.
The little feudal castle built on Roman substructures was wrecked by the Saracen corsairs in the thirteenth century. The present village of Napoule is tenanted by poor fishermen, but it is likely to look up as a bathing place, and as a centre for excursions into the Estérel. The tower is all that remains of a castle of the Counts of Villeneuve. The rocks in the bay, beaten by the sea, have assumed fantastic shapes; being of sandstone, they are not like porphyry, too hard to resist the erosion of the sea.
And La Napoule, facing east, sees how that, —
“The eastern gate, all fiery red,
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt-green streams.”
Midsummer Night’s Dream, III. 2.
Another old place that fell into decay, but which has in it now hopes of renovation, is Antibes. This was the Greek Antipolis, the town over against Nicæa, at the farther side of the bay.
Almost all of the monuments bearing Greek inscriptions that have been found in such numbers in Provence belong to a date after the Roman annexation. But this is not the case with regard to a curious inscription discovered at Antibes on a black boulder, egg-shaped, of diorite, a kind of basalt. This stone had no shaping given to it by the hand of man, but on it was cut in archaic characters, this inscription: —
“I am Terpon, servant of the august goddess Aphrodite; may Cypris reward with her favours those who erected me here.”
What does this mean? How could the stone be Terpon, a servant of the Goddess of Love?
It would seem to have been one of those mysterious sacred stones which received worship from the most remote ages, a form of worship belonging to the earliest people of whom anything is known. This cult of rude unshapen stones, very generally black, prevailed among the Phœnicians; it forced its way into the worship of the Israelites. Such stones were set up even in the temple of Jehovah by some of the kings, who inclined to the superstitions of the Canaanites. The worship had so strong a hold on the Arabs that Mohammed could not extirpate it, and the Black Stone of Mecca still receives the veneration of the faithful. It forced its way into the religion of the ancient Greeks, and though quite incongruous with their mythology, held its own to the last.
Prudentius, the Christian poet (died about 410) shows us how strong was the devotion, even in his day.
“His first food was the sacred meal, his earliest sight the sacred candles, and the family gods growing black with holy oil. He saw his mother pale at her prayers before the holy stone, and he, too, would be lifted by his nurse to kiss it in his turn.” (Cont. Symmachum.)
It has been so tough that it is not extirpated yet.
In 1877 a correspondent of the Society of Anthropology at Paris wrote about the worship as still prevailing in the valleys of the Pyrenees.
“One comes across these sacred stones most usually near fountains. They are rough blocks of porphyroid, or amphibolite granite, left on the mountain side by glacial action. They are almost invariably shapeless, and rarely present any features that can distinguish them from other great stones strewn about. One might pass them by unnoticed but for the local traditions that attach to them and the veneration with which they are regarded by the natives. In vain do the priests preach against them. They have utterly failed to drive the superstition from the hearts of their people. In vain do they get them smashed up secretly, in hopes of thereby destroying these vestiges of paganism; especially do they use their efforts against such as serve as meeting-places to young men and girls. The natives, when they come on the workmen engaged in the destruction, break out into riot, and stop the work. When they cannot do this, then they collect the fragments, replace them, and continue to surround them with veneration. It is necessary to disperse the débris of the Holy Stone to put an end to the cult; but even then, the place where it stood is regarded as sacred, and sometimes the clergy plant a cross there, as the only means of turning the traditional reverence of the spot into a new direction.”
Whether this religion of the black stone of Antibes goes back to Phœnician or to Ligurian religion one cannot say – probably both Phœnician colonist and Ligurian native shared the same devotion to rude blocks of stone.
In Scotland, in Ireland, in Cornwall, in Brittany, among the graves of the dead of the Bronze Age, almost invariably a piece of white quartz or a jade weapon is found. Indeed, the bit of quartz is so constant that a workman engaged in opening one of the barrows will cry out, “Now we are coming on the bones,” when he sees it gleam. The bit of quartz or jade pertained to the same category of ideas. It was the rude stone protecting the dead, as the rude stone was the safeguard of the living, the object of worship in life, of hope, of confidence in death.
At Antibes, in the wall of the Hôtel de Ville, is the stone with the inscription, already spoken of, to the poor little dancing boy of twelve, from the North. In the museum is an inscription to the memory of a horse, by his sorrowing master. Another shows that at Antibes there was a corporation of Utriculares, that is to say, of boatmen who navigated the sea in vessels sustained by bladders. These were common enough on the lagoons and the rivers, but exceptional on the coast.
Perhaps the most interesting excursion that can be made from Cannes is to the isles of Lerins. Of these there are two – Ste. Marguerite and S. Honorat – the latter formerly the seat of the great school and monastery of Lerins. The islands take their name from some mythic Lero, of whose story nothing is known; but Pliny informs us that there had once been a town named Vergoanum situated on one of them which had disappeared before the Christian era, and of which no traces remained. That Ste. Marguerite was occupied by Greeks and Romans is testified by the finding there of a bi-lingual inscription. But whatever relics of structures may have been left by its old masters have been used up again and again from mediæval times down to the present. The fortress now standing is a barrack. It was built by Richelieu, considerably enlarged by the Spaniards when they had possession of the island, and then transformed after the plans of Vauban. The fortress was employed mainly as a military or State prison.
The most celebrated of its prisoners, or at least him about whom most has been written, was the Man of the Iron Mask. It was due to Voltaire that the story obtained such currency and excited so keen an interest. In his Age of Louis XIV., published in 1751, he wrote: —
“Some months after the death of Mazarin an event happened which is without a parallel in history. Moreover, and this is not less remarkable, the event has been passed over in silence by every historian. There was sent with the utmost secrecy to the castle of the Isles of Ste. Marguerite, in the Sea of Provence, a prisoner unknown, of a stature above the average, young, and with features of rare nobility and beauty. On the way the prisoner wore a mask, the chin-piece of which was furnished with springs of steel, so that he could eat without removing it. Order had been given to kill him if he ventured to uncover. He remained at the Isles until a trusted officer, Saint Mars by name, Governor of Pignerol, having been appointed in 1690 to the command of the Bastille, came to Ste. Marguerite to fetch him, and bore him thence – always in his mask – to the Bastille. Before his removal he was seen in the isle by the Marquis de Louvois, who remained standing while he spoke to him with a consideration savouring of respect. In the Bastille the unknown was as well bestowed as was possible in that place, and nothing that he asked for was refused him. He had a passion for lace and fine linen; he amused himself with a guitar; and his table was furnished with the best. The governor rarely sat down in his presence. An old doctor of the Bastille, who had often attended this interesting prisoner, said that, although he had examined his tongue and the rest of his body, he had never seen his face. He was admirably made, said the doctor, and his skin was of a brownish tint. He spoke charmingly, with a voice of a deeply impressive quality, never complaining of his lot, and never letting it be guessed who he was. This unknown captive died in 1703, and was buried by night in the parish of S. Paul. What is doubly astonishing is this: that when he was sent to Ste. Marguerite there did not disappear from Europe any personage of note. But observe what happened within a few days of his arrival at the isle. The governor himself laid the prisoner’s table and then withdrew and locked the door. One day the prisoner wrote something with a knife on a silver plate and threw the plate out of the window towards a boat on the shore, almost at the foot of the tower. A fisherman to whom the boat belonged picked up the plate and carried it to the governor, who, surprised beyond measure, asked the man: ‘Have you read what is written on this plate, and has any one seen it in your hands?’ ‘I cannot read,’ answered the fisherman; ‘I have only just found it, and no one else has seen it.’ He was detained until the governor had made sure that he could not read, and that no other person had seen the plate. ‘Go,’ he then said. ‘It is well for you that you cannot read.’”
How Voltaire could describe the prisoner as “with features of rare nobility and beauty,” when he was invariably masked, so that no one could see his face, is certainly remarkable.
When Voltaire found that this story had created a sensation, he vouchsafed a solution to it. “The Iron Mask was without doubt a brother, and an elder brother, of Louis XIV.”
But the mystery has been solved. We know with certainty who the prisoner was – no one of great importance after all, but one against whom Louis XIV. entertained a bitter and implacable resentment – Ercole Antonio Mattioli.
Louis XIV. had a strong desire to obtain the Marquisate of Montferrat, with its capital Cassale; but the marquisate belonged to Charles, Duke of Mantua, a feeble, dissipated, extravagant fool. On the other hand, the Empress and the Spanish party were bitterly hostile to French schemes of aggrandisement. Mattioli acted as a paid agent of the French Government to negotiate in secrecy a sale of Cassale to Louis; and after he had received a good deal of payment for his services, betrayed the whole intrigue to the Austro-Spanish Government. Louis was furious, not only at having failed in this coup d’état, but also at being so fooled. Mattioli was lured near to the frontier, and fallen on upon Piedmontese soil, carried off and thrown into the fortress of Pignerol, which was then in the hands of the French. From Pignerol he was afterwards moved to Lerins, and then finally to the Bastille, where he died. The whole story has been thoroughly thrashed out, and that the Man in the Iron Mask was Mattioli and no one else has been conclusively established.15
It would seem that an attempt was made to fabricate for Napoleon a descent from the Iron Mask, who was assumed to be an elder brother to Louis XIV., and by this means to establish for Napoleon a legitimate right to the throne of the Capets. But the attempt was too absurd to obtain credence, if ever proposed to Bonaparte. In the Mémorial de Sainte Hélène allusion is made to this.
“Conversation turned on the Mask of Iron, and all that had been said on the subject by Voltaire, Dutens, etc., and what was found in the Mémoires of Richelieu was passed in review. These made him, as is well known, to be the twin brother of Louis XIV., and his elder. Then some one (probably Count de Las Casas) added that on studying genealogical trees, it had been seriously shown that he, Napoleon, was the lineal descendant of the Man in the Iron Mask, consequently legitimate heir to Louis XIII. and to Henry IV. in preference to Louis XIV. and his posterity. The Emperor replied that he had, in fact, heard this, and added that human credulity and love of the marvellous was capable of believing anything; that it would have been quite possible to establish this to the satisfaction of the multitude, and that there would not have lacked men in the senate capable of producing the requisite demonstrations, and these the men who later turned against him when they saw that he was unfortunate.
“Then we went on to discuss the particulars of the fable. The governor of the isle of Ste. Marguerite at the time, so it was said, the man to whose care the Iron Mask was confided, was called M. de Bonpart, a very remarkable fact. This man had a daughter. The young people saw each other and loved. The Governor thereupon communicated with the Court; and it was there decided that no great inconvenience could arise if the unfortunate man were suffered to find in love some alleviation of his misfortunes. Accordingly M. de Bonpart had them married.
“He who related this turned red when the facts were disputed. He said that the marriage could be verified by inspection of the register of a certain parish in Marseilles, which he named. He added that the children born of this marriage were clandestinely removed to Corsica, where the difference of language, or deliberate purpose, caused the name Bonpart to be rendered Bonaparte, or Buonaparte.”
Whether it was proposed to Napoleon at one time to circulate this fable is uncertain. What is certain is, that, when he was emperor, he took pains to have the registers of Ajaccio falsified or destroyed, either in preparation for the publication of this fiction, or because they revealed some unpleasant truths, which he was interested in suppressing. The crucial difficulty in the way of formulating this fable was that Saint Mars, and not any M. Bonpart, had been governor of Ste. Marguerite whilst the Iron Mask was there.
The last celebrated prisoner at Ste. Marguerite was Marshal Bazaine, who escaped with the assistance of his wife, it can hardly be doubted with the connivance of the governor. Marshal François Achille Bazaine was born at Versailles in 1811, and was destined to be a tradesman by his very bourgeois parents. But as he did not relish the shop, he entered the army as a private soldier in 1831, and served in Algiers, where he sufficiently distinguished himself to be promoted to a lieutenancy, and then become captain of the Foreign Legion in the service of Queen Christina against the Carlists. In 1841 he again served in Algiers, became colonel, and next general of brigade. He was in the Crimean War, and returned from it as general of division. Later he attended the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian to Mexico, when he was raised to the rank of marshal. There he married a rich Creole. His conduct in Mexico was not glorious. He left the emperor in the most menaced position; but whether this desertion was due to himself or to orders received from Napoleon is not known. After that, for some time nothing was heard of him, but on the breaking out of the war with Prussia and Germany he was appointed to the command of the Third Army Corps. How he surrendered Metz, with 150,000 men, on October 23rd, 1870, is well known.
The questions asked of the jury at his trial were these: —
1. Is Marshal Bazaine guilty, on October 28th, 1870, of having signed a capitulation in the open field, at the head of his army?
2. Was the consequence of this capitulation, that the army laid down its arms?
3. Did Marshal Bazaine, both verbally and by writing, correspond with the enemy, without having previously done all that was his duty?
4. Is Marshal Bazaine guilty, on October 28th, 1870, of having capitulated to the enemy, and delivered over the fortress of Metz, over which he had command, without having previously used every effort in his power to defend it, and exhausted every means of holding out that lay open to him in duty and honour?
The jury answered Yes, unanimously, to all these questions, and he was sentenced to degradation and death; but the sentence of death was commuted to imprisonment for twenty years. On December 25th – Christmas Day – 1873, he was taken from the Trianon, Versailles, in a close carriage, to Villeneuve l’Etang, and thence conveyed to Antibes, where he was placed on a steamboat and transferred to the fortress of Ste. Marguerite. On August 10th, 1874, the director of the prison, named Marchi, found Bazaine’s prison empty. The first thought in France, when this news was spread by the telegraph, was that he had been allowed to escape by the connivance of MacMahon. Then details were published which put a romantic gloss on the evasion.
In the fortress of Ste. Marguerite three rooms had been placed at the disposal of the prisoner, as well as a little terrace, which latter was reached by a stone bridge with a wall on each side, and here stood a sentinel, on the wall; but he could not see those who passed over the bridge nor what went on upon the terrace, as the latter was partly covered with an awning against the sun. On the terrace, to which led several steps from the bridge, the Marshal had formed for himself a little garden; and whilst working therein one day he found a choked gutter intended for carrying off rain-water from the castle shoots; it was bored through the rock; and he set to work to clear it. By means of sympathetic ink he was able to maintain a correspondence with his wife; and all was planned for his escape.
On the evening determined on he asked his gaoler, who usually accompanied him for a stroll on the terrace after dinner, to allow him to walk it alone, and this was readily permitted.
