Annales Monégasques

This article follows in the footsteps of the man who first introduced this name in the Grimaldis of Monaco lineage, Rainier I (circa 1267 - 1314). A study of documents, mainly translated from Latin, most of which are held in the Prince’s Palace of Monaco Archives, provides a better understanding of this character. Monegasque history has mostly remembered the prestigious role played by this great navigator and fine tactician of naval battles and boardings, as Admiral of France in the service of Philippe le Bel, at the end of the High Middle Ages, when the Grimaldis of Genoa first established themselves in Monaco. A contemporary of his cousin François, known as Malizia, who, according to tradition, seized the Rock, it is not known whether he was part of this expedition. In fact, it seems that he never was a lord of Monaco, despite the title ‘‘the 1st’’ attributed to him by historians, given the extent of his itinerant and adventurous maritime life, as admiral to the King of France, vassal of the Counts of Provence, ‘‘condottiere’’, pirate, even ‘‘corsair’’, but also a skilful merchant. As such, this extraordinary character is rightly considered to be one of the first great figures in the history of Monaco, in whose lineage his descendant prince Rainier III resolutely followed.

Throughout his reign, Lambert Grimaldi (1458-1494), a descendant of the lords of Antibes, fought to defend Monaco, Menton, and Roquebrune from the covetous ambitions of neighbouring powers. Among his fiercest rivals was Pomelline Grimaldi, née Fregoso, a scion of a powerful Genoese family and paternal grandmother of his wife Claudine, the rightful heiress to the Rock of Monaco after her father Catalan’s death. Pomelline went so far as to incite the people of Menton and Roquebrune to rise up against him, but Lambert showed remarkable resolve to quell the unrest and preserve Monaco’s independence through a time of great turmoil.

Although the works of the Monegasque artist Philibert Florence (1839-1918) are well-documented and studied in the history of the frescoes of the Prince’s Palace of Monaco, this collection, consisting of twenty-seven drawings, has not yet revealed all of its secrets. A detailed examination of one of these drawings, highlighted that it is the key to understanding one of the attributions long associated with the monumental fresco located on the façade known as « nord-est de la cour d’Honneur ». Is this work truly the product of the brushstrokes of the so-called Caravaggio?

In the mid-19th century, Princess Caroline and her son, Charles III, undertook the restoration of Monaco’s palace and its frescoes. Painted during the Renaissance or the 17th century, the frescoes had suffered the ravages of time and, particularly after the French Revolution, decades of neglect. In 1863, the painter Jean Gilbert Murat, winner of the Grand Prix de Rome in 1837, began restoring the lunettes in the Gallery of Hercules. Illness forced him to abandon the project before he could complete it. The task then passed to Jean-Baptiste Prudent Carbillet, a pupil of Baron Gros, who until then had been best known for his commissioned artwork, chiefly copies of portraits and historic or military scenes. Between December 1863 and August 1866, Carbillet worked in Monaco on the ceiling of the York Room and on the lunettes in the Gallery of Hercules. Drawing on what remained of the original frescoes, his work was partly restoration and partly re-creation. His tracings, sketches, and preparatory studies, still preserved in the Palace archives, reveal the process behind his craft.

Charles Contejean (Montbéliard, 1824 - Paris, 1907) was one of the foremost naturalists of the Montbéliard region. Throughout his life, he travelled across Europe and as far afield as Russia and North Africa. In his handwritten notebooks, he recorded each journey and the impressions they made on him, offering a vivid, personal glimpse of life in the 19th century and the lands he explored. In March 1861, he left Paris by train to discover the Mediterranean coast between Montpellier and Monaco. Here we present the section of his journey between Cannes and Monaco (and back again).

Written in 1872, Rabagas represents something of an outlier in Victorien Sardou’s multi-faceted oeuvre. It bears the playwright’s hallmarks, such as a fascination with history and most notably the French Revolution, a flair for comedy and theatricality, and an ability to speak to contemporary audiences. And yet this complex play defies any attempt at neat categorisation. Sardou focuses on what was then the quite recent past, namely the early years of the Third Republic, whilst also invoking memories of the revolutionaries of 1848, 1789 and 1793. In so doing, he lays bare the immutable nature of the schism that separates moderates and radicals, and condemns the machinations of those determined to seize power at any cost. Departing from his customary preoccupation with distant history, here he sets the action in the nearby Principality of Monaco, during the reign of Prince Florestan I and the momentous events of 1847-1848 that culminated in the secession of Menton and Roquebrune. In Paris and the larger provincial cities, the play caused a scandal, angering many republicans, both moderate and socialist alike, who accused Sardou of tarnishing the early days of the Republic while the wounds of war and the Commune were still raw. By contrast, there was no such controversy in the Principality, which is largely spared in Sardou’s account. Prince Florestan himself comes across as remarkably sympathetic, set against the renegade Rabagas, whom contemporary audiences saw as a satirical portrait of Gambetta.

According to Prince Albert I of Monaco, at Washington in 1921, anaphylaxis is a « mystery » torn from the marine abyss, which illustrates the crucial importance of oceanographic science for the understanding of Life. The first step of its discovery took place aboard the second ship Princesse Alice, during the campaign of August-September 1901, sponsored and inspired by the prince. In 1913, the Nobel Prize was awarded solely to Charles Richet, ignoring the role played by the other protagonists. The research on the puzzling phenomenon of anaphylaxis has in the following years generated biomedical developments initiated during one of Prince Albert’s sea campaigns. Anaphylaxis posed a formidable challenge by suggesting the double face of immunological phenomena, whose phenomena are being progressively clarified. Anaphylaxis is linked to a fundamental property of living beings, that is memory, a theme of a particular concern at the time of Covid-19 pandemic and of burning questions around vaccination.

A little-known aspect of prince Albert’s internationalist engagement before 1914 is his collaboration with the British-German industrialist, philanthropist and pacifist Sir Max Waechter (1837-1924), who in the decade before the outbreak of World War I led a sustained campaign for a federation of the states of Europe as the most effective means to prevent the outbreak of war. Prince Albert and Waechter, who frequently met during sailing occasions, in the Mediterranean as well as in Norwegian waters, teamed up to form the European Unity League (May 1913), which in the 15 months of its existence before the outbreak of war put an end to it, attracted a membership of 20,000 in Britain alone and was on its best way to become a significant force in British politics. It is the aim of this article to shed light on prince Albert’s role in the organisation.

Eighty years ago, on 3 September 1944, Monaco regained its freedom after several months under German occupation. During the night of 14 to 15 August 1944, units of the 1st Airborne Task Force, under the command of American General Robert Tryon Frederick, were air-dropped into the Var region as part of the liberation of southern France. In retaliation for the Provence landings, the Gestapo executed twenty-one imprisoned members of the Resistance in Nice, among them the Monegasque René Borghini, Secretary to the President of the National Council, and his liaison officer Esther Poggio. The exhibition Monaco Liberated! 3 September – 28 December 1944 retraces, through archives and previously unseen photographs, the major events, truths, and distortions of this painful chapter in the history of the Principality of Monaco.