The Fall of Prince Florestan of Monaco

The next morning when I dreamily called for my coffee there was brought to me along with it a gigantic envelope sealed with soft wax stamped with my arms, and containing a terrific despatch of twenty-three pages. “Rapport Hebdomadaire.” “Weekly report” of what, I asked myself. Why, I have but five thousand subjects – the same number that Octavia Hill rules in Marylebone with such success. I began to read.

“On Monday night a man named Marsan called the carbineer Fissori a fool. He was not arrested (see Order No. 1142 and correspondence 70, 10, 102), but a private report was addressed to the Council of State, on which the Secretary General decided to recommend that Marsan should be watched for a week; referred to the Sub-Committee on Public Order.”

“M. Blanc on Tuesday visited the tunnel in the commune of Turbie (France) by which he hopes to obtain an additional water supply for the Casino. As M. Blanc had not had the courtesy to inform the secretarial office of his excursion it was impossible to send an agent to obtain details of what took place.”

So on for twenty and more pages, the last informing me of the names of the fishing boats that had come in and gone out, of the time of sunrise, and of the fact that a private in my guards had caught a cold in his head.

It was unbearable. These formalities should be suppressed at once. The administration should be decentralised. I rang and sent to the secretarial office for M. de Payan. I addressed him thus: —

“I gather from this tedious document that my principality of five thousand persons possesses every appliance and every excrescence of civilized government except a parliament. The perfection of bureaucracy and of red tape has been reached in a territory one mile broad and five miles long. No doubt centralisation is less hurtful than it is elsewhere in a country so small that it is virtually all centre, but I intend that this state of things (for which you are in no way responsible) shall cease. In the first place kindly inform me of the facts. What are the expenses and what are the revenues of the state, and what is the number of its officials?”

“There are, Sir,” he answered, “including your household and the officers of your guards, one hundred and twenty-six functionaries in Monaco. There are sixty soldiers and carbineers, and there are one hundred and fifty unpaid consular and diplomatic representatives of Monaco abroad.”

“How many servants have I in all, including stable men?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Then you mean to say that there are three hundred and sixty-one persons employed under the crown for a population of thirteen hundred male inhabitants of full age?”

“Yes, Sir, and M. Blanc employs on his works and at the Casino eight hundred of the remainder.”

This was a startling state of things, but I soon found out that, as Colonel Jacquemet had used his men twice over on my arrival, so we used our politicians twice or thrice, politicians being happily scarce with us. Many posts were filled by one man, a plan which has its advantages as well as its drawbacks, the advantages predominating in a country where there are eleven hundred and sixty posts to fill and only thirteen hundred grown male inhabitants.

To give you an idea of the way in which we used our men, Baron Imberty, our Governor-General for instance, was also President of the Council of State, Chancellor of the Order of St. Charles, President of the Maritime Council, President of the Board of Public Works, President of the Bureau de Bienfaisance, etc. etc.

Thanks to M. Blanc and his gambling establishment, and thanks to the large private fortune of my family, the finances of Monaco were in a flourishing position. Prince Charles had had half a million of francs a year of private fortune and of revenue from the gambling tables. My cousin Albert had had three hundred thousand francs a year. I consequently had eight hundred thousand francs of private fortune, or £32,000 a year, out of which I could easily keep up the palace, the stables, and, if I chose, a powerful steam yacht, together with my cousin’s house in Belgium as a summer residence. The cost of the government for army, church, education, and justice, was two hundred thousand francs a year. Public works were dealt with liberally by M. Blanc as a part of his “concession.” The ordinary revenue was derived from four sources, each contributing about an equal share. These were: —

I. The payment of the Government of France for half the value of the tobacco sold in the principality on behalf of the French régie.

II. The payment of France for customs collected by France in my ports.

III. The payment by the “Paris, Lyons, Méditerranée” Railway for right of passage.

IV. Our only local tax, one on all lands and houses changing hands.

The total receipts were two hundred thousand francs, or about the same as the total expense of government.

I dismissed M. de Payan; and without telling anyone where I was going I walked up to the Casino by myself.

I was little known by sight at present in the town, as those who had seen me enter it in uniform and on horseback the day before would hardly recognize me in deep mourning and on foot. I passed unnoticed by the guards, and on reaching the Casino, hot and dusty, was stopped by one of the employés of the bank, I said, “Take me to M. Blanc.”

Under similar circumstances the Prince of Wales is introduced as “Captain White,” but then he is not a sovereign prince; and I preferred to give no name at all than to assume an alias.

I found him literally “a counting out his money.” That is to say, two clerks were counting rouleaus of gold while he at a small table was quietly playing patience with two packs of cards. At a bureau was a third clerk, an Englishman, translating into French for his benefit one of Mr. Bagehot’s leaders in the Economist.

He knew me at once, although he had seen me but for a moment and in a wholly different dress. Bowing low, and speaking not to me but to his clerks, he said, “Qu’on nous laisse.” The moment they had left the room he bowed to the ground again, and said, “Ah monseigneur, votre seigneurerie me fait trop d’honneur! J’allais écrire à monsieur le chambellan pour lui demander de vouloir bien solliciter une audience en mon nom, afin de déposer mes respectueux hommages aux pieds de votre Altesse. Elle me comble en venant chez moi incognito.”

M. Blanc, whose appearance I described before, is well known to gambling Europe as a distinguished political economist, the keeper of the greatest “hell” on earth, and the loving father of a pair of pretty and accomplished daughters, living upon roulette, but himself innocent nowadays of all games but the mildest patience – of which he knows sixty kinds. At Monaco he is more than a public character: he is a benefactor and a prince. Attacks may be made upon gambling establishments even conducted as his is, but I am disposed to agree with the Jesuit fathers of the Visitation that the Monaco roulette – forbidden to the inhabitants of Monaco and of the neighbouring parts of France – does not do much harm to anyone, although I could hardly go with Père Pellico so far as to prohibit the building of a Protestant church while he tolerates a “hell,” and even permits his students to visit the musical portion of its rooms. I had no wish in my proposed reforms to reform out of existence my roulette revenue. I wished indeed to make good use of it; better use than my predecessors had done. I wanted to make of Monaco a Munich and a Dresden all in one. I would have a gallery of the greatest modern pictures – great ancient ones are not now to be obtained – a magnificent orchestra, a theatre of the first rank; art, in short, of all kind of the highest class by which to raise the culture of my people, who, excluded from the gambling side of the Casino by a wise ordinance of my predecessor, would reap the benefit without drinking the poison of the roulette.

I found M. Blanc’s mind running upon the question of whether English families would be most attracted to Monaco by pigeon-shooting or by an English church. The church he fancied most, but owing to the opposition of Père Pellico it would have to be built upon the hill a mile off from the Casino, in the territory of France.

“I will authorise you to disregard Père Pellico’s bigotry, and to build it where you please,” I cried.

M. Blanc smiled, and said, “If your Serene Highness will excuse me, I had sooner not go against the Jesuits.”

I wasn’t king in my own country, as it appeared. Expel the Jesuits, the tempter within me suggested; but then I wasn’t Bismarck, and I hadn’t a “national liberal” party at my back.

I rapidly exposed my views to M. Blanc. I was much struck by the fact that his practical mind insisted on viewing my reforms as questions not of principles but of men.

“You have no men to back you,” he kept saying; “and if you turn out your present set and get some clever Germans you will be deposed.” He had dropped the excessive formality of speech with which he had begun. Several times he used the phrase, “Dr. Coulon is the only man you have.” Then, after thinking for a time, “What do you propose to gain by your reforms? You are rich. Your people are contented. Why trouble yourself? As for works of art, as for theatre, as for orchestra, these things are matters of money, and I will do my best to help. I am not sure that as a mere investment they will not pay, and at all events I will do my best to make them do so; but as for your reforms of army, church, and education that you talk about, I beg your Highness to leave it all alone. The shares in the bank will fall ten per cent. when it is known. My shares here are like the funds at Paris, they hate liberty. The less liberty, the higher they stand. It is just the same at Paris. Suppress a journal, and the rente rise a franc. Suppress all the journals, and they would rise five francs! Suppress the Assembly, and they would rise ten! Does your Serene Highness take part in pigeon-shooting?”

Making nothing of M. Blanc, except as to art matters, I returned slowly to the Castle, where I found the Council of State assembled to take the oaths.

I chatted with the members of the Council, but arranged to develope my plans in the first place to a few carefully-selected individuals. I fixed hours at which I would receive M. de Payan; Dr. Coulon; the curé of the cathedral; l’abbé Ramin; Père Pellico; and Colonel Jacquemet; after seeing the Governor General, Baron Imberty, and talking matters over with him. Baron Imberty I only saw because not to see him would be to pass a slight upon him; but I had no hope of help from him, and none from Colonel Jacquemet. From Père Pellico I knew that I should meet with opposition, and I received him only to see how strong and of what nature the opposition would be. I built my hopes upon M. de Payan, Dr. Coulon, and l’abbé Ramin.

To Baron Imberty I said only that I contemplated a reform in the army, a gradual liberation of the church from state control, and the re-organization of the schools. He answered that my wish was law, but that the church was very well as she stood.

To Colonel Jacquemet I explained in detail my military re-organization scheme, which was the best of my reforms. I pointed out to him that his force of forty men, now reduced to thirty-eight by the unfortunate wart and cold, was only preserved from becoming the laughing-stock of Europe by its exceptional discipline and courage. It was absolutely necessary for me to say this or he would have had a fit upon the spot. I directed that a list should be prepared of all the male inhabitants aged from sixteen to thirty, and numbering, as I calculated, about eight hundred. That of them those physically fit – some six hundred, as I should suppose – were to receive drill, and ultimately uniforms. The gallant forty men were to become sergeants, corporals, and inferior officers of the new national regiment. Captain Ruggeri and Lieutenant Gasignol were named its majors, and Lieutenants Plati and De la Rosière the senior captains. Four other captains were to be selected from among the privates and non-commissioned officers of the guard. The new levy was to be unpaid, and the only increased expense would be the uniforms and rifles, and at first the additional pay of the ten new officers. As vacancies occurred in company officers they were to be filled up by election by the company, but the majors were to be appointed by the colonel. The cost of the uniforms and arms I proposed to meet by selling for old iron our twenty magnificent, but useless pieces of old artillery. Modern artillery for the fortress I proposed to provide out of my private income, and as defence of the town was our only possible service, of field artillery I decided to have none. The night sentry duty at the palace was to be performed by the paid sergeants only, and the regiment was to parade but once a week. I could see that Colonel Jacquemet did not like it, but he bowed and left the room.

My next interview was with M. de Payan. He heartily concurred in my army reform, and said that no measure could be better for the country, educationally, than my plan of universal service of this limited character. When I came to talk of church reforms, however, M. de Payan was very cold and hard to fire. He advised me to talk the matter over with the curé, l’abbé Ramin, a most moderate man, and to beware of Father Pellico. From this negative position I could not move him.

The curé was my next visitor. He also agreed heartily in the wisdom of my army reform. He listened without dissent to my proposal for the gradual cessation of the small grant to the priests, including that to himself. On the other hand, when I spoke about the necessity of procuring lay teachers for the schools, he began to weep. I changed the subject, and when I allowed him to leave the room he said, with a singularly sweet smile, that he would go with my reforms as far as he could, that so just a man as my Highness would not harm his country, that God would watch over his church. I was touched by Abbé Ramin.

Dr. Coulon was then shown in. A man of intellect, as I could see at the first glance. I set before him my army reform, and he was delighted with it. I touched upon the separation of church and state, and he said that it was not hard to be done at Monaco – in name, that is, but difficult indeed to be done in fact. Still he supposed the name of separation was what I wanted, and the gradual cessation of the stipends, which would put Monaco in accord with the modern movement. I then referred to education.

He shook his head, and answered, “I should be your Highness’s sole supporter, and I am a materialist, and only tolerated here on account of my medical skill, and placed on the Council of Education because, as I am not in the habit of running my head against stone walls, I always side with the Jesuits.”

I insisted on the vast improvement in the standard of secular education to be expected from the introduction of highly trained lay teachers, and said that the priests should be absolutely free to teach the children out of school hours.

His reply was a singular one, and shook me.

“Your Highness is a democrat,” he said. “How then can your Highness impose your will in this matter upon a people who are unanimous? If your Highness wishes to escape individual responsibility for the existence of the present state of things, your Highness can dissolve the council of state and institute an elective parliament. That parliament would consist, let us say, of twelve members. If so, eleven would be priests or Jesuits, and the twelfth M. Blanc of the Casino – a body which would resemble in complexion some of the school boards in your Highness’s favourite England. Your Highness has a heavy task, and if that task be persevered in, I fear that the state of your Highness’s nerves will be such as to require my prescriptions.”

He was very free in his conversation, the old doctor, but it was a pleasing change after Baron Imberty and M. de Payan; not but what Abbé Ramin had much attracted me.

I did my best to charm Père Pellico. I courted him as my other subjects courted me. He was expansive in manner; but I am not a fool, and though only twenty-four, I knew enough of human nature to see that there was another Père Pellico underneath the smiling case-work which talked to me. To my military reform he had no objection, provided I exempted Jesuit students from service. I answered that I would exempt all those at present in Monaco, to which he replied that he feared then that I should never have the pleasure of seeing any others. I thought to myself “here is” – but Père Pellico smiled and slowly spoke again.

“Your Highness was thinking, I venture to imagine, that that would be an additional reason for hurrying your military reform. But I must crave the pardon of your Highness for speaking except in reply to your Highness. I have not the habit of courts.”

I spoke then of the Church; he was indifferent – the salaries of his four professors could easily be got from Italy. I then touched upon education.

Père Pellico, to my astonishment, exclaimed, “But on the contrary; my opinions are not different from those of your Highness. They are the same. But as a democrat I do not venture, although I may be wrong, to force them upon the people.”

Here was a change of base.

“If I were your Highness,” he continued, “I would dismiss the Council of State and call an elected parliament to frame a constitution. That would be a more regular method of proceeding than limiting your own prerogative by the exercise of that very prerogative itself.”

“Father,” I replied, “is not the country somewhat small for the complicated machinery of parliament?”

“Why then not try a Plebiscite, ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ upon certain written propositions, as in Zurich?”

“How liberal a politician can afford to be when he has the people with him,” I thought to myself as I bowed out Father Pellico.

For the next three weeks, until the end of February, things went smoothly with me. My great aunt bothered me so to marry a “nice steady young lady who would maintain the dignity of the Court, check the extravagance of the steward, and count the linen,” that I got Dr. Coulon to tell her that she would die unless she removed to Nice. She preferred a short remove to a long one, and took herself off to my great relief. She was a very fussy, but a clever and a really good old lady. My army reform went well enough, and the church edict was fulminated without meeting with opposition. I bought, through Mr. Gambart, who often came to Nice, a charming Leighton and a glorious Watts, and a fine Verboeckhoven from M. Blanc, as a beginning of the public collection. I moved the councils to the palace, and fitted up the public offices thus rendered vacant as my museum. I got M. Lucas at the Casino to improve his already admirable orchestra, to start a free school for instrumental music, and to play once a week in the town of Monaco instead of at Monte Carlo. I wrote to M. Gounod, whom I had the honour to count among my friends, to offer him the Louis Quinze rooms beyond the Chambre d’York, at the north-west corner of the Castle, with the most lovely view in both directions, and the prettiest decorations to my mind in all the palace, if he would come and stay with me as a permanent visitor, and countenance our musical efforts. I founded a school for modelling in clay, a class in decorative art which I taught myself, and I made the arrangements for the reception of a troop of actors in the winter, and for the production of Gounod’s “Jeanne d’Arc” – a piece which was suggested by Père Pellico. In the palace itself I made many improvements. Of the Chambre d’York I left nothing but the pretty mosaic floor, but the room itself, which had been gilt from top to bottom, bed and all, by my great-grandfather to take out the taste of the Great French Revolution, during which the palace had been a poor-house, I turned into a meeting room for the Council of State. My steam yacht had come with a temporary crew of English tars, and my two great 15-inch 60-ton Krupp guns – one for the terrace, seawards, and one for the garden, landwards – were ordered. The “reports” had been abolished; the nagging surveillance of the police had been abolished; the Church establishment had been abolished; and I then had nothing left to abolish but myself, the abolition of myself being a measure from which I shrank although, like King Leopold, I was ready to go if my subjects wished it.

The only one of my reforms which was really popular was the national army, which afforded all the young married men in the principality a weekly holiday away from their wives. But Major Gasignol, who had a “soul above buttons,” used on parade when he was acting as adjutant to take an opportunity of reminding me of the days of glory when one of my ancestors, Grimaldi II., about the time of the Norman conquest of England, had delivered at Rome the Pope from the forces of no less a personage than the Emperor.

All this time, however, my education scheme and my substitution of an elective for a nominated council were in abeyance, the first on account of Père Pellico’s opposition, the second I might almost say on account of his support.

Dr. Coulon, consulted by me, often used to say, “Why does not your Highness throw the responsibility upon a parliament of leaving matters where they are?”

“But I wish to change them,” I as often replied.

“I can understand that your Highness should wish to be thought to wish to change them, but further than that point I can not follow your Highness.”

I seriously thought of clapping Dr. Coulon into prison for his impertinence, but then he was the only liberal in Monaco, and I was a liberal prince. How I wished, though, that my uncle had not been such a fool as to invite the Jesuits, harassed in Italy in 1862, to take refuge in his dominions.

I was no further advanced than my grandfather, Florestan I., who when overtaken by the events of 1848, which lost him Mentone and Roquebrune, contemplated a parliament, which however he never formed. It was a funny constitution was that one which he posted on the walls, and over which I had often mused. It had not gone further than being posted on the walls, I should add, because my grandfather found that it would not bring back Mentone, and as he was strong enough to keep Monaco with or without it he had, very sensibly, put it in the fire. The 11th article of it was the oddest: – “La presse sera libre, mais sujette à des lois répressives.” But the first article gave the tone to the whole: – “The sole religion of the State is the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman.”

I strolled up the terraces of Monte Carlo, which always reminded me of John Martin’s idea of heaven, and consulted M. Blanc. He was in especially good humour that day, because “Madame Brisebanque” and “the Maltese” had both been losing money. Still, when I talked of my parliament and my education reform, he talked of “Jacob’s ladder” and of other infallible systems of ruining him which never had any result except that of beggaring their authors. He told me a long-winded story of how at Homburg a company called “La Contrebanque” had won twenty-four days in succession, and how on the twenty-fifth they had sent for a watchman and an iron chest to guard their winnings, how that afternoon their secretary had lost the whole capital in eighteen coups, and how the innocent watchman had marched up and down all night religiously guarding an empty chest. I tried to hark back to my subject, when off he went again at a tangent, and told me how the day before on opening the “bienfaisance” collection-box in the hall of the hotel they had found no money, but all the letters of an American gentleman who had posted them there the year before. Another of his anecdotes was of a lady who, having lost, had eaten a thousand-franc note on a slice of bread and butter to improve her luck. M. Blanc left the Casino in his carriage just after I had ridden off, and without seeming to look I saw well enough out of the corner of my eyes after he had passed me on the road, that the people uncovered to him more universally and for a longer time than to myself. There was, however, one difference between us – I returned the bows and he did not.

I gave up M. Blanc and pursued my reforming course, abandoning, however, the idea of a parliament and fearing to touch education. My government, now in working order, resembled in no way that which you English think the best of all possible polities – “constitutional monarchy” – which with you appears to me to mean a democratic republic tempered by snobbism and corruption. Mine was a socialistic autocracy, which, in spite of my failure, I maintain to be the best of governments, provided only that you can secure the best of autocrats.