But we were as yet in no mood to climb this height, even with the help
of a funicular railway, and I made my explorations at such convenient
elevations as I could reach on foot, or by the help of one of those
luxurious landaus peculiar to Monte Carlo.
One such point was undoubtedly the headland of Monaco, where the Greeks
of Marseilles, long enough before Augustus, built a temple to Hercules
Monoecus. The Grimaldi family which gave Genoa many doges, came early
into the sovereignty of Monaco, by the hook or crook those days, but
whether it was they who fostered its piracy in the fourteenth century,
does not distinctly appear, though it seems certain that one of the
Grimaldi princes served against the English under Philip of Valois, and
was wounded at Crecy. In 1524 a successor went over to the empire under
Charles V. Still later the principality returned to the sovereignty of
France, and in 1793 the French republicans frankly annexed it, but it
was given back to the Grimaldi in 1814.
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