The Grimaldi on the whole were a baddish line of potentates, and only
lacked largeness of scene to have left the memory of world-tragedies.
They murdered one another, at least in two cases; in another, the people
killed their ruler by publicly drowning him in the sea for insulting
their women; the princes were the protectors of piracy, and in the very
late times following their restoration by the Congress of Vienna, the
reigning prince confiscated the property of the churches for his own
behoof, and took into his hands the whole trade of the principality. He
alone bought and ground the grain, and baked the bread, which he sold to
his people at an extortionate price; he bought damaged flour in Genoa
and fed it to his subjects at the same rate as good. When they murmured
and threatened rebellion, he threatened in turn that he would rule them
with a rod of iron, as if their actual conditions were not bad enough.
Some of his oppressions were of a fantasticality bordering on comic
opera: travellers had to give up their provisions at the frontier and
eat the official bread of Monaco; ships entering the port were
confiscated if they had brought more loaves than sufficed them for their
voyage thither; no man might cut his own wood without leave of the
police, or prune his trees, or till his land, or irrigate it; the birth
and death of every animal must be publicly registered, with the payment
of a given tax, and nobody could go out after ten at night without
carrying a taxed lantern.
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