A Book of The Riviera

Sieyès was born at Fréjus in 1748, and was trained for orders at S. Sulpice. In 1788 he was sent as member for the clerical order to the Provincial Assembly at Orléans. He saw what was the trend of opinion and what must inevitably happen, and he wrote his trenchant pamphlets, Essai sur les Privilèges and Qu’est-ce que le tiers-état, 1789, that acted as firebrands through France. He was elected by Paris as representative at the General Assembly that met at Versailles. There, looking at the nobles in their sumptuous attire, the curés in their soutannes, and the representatives of the Third Estate in their humble cloth, he said, “One people! – We are three nations,” and he it was who, on July 20th, on entering the Assembly, exclaimed, “It is time now to cut the cords,” and sent an imperious message to the other two Houses to enter and sit along with the Tiers État.

He strove hard against the abolition of tithe without some compensation to the clergy, but was overborne. The general feeling was against this. As he saw that anarchy was resulting from the conduct of the Assembly he withdrew from taking any further active part; but he was elected by the Department of Sarthe to sit as deputy in the Convention.

At the trial of Louis XIV. he voted for his death – “La mort – sans phrases.” When in 1798 he was commissioned by the Directory as Ambassador to Berlin, he sent an invitation to a German prince to dine with him. The prince wrote across it, “Non – sans phrases.” He was elected into the Council of the Five Hundred. At this time it was that the half-crazy fanatical Cordelier Poule attempted to shoot him. Sieyès struck the pistol aside, but was wounded in the hand and shoulder. Poule was sentenced for this for twenty years to the galleys, and died on them. Sieyès was a member of the Directory. He was a great man for drawing up schemes for a Constitution. The Directory had lost all credit; France was sick of its constituent Assemblies, Legislative Assemblies, Conventions, and Directory. This latter, at one moment feeble, at the next violent, seemed to be able to govern only by successive coups d’état, always a token of weakness. It had brought France to the verge of bankruptcy. In its foreign policy it had committed gross imprudences, and now a new coalition had been formed against France, and the armies had met with reverses in Italy and Germany. At this juncture Napoleon landed at S. Raphael. As he travelled to Paris he was everywhere greeted with enthusiasm as the expected saviour of the country. But on reaching Paris he behaved with caution; he seemed only to live for his sister, and for his wife, Josephine, and for his colleagues of the Institut. But he was watching events. Everyone was then conspiring; Sieyès in the Directory, Fouché and Talleyrand in the ministry, a hundred others in the Conseils, Sieyès said, “What is wanting for France is a head,” tapping his own brow, “and a sword,” looking significantly at Napoleon. He was to learn very soon that head and sword would go together.

The 18th Brumaire was contrived by Sieyès; but he was in his coach, outside S. Cloud, when Napoleon entered to dissolve the Council of the Five Hundred. In face of the tumult within Bonaparte lost his confidence and was thrust forth by the Deputies. He found Sieyès in his carriage, to which were harnessed six horses, ready to start at full gallop should the coup fail. “Do they seek to outlaw you?” asked Sieyès. “Man, outlaw them yourself.” Napoleon recovered himself and re-entered the hall at the head of his soldiery. The situation was saved.

Bonaparte, Sieyès, and Roger-Ducros were nominated Consuls. The Revolution had abdicated into the hands of the military. That same evening Sieyès said to his intimates, “We have given ourselves a master.”

Afterwards, Bonaparte, as first Consul, took him into the Senate, and granted to him the domains of Crosne. Later, it was said —

“Bonaparte à Sieyès a fait présent de Crosne,Sieyès à Bonaparte a fait présent de trône.”

Under the empire Sieyès was created a count.

During the Hundred Days, Sieyès took his place in the Chamber of Peers, but at the second restoration he was banished as one of the regicides. He went to Brussels, but after the Revolution of 1830 returned to Paris, where he died in 1836.

To finish with one more worthy, of a character very different from the rest: Marc Antoine Désaugiers. Born at Féjus in 1772, he died in 1827. He was the soul of the Caveau Moderne.

The old Caveau had been founded by Piron, Collé, and others. They met twice a month at the wine-shop of Landelle, where they produced songs, stories, and epigrams they had composed, dined and drank together. This réunion began in 1737, and lasted over ten years.

After the 9th Thermidor, and the fall of Robespierre, the Terror was at an end. Men began to breathe freely, lift up their heads, and look about for amusements to indemnify themselves for the reign of horrors they had passed through. Then some choice spirits renewed the reminiscences of the old Caveau, and met near the Theatre of the Vaudeville, opened in 1792. The songs that were sung, the stories there told, flew about. The public desired to share in the merriment, and in Vendémiaire of the year V. (September, 1796) appeared the first number of the Caveau Moderne. The tavern at which the company met was “Le Rocher de Cancalle.” A complete edition of the songs was published in 1807. The tunes to which the songs were set were either well-known folk-melodies, or opera-house airs.

Désaugiers was a large contributor.

As a specimen of his style I give some stanzas of his “Carnaval.”

“Momus agite ses grelots,Comus allume ses fourneaux,Bacchus s’enivre sur sa tonne,Palas déraisonne, Apollon détonne,Trouble divin, bruit infernal —V’là c’que c’est que l’Carnaval.“Un char pompeusement ornéPrésente à notre œil étonnéQuinze poissardes qu’avec peineUne rosse traine: Jupiter les mène;Un Cul-de-jatte est à cheval;V’là c’que c’est que l’Carnaval.“Arlequin courtise Junon,Columbine poursuit Pluton,Mars Madame Angot qu’il embrasse,Crispin une Grace, Venus un Paillasse;Ciel, terre, enfers, tout est égal;V’là c’que c’est que l’Carnaval.“Mercure veut rosser Jeannot,On crie à la garde aussitôt;Et chacun voit de l’aventureLe pauvre Mercure à la préfecture,Couché, – sur un procès verbal;V’là c’que c’est que l’Carnaval.“Profitant aussi des jours gras,Le traiteur déguise ses plats,Nous offre vinaigre en bouteille,Ragoût de la vieille, Daube encore plus vieille:Nous payons bien, nous soupons mal;V’là c’que c’est que l’Carnaval.“Carosses pleins sont par milliersRegorgeant dans tous les quartiers;Dedans, dessus, devout, dernière,Jusqu’à la portière, quelle fourmilière!Des fous on croit voire l’hôpital;V’là c’que c’est que l’Carnaval.“Quand on a bien ri, bien couru,Bien chanté, bien mangé et bu,Mars d’un frippier reprend l’enseigne,Pluton son empeigne, Jupiter son peigne:Tout rentre en place; et, bien ou mal,V’là c’que c’est que l’Carnaval.”

Désaugiers was one day invited to preside at the annual dinner of the pork butchers. After the table was cleared he rose, and all expected the oration or song of the evening. Looking round with a twinkle in his eye, he began —

“Des Cochons, des Cochons.”

The pork butchers bridled up, grew red with wrath, thinking that this was intended as an insult, when Désaugiers proceeded with his song —

“Décochons les traits de la satire.”

A French author has said of him: —

“Désaugiers is song personified; – all gaiety, fun, laughter. He has in him something of the spirit of Rabelais. His inherent wit breaks out like the effervescence of champagne. Thought and rhyme are born in him along with song. Every refrain in his compositions is full of joyous sparkle.”

CHAPTER IX

DRAGUIGNAN

The Department of Var – A lifeless town – Dolmen – S. Armentarius kills a dragon – The old walled town – The Fronde – The Sabreurs and the Canifets – Les Tourettes – Joanna I. of Naples; her story – The Crown of Jerusalem – Charles I. of Anjou – Death of Conradin – Murder of Andrew of Hungary – Philippine Cabane – Louis of Hungary invades Naples – Joanna buys a sentence clearing her of guilt by the sale of Avignon – Joanna’s many sales – Again declared innocent – Charles of Durazzo – Urban VI. and Clement VII. – Urban incites Charles against Joanna; her assassination; her character – Butello – Death of Charles – Joanna II. makes Réné her heir – Pedigree – Joanna and Caracciolo

DRAGUIGNAN is the capital of the Department of Var. The name of the department is a misnomer. It received the name when the department extended to that river, formerly the boundary of France. But when, in 1860, Nice was ceded to France and the department of the Maritime Alps was formed, then a slice of territory, through which flowed the River Var, was detached and united to the newly constituted department. The consequence is that the River Var at no point runs through the department to which it gave its name.

Draguignan is not an interesting town. It lives on its character as departmental capital. It has no manufactures, no trade, no life save that which is infused into it when the young folk come up there for examination for professions, and from the military who are quartered there, and from the prisons which accommodate the criminals of the department. Draguignan is supposed to have been a Greek town called Antea. But there must have been people living here in prehistoric times, for near the town is a dolmen as fine as any in Brittany or Wales. It is composed of four upright stones supporting a quoit eighteen feet long and fifteen wide, and the height above the ground is seven feet.

In the Middle Ages the place was called Drachœnum, and it was fabled that the old town stood on the heights above, as the plain was ravaged by a dragon. St. Armentarius, Bishop of Antibes (A.D. 451) slew the monster, whereupon the people came down from the heights and settled where is the present town. The town really began to flourish in the thirteenth century, when, owing to the silting up of the port of Fréjus, that city declined in prosperity. Then it was surrounded by a wall pierced by three gates, of which two remain. Within the old walls the streets are scarce six feet wide, and the houses run up to a great height. The sun never penetrates to their pavement. The town was also defended by a castle on rising ground. In 1535 Draguignan was one of the principal Sénéchaussées of Provence. She rapidly spread beyond the walls, and then a second circuit of walls was erected where is now the boulevard; but portions of the ramparts to the east and north-east still remain.

In 1650 Draguignan was the scene of bloody fights on account of the troubles of the Fronde. During the minority of Louis XIV., the Regent, Anne of Austria, committed all authority to Cardinal Mazarin. He loaded the country with taxes, took away the privileges from the towns, and from the nobles, and strove to centralise the Government and establish the despotism of the Crown. This roused the fiercest opposition, and the country was divided into factions; one for the Court and centralization, the other for the maintenance of local self-government. This latter party was the Fronde. In Draguignan some Frondists attempted to get hold of the castle; the people rose, armed with spits and clubs, and drove them away. The parties distinguished themselves by wearing ribbons, white or blue.

Two years later civil war broke out again between the Sabreurs, the Fronde party, and the Canifets, the favourers of Royal prerogative; each was headed by a young peasantess armed with a scythe. Frightful violence ensued. The mayor and many officers of the town were killed. Men, women, and children were massacred indiscriminately as this or that faction got the upper hand.

The king sent troops to Draguignan, and ordered the demolition of the castle, which was the bone of contention between the parties, and most of the Sabreurs fled into Piedmont. The story goes that a cavalry regiment called La Cornette blanche was quartered in the town, and having behaved with great insolence, the people rose in the night and massacred every man in the regiment, But in the municipal records there is nothing to be found to confirm the tradition.

Les Tourettes by Fayence, easily accessible from Draguignan, is a most extraordinary pile, like no other castle known. In the time of the religious wars it was held by the Carcists, and they, being short of provisions, at night raided the neighbourhood. The people of Fayence complained to the Governor of Provence, and he authorised them to take what measures they liked to free themselves of the inconvenience. Accordingly they sent for a cannon from Antibes and proceeded to batter the castle down; and by keeping up an incessant fire they made the castle too hot for the Carcists, who fled, and then the good folk of Fayence proceeded to gut and unroof the castle, so as to save themselves from further annoyance from that quarter.

Draguignan was supplied with water by a canal cut, so it is asserted, by Queen Jeanne I. of Sicily, and she is also credited with having built the church at Salernes at the confluence of the Bresgne and the Brague, and to have resided at Draguignan.

It is remarkable that only two names of their former rulers have any hold on the imagination and hearts of the Provençals of to-day, and these the names of two totally different characters —la reino Jeanno and good King Réné. It was through Queen Joanna or Jeanne of Sicily that King Réné acquired his empty royal titles. At Grasse a flight of stone steps built into a vaulted passage is all that remains of her palace. Houses said to have been occupied by her are pointed out in many places, but in some instances, as in that of the pretty Renaissance palace of Queen Jeanne at Les Baux, there is confusion made between her and Jeanne de Laval, the wife of King Réné.

It may be asked, How in the name of Wonder did Joanna obtain the title of Queen of Jerusalem, so as to transmit the Crown of the Holy City to Réné through her grandniece, Joanna II.?

The bitter and implacable hostility borne by the Popes to the German Imperial House of Hohenstauffen led Urban IV. to invite S. Louis, King of France, to assume the title of King of Sicily and Naples. But the delicate conscience of Louis revolted from such an usurpation. If the Crown were hereditary, it belonged to Conradin, grandson of Frederick II., the Great Redbeard, Emperor, King of Germany and of Sicily. But Charles of Anjou, the brother of S. Louis, was less scrupulous. He accepted the invitation. On the death of Urban, Clement IV. pursued the same policy. Manfred, the uncle of Conradin, then wore the Crown of the Sicilies. He was defeated by Charles and fell in battle, 1266, before the army of the Pope and of Charles of Anjou, marching as crusaders. Manfred left an only child, Constance, married to Peter III., King of Aragon. Conradin, at the head of an army, advanced to claim the Crown that was now his by right, regardless of the excommunication and curses hurled at him by the Pope. He was defeated and taken prisoner. Clement, fearful lest Charles should deal leniently towards the last of the Hohenstaufens, wrote to urge him to smother all feelings of pity.

“The life of Conradin,” he wrote, “is the death of Charles; the death of Conradin is the life of Charles”; and the Anjou prince had the last male of this noble race executed publicly. As Conradin stood on the scaffold, he flung his glove among the people, crying out that he constituted the King of Aragon his heir.

Charles was now King of the Two Sicilies. But he was ambitious of a more splendid title, and he bought that of Jerusalem from Mary of Antioch, daughter of Bohimund V., who inherited the title of King of Jerusalem from his mother, Melusina, daughter of Amaury de Lusignan, twelfth sovereign of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. But Jerusalem itself had fallen into the hands of the Saracens in 1244.

To return now to Jeanne de Naples.

Joanna I. of Naples was born in 1327, and was the daughter of Charles, Duke of Calabria, and of Marie de Valois, his second wife. Charles was the only son of Robert the Good, King of Naples, who was the grandson of Charles of Anjou, brother of S. Louis, to whom had been given the Crown of Naples by Pope Urban IV., determined at any cost to destroy the Hohenstauffen dynasty.

Charles, Duke of Calabria, died before his father, and Joanna succeeded to the throne at the age of sixteen.

She had been badly brought up. Philippine Cabane, a washerwoman, wife of a fisherman, had been nurse to Charles, and she became later the nurse and confidante of Joanna. She was a very beautiful and a thoroughly unprincipled woman. On the death of her husband she married a young Saracen slave in the service of Raymond de Cabane, maître d’hôtel to the King. Raymond fell under the influence of this Saracen, and he introduced him to King Robert, who created him Grand Seneschal, to the indignation of the Sicilian nobility, and himself armed the Saracen knight.9 Soon after marrying this man, we find “la Cabanaise,” as she was called, installed as lady of honour to Catherine of Austria, first wife of Charles of Calabria. Soon she induced Raymond to adopt her husband, and to give him his title and bequeath his fortune to him. Catherine of Austria died, and then Charles married Marie de Valois; and when Jeanne or Joanna was born, Charles entrusted his child to this infamous woman.

King Robert had been younger brother of Charles Martel, King of Hungary, and the Crown of Naples was liable to be disputed between the branches. It was therefore deemed advisable to marry Joanna to Andrew, son of Caroly I., and grandson of Charles Martel, King of Hungary.

Joanna and Andrew were married when mere children – she, in fact, was only seven when affianced to him. She and Andrew never liked each other, and when they occupied one throne, dislike ripened into aversion; two factions rent the Court with their rivalries, one favoured by the King, the other by the Queen. At last Philippine Cabane induced Joanna to acquiesce in a plot to murder Andrew. One evening in September, 1345, when the Court was at Averso, the chamberlain of the King entered the bedroom, where were Andrew and Joanna, and announced to him that he had despatches of importance to communicate. Andrew rose from bed and went into the adjoining apartment, where he was set upon, and hung from the bars of the window with a rope into which gold thread had been twisted by the hands of Joanna, for as Andrew was a king, “Let him be strangled royally,” she had said.

The body of Andrew was left hanging from the window for two days. Joanna at the time was aged eighteen, but she was utterly corrupt in mind. At quite an early age she had had a liaison with the son of la Cabanaise. Pope Clement VI. deemed it incumbent on him as suzerain to order the murderers to be punished; but only accessories suffered. Philippine was tortured and died under torture. Her son, Robert de Cabane, was also made to suffer in like manner; but a wad was put in his mouth to prevent him from betraying the part the Queen had in the murder, and those publicly executed were also so gagged that they might not reveal her complicity in the crime.

In less than two years after, on August 20th, 1347, Joanna married Louis of Tarentum, her cousin, who had been one of the prime investigators of the murder. But Louis, King of Hungary, was determined to avenge the death of his brother, and he marched an army against Naples, under a black flag, on which was embroidered a representation of the murder of Andrew.

Louis of Tarentum headed an army of Neapolitans against the invader, but it dispersed of itself, and Joanna fled with him to Provence in January, 1348, leaving behind her, in heartless indifference, her son, the child of the murdered Andrew.

On reaching Provence she found the barons there by no means disposed to receive her with cordiality. The atrocity of the crime revolted them, and for a whole year they held her in prison. She was arraigned before the world as an adulteress and a murderess.

At length, thanks to the intervention of Pope Clement VI., she was allowed to take refuge in Avignon, where she arranged terms with Clement, that he should declare her innocent and sanction her marriage with her cousin, in exchange for which favour she was to make over to him, for a nominal sum, the city of Avignon without the Venaissin previously acquired. The stipulated sum was 80,000 gold florins, amounting to about £128,000 in modern money. The sale was in direct contravention to the terms of the will of King Robert, who constituted her heiress with the proviso that she was not to dissipate the Crown lands and rights in the Two Sicilies and in Provence. It was further a breach of a solemn oath she had taken to the barons “that she would never alienate or wrong her royal and loyal estates of Provence.” But Joanna was in need of money to prosecute the war against Louis of Hungary. For this purpose she sold rights and domains wherever she could find a purchaser. She disposed of the forests of the Montagnes des Maures to the town of Hyères, and the fishing in the lake of Hyères as well. The rights of the Crown to the harvest of the kermes or cochineal insect that lived on the oaks, were also sold. Parts of the Estérel were alienated. Marseilles and other towns bought of her valuable privileges.

Meanwhile, Louis of Hungary had lost much of his army about Naples, swept off by plague. He himself returned to Hungary, carrying with him the son of Joanna, born two months after the death of Andrew, deserted by her at Naples; the child, however, died soon after. Joanna, whitewashed by the Pope, returned to Naples in 1348, in August, whereupon Louis again appeared in Italy at the head of an army, but met with small success, and a truce was arranged; whereupon Joanna returned to Avignon, there to have her guilt or innocence formally tried before three cardinals nominated by the Pope.

Louis accused Joanna of being more than accessory to the murder of her husband, and Louis of Tarentum of being an instigator of the crime, and Cardinal Talleyrand Perigord as having also been in the plot.

Joanna appeared before the Papal Commission. She pleaded guilty only to having disliked her husband, and claimed that this was due to witchcraft. She was acquitted as innocent of all charges brought against her; and as the Pope was regarded as infallible judge, in morals as in matters of faith, the world was constrained to acquiesce in the judgment.

Joanna returned to Naples, where she held a gay, voluptuous court, frequented by the wits and artists of Italy. Boccaccio wrote for her his filthy tales, which he afterwards grouped together in the Decameron. Petrarch corresponded with her. Leonardo da Vinci painted her portrait; pupils of Giotto painted for her; Troubadours sang before her, and were fulsome in their praise.

But her rule was no rule at all. The country suffered from misgovernment. Companies of adventurers ravaged the kingdom, and carried their depredations to the very gates of Naples. Joanna cared for none of these things; did not give over her revelries and carnival entertainments. Her husband Louis was offended at her shameless gallantries, and beat her with his fists. He died in May, 1362; and she at once offered her hand to James of the House of Aragon, claimant to the throne of Majorca, a young and chivalrous prince. He accepted, and they were married in 1363; but she would not allow him any further title than that of Duke of Calabria.

He was disgusted with the frivolity of her Court, and with her conduct, and fearing lest the same fate should befall him that had come on her first husband Andrew, he quitted Naples and fled to Spain. James of Aragon died, and in 1376 Joanna married Otto of Brunswick. This fourth marriage offended Charles of Durazzo, grandson of John de Gravia, younger brother of Robert, King of the Two Sicilies, who calculated on succeeding to the throne and the county of Provence should Joanna die childless. His father Louis had been poisoned by Queen Joanna. Now ensued the great schism.

For seventy years the papal court had been at Avignon, and the Romans were sore that the money accruing from the influx of pilgrims, litigants, and suitors to the Pope should flow into the pockets of the Avignonese instead of their own. Gregory IX. had come to Rome, urged thereto by S. Catherine of Siena; and there he died in 1378. Thereupon the Romans, armed and furious, surrounded the conclave of the Cardinals, shouting for a Roman Pope. At the time there were in Rome sixteen Cardinals; eleven were French, four Italian, and one Spanish. Intimidated by the menaces of the populace, quaking for their lives, the Cardinals elected the Archbishop of Bari, a narrow-minded man, of low birth, coarse manners, no tact, and, as proved eventually, of remorseless cruelty. He showed at once of what stuff he was made by insulting the Cardinals, and by threats of swamping the college with Italian creations. The Cardinals fled to Anagni, where they issued a declaration that the election was void, as it had been made under compulsion, and that their lives had been threatened. However, the newly-elected Pope assumed the name of Urban VI. As Archbishop of Bari he had been the subject of Joanna, and she hailed his elevation, and sent him shiploads of fruit and wines, and the more solid gift of 20,000 florins. Her husband, Otho of Brunswick, went to Rome to pay his personal homage. But his reception was cold and repellent, and he retired in disgust.