VILLEFRANCHE AND THE FORTIFICATIONS
Nice in many respects is the centre from which radiates all the life of
the Riviera; moreover its military and strategic importance attains the
same distinction; it is the base of the whole system, social and
political.
East and west the “Côte d’Azur” extends until it runs against the grime
and commercial activity of Marseilles on the one side, and Genoa on the
other.
From the heights back of Nice one sees the Ligurian coast stretch away
to infinity, with the sea and the distant isles to the right, while to
the left are the peaks of the Maritime Alps.
[Illustration: _Cap Ferrat_]
On this _pied de terre_ France has organized a great series of defences
by land and sea. On every height is a fort or a battery, like the
castle-crowned crags of the Rhine. The bays and harbours below the
foot-hills are all defended from the menaces of a real or imaginary foe
by a guardian fringe of batteries and defences of all ranks, and, what
with battle-ships and torpedo-boats, and destroyers and submarines,
this frontier strip is in no more danger of sudden attack by an
unfriendly power than are the interior provinces of Berry and Burgundy.
The entire country around Nice is one vast entrenched camp, constructed,
equipped, and maintained, as may be supposed, with considerable
difficulty and at enormous expense. A mountain fortress whose very
stones, to say nothing of other materials, are transported up a
trailless mountainside, is one of the wonder-works of man, and here
there is a long line of such, encircling the whole region from the
Italian frontier westward to Toulon.
Above all, the fortifications are concentrated in the country just back
of the capital of the Riviera. All the great hillsides, rocky,
moss-grown, or covered with pines or olive-trees, are a network of forts
and batteries, strategic roads, reservoirs of water, and magazines of
shot and shell.
One of the strongest of these forts is on the flanks of Mont Boron; Cap
Ferrat holds another, and the “Route de la Corniche,” the only low-level
line of communication between France and Italy, literally bristles with
the same sort of thing.
Fort de la Drette, five hundred metres in altitude, rises above that
astonishing Saracen village of Eze, while a strategic route leads to
another at Feuillerins, six hundred and forty-eight metres high, and
thence to Fort de la Revere at seven hundred and three metres, an
impregnable series of fortifications, one would think.
Between the battery-crowned heights are the reservoirs and magazines of
powder, all in full view of the automobile and coach tourists from Nice
to Monte Carlo. The route skirts La Revere and the great towering rock
back of Monte Carlo, known as the “Tête de Chien,” and the tourist may
readily enough judge for himself as to the utility and efficacy of these
distinctly modern defences.
The crowning glory, however, is on Mont Agel, the culminating peak in
the vicinity of Nice. It is situated at a height of eleven hundred and
forty-nine metres, and it would take a long siege indeed to capture this
fortress, if things ever came to an issue in its neighbourhood.
Of all the wonderful examples of road-making in France, and they are
more numerous and excellent than elsewhere, the “Route de la Grande
Corniche” is the best known, covering as it does a matter of nearly
fifty kilometres from Nice to Vintimille.
Personally conducted tourists make the trip in brakes and char-à-bancs
via Mont Gros and its observatory, the Col des Quatre Chemins, by Eze
perched on its pyramidal rock, and La Turbie with its memories of
Augustus, until they descend, either via Roquebrune to Menton, or by the
steeps of La Turbie to Monte Carlo and its “_distractions de haut
goût_.”
It is all very wonderful and, to the traveller who makes the trip for
the first time or the hundredth, the beauties of the panorama which
unfolds at every white kilometre stone is so totally different from that
which he has just passed that he wonders if he is not journeying on some
sort of a magic carpet which simply floats in space. Certainly there is
no more beautiful view-point in all the world than that from the height
overlooking Monaco, Monte Carlo, and Cap Martin, all bedded like jewels
amid an inconceivable brilliancy and softness, a combination which seems
paradoxical enough in print, but which in real life is quite the
reverse, although it is ravishingly beautiful enough to be unreal.
The twenty-franc excursionists from Nice are rushed out from town in the
early morning, via “La Grande Corniche,” to Menton, and back in the
early afternoon via the “Route du Bord du Mer,” at something like the
speed that the _malle-poste_ of other days used to thread the great
national roadways of France. Really the excursion is quite worth the
money, and you _do_ cover the ground, but you cover it much too rapidly,
and so do the speeding automobilists. By far the best way to drink in
all the beauties of this delightful promenade is to devote a week to it,
and do it on foot. Walking tours are not fashionable any more, and in
many thousands of miles of travel by road in France, the writer has
never so much as walked between neighbouring villages, but some day that
promenade _au pied_ is going to be made on the “Corniche” between Nice
and Menton, returning, as do the “trippers,” via the lower road through
Monte Carlo, La Condamine, and Beaulieu. It is the only way to
appreciate the artistic beauties, and the strategic value, of this great
highway of a civilization of another day, whose life, if not as refined
as that of the present, could hardly have been more dissolute than that
which to-day goes on to some extent here in this playground of the
world.
One should make the journey out by the “Corniche” and back by the
waterside, lunching at the _auberge_ at Eze off an anchovy or two, a
handful of dried figs, and a flagon of thick, red, perfumed wine. Then
he will indeed think life worth living, and regret that such things as
railway trains, automobiles, and palace hotels ever existed.
Beyond Nice the Corniche route toward Italy is ample and majestic
throughout its whole course, though, as a whole, it is no more beautiful
than that Corniche by the Estérel. It winds around Mont Gros, at the
back of Nice, and reaches its greatest height just beyond the Auberge de
la Drette. _En route_, at least after passing the Col des Quatre
Chemins, there is that ever-present panorama of the Mediterranean blue
which all Frenchmen, and most dwellers on its shores, and some others
besides, consider the most beautiful bit of water in the world.
To know the full charms of the road from Nice to Villefranche and
Beaulieu one should start early in the morning, say in April or even
May, when, to him who has only known the Riviera in the winter months,
the very liquidness of the atmosphere and the landscape will be a
revelation. All is impregnated with a penetrating gentle light, under
which the house walls, the roadway, the waves, the rocks, and the
foliage take on a subtle tone which is quite indescribable and quite
different from the artificiality which is more or less present all
through the Riviera towns in winter. There is a difference, too, from
the sun-baked dryness of the dead of summer. Each rock, each cliff, each
bank of sand, and each wavelet of the Mediterranean has a note which
forms the one tone needful for the gamut which is played upon one’s
emotions.
Rounding Mont Boron by the coast road, one soon comes to Villefranche,
whose very name indicates the privileges which were accorded to it by
its founder, Charles II., Comte de Provence et Roi de Naples. Built in
1295, it became at once a free trading port, and speedily drew to itself
a very considerable population. Soon, too, it came into prominence as a
military port, and the Ducs de Savoie made it their chief arsenal.
To-day Villefranche occupies a very equivocal position. It has a
population of something over five thousand souls, and its splendid
harbour gives it a prominence in naval circles which is well deserved;
but, in spite of this, the town has none of the attributes of the other
Riviera coast towns and cities.
The prevailing note of Villefranche is Oriental, with its house walls
kalsomined in red, blue, and pink, in ravishingly delicate and
picturesque tones; really a great improvement, from every point of view,
to the whitewash of Anglo-Saxon lands. The French name for this species
of decoration is the worst thing about it, and, unless one has a
considerable French vocabulary, the word “_badigeonée_” means nothing.
Another exotic in the way of nomenclature which one meets at
Villefranche is _moucharabieh_, which is not found in many dictionaries
of the French language. A _moucharabieh_ is nothing more or less than a
unique variety of window screen or blind, behind which, taking into
account the Eastern aspect of all things in Villefranche, one needs only
to see the beautiful head of an Oriental maiden to imagine himself in
far Arabia.
It is but a step beyond Villefranche to Beaulieu and “_La Petite
Afrique_,” generally thought to be the most exclusive and retired of all
the Riviera resorts. To a great extent this is so, though the scorching
automobilists of the _nouveau-riche_ variety have covered its giant
olive-trees with a powdery whiteness which has considerably paled their
already delicate gray tones.
Between Villefranche and Beaulieu is the peninsula of St. Jean, washed
by the waves on either side and as indented and jagged as the shores of
Greece. To-day it has become an annex of Nice, with opulent villas of
kings, princes, and millionaires, from Leopold, King of Belgium down.
[Illustration: _Villa of Leopold, King of Belgium_]
At St. Jean-sur-Mer, midway down the peninsula, is a little fishing
village, still quaint and unspoiled amid all the splendours of the
palaces of kings and villas of millionaires, which have of late grown
so plentiful in this once virgin forest tract. There are many souvenirs
here of the time when the neighbourhood was occupied by the Knights
Hospitalers of St. John of Jerusalem, and there is much history and
legend connected with them. Seaward is the Promontory or Pointe de St.
Hospice, where the Duc de Savoie, Emmanuel Philibert, built a
fortification. It was an ideal spot for a defensive work of this nature,
though it protected nothing except what was inside. It must, in a former
day, have been a very satisfactory work of its kind, as it is recorded
that this prince, coming to view the progress of the work, and fallen
upon by the Saracens, retreated within the walls of his new defence,
where he successfully repulsed all their attacks.
Many times did the pirates attack this outpost, but finally, as the
country became peaceful, a hospice came to take the place of the warlike
fortification, and from this establishment the Pointe de St. Hospice of
to-day takes its name.
Half-way up the foot-hills of the Alps the great white ribbon of the
“Corniche” rolls its solitary way until La Turbie is reached. Here is a
little village seated proudly beneath that colossal ruin, the Augustan
trophy, which has been a marvel and subject of speculation for
archæologists for ages past. One thing seems certain, however, and that
is that it was a monument commemorative of the submission of forty-five
distinct peoples of western Gaul to the power of Rome.
Westward is Roquebrune, where the “Corniche” drops to the two
hundred-metre level, and one rapidly approaches the sea beyond Cap
Martin, and thus reaches Menton, but two kilometres onward.
The coast route from Nice to Menton via Villefranche and Beaulieu
approximates the same length as the “Corniche” proper, and its charms
are as varied. It rolls along behind the old citadel of Mont Boron and
suddenly opens up the magnificent bay of Villefranche, the favourite
Mediterranean station of the Russians and Americans, and thence on
rapidly to Beaulieu, Monte Carlo, and Menton.
All the way this route by the sea follows the shore and skirts
picturesque gulfs and _calanques_, and now and then tunnels a hillside
only to come out into day and a vista more beautiful than that which was
left behind.