The Grimaldis of Monaco by Anne Edwards

Author:Anne Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493029228
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2018-02-01T16:00:00+00:00

Footnote

1The Communards (members of the Commune of Paris) had been formed during the Revolution of 1792 and had virtually engineered the storming of the Tuileries. The Commune re-formed in 1871, its members drawn from several political groups, including the radical republicans and the Marxist First International.

INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

13

WITH ALICE’S DEPARTURE, Monaco lost much of its luster, but Monte Carlo continued to prosper. Raoul Gunsbourg retained his hold on its cultural life (and would do so until his death) and people would soon forget that Alice had been responsible for bringing concerts, ballet and opera (as well as the greatest world artists) to the town. A concerted effort on the part of Albert to remove all evidence of the twelve years when she was officially acting as Princesse de Monaco was successful. No word of her or her whereabouts was published in the local press. Photographs and portraits were removed from display, and in the Royal Archives her papers and all photographs had been removed so that no history could record her activities or accomplishments. Almost any thing or place that had been called the Princesse Alice, including a variety of rose in the exotic gardens she had helped create, was renamed. Albert was bitter and relentlessly unforgiving.

Florestine had died in 1897 and the Palace, without any feminine hand at its helm, took on a strong, masculine aura. And with consequences far more damaging to its future, Albert was suddenly being seen as the absolute monarch that he was. Enriched beyond any of his ancestors’ dreams by the flow of francs at the gaming tables and by a separation settlement with Alice in which she paid him five million francs, he gave munificently of his own money to scientific foundations in Paris and made some astute foreign investments, on the Continent and in the United States. He opened the Oceanography Museum in Monaco in 1910 at astronomical cost to the Principality’s treasury. Four years later he established the Institute of Oceanography in Paris, giving it a large grant so that it would be independent of revenues from France. Then came the Institute of Human Palaeontology, which was also built in Paris. The Princesse Alice had been replaced in 1897 by the much larger Princesse Alice II, and then, after Alice’s departure, by L’Hirondelle II, a larger vessel yet, with special equipment that reached depths of 35,000 feet and could raise up to eight tons. The acquisition of this last boat enabled Albert to extend his voyages to deeper waters. The majority of his time was spent at sea or in Paris, Marchais or at scientific conferences.

A murmur of discontent rose among the Monégasques. True, the citizens of Monaco did not pay taxes, but they had other serious financial concerns. The foreign population in 1910 numbered over 18,000 compared to fewer than 2,000 Monégasques. Outsiders were hired to work in the Casino (where 3,782 persons were employed), the hotels and the restaurants. Foreigners controlled most of the other commercial enterprises, the

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