Re: Joe Abercrombie Shattered Sea Epub 16
Emmanuelle Riker
[Pg 129]The after story of Nice is confused and confusing. Now a vassal of theFrankish kings; now again a member of the Genoese league; now engaged in adesperate conflict with the piratical Saracens; and now constituted into alittle independent republic on the Italian model; Nizza struggled onagainst an adverse fate as a fighting-ground of the races, till it fellfinally into the hands of the Counts of Savoy, to whom it owes whateverlittle still remains of the mediæval castle. Continually changing handsbetween France and the kingdom of Sardinia in later days, it wasultimately made over to Napoleon III. by the Treaty of Villafranca, and isnow completely and entirely Gallicized. The native dialect, however,remains even to the present day an intermediate form between Provençal andItalian, and is freely spoken (with more force than elegance) in the OldTown and around the enlarged modern basins of the Port of Limpia. Indeed,for frankness of expression and perfect absence of any false delicacy, theladies of the real old Greek Nice surpass even their London compeers atBillingsgate.
Only a comparatively few winters ago fashionable Nice consisted almostentirely of the Promenade des Anglais, with a few slight tags andappendages in either direction. At its eastern end stood (and stillstands) the Jardin Public, that paradise of children and of be-ribbonedFrench nursemaids, where the band discourses lively music every afternoonat four, and all the world sits round on two-sou chairs to let all therest of the world see for itself it is still in evidence. These, and thestately quays along the Paillon bank, lined with shops where female humannature can buy all the tastiest and most expensive gewgaws in Europe,constituted the real Nice[Pg 136] of the early eighties. But with the rapidgrowth of that general taste for more sumptuous architecture which marksour age, the Phocæan city woke up a few years since with electric energyto find itself in danger of being left behind by its younger competitors.So the Niçois conscript fathers put their wise heads together, in conclaveassembled, and resolved on a general transmogrification of the center oftheir town. By continuously bridging and vaulting across the almost drybed of the Paillon torrent they obtained a broad and central site for anew large garden, which now forms the natural focus of the transformedcity. On the upper end of this important site they erected a large andhandsome casino in the gorgeous style of the Third Republic, all gloriouswithout and within, as the modern Frenchman understands such glory, andprovided with a theater, a winter garden, restaurants, cafés, ball-rooms,petits chevaux, and all the other most pressing requirements of anadvanced civilization. But in doing this they sacrificed by the way thebeautiful view towards the mountains behind, which can now only beobtained from the Square Masséna or the Pont Vieux farther up the river.Most visitors to Nice, however, care little for views, and a great dealfor the fitful and fearsome joys embodied to their minds in the outwardand visible form of a casino.
The internal history of the city during all this period was not morepeaceful than its external. Genoa presents the picture of a house dividedagainst itself; and, strange to say, falsifies the proverb by prosperinginstead of perishing. If there were commonly wars without, there were yetmore persistent factions within. Guelphs, headed[Pg 164] by the families ofGrimaldi and Fieschi, and Ghibellines, by those of Spinola and Doria,indulged in faction-fights and sometimes in civil warfare, until at lastsome approach to peace was procured by the influence of Andrea Doria, who,in obtaining the freedom of the state from French control, brought aboutthe adoption of most important constitutional changes, which tended toobliterate the old and sharply divided party lines. Yet even he narrowlyescaped overthrow from a conspiracy, headed by one of the Fieschi; hisgreat-nephew and heir was assassinated, and his ultimate triumph was duerather to a fortunate accident, which removed from the scene the leader ofhis opponents, than to his personal power. Then the tide of prosperitybegan to turn against the Genoese. The Turk made himself master of theirlands and cities in the East. Venice ousted them from the commerce of theLevant. War arose with France, and the city itself was captured by thatpower in the year 1684. The following century was far from being aprosperous time for Genoa, and near the close it opened its gates to theRepublican troops, a subjugation which ultimately resulted in no littlesuffering to the inhabitants.
South of Civita Vecchia the coast region, though often monotonous enough,becomes for a time slightly more diversified. There is still some marshyground, still some level plain, but the low and gently rolling hills whichborder the main mass of the Apennines extend at times down to the sea, andeven diversify its coast-line, broken by a low headland. This now andagain, as at Santa Marinella, is crowned by an old castle. All around muchevergreen scrub is seen, here growing in tufts among tracts of coarseherbage, there expanding into actual thickets of considerable extent, andthe views sometimes become more varied, and even pretty. Santa Severa, alarge castle built of grey stone, with its keep-like group of highertowers on its low crag overlooking the sea, reminds us of some oldfortress on the Fifeshire coast. Near this headland, so antiquarians say,was Pyrgos, once the port of the Etruscan town of Cære, which lies awayamong the hills at a distance of some half-dozen miles. Here and therealso a lonely old tower may be noticed along this part of the coast. Theserecall to mind in their situation, though they are more picturesque intheir aspect, the Martello Towers on the southern coast of England. Likethem, they are a memorial of troublous times, when the invader wasdreaded. They were erected to protect the Tuscan coast from the descentsof[Pg 215] the Moors, who for centuries were the dread of the Mediterranean.Again and again these corsairs swooped down; now a small flotilla wouldattack some weakly defended town; now a single ship would land itsboatload of pirates on some unguarded beach to plunder a neighboringvillage or a few scattered farms, and would retreat from the raid with alittle spoil and a small band of captives, doomed to slavery, leavingbehind smoking ruins and bleeding corpses. It is strange to think how longit was before perfect immunity was secured from these curses of theMediterranean. England, whatever her enemies may say, has done a few gooddeeds in her time, and one of the best was when her fleet, under thecommand of Admiral Pellew, shattered the forts of Algiers and burnt everyvessel of the pirate fleet.
Tiryns is the first walled city upon record. Its walls weresupposed to have been erected by the Cyclops, and the stones ofwhich they were composed were of such prodigious size, that theleast of them could not be moved by a pair of oxen. (Pausanias, lib.ii.) The ruins subsist to the present day, and the traces are stillgigantic. Pindar mentions Tiryns in his Olympionics, Nemeonics,and Isthmionics. These shattered remains present the earliestspecimen of the Cyclopean architecture.
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