On This Day in History: January 8

The Rock of Monaco

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Possession is nine-tenths of the law. It’s an axiom that means ownership is easier to maintain if you already hold something. On January 8, 1297, François Grimaldi disguised himself as a Franciscan friar and led a group of men to capture the Rock of Monaco. The Grimaldi family still rules it today.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: January 8, 1297--

Monaco is a sovereign city state on the French Riviera near the Italian border. Not far on the other side of the border is the seaside city of Genoa, where François was from. He was that city’s leader of a group called the Guelphs, who were fans of the pope, standing in opposition to the Ghibellines, who preferred to kiss the ass of the Holy Roman Emperor. François’s nickname was il Malizia—the malicious.

Late in the 13th century, as legend has it, François and his cousin Rainier I dressed up as friars and led some totally-not-dressed-as-soldiers soldiers up to the gates of the Prince’s Palace of Monaco, a fortress that protects the Rock of Monaco, asking for shelter. The guards were all hey these are just unarmed religious dudes in robes and certainly no threat open the gates, and then out came the fucking swords from under those robes and hack hack ow stop killing me. The Coat of Arms of Monaco shows François and Rainier in their friarly robes wielding swords. There is also a statue of François, shown in his robes about to pull a sword, inside the palace grounds. 

The Rock is a 200-foot-tall monolith that overlooks the Mediterranean Sea and has long been a coveted possession for its strategic location next to the seaport. That’s why the Grimaldi’s wanted it, as a place to launch naval operations against the Ghibellines in Genoa. François died without any kids, so it was Rainier Grimaldi’s offspring who inherited title to the land. Speaking of land, we’re only talking about 0.8 square miles. The only sovereign state in the entire world that is smaller than Monaco is Vatican City.

Soon after taking possession, the Grimaldi family began to expand and strengthen the fortress to defend it from those seeking to attack it and take it for themselves. And they did face many such attacks, even losing it a few times in the 14thcentury to the Genoese, but always regaining control. In 1419 the Grimaldi family purchased Monaco from a composite monarchy called the Crown of Aragon and since then they’ve been considered the undisputed rulers, with a couple of occupations, like by Napoleonic forces during the French Revolution, and also by the Italians and Germans during World War II. And yeah, the fucking Nazis deported as many Jews as they could off to their death camps. The principality gave out a lot of false papers to the approximately 300 Jews during the fucking Nazi occupation, but about 90 Jews and resistance fighters were still arrested with the help of the Monaco police against the wishes of the government. Only nine of those arrested survived.

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