The Norman Who Became Prince of Monaco

In 1713 Antoine I, Prince of Monaco, was seeking a rich husband for his eldest daughter, Louise-Hippolyte. He was riddled with debts and in need of cash payments from whoever married her. But what was there to offer in exchange?

‘A barren rock and a few lemons,’ was how the British Ambassador to Savoy summed up the worth of the Principality. Its ruler enjoyed sovereign powers over a territory that then extended to Menton and beyond, but apparently possessed little else.

Antoine Grimaldi de Monaco was fifty-two, surly and irascible, vain and obstinate, and for the past decade had rarely left his arid Principality. He had served in the French army for fifteen years, rising to the rank of colonel; a bad leg-wound, received at the siege of Namur, had never properly healed, and he was a semi-invalid. He was fond of music, especially opera; and in his younger days in Paris, before succeeding his father, Louis I, in 1701, he had had a fondness for some of the young ladies of the Opera.