During the Middle Ages Hercules was entirely cast aside, and the town was spoken of as Monaco.  The tradition of its original foundation is carefully preserved in the civic coat-of-arms, which represents a gigantic monk with a club in his hand—­Hercules in a friar’s robe.  In the days of Charlemagne the Moors invaded Monaco, and remained there until A.D. 968, when a Genoese captain named Grimaldi volunteered to assist the Christian inhabitants in driving the infidels from their shores.  He was victorious, and was rewarded for his bravery and skill by being proclaimed prince of Monaco.  In the family of his descendants the little territory still remains.

The Grimaldis were powerful rulers, wise and brave, and having secured independence, they maintained it at all cost through centuries of trouble.  Fifty-eight sieges has Monaco sustained from either the French or the Genoese, but she never lost her independence excepting for a few years at a time.  In 1428 a terrible tragedy of great dramatic interest occurred in the castle.  John Grimaldi was prince, and married to a Fieschi Adorno of Genoa, a lovely lady, but a faithless.  She had not long been a wife ere she fixed her affections on her husband’s younger brother, Lucian, and induced him to murder his brother and usurp the throne.  Accordingly, Lucian, aided by his mistress, stabbed John Grimaldi in his bed, and having thrown the body into the sea, proclaimed himself prince.  He reigned but a short time.  Bartolomeo Doria, nephew of the Genoese doge, Andrea Doria the Great, murdered him at a masquerade given in his palace to celebrate his infamous sister-in-law’s birthday.  The galleys of the doge awaited the assassin without the port, and transported him back in safety to Genoa—­a circumstance which gave rise to a suspicion that Andrea was himself privy to the deed.  As to the wicked lady, she was banished to the castle of Roccabruna, where she died miserably, abandoned by all.  A legend says she went distracted, and in a fit of insanity flung herself headlong over the rocks into the sea.

In 1792 the French Republic destroyed the principality, but it was restored through the interest of Talleyrand in 1815.  A revolution broke out in 1848, which obliged the prince to declare Monaco a free town, and which also deprived His Highness of Mentone and Roccabruna.  When the French annexed Nice they also added the two last-mentioned towns to their dominions, but had to pay Prince Florestan four millions of francs for his feudal right.

If Monaco is not a very large principality, it is in a pecuniary sense exceedingly flourishing.  In 1863 His Highness made the acquaintance of M. Blanc, the famous gambling-saloon “organizer” of Homburg, and, on the receipt of the trifling consideration of twelve million francs and an annual tax of one hundred and fifty thousand, consented to allow him to establish the world-famous saloons at Monte Carlo, about a mile and a half from the capital.