MyWords: Learn French Vocabulary. $9.99
Founded in 1215 as a colony of Genoa, Monaco has been ruled by the House of Grimaldi since 1297, when François Grimaldi, known as "Malizia" seized Monaco's fortress in response to the exile imposed upon the Guelfs. For seven centuries the Grimaldi family has presided over the Principality of Monaco, the only exception to this was from 1789 to 1814, when Monaco was under French control.
Designated as a protectorate of Sardinia from 1815 until 1860 by the Congress of Vienna, Monaco's sovereignty was recognized by the Franco-Monegasque Treaty of 1861.
Economic development was spurred in the late 19th century with a railroad linkup to France and the opening of a casino in Monte-Carlo when the major "trade" of Monte Carlo became the commerce of money exchanging hands through gambling.
The New York Times
July 20, 1884
Public attention has been forcibly directed for the last few years to the Monte Carlo gambling establishment at Monaco, and to the growing evils which its existence entails. Of late, the feeling of aversion, not to say horror, which it occasions has become so general in every country throughout Europe, both with the governed and the governing bodies, that I cannot but think that its days are numbered. Both Europe and America have become fully awakened to the fact that the gambling house is a blot on modern society, and that its great and yearly increasing prosperity scatters desolation over the earth . . .It's enormous influence for evil is best understood by a simple explanation which I owe to a professional gambler. As the chances are in favor of the bank . . .
At Monte Carlo often every fourth player is a woman, and such women! Hundreds of the demimonde flock here in Winter from every capital in Europe to allure and entangle well-to-do young men, who are always present in great numbers. Truly they represent the sirens of old, and are infinitely more dangerous . . .
In every hotel there is a band of gamblers who talk of nothing but rouge and noir, of numbers, of systems of play. These votaries of gambling are not necessarily the young and the inexperienced. They are often middle aged or aged men and women, and noblemen, gentry, Generals, Colonels, barristers, physicians. The demon of gambling has got hold of them. They come from the four corners of the earth, and the ruin that follow—bankruptcy, poverty, dishonor, suicide— mostly falls upon them at home at New York, Rio Janeiro, Batavia, Calcutta, anywhere. It is said that during the Winter about a suicide a week occurs in and near Monaco. If so, it is only a tithe of what occurs elsewhere through Monte Carlo. For whom is this royalty of £700,00 yearly, this enormous income, raised? Merely to to subsidize a degraded Prince, and to give colossal incomes and fortunes to half a dozen or a dozen persons, who are ashamed of the source form whence their money comes, whom no respectable person would like to acknowledge or receive as friends, and to whom society only owes punishment as inciters to vice.
