This Louis was married to Charlotte de Gramont, who was one of “_les grandes amoureuses_” of the reign of Louis XIV. She intrigued with the king. She entertained a passion for her ambitious cousin de Lauzun. Her many love adventures furnished Saint Simon with a good deal of not very edifying matter for his Mémoires. Whilst Charlotte revelled in Paris, Louis sulked at Monaco. As news reached him of Charlotte having made a fresh conquest, he had a gibbet erected on the confines of his tiny principality, and the happy man in effigy hung from it; and as Charlotte’s caprices and conquests were numerous, the frontier of Monaco was soon marked out at intervals by a score of gallows, from which dangled dummy men, all dressed in Court costume.
“Not merely,” says Mme. de Sévigné, “is this measure retrospective, but folk amuse themselves by informing the prince of what is now going on. The consequence is that the gibbets have to be put closer together, and more than half of the courtiers are now dangling in effigy along the frontiers of Monaco. I can assure you that I have had many a laugh over this, and others as well. The king himself laughs at it. This frenzy of hangings passes all belief.”
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Spaniards had profited by the minority of Honoré II. to put a garrison into Monaco, under the pretext of alliance. Speedily they took advantage of this to behave as masters of the place. Prince Honoré, to escape from their domination, signed a secret treaty with Louis XIII. in 1641, by virtue of which his sovereign independence was guaranteed and a garrison of 500 French soldiers was assured him after the expulsion of the Spaniards. But it was precisely this last thing that was most difficult to achieve. Honoré succeeded by subtlety. He ordered the arrest of thirty of the inhabitants of Monaco, lusty men, and cast them into prison; then invited the Spanish garrison to a grand banquet at the palace, and made them as drunk as fiddlers. When they were almost incapable of defence, he opened the prison, told the men he had locked up that they were to massacre the Spanish garrison, and put daggers into their hands. The Spaniards, however, were not so drunk that they could not defend their lives; they were, however, nearly all slaughtered; and the gates were thrown open to some French soldiers who had been waiting at Antibes to replace the Spaniards. This took place in November, 1641. In consequence of this, all the estates of Honoré in Italy were confiscated, but Louis XIII. indemnified Honoré for this by granting to him the Seigneurie of Les Baux in Provence and the Duchy of Valentinois.