sperity. In 1364 an invasion of locusts from Africa led to a
famine, and ultimately a plague which destroyed two-thirds of the
population. The people, attributing their misfortunes to the
intercession of the Jews with the powers below, rose up and massacred
them: only five Israelites out of over two thousand are said to have
escaped their blind fury. When order was at last re-established, and the
Nicois began to settle down again, they perceived their impoverished and
subordinate position to be so alarming that their only chance of safety
was immediately to place themselves under the protection of the dukes of
Savoy, who for a century and a half defended them from the attacks of
their numerous enemies in a most valiant manner. But in 1521, Francis I.
of France wrenched the city and province from the beneficent rule of the
Savoyards and proclaimed himself count of Nice. In 1524 war broke out
between Francis and the emperor Charles V., and the contending armies
alternately devastated and pillaged Nice and its environs. The pest
reappeared, and with it a drought and famine of so fearful a character
that many thousand persons perished, and others in their despair slew
themselves. Pope Paul III. undertook the difficult task of reconciling
the belligerents, and even went so far as to travel to Nice for the
purpose. A marble cross which gives its name to a suburb of the town
("La Croix de Marbre") still marks the spot where the conference took
place in which Francis and Charles swore a peace in the presence of His
Holiness which they took the first opportunity to violate. In 1540 the
war recommenced, and a number of dissolute young men of good family
formed themselves into organized companies of bandits and overran
the country, to the terror of the wretched peasantry and the utter ruin
of many hundreds of honest families. But in 1543 a second Joan of Arc
was raised up by Providence to deliver the Nicois in the person of the
still popular heroine, Catterina Segurana. Francis I. had recently
scandalized Christendom by allying himself with the famous Mohammedan
corsair, Barbarossa of Algiers with a view of reconquering Nice, which
he considered the key of Italy. Accordingly, one fine morning three
hundred vessels belonging to the Algerine pirate entered the neighboring
port of Villefranche, and presently the whole country was filled with a
horde of turbaned freebooters. Cimiez, Montboron, Mont Gros and a
hundred other villages and