hamlets were soon alive with French marauders
and Turkish pirates, who presently proceeded to bombard the city itself.
The siege was short, but terrible, and the inhabitants were at the last
gasp when the energetic Catterina Segurana, a washer-woman by trade, and
surnamed _Mao faccia_ ("Ugly face"), on account of the homeliness of her
countenance, seized a hatchet, and, after a vigorous address to her
fellow-citizens, placed herself at their head and led them against the
enemy. The same result attended her efforts as did those of her
immediate prototype, the glorious Maid of Orleans. She so animated the
people, so roused their patriotism, that before the day was over the
French and infidels were conquered, and the bold and generous Catterina.
stood surrounded by her enthusiastic fellow-citizens, waving the
conquered Algerine flag, in token of victory, from the summit of the
castle hill, on the spot where formerly stood her statue.[001]

From the time of the brave Catterina to our own, Nice has sustained at
least a dozen sieges of more or less severity. That of 1706 was perhaps
one of the most shocking on record. The city, by the treaty of Turin of
1696, had once more passed under the protectorate of the dukes of Savoy,
but the French, who have always had a longing eye for the "Department of
the Maritime Alps," as they even then called it, broke the treaty they
had themselves framed, and sent the duc de la Feuillade over the
frontier with twenty thousand men to conquer the country. Nice was then
governed by the marquis de Caraglio, who, although entreated by the
enemy to allow the women and children to leave the city's gates,
positively refused to do so. The consequence was that during the siege,
which lasted six months, more than a third of the inhabitants perished
from starvation. Men are said to have killed their wives for food, and
women their children. Sixty thousand shells fell in various parts of the
town, and the castle, cathedral and many churches were entirely
destroyed.[002]

In 1792, under the First Republic, Nice was again occupied by the
French, and declared a _chef-lieu de departement_. By the treaty of 1814
the place was handed over to the Piedmontese, and stayed contentedly
beneath the rule of the Sardinian kings until 1860, when, by the treaty
of March 24, Napoleon III. annexed the county of Nice and the duchy of
Savoy to his imperial possessions, in exchange for the services his army
had rendered Ital