When Monaco financed the famous Nice Carnival
“If ‘His Majesty Carnival’ of Nice was able to conquer his supremacy, it is because he found a generous banker. This banker, you know him, is Monte-Carlo.” This is what one could read in February 1879, in the satirical Nice newspaper Le Rabelais.
At that time, in fact, the Principality financed the Nice carnival. She sees her interest in it. She estimates that among the tourists who came to the Nice Carnival, many would then go to Monaco. The Principality being in full expansion.
Monte-Carlo was created at the end of the 1860s with its casino and its Hôtel de Paris and was accessible by train from 1868. Visitors to the Nice Carnival constituted a pool of potential players for the Principality – the creation of the Nice Carnival dating back to 1873.
80,000 francs at the time
In the early years, the subsidy from Monaco’s Société des Bains de Mer was as important… as that of the city of Nice. Financially, the carnival therefore belonged a little and even a lot to the Monegasques.
In one of its February 1888 issues, the famous Parisian newspaper Gil Blasdevoted to leisure and culture, given the floor to the King of the Carnival of Nice: “I was afraid for a moment that my triumphal procession would not be as delicious this year as in previous years. I am too good a prince to levy an additional tax on my subjects. What was going to happen? Fortunately, I received a letter from a famous banker. They call him Monte-Carlo. And thanks to the 80,000 francs that Monte-Carlo has placed at my disposal, I will do things so generously that I will not give it up to anyone. my expectations.”
As explained by Gaston Grondona and number 8 of Monegasque Annalspublished in 1984, “Between 1876 and 1914, the revenue from the Nice festivals, of which the carnival is the centerpiece, was divided into four parts: subsidies from the city of Nice and the Société des Bains de Mer de Monaco, contributions from members of the Festival Committee Nice (from 100 to 200 francs per contributor), subscription from local businesses (hotels and others) and receipts from the various festivals.
Diplomatic incident
All this took place in a facade of friendship. In reality, a rivalry was brewing between Nice and Monaco. Nice was jealous of the Monte-Carlo games.
Thus, during the carnival of 1877, François Blanc, director of the SBM and creator of the Casino de Monte-Carlo, learned that he was to be represented in a ridiculous way on one of the Nice Carnival floats.
He does not appreciate the joke – as can be read in a report by the government commissioner Payan, quoted by Gaston Grondona: “Monsieur Blanc went to the Duke of Castries, president of the Nice Festival Committee, and told him that if this masquerade took place, he would withdraw his subsidy. We referred to the mayor of Nice, Auguste Raynaud, who , it seems, was not of the opinion of preventing the exit of this tank, but M. le Duc de Castries having threatened to resign if it were to be so, the authority consented to defend the Leaving the tank, Mr. Blanc then had the promised 5,000 francs paid.
The Duc de Castries, president of the Nice Festival Committee, was the brother-in-law of the President of the French Republic, Admiral Mac-Mahon.
As Annie Sidro reports in her essential work on the Carnival of Nice, it was the Duke of Castries who had obtained from the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway company the creation of “pleasure trains” for the Carnival of Pleasant. This was of great interest to the Principality of Monaco. 12,000 travelers would have borrowed, that year, the “pleasure trains” between Marseille and Genoa (read below).
Fifteen million profit
In 1894-1895, the Éclaireur de Nice newspaper got angry. It highlights that the Monegasque subsidy to the Nice carnival is derisory compared to the benefit that the Principality derives from it: “To pay Nice for his naivety, Monte-Carlo throws him 30,000 francs every year for his parties! 30,000 francs when Nice has made him earn hundreds of millions. Nice could do without these few thousand tickets, this misery; and if we wanted to make the statistics of the players coming from Nice, the Société des Bains de Mer would have to give 75% of its gain, that is to say about fifteen million. It is a shame for the municipality of Nice to accept a charity which seems to pay son silence.”
Monaco supported until 1921 to subsidize the Nice Carnival. Today is over.
From the beginning of the 20th century, we sensed that Monte-Carlo was going to withdraw. R. de Souza writes it in his book, Nice, winter capital: “Monte-Carlo favors less and less of its jackpot the attractions of the Riviera… under the pretext that it cannot compete against it from the new casinos of Nice, Cannes and Menton.”
The truth is that now Monaco no longer needs to attract tourists. They come from themselves. The situation has even been reversed: it is the neighborhood of Monaco that has become an asset for the towns of the Coast. So goes the story…