Île Sainte-Marguerite

Île Sainte-Marguerite (; , ) is the largest of the Lérins Islands, about half a mile offshore from the French Riviera city of Cannes, situated in the Bay of Cannes. The island is approximately in length (east to west) and across (north to south). Sainte Marguerite Island is the closest of the Lérins Islands to Cannes, just 700 metres from the Palm-Beach headland, and the most extensive, covering an area of . It reaches an altitude of only in the north, near the fort.

The island is most famous for its fortress prison, entitled the "" ( French: " Fort Royal"), in which the so-called Man in the Iron Mask was held for 11 years (1687–1698) of his 34 years of imprisonment.

The island

The island was known to be occupied in 6 BC by a Celtic-Ligurian population. In 3 AD, it was under Roman occupation, when it was known by the name ''Lero'', on account of an altar or temple having been erected there to honour ''Lero'', a celebrated pirate chief.

In medieval times, during the first centuries of Christianity, the island was named in honour of the martyr Saint Margaret of Antioch by the crusaders, who built a chapel on the island dedicate to her. In the 14th century, probably due to the writings of Raymond Féraud, the island became associated with a fictional Sainte Marguerite, sister to Saint Honoratus, founder of the monastery on the neighboring Île Saint-Honorat. According to legend, Sainte Marguerite led a community of nuns on the island which was named after her. In 1612, ownership of the island passed from the monks of Saint-Honorat to Claude de Lorraine, Duke of Chevreuse. In 1635, the island was captured by the Spanish The Spanish developed a system for collecting rainwater which was purified in four decantation basins, and collected into two tanks set under a well to serve the 800 men stationed on the island. Two years later in 1637, the island was recaptured by the French.

In 1746 the islands were lost to the Austrians and the English for a year; and in WWII first the Italians then the Germans occupied it.

Fort Royal

Structure

In Gallo-Roman times, the site consisted of nothing more than a simple fortified house, and several cistern buildings, which still exist from this time. Rocher Tower was built on the corner of the building in the Middle Ages to protect the island from regular Saracen attacks. In 1617, the Duke de Guise gave Jean de Bellon the task of building a fort intended to block access to Cannes. The fort was constructed between 1624 and 1627. The fort underwent extension in 1635 during the Spanish occupation, including two bastions, and the first barracks buildings.

When the island was recatured by the French in 1637, it building was named the ( French: " Fort Royal"). The French strengthened the fortifications considerably, including deepening of the moats, raising the curtain wall, and linking two demi-lunes to the fort via elevated walkways (since disappeared). Guitaut, the French royal governor, also had a "tenaille" built, a low bastion placed in front of the entrance gates to the fort, which bears his name today. At the end of the 17th Century, when the Louis XIV's general commissioner of fortifications ( Vauban) personally inspected the fort, he gave instructions to strengthen the square, giving the fort its current appearance. Currently, the pentagonal-shaped fort rises 26 metres above sea level to project over a rocky cliff on the northern coast of the Island, opposite Cape Croisette. It is flanked by four bastions at its weak points, on the land side, and on the coastal side, the structure's stone ramparts are supported by an earth embankment blended into the sheer cliff. Inside the compound, a chapel, several barns (for housing the troops), and artillery (including the powder store surrounded by the walls of the royal bastion to the fort's south, probably to reduce the consequences of any accidental explosion).

Prison

From 1637 onwards, the first cells were fitted out in the governor's château. In 1685, at a time when the accommodated a large garrison, the fort was dedicated definitively and first and foremost to be used as a state prison. In 1687, Governor Saint-Mars, on the orders of Louis XIV, had a parallelepiped stone building constructed inside the compound, inside which several cells were soon fitted out. The also has a smaller detention area, reserved for soldiers.

In 1685, the Fort of Sainte-Marguerite Island was one of the four places of imprisonment for Huguenots, when the Edict of Nantes was revoked by Louis XIV. In 1950, a Huguenot memorial was set up in a former cell to honor six Protestant ministers, Paul Cardel, Pierre de Salve, Gabriel Mathurin, Mathieu de Malzac, Elisée Giraud, and , who were incarcerated in the fort for life, and subseuently in October 1985, to commemorate the tricentenary of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, President François Mitterrand of France announced a formal apology to the descendants of Huguenots around the world.

Until 1841, there were only 37 or 38 male prisoners on the island of Sainte Marguerite. However, in 1841, France's Ministry of War commissioned a report on the feasibility of the fort acting as a "prison likely to receive political detainees or prisoners of war" from Aleria. The report (26 April 1841) from the president of the Fortifications Committee, V. Dode, confirmed its suitability, considering it possible to house 400 prisoners. Four days later, a ministerial decree assigned the prison fort for "the detention of Arab prisoners transported from Algeria to France". The prisoner were not "judicial convicts", but specified as political prisoners or prisoners of war, therefore the length of incarceration was rarely mentioned, instead using phrasing like: "men whom politics orders to remove from Algeria for a certain time" or "detained until further notice ... The complete pacification of their country could contribute to their enlargement".

This included prisoners from the Battle of the Smala. The first group, transported on the barge La Provençale which left on 22 June 1843, arrived on 26 June 1843, carrying an estimate 290 prisoners. The second group arrived on 9 August 1843 carrying 186 prisoners. Women and men were separated. In September 1843, the fort housed 520 people (not all of whom belonged to the former smala of Abd el-Kader) and Doctor Bosio estimated that each individual had 8 cubic meters of air, "a quantity recognized as insufficient even for soldiers, all the more so for prisoners who, in relation to the air, must be treated as sick, at the rate of 16 cubic meters". The Ministry estimated that the fort housed 687 prisoners in 1847, however, the actual numbers recorded were 547, due to deaths and unreported releases. A cemetery was built to bury those who died on the island. The incarceration of these prisoners ended in 1856.

In 1859, after the Battle of Montebello, 600 Austrian prisoners detained.

Between 1817 and 1820, two hundred mamluks from Egypt are said to have been interned there.

The fort ceased operating as a prison during the 20th century. Some noted prisoners accommodated during its operation as a prison included: -

20th-century adaptations

In 1862, Rocher Tower was raised to accommodate a semaphore to send telegraphs. During the occupation by German troops during the Second World War, a surveillance station was established on one of the fort's triangular promontories.

Museum

As well as accommodating a youth hostel, old part of the , the Roman and medieval cisterns, houses an archaeology museum exploring land and sea (Museum Reference No: 0602902; Identification Number: M0873) This official was called the ''Museum of the Sea'' ( French: "Musée de la Mer"), but changed its name from 2020 onwards to the ' ( French: " Musée du Masque de fer et du Fort Royal") The museum is laid out around the former prison with the cell in which the Man in the Iron Mask was imprisoned, the Roman cisterns of the old castle and, upstairs, its collection of objects from Roman and Saracen shipwrecks, from the islands of Tradelière (French: Tradelière) and Batéguier, as well as Roman frescoes. The museum also presents explicative scale models and works of contemporary art. The museum's temporary exhibitions take place in summer on the vast terrace overlooking the sea:-

Visitors are also able to view a number of former prison cells (including that occupied by the Man in the Iron Mask) and a Roman cistern room. The attendance statistics for the museum have been:

- The first year the museum was known as the '

Village

During the 18th century, the present-day village of Sainte-Marguerite developed, thriving on the spending power of the soldiers stationed on the island.

The village of Sainte-Marguerite is made up of about twenty buildings. Most of these are home to fishermen, but there is also a small boatyard and one or two establishments offering refreshments to tourists. The island's hotel has been closed down since the summer of 2005.

Cemetery

Close to the ''Fort Royal'' is a small cemetery for French soldiers who died there when it was used for convalescence during the Crimean War, and alongside it is a cemetery for North African soldiers killed on the Allied side during World War II.

The Great Garden

"The Great Garden" ( French: "Le Grand Jardin") is a 1.3 hectare piece of luxury real estate on Sainte-Marguerite Island. The estate is protected by a wall built on the orders of Cardinal de Richelieu. All the buildings are said to have been built between the 12th century and 17th century and the estate has been the refuge of famous owners, the monks of Lérins, the King of France (Louis XIV), the Duke of Guise or the Governor of Provence; but also the mayor of Marseilles, after the French Revolution.

The property belonged in 1840 to the Cannes resident Jean-François Tournaire; in 1889 to Paul Jubelin, doctor of the Navy; then to Félix Sue, owner of the lime kilns of Rocheville. This last occupant sold it in 1928 to the Danish sculptor Viggo Jarl who remained the owner until the sale of the estate, for 5 million francs, in 1982, to a promoter from Cannes, Claude Muller. On 16 September 2008, it was announced that Claude Muller had sold it to Vijay Mallya, an Indian businessman, for a unique price of somewhere between €37 million and €43 million ($53–61 million US), through his Luxemburg company Gizmo Invest SA, a company ultimately owned by Mallya, using a 27-million euro ($30 million) loan facility from Ansbacher & Co (a unit of Qatar National Bank SAQ) on 15 February 2017, with a €5 million mortgage on his Mangusta 165 yacht as additional security. Gizmo defaulted on the loan. By September 2015, when the loan was due and Mallya was facing a $100 million lawsuit from Diageo Plc and $1.2 billion lawsuit from a consortium of Indian banks led by the State Bank of India, including Bank of Baroda, Corporation Bank, Federal Bank Ltd, Jammu and Kashmir Bank, State Bank of Mysore, United Bank of India etc, that lent money to Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines before the carrier's collapse in 2012 in lieu of the loans granted to the airline. The estate was described by Gideon Shirazi, one of the bank's lawyers suing him for unpaid debts, as having "fallen into disrepair” and that unsuitable interior designers and builders engaged to carry out repairs at the property (still incomplete by January 2018) had left it in a worse state. During a request to extend the defaulted loan, the property was evaluated by real estate agent Knight Frank who found that the value had fallen by 10 millions euros, to 30 million euros. The property was sold for 2.9 million sale, and the proceeds and other assets were held within the United Kingdom Court Funds Office during the bankruptcy proceedings.

The estate currently includes 17 bedrooms, a swimming pool, gym, sauna and steam room, private cinema, night club, large wine cellar, a private helipad, staff quarters and rooftop terrace with panoramic views of the Mediterranean.

Wildlife

The island is low in profile and heavily wooded with umbrella pines and eucalyptus. This insland and Saint-Honorat Island) are looked after by France's National Office of Forests ( French: " Office national des forêts"), and are a popular tourist attraction of natural interest.

The island has a unique variety of plant species. The flauna and flora areas of note are:-

• Allee des Eucalyptus – An area lined with eucalyptus trees.
  
• Bateguier pond - An artificial pond home to numerous specious of migratory birds.
  
• Point de la Convention – Featuring the island flora.

Tourism

A commercial ferry service between the Vieux-Port of Cannes and the Lérins Islands provides daily crossings all year round.

During the summer months, a large number of boats moor in the shallow, protected "Plateau du Milieu", between the islands or on the landward side of Sainte-Marguerite island where there is more room for water skiing, parascending and other popular water sports.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ile Sainte-Marguerite
Sainte-Marguerite
Cannes
Landforms of Alpes-Maritimes
Islands of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Prison islands
Car-free islands of Europe