County of Nice

Origins

During the war of succession that followed Queen Joanna I's death, Nice and its hinterland rejected the Angevin claimant and in 1388, in the act known as the Dedition, placed themselves under Amadeus VII of Savoy. Nice thus left the County of Provence and became Savoy's outlet to the Mediterranean.

Rule and society

The county was governed by Savoyard officials and later a senate at Nice, with Villefranche as the dukes' naval base. In 1543 a Franco-Ottoman fleet besieged Nice, an event remembered through the heroine Catherine Ségurane. The people spoke Niçard Occitan, while Italian was the language of administration. Giuseppe Garibaldi was born there in 1807.

Decline and legacy

France occupied Nice from 1792 to 1814. Under the Treaty of Turin of 1860, Victor Emmanuel II ceded it to Napoleon III's Second French Empire in return for help in Italian unification, ratified by a plebiscite.