Grimaldi destroyed the Saracen citadel, and left of it nothing standing save the tower that remains to this day. The captured Saracens were quartered in a portion of Nice still called lou canton del Sarraïns, and were employed by him in strengthening or rebuilding the walls of the town.
To the Saracens are attributed the subterranean magazines, or silos, that are found at S. Hospice, S. Jean, Trinité-Victor, and elsewhere, to contain the plunder they acquired in their marauding expeditions. These are vaulted over, and are still in some instances used as cisterns or store places; but the evidence that they were the work of the Moors is inconclusive.
Among those who assisted the Count of Provence against the Saracens was one Bertrand de Balbs, and in reward for his services he was given in fief the barony of Beuil, a vast territory stretching from the Estéron to the Alps, and comprising twenty-two towns and townlets. His descendants kept the barony till 1315, when William de Balbs made himself so odious to his vassals by his tyranny that they murdered him. A brother of the Grimaldi of Monaco had married the only daughter of William de Balbs, and as there was no son the fief passed to him, and he became the founder of the family of Grimaldi of Beuil. The barony remained in the Grimaldi family till 1621, when it was united to the county of Nice.
They ran, however, a chance of losing it in 1508.
Towards the close of 1507, George Grimaldi, Baron of Beuil, his son John, Augustine Grimaldi, Bishop of Grasse, and Nicolas Grimaldi, seigneur of Antibes, formed a plot to deliver over the county of Nice to Louis XII. The Duke of Savoy was warned, and he
