taken from a pier on Sainte Marguerite island, in the bay of Cannes; in the far bg: Cap d'Antibes on the right: Fort Royal: the Royal Fortress From the seventeenth century on, the Ile Sainte-Marguerite had essentially a military vocation. Under King Louis XIII the Duc de Guise started to build (1624) the fortress Fort Royal (just east of the ferry pier) which was almost immediately conquered and reinforced by the Spaniards (1635). They had 800 men on this island without a sole spring so that they had to collect the rain water. The fortress was recaptured by the French in 1635 and later the famous French military engineer Vauban reinforced and extended Fort Royal which became a state prison with the Iron Mask has most popular prisoner (1687 - 1698) taking into account the number of books and films generated by the still unknown prisoner. More prisoners followed such as Abd el-Kader (1843) after the conquest of Algeria. In 1859 there were 600 Austrian prisoners captured at the battle of Montebello. Only one of the prisoners of the fortress escaped the Marshal of France François Bazaine who had been sentenced by the government for his surrender of the fortress city of Metz and his army of 180,000 men to the Prussians on 27 October 1870. His young Mexican wife and a nephew hired a yacht in Genoa and sailed to Golfe Juan (near Cannes) where they hired a fisher boat. In the night of 9/08/1874 they waited for the prisoner at the feet of the fortress. Balzaine came down with a cord from the 23 m high wall, jumped in the sea and did swim towards the boat. He found refuge in Madrid.