A new graphic novel recounting Monaco’s ‘Siège des Génois’, the four-month assault that secured the Principality’s independence more than five centuries ago, will go on sale on 17th September. Assiégés: Monaco, written by France Richemond and Laurent Vissière and illustrated by Germano Giorgiani, carries a preface by Prince Albert II, who describes the episode as a “jalon fondamental” — a fundamental milestone — in the affirmation of Monaco’s sovereignty.
The story is set in the winter of 1506, when the Republic of Genoa launched a vast army against the Rock of Monaco in a final attempt to reclaim the territory it had once controlled. Monaco had served as Genoa’s western border fortress from 1215 until the Grimaldi family took hold of the Rock at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, and by 1506 the Genoese, under a newly installed doge keen to distance the republic from France, set their sights on retaking it.
Lucien Grimaldi, the young lord then ruling Monaco, chose to defend the fortress rather than surrender it. According to historical accounts, his garrison numbered at most around 1,500 men, facing a Genoese force several times larger. The siege began in early December 1506 and held until March 1507, ending in a Monegasque victory that, in the Prince’s words, marked “l’affranchissement définitif de Monaco de sa mère patrie” — Monaco’s definitive emancipation from its mother country.
From fortress to palace
In his preface, dated January 2026, Prince Albert II situates the siege at a hinge point between two eras, describing it as the moment “entre la fin du Moyen Âge et le début de la Renaissance” — between the end of the Middle Ages and the start of the Renaissance. With the military threat from Genoa removed, the Grimaldis began transforming their fortified château into a palace better suited to the dynastic ambitions the family was beginning to develop. France’s King Louis XII, recognising the strategic value of the Rock, briefly considered taking it for himself, before formally acknowledging Monaco’s independence in 1512.
The Prince also pays tribute to the authors’ research, noting that the strength of character shown by Lucien Grimaldi during the siege proved decisive for the Monegasques, at most fifteen hundred men, against a Genoese army ten times their number.
Children watching the gates
The graphic novel frames the siege as a hundred-day struggle in which “tous les coups sont permis” — anything goes — between the two camps, with the gravest danger coming not from Genoese cannon but from the possibility of betrayal from within. According to the publisher, it is the threat of a traitor opening the city’s gates that drives much of the tension in the book’s narrative, with a group of children playing a watchful role in keeping the Rock secure.
Assiégés: Monaco is illustrated by Germano Giorgiani, with colouring by Dimitri Fogolin, and will be available in bookshops from 17th September.