THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY
The Battleground of Europe—The Riddle of “The Man in the Iron
Mask”—Its True Story—Louis XIV’s Ambition in Italy—Plot to Secure
Casale—Character of Charles, Duke of Mantua—Count Mattioli,
His Favourite—Terms of the Transfer—Mission of the Count to
Paris—Conclusion of the Treaty—Mattioli’s Double Dealing—Ominous
Delays—The Storm Breaks.
It is a far cry, geographically speaking, from Rome to the vast,
alluvial plain of Lombardo-Venezia, that most bloodstained, perhaps,
of all the districts of the earth; for, if Flanders has been called the
cock-pit of Europe, the immense lowlands of upper Italy may with equal
justice lay claim to the title of the battlefield of the old world.
Scarcely a parish of it, from Rivoli in the west, to Aquileia in the
east, but has, at one time or another—and, in many instances, not
once but again and again—been deluged with the blood of armies and
of individuals in public and private struggles during the course of
the centuries. From Rivoli, rock-bound in the shadow of the Savoy and
Alps, across to sad Aquileia, slowly decaying among its fever-stricken
rice-fields by the Adriatic lagoons, shades of Masséna’s Frenchmen may
well look over to where their hereditary foes first poured into the
southern “Mayland,” as they named it under the leadership of Attila,
a thousand and three hundred and forty-five years earlier; whilst,
between the two, the dust of innumerable armoured condottieri and
“Landsknechte” of the middle ages and the Renaissance is mingled with
that of hundreds of thousands—Latins, Teutons, Slavs, and Magyars—since
fallen in this, the cloth-and-bullet age of our development from the
days of Pavia to those of Solferino and Custozza.
Truly, this “Mayland” of the Gothic invaders—whence, as some hold,
is derived the name of Milan—is one of the most fertile of all soils
for those endowed with the gift of what Sir Thomas Browne so quaintly
styled, “the art of reminiscential evocation.” Its history has been
made familiar to us, moreover, by many writers and painters and
sculptors, all along the road of the centuries; and yet, for me, at
least, the very essence of its fascination lies in some of the less
known recesses of its treasure-house of human vicissitudes and human
good and evil. Its towns and castles, its villas and churches, have
their tales of glory or of terror, of sorrow or triumph to tell; and
the story of them is the story of a people, and of a society, that
have preserved their characteristics intact throughout more changes of
government and of ideas than have fallen to the lot of any others in
all the world, with the possible exception of the inhabitants of the
kingdom of Naples.
There are in this world of ours certain spots that, on first beholding
them, cause our hearts to thrill and glow with an extraordinary
gladness, by reason of their perfect beauty and the exquisite harmony
of them with their surroundings; until, suddenly, we learn the name of
the place—and then it seems to us as though the loveliness at which we
have been gazing changes under our very eyes, and, as we draw closer
to it, becomes swiftly hideous with all the loathsomeness of some dead
thing first seen from afar.
Such a one was once, for Victor Hugo, on viewing it of a summer’s
evening from the window of a railway train, the town of Sedan, and just
such another, for the wanderer who comes into sight of it for the first
time, is to be found in a little old bourg at the foot of the mountains
in western Lombardy, nestling among poplars and gardens, and crowned
by the spire of an ancient church that rises from near the remains of a
contemporary castle, once the citadel of the place.
The name of the town is Pinerolo.
The name of Pinerolo, though not so widely known as that of Sedan,
is yet linked for ever with one of the most tragically famous of all
personalities—that of the “Man in the Iron Mask,” Hercules Anthony
Mattioli, as he has now at last been proved irrefutably to have been
by Monsieur Funck-Brentano in that gentleman’s luminous “Legends and
Archives of the Bastille,” in which at one blow the writer destroys the
pretensions of the several other candidates for that mournful honour.
Very few riddles, I should think, if any at all, have so constantly
occupied the minds of those interested in historical curiosities during
the last hundred and fifty years as has done that of the mysterious
prisoner of Louis XIV; rarely, if ever, has any question been so hotly
disputed by one generation and another of antiquarian scholars. But
perhaps the most fascinating work on the subject is an English one,
that of Mr. Tighe Hopkins,[25] which I would cordially recommend to all
lovers of historical writings.
The whole episode of the “Man in the Iron Mask” furnishes as consummate
an instance as any on record of the atrocious vengeance of one human
being upon another; if ever Louis XIV was unworthy of his title of
“the most Christian King” it was in his unmerciful cruelty towards the
man who had inflicted upon him the most crushing diplomatic defeat
of his whole reign, that same Count Mattioli. It was for making him
ridiculous in the eyes of all who had any knowledge of the affair, by
destroying his pet political scheme in regard to Italy, that King Louis
condemned Mattioli to life-long imprisonment and to total separation
from all that could make his existence endurable—the man’s religion
alone excepted. So that, for twenty-four years, from May 2, 1679, to
the hour of his death, which took place about ten o’clock in the night
of November 19, 1703, the unhappy Italian endured the living death of
a man deprived of all knowledge of those he had loved and left behind
him, and who on their side had long assumed him to be dead in very
fact. Neither his wife nor his father ever learned what became of
Mattioli after his disappearance on that fatal 2d of May.
The beginnings of Mattioli’s tragedy were simple enough. They had
their foundation, on the one hand, in the overweening ambition of
Louis XIV in regard to Italy, where France had possessed Pinerolo since
Cardinal Richelieu’s time; and, on the other hand, in the extravagance
and debauchery—and the consequent need of money—of one of the most
contemptible men who ever lived: Charles of Gonzaga, fourth Duke of
Mantua and the owner of the Marquisate of Montferrat, with its strong
place of Casale, that lay on the Po, between forty and fifty miles east
of Turin. Thus, if Casale could only be brought within his power, the
French King would be in a position to prevent any further advance of
the Piedmontese into Italy by his own domination in Lombardy. It was
his minister of war, the brilliant, if unscrupulous and personally
immoral Louvois, who suggested to Louis in 1676 the idea of possessing
himself of Casale, and so of making France the arbiter of Italian
development.
Nothing could have been more to the taste of the monarch whose appetite
for Italy at that time was being whetted by his naval triumph over
his Dutch and Spanish adversaries off Sicily, by which he enjoyed
for a space the sovereignty of the Mediterranean. The only possible
difficulty in the matter was that of inducing the owner of Casale,
the Duke of Mantua, to make over the control of it to King Louis—a
difficulty of which the astute Louvois undertook to dispose, without
fail, by means of pressure in the right place. Thus reassured, his
sovereign left the management of the affair entirely in the hands of
Louvois.
Louvois did not keep the King waiting long for further and most welcome
news upon the subject of Casale and the Duke of Mantua. He had placed
the matter, he reported, with the French representative in Venice,
the Abbé D’Estrades, for investigation; and D’Estrades, an ambitious,
intriguing man, only too anxious for an opportunity of distinguishing
himself in the eyes of his master, had replied that he felt perfect
confidence in his own ability to bring about the desired result. He was
thoroughly informed, he said, of the Duke of Mantua’s affairs; and,
so far as these were concerned, the success of the enterprise was a
foregone conclusion.
In point of fact, the Duke of Mantua was, as Mr. Tighe Hopkins puts it,
“up for sale”; his revenues, as D’Estrades reported to Louvois, were
spent in advance, and he was helplessly in the hands of the Jews; there
was nothing he owned that he would not be willing to sell for money
to spend on his pleasures in Venice, where he lived almost habitually
and whence he never returned to Mantua except upon expeditions of
rack-rent. He was also much under the influence of his favourites,
to whom he was accustomed to leave the governing of Mantua and the
administration of his affairs; all he asked for himself was that they
should leave him to his boon companions in Venice, “his gamesters, his
women, and his wine-parties.” And it was D’Estrades’ opinion that he
might best be approached in the matter of Casale through one of his
favourites.
The responsibility for Duke Charles’ way of life may not have lain
entirely with the young man himself, then in the springtime of life;
for it would seem that some of the blame should fall upon his widowed
mother, Archduchess Isabella Clara of Austria, the head of his council
and virtual ruler of his small domain; and Isabella Clara was as
notoriously opposed to the interests of the King of France as she was
favourable to those of the King of Spain, his sworn opponent in Italy.
And it may even be that, in order to keep the destinies of Mantua in
her own control, she rather encouraged than otherwise her son’s absence
from his territories in order the more easily to administer them in
union with the Spanish policy—Spain being then allied with Austria
against the encroachments of their rapacious Gallic neighbour.
Duke Charles, himself, according to D’Estrades in writing to Louis
XIV from Venice, was endowed with “more talent and ambition than he
is thought to have,” was eager to recover for himself the authority
he had let fall into his mother’s hands; and, supremely, was imbued
with profound suspicion of the Spaniards, who, as he believed, had
every intention of making themselves masters of Montferrat and the
fortress of Casale. Moreover, wrote D’Estrades, he was convinced that
the duke would be willing to accept King Louis “to some extent” as his
protector.
In this same letter there first occurs the name of Mattioli, whom,
as D’Estrades informs the King, he has approached through a mutual
acquaintance, a certain Giuliani, with the object of enlisting
Mattioli’s services on the French side.
For Mattioli had the ear of Duke Charles as being the one of the
favourites most especially admitted to his intimacy. Mattioli was
about thirty-six years old, a member of the Mantuan senate and an
ex-secretary of state; a successful lawyer, and, it would appear,
a boon companion of the duke’s. No one fitter then, considered
D’Estrades, than Mattioli to be entrusted, if possible, with the task
of persuading his master to let the French take care of Casale for him
against the Austrians and Spaniards, who designed to rob him of it. But
Mattioli himself must first be sounded, in order that D’Estrades might
be as sure of his sentiments towards France as he was of his influence
over Duke Charles; hence Giuliani’s mission to Verona, where Mattioli
was staying, in October, 1677.
Now from this same despatch of D’Estrades’ to Louis XIV it is evident
that he knew Mattioli to have been already engaged in negotiations with
the Spaniards in Milan—which was still, for some years, to remain their
capital in Upper Italy—and to have been disappointed by them in regard
to certain hopes they had led him to entertain.
What those hopes were I do not know, because D’Estrades’ despatch
does not go into the details of them; but one can only suppose they
must have had to do in some way with Mattioli’s personal advancement
or profit—which consideration seems to have weighed, at first, more
with him than did that of patriotism. And, if indeed Mattioli’s later
conduct can be held to have been inspired by a desire to benefit
his country, that conduct is at all events open by its deceitful
tortuousness to the worst possible of interpretations.
And so D’Estrades’s agent, Giuliani, came to seek out Mattioli at
Verona, under pretence of private business, but in reality that
he might win him over to the side of King Louis and so obtain his
coöperation in bringing Duke Charles to the same view of his own
interests. To this end Giuliani represented to Mattioli “that the
friends of the duke desired greatly to see him in a position of
independence; that all his territories and all his revenues were
under the absolute control of his mother and the monk, Bulgarini, her
confessor, and that Casale and the Montferrat were threatened by all
manner of Spanish and other intrigues.”[26]
To this Mattioli answered glibly “that he had long seen the truth” of
what Giuliani had laid before him, but “there was still a remedy for so
great an evil”; adding that he would speak with the duke on the subject
and “discover his real sentiments.”
Once thus launched, the intrigue went merrily forward. The duke was
sounded in his turn by Mattioli, and answer was made through the
latter to Giuliani and through D’Estrades to Louis XIV that: “The duke
approved very much of the proposition that was made him, to free him
from the perpetual uneasiness he felt on the score of the Spaniards,
and that, for this purpose, Casale should be placed in your Majesty’s
hands, upon the understanding that I should try to obtain from you in
his favour all that he could reasonably ask for.”
Charles of Mantua’s requirements were as follows:
One hundred thousand pistoles—some forty thousand pounds of English
money—in cash, and that Louis should send into Italy a sufficiently
strong army “to be able to undertake something considerable”; also,
that he, the Duke of Mantua, should have the command of this army “in
order to be considered in Italy like the late Duke of Modena, and the
late Duke of Mantua, who at his age commanded in chief the Emperor’s
army, with the title of Vicar-General of the Empire.”
With this despatch of D’Estrades’ was enclosed a letter from Mattioli
to Louis XIV, in which he wrote: “I bless the destiny which procures
me the honour of serving so great a monarch, whom I regard and revere
as a demigod.” To which the King replied that he thanked the writer,
and was greatly obliged to him and would have much pleasure in giving
him proofs of his satisfaction upon every occasion. But King Louis did
not vouchsafe any answer in the matter of terms until the reception
of a further and pressing letter from D’Estrades, to the effect that
the Austrians and Spaniards were making ready to seize Casale and all
the Montferrat; and that Mantua even was to be occupied by them. This,
wrote D’Estrades, he had learned by letter from the Duke of Mantua
himself, who, as D’Estrades explained, was so closely watched by
Isabella Clara and Father Bulgarini as to make it impossible for him
either to declare himself openly for France or to deliver Casale to the
French unless King Louis would send into Italy an army strong enough to
hold that fortress.
At last, however, after much haggling over the sum to be paid to the
duke as the price of Casale (he was finally beaten down to take about
twelve thousand pounds, by instalments), everything was agreed to; all
that remained to do was to put the agreement into writing and to sign
it.
But here the first real difficulty entered into the matter; for, as
D’Estrades well knew, it would be utterly impossible, during many
months to come, for Louis XIV to send into Italy the soldiers upon whom
the duke was relying, to enable him to hold the fortress of Casale
for King Louis against his mother and her friends, the Austrians
and Spaniards; because all the King’s troops were too badly needed
elsewhere.
The Duke of Mantua, however, who was impatient to finish the business,
insisted upon sending the faithful Mattioli to Paris at this juncture,
to negotiate with the King in person so as to save further delay;
to this D’Estrades consented, but at the same time he cast about him
for a means of retarding Mattioli’s departure, lest the latter might
have none but disappointing news to bring back with him from Paris to
Mantua—and so the duke, impetuous and unstable, might be caught on his
rebound in the hands of Spain and Austria.
Luckily for D’Estrades, one delay now succeeded to another; the
necessity under which Mattioli felt himself of protecting his master
against the Spanish blandishments kept him in close attendance on the
duke for months; then there followed an illness of the duchess-mother,
Isabella Clara, of whose probable demise D’Estrades wrote home with the
most beautiful expressions of resignation to the Divine Will: “If God
should call her to Himself, the affair would be more easy to conclude.”
But it was fated otherwise; the honest, patriotic Austrian woman got
well again. Next, it was Mattioli’s own turn to fall ill; and so, from
one cause and another, it resulted that he did not reach Paris until
the end of November, 1678, when in a private audience with Louis XIV
the matter was concluded—twelve thousand pounds were to be paid to the
Duke of Mantua, to admit the French into Casale, and he was then to be
appointed their commander-in-chief. Mattioli himself was given a ring
and a sum of money by way of “pourboire,” together with promises of
the royal patronage for his son and of preferment in the Church for his
brother, who was a priest. French troops under Boufflers were mobilised
at Briançon on the frontier of France and Piedmont, and the great
Catinat, at that time a simple brigadier, was despatched in all secrecy
to Pinerolo, to await their coming.
Simultaneously, Colonel Baron D’Asfeld was sent to Venice, where
the Duke of Mantua was spending the winter, there to exchange the
ratification of the treaty; he arrived in the January of 1679, and at
once informed Pinchesne, the French representative, of his mission. But
the duke refused to ratify the treaty until Mattioli, who was still on
the way from Paris, should have arrived to give him the benefit of his
opinion concerning it; and here, be it noticed, is the first sign of
Mattioli’s double-dealing as shown in the extraordinary slowness of his
journey home from Paris.
What was the reason of that slowness?—but let us wait and see.
The parts were now reversed; whereas, the French had been formerly
anxious for delays, they were now all afire with eagerness to put the
business through; whilst the Duke of Mantua and his Mattioli, once
so impatient of any hitch in the negotiations, now seemed scarcely
interested any longer in the question of Casale. Pressed by D’Asfeld
and Pinchesne to promise that he would be at that place by the 20th
of February at latest, the duke declined to commit himself; and when
he answered them at last through Mattioli (who, on his arrival in
Italy, was once more prevented for a time from attending to business
by another of his inopportune attacks of illness) Duke Charles sent
word to say that he could not possibly get to Casale before the 10th
of March, urging three separate reasons for his inability to do so.
These were: That he had not sufficient funds for such a journey; that
he was unwilling to leave his heir-presumptive, Don Vincenzo Gonzaga,
behind at Mantua at such a crisis; and “the obligation he found himself
under of holding a sort of carousal with several Venetian gentlemen.”
Could anything be more frankly careless than this last; more plainly
indicative of the fact that Duke Charles, disappointed by the smallness
of the monetary advantage proffered him in return for the control of
Casale, was either desirous of obtaining more by giving an impression
of indifference in the matter, or else, that he was genuinely
indifferent, by reason of the knowledge that Mattioli was even at that
moment (and by preconcerted arrangement with himself) displaying the
political wares so undervalued by Louis XIV to other and more generous
purchasers along the road from Paris to Venice?
And yet the French agents, at this stage of things, still reported
their unshaken belief that the duke had every intention of remaining
true to their master in Paris!
Meanwhile, the massing of the French troops over against the
Piedmontese frontier was causing consternation throughout Northern
Italy. Duke Charles even received “representations” from the Spanish
and Austrian ministers at Mantua, protesting violently against
the news they had heard from Turin—“that he wished to give Casale
and the Montferrat to the King of France.” To which the ingenuous
Charles returned a flat denial, expressing some mild wonder at their
excellencies’ credulousness! All was now suspicion and anger, and
veiled threats for Duke Charles from both sides; couriers were being
sent off at top-speed to Vienna and Madrid, and even to Venice, with
the news of Charles’ projected “deal” with the French; whilst Pinchesne
and D’Asfeld pressed him, without mercy or intermission, to betake
himself to Casale, there to wait for the French troops and to hand
over the keys of the place to them on their arrival. At last he agreed
to do this; at the same time, D’Asfeld and Mattioli were to meet at
Incréa, not far from Casale, and to exchange the ratifications of
the treaty—this, I fancy, by the duke’s stipulation, seeing that both
Mattioli and D’Asfeld were in Venice with the treaty in their pockets.
This eccentric provision seems to prove all the more clearly, in the
light of subsequent events, that Duke Charles was perfectly aware of
those events, and that he had no intention whatever of binding himself
to Louis XIV by any signed instrument that might afterwards be held
against him by that person.
The duke then was to be at Casale by the 15th of March; and Mattioli
was to meet D’Asfeld at Incréa on the 9th of the same month.
And then, all at once, it was learned that D’Asfeld, marching to
keep his appointment with Mattioli, had been arrested by the Spanish
Government in the Duchy of Milan, which he was obliged to cross to
reach the rendezvous at Incréa; on the other hand, neither Duke Charles
nor Mattioli had as yet left Mantua for Casale or for Incréa—although
the latter was the first to send the news of D’Asfeld’s arrest to the
French agents, D’Estrades at Turin and Pinchesne at Venice. It was
now the end of the month of March, and those same French agents were
beginning to entertain the strongest suspicions of Mattioli himself.
April passed away and still the business remained stationary, while
those suspicions increased to a straining-point—and then on May Day,
1679, the storm broke.
The whole of the proposed cession of Casale was made known,
simultaneously at Turin, Madrid, Vienna, Milan, and Venice; at one and
the same time, the representative of each state announced his perfect
knowledge of the entire transaction to Monsieur de Pomponne, the French
minister for foreign affairs!