TRUTH OF THE IRON MASK
Mattioli’s Betrayal of Louis XIV—Participation of Duke
Charles—Louis’ True Character Exhibited to World—Abduction of
Mattioli—Imprisoned for Fifteen Years—Insanity—Story of the
Mask—Mattioli’s Disappearance No Mystery—Explanation of the
Riddle—Mattioli’s Hardships—His End.
And so the truth came to light.
The Duchess-Regent of Savoy wrote, herself, to Louis XIV, to tell him
that Mattioli had shown her the documents relating to the negotiations
for Casale, and that she had in her possession copies of them. Her
minister, Signor Trucci, had had an interview with Mattioli on the
subject at Turin. It afterwards transpired, through Mattioli’s own
admission to Catinat, that he had betrayed the whole affair to the
Conde de Melgar, the Spanish Governor of Milan, and that Melgar had
provided him with a cipher for their communications on the subject; and
that he, Mattioli, had had secret interviews in regard to it with one
of the Inquisitors of State at Venice.
Personally, I find it hard to believe with Mr. Hopkins that Mattioli
acted throughout without the knowledge and consent of the Duke of
Mantua. In the first place, he had no certainty of any commensurate
gain to be derived from his betrayal of Louis XIV to that monarch’s
adversaries—for responsible ministers of state do not generally pay
largely for information before that information has been shown to be
not merely negatively, but positively valuable. And Mattioli would
naturally have required a very large sum in each instance to compensate
him for the inevitable loss of Duke Charles’ favour when Duke Charles
(always supposing the two men to have been working at cross purposes,
and that the duke was in ignorance of Mattioli’s subterranean
intrigues) should discover that Mattioli had disloyally wrecked his
pet project of military glory, and had kept him as well out of the
enjoyment of twelve thousand pounds or so.
Again, consider the duke’s own behaviour throughout—his first keenness
and then his amazing apathy just at the moment when his cherished
desire and a large sum of money to boot were within his reach—the “sort
of carousal” put forward by him as an excuse for not going to Casale to
meet the troops of which he was to have been the _generalissimo_—was
such the conduct of any but a man anxious to evade the fulfilment of
his bargain?
The fury of Louis XIV at being thus exhibited to the world in his true
character of intriguer and brigand—and a feeble one at that—together
with the explanations and personal untruths in which he now found
himself involved (neither explanations nor personal untruths being at
all to his proud taste) may be more easily imagined than described.
Also his wrath with D’Estrades and Pinchesne for letting themselves be
made fools of by Mattioli. The former of these, however, instantly took
steps to assuage his master’s anger by submitting a plan of revenge; he
proposed that Mattioli should be kidnapped and imprisoned for so long
or so short a time as the King might please.
To this Louis consented, insisting only that the thing should be
done with the utmost secrecy; Mattioli was to be lured on to French
soil beyond the frontier of Piedmont and incarcerated in a dungeon
at Pinerolo. Except his gaoler there—one Saint-Mars, baptised
Benignant—and Catinat, no one was to know the prisoner’s name. As the
offended Louis put it to D’Estrades, “Look to it that no one knows what
becomes of this man.” So that it was now, as Americans say, “up to”
D’Estrades to carry out the abduction of Mattioli.
Oddly enough, Mattioli had not the least inkling of his peril; he
had no idea that the Duchess of Savoy had made known his transaction
with her to Louis XIV, and so he was all unsuspecting of the advances
with which D’Estrades continued to ply him. Indeed, he was now in
Turin, trying to get more money out of the French representatives, on
the ground of the expenses incurred by him in promoting King Louis’
interests in Italy. To that, on D’Estrades’ telling him that Catinat
was at Pinerolo with funds for the express purpose of reimbursing him,
Mattioli agreed to meet D’Estrades early in the morning of May 2, 1679,
at a spot outside the city, whence they were to drive together to a
place on the frontier near Pinerolo.
Mattioli kept the appointment; D’Estrades was waiting for him at the
place set, and away the carriage rolled with its burden of revenge, and
treachery, and greed, along the country roads to where, at the end of
some seventeen miles, Catinat was waiting for them.
And so the meeting took place and, all unwittingly, Mattioli stepped
in between the very teeth of the trap set for him by D’Estrades; and at
once the teeth snapped to, never again to open for the unhappy man. At
two o’clock that same afternoon, in Mr. Hopkins’ words, “Saint-Mars had
him under lock in the dungeon of Pignerol—the French name for Pinerolo.
There, for fifteen years, Mattioli was confined under circumstances
of every severity; his name was changed, officially, to Lestang, in
order that none might know his identity saving only that same Benignant
Saint-Mars—as timorous and heartless a creature as ever passed for a
man.
In less than a year Mattioli went out of his mind, thanks to
Saint-Mars’ treatment of him; at that time three of the prisoners
under the amiable Benignant’s charge in the hell of Pinerolo were
insane—Mattioli, Dubreuil, and a nameless Jacobin monk. After a while
Mattioli and the Jacobin were put in the same cell—and there they lived
and had their miserable being together until 1694, when, in consequence
of the French reverses, preparations were set on foot to abandon
Pinerolo to the Savoyards. It now became necessary to remove the only
three prisoners left there to safer keeping in France itself, in order
that the King’s secret might be kept—the secret of his having “spirited
away,” by means of his agents, the Minister of a friendly Prince.
And so Mattioli was taken off, along with Dubreuil and another—the
monk was dead—in a closed litter to another fortress, that of
Sainte-Marguerite, on an island off the coast of Nice; his former
gaoler, Saint-Mars, had, for some years already, been the governor
of Sainte-Marguerite, and to him Mattioli was brought under a strong
escort of soldiers by the then governor of Pinerolo, the Marquis
D’Herleville, in person.
It is to be presumed that on this journey between the two prisons
Mattioli was masked, as he was similarly masked some years later, on
his transference, under charge of Saint-Mars, from Sainte-Marguerite
to Paris and to the Bastile itself; the mask, though, was not the
traditional monstrosity of iron, but the ordinary velvet “vizard” worn
to this day at masked balls.
And this brings us to one of the strangest features of the whole
case—namely, that from beginning to end this secrecy on the part of
Louis XIV and his henchmen was completely unnecessary, for the simple
reason that the secret was no secret at all and never had been.
This is abundantly proved by the fact that, as early as 1682, little
more than two years after Mattioli’s abduction by D’Estrades, there
was published at Cologne a pamphlet in Italian called “La prudenza
trionfante di Casale.” In this a complete, detailed account was given
of the whole affair of the intrigue for Casale, with the full parts
played in it by D’Estrades, Mattioli, the Duke of Mantua, Catinat,
D’Asfeld, and Pinchesne; and in 1687 there was published at Leyden
the “Histoire abrégée de l’Europe,” containing a letter translated
from Italian into French, denouncing the abduction of Mattioli as the
outrage that it was.
How the thing came thus to light and through whom, I have no means
of ascertaining, and so I must leave it to the reader to decide the
question for himself. But, as the “Prudenza trionfante” contains a
minute description of Mattioli’s arrest, in the words, “The secretary
(Mattioli) was surrounded by ten or twelve horsemen, who seized him,
disguised him, _masked_ him, and conducted him to Pinerolo,” we can
only conclude either that it must have been written by an eyewitness,
or else from the description given by one of the scene in question.
Moreover, there were alive, until the Eighteenth Century, many persons
of the parts about Pinerolo who continued to bear witness both to
Mattioli’s arrest as well as to the manner of it, especially in regard
to his masking by Catinat’s men.
After all, what explanation more natural than that (for the day was
a Sunday) some small boys or other idlers should have followed the
march of Catinat and his few soldiers, at a respectful distance, along
the three miles of road from Pinerolo to the place of the arrest and,
concealing themselves among the dense trees nearby, should have seen
everything?
Thus, the mystery of Mattioli’s disappearance from the world of the
living was in no way a mystery, except in the fond imagination of his
gaolers, seeing that the facts of it were public property over a great
part of Europe, after the appearance of the publications mentioned in
1682 and 1687.
There arises then the question—whence the mystery of the “Man in the
Iron Mask”?
From the early spring of 1694 until the summer of 1698, when Saint-Mars
was promoted to be the governor of the Bastile in Paris, Mattioli
remained under his care at the Island of Sainte-Marguerite. At the end
of those four years Saint-Mars is told to come to Paris and to bring
with him his “ancient prisoner” in such a manner that he shall be seen
by no one.
And so Saint-Mars set out for his new post in the capital, taking with
him his “ancient prisoner,” masked as ever, in a litter, with an escort
of horse-soldiers. On their way they passed by Saint-Mars’ estate
of Palteau, near Villeneuve in the Department of the Yonne, where
Saint-Mars rested for a day or two, never letting his prisoner out of
his sight; together they ate their meals, and at night Saint-Mars slept
in a bed close to that of the man in the mask.
In a letter upon the subject published in the “Année Littéraire” for
June 30, 1768, and quoted in his admirable book by Mr. Tighe Hopkins,
the grand-nephew of Saint-Mars, M. de Formanoir de Palteau, writes:
“In 1698, M. de Saint-Mars passed from the charge of the Isles
of Sainte-Marguerite to that of the Bastile. On his way he
stayed with his prisoner at Palteau. The Man in the Mask came
in a litter which preceded that of M. de Saint-Mars; they were
accompanied by several men on horseback. The peasants went
to greet their lord; M. de Saint-Mars took his meals with his
prisoner, who was placed with his back to the windows of the
dining-room, which overlooked the courtyard. The peasants whom I
questioned could not see whether he wore his mask while eating,
but they took note of the fact that M. de Saint-Mars, who sat
opposite to him, kept a pair of pistols beside his plate. They
were waited on by one manservant, who fetched the dishes from the
ante-room, where they were brought to him, taking care to close
behind him the door of the dining-room. When the prisoner crossed
the courtyard, he always wore the black mask; the peasants
noticed that his teeth and lips showed through it; also that he
was tall and had white hair.”
These things the writer had from the few remaining actual witnesses of
them, seventy years before.
On the arrival of Saint-Mars at the Bastile in the later days of
September, 1698, he was met by Du Junca, the King’s lieutenant of the
prison, who noted the fact with all its circumstances in the register
now in the library of the Arsenal in Paris. It is this entry of Du
Junca’s (according to M. Funck-Brentano, as quoted by Mr. Hopkins)
that is “the origin and foundation of all that has been printed on the
question of the Iron Mask.”
The entry goes thus:
“On Thursday, 18th of September, at three in the afternoon, M.
de Saint-Mars, governor of the château of the Bastile, presented
himself for the first time, coming from the government of the
Isles of Sainte-Marguerite—Honorat, having with him in his
litter a prisoner who was formerly in his keeping at Pignerol
(Pinerolo), whom he caused to be always masked, whose name is not
mentioned; on descending from the litter, he had him placed in
the first chamber of the Basinière tower, waiting until night for
me to take him at nine o’clock, and put him with M. de Rosarges,
one of the sergeants brought by the Governor, alone in the third
chamber of the Bertandière tower, which I had had furnished
some days before his arrival by order of M. de Saint-Mars. The
said prisoner will be served and tended by M. de Rosarges, and
maintained by the Governor.”
By degrees, though, poor Mattioli’s importance began to decrease with
years and the world’s forgetfulness of the events that had so stirred
France and Italy all those years before 1679; by 1701, twenty-two
dreadful years after his arrest by Catinat at Pinerolo, he had fallen
from his high estate of mystery, and we find him torn out of his
seclusion from the common herd of malefactors, and put to share a cell
with a miserable rascal imprisoned for various offences against the
common law—one Tirmont, who died insane, seven years later, in the
Bicêtre. And on April 30, 1701, there was added to these two yet a
third prisoner, Maranville by name; the three remained together thus
until the December of that year, when Tirmont was removed to Bicêtre.
The two remaining years of Mattioli’s life were spent with Maranville;
one can only hope the latter was able to console him a little and to
soften his last moments on earth with some particle of companionship.
And now comes the last of him; as noted in Du Junca’s handwriting in
the prison register on November 19, 1703:
“The same day, Monday, 19th of November, 1703, the prisoner
unknown, masked always with a mask of black velvet, whom M. de
Saint-Mars, the governor, brought with him from the Isles of
Sainte-Marguerite, and whom he had had for a long time, happening
to be rather unwell yesterday on coming from Mass, died this
day at about ten o’clock in the evening, without having had
any serious illness; indeed, it could not have been slighter.
M. Giraut, our chaplain, confessed him yesterday. Surprised
by death, he did not receive the Sacraments, and our chaplain
exhorted him for a moment before he died. And this unknown
prisoner, confined for so long a time, was buried on Tuesday at
four in the afternoon, in the cemetery of Saint Paul, our parish;
on the register of burial he was given a name also unknown. M. de
Rosarges, major, and Arreil, surgeon, signed the register.”
At the lower left-hand side of this entry in Du Junca’s prison-registry
there is a note to the effect that:
“I have since learned that he was named on the register M. de
Marchiel, and that the burial cost forty livres.”
As a matter of fact, the entry in the registry of Saint Paul’s runs as
follows:
“On the 19th (November, 1703) Marchioly, aged forty-five or
thereabouts, died in the Bastile, whose body was buried in the
cemetery of Saint Paul, his parish, the 20th of this month in the
presence of M. Rosage (_sic_), major of the Bastile, and of M.
Reglhe (_sic_), surgeon-major of the Bastile, who signed:
“Signed: Rosarges, Reilhe.”
After seeing how Du Junca makes “Marcheil” where the sacristan of Saint
Paul makes the name “Marchioly,” it is presumable that Du Junca learned
it by word of mouth from some one or other; also that the name itself
had been communicated to Du Junca’s informant in the same manner by
Rosarges or Reilhe or the sacristan—in short, that, all along, the
name was an unintentional corruption of “Mattioli.” And so good-bye
to his competitors, in the popular imagination, to the title of “Man
in the Iron Mask,” Vermandois, Monmouth, Vendôme, Fouquet, an unknown
twin brother of Louis XIV, Avedick, the Armenian patriarch, General de
Bulonde, and the rest. I would once more recommend to all interested
in the subject Mr. Tighe Hopkins’ altogether admirable publication in
which he traces and destroys the claims of each and every one of these
candidates to be what he so aptly terms “The Sphinx of French History.”