The Mystery of the Man in the Iron Mask is, despite a pleasant saying
of Lord Beaconsfield’s, one of the most fascinating in history. By a
curious coincidence the wildest legend on the subject, and the correct
explanation of the problem, were offered to the world in the same year,
1801. According to this form of the legend, the Man in the Iron Mask was
the genuine Louis XIV., deprived of his rights in favour of a child of
Anne of Austria and of Mazarin. Immured in the Isles Sainte-Marguerite,
in the bay of Cannes (where you are shown his cell, looking north to
the sunny town), he married, and begot a son. That son was carried to
Corsica, was named de Buona Parte, and was the ancestor of Napoleon. The
Emperor was thus the legitimate representative of the House of Bourbon.
This legend was circulated in 1801, and is referred to in a proclamation
of the Royalists of La Vendee. In the same year, 1801, Roux Fazaillac,
a Citoyen and a revolutionary legislator, published a work in which he
asserted that the Man in the Iron Mask (as known in rumour) was not one
man, but a myth, in which the actual facts concerning at least two men
were blended. It is certain that Roux Fazaillac was right; or that, if
he was wrong, the Man in the Iron Mask was an obscure valet, of French
birth, residing in England, whose real name was Martin.
Before we enter on the topic of this poor menial’s tragic history,
it may be as well to trace the progress of the romantic legend, as it
blossomed after the death of the Man, whose Mask was not of iron, but
of black velvet. Later we shall show how the legend struck root and
flowered, from the moment when the poor valet, Martin (by his prison
pseudonym ‘Eustache Dauger’), was immured in the French fortress of
Pignerol, in Piedmont (August 1669).
The Man, IN CONNECTION WITH THE MASK, is first known to us from a kind
of notebook kept by du Junca, Lieutenant of the Bastille. On September
18, 1698, he records the arrival of the new Governor of the Bastille,
M. de Saint-Mars, bringing with him, from his last place, the Isles
Sainte-Marguerite, in the bay of Cannes, ‘an old prisoner whom he had at
Pignerol. He keeps the prisoner always masked, his name is not spoken...
and I have put him, alone, in the third chamber of the Bertaudiere
tower, having furnished it some days before with everything, by order
of M. de Saint-Mars. The prisoner is to be served and cared for by M. de
Rosarges,’ the officer next in command under Saint-Mars.*
*Funck-Brentano. Legendes et Archives de la Bastille, pp. 86, 87,
Paris, 1898, p. 277, a facsimile of this entry.
The prisoner’s death is entered by du Junca on November 19, 1703. To
that entry we return later.
The existence of this prisoner was known and excited curiosity. On
October 15, 1711, the Princess Palatine wrote about the case to
the Electress Sophia of Hanover, ‘A man lived for long years in the
Bastille, masked, and masked he died there. Two musketeers were by his
side to shoot him if ever he unmasked. He ate and slept in his mask.
There must, doubtless, have been some good reason for this, as otherwise
he was very well treated, well lodged, and had everything given to him
that he wanted. He took the Communion masked; was very devout, and read
perpetually.’
On October 22, 1711, the Princess writes that the Mask was an English
nobleman, mixed up in the plot of the Duke of Berwick against William
III.--Fenwick’s affair is meant. He was imprisoned and masked that the
Dutch usurper might never know what had become of him.*
* Op. cit. 98, note 1.
The legend was now afloat in society. The sub-commandant of the Bastille
from 1749 to 1787, Chevalier, declared, obviously on the evidence of
tradition, that all the Mask’s furniture and clothes were destroyed at
his death, lest they might yield a clue to his identity. Louis XV. is
said to have told Madame de Pompadour that the Mask was ‘the minister
of an Italian prince.’ Louis XVI. told Marie Antoinette (according to
Madame de Campan) that the Mask was a Mantuan intriguer, the same
person as Louis XV. indicated. Perhaps he was, it is one of two possible
alternatives. Voltaire, in the first edition of his ‘Siecle de Louis
XIV.,’ merely spoke of a young, handsome, masked prisoner, treated with
the highest respect by Louvois, the Minister of Louis XIV. At last, in
‘Questions sur l’Encyclopedie’ (second edition), Voltaire averred that
the Mask was the son of Anne of Austria and Mazarin, an elder brother of
Louis XIV. Changes were rung on this note: the Mask was the actual
King, Louis XIV. was a bastard. Others held that he was James, Duke of
Monmouth--or Moliere! In 1770 Heiss identified him with Mattioli, the
Mantuan intriguer, and especially after the appearance of the book by
Roux Fazaillac, in 1801, that was the generally accepted opinion.
It MAY be true, in part. Mattioli MAY have been the prisoner who died in
the Bastille in November 1703, but the legend of the Mask’s prison life
undeniably arose out of the adventure of our valet, Martin or Eustache
Dauger.