The True History of the State Prisoner, commonly called the Iron Mask / Extracted from Documents in the French Archives

Transcriber’s Note:
Obvious typographical and printing errors have been corrected. Variations in hyphenation have been normalized; other spelling inconsistencies have been retained.
The publisher’s inconsistent application of small caps has been retained.
Pages 86 and 88 are blank pages in the original publication.
The cover image has been produced by the submitter for the e-reader editions of this e-text. It is released into the public domain.
THE HON. GEORGE AGAR ELLIS.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
MDCCCXXVI.
LONDON: PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY, DORSET STREET.
I was led to undertake the following Narrative by the perusal of a work, lately published at Paris, entitled “Histoire de L’Homme au Masque de Fer, par J. Delort;” in which the name of that state prisoner is most clearly and satisfactorily ascertained, by means of authentic documents.
Under these circumstances, it may be asked why I was not contented to leave the question, thus set at rest, in the hands of M. Delort, who had the original merit of the discovery:—to this I would answer, that M. Delort’s part of the book struck me as peculiarly ill arranged and confused; besides being unnecessarily filled with the most fulsome flattery of Lewis the Fourteenth, never, certainly, more inappropriately bestowed, than while in the act of recording one of the most cruel and oppressive acts of that Sovereign’s cruel and oppressive reign.