Legends of the Bastille

by Frantz Funck-Brentano

The Baron de Gleichen goes still farther. He is at the pains to prove that it was the true heir to the throne who was put out of sight, to the profit of a child of the queen and the cardinal. Having became masters of the situation at the death of the king, they substituted their son for the Dauphin, the substitution being facilitated by a strong likeness between the children. One sees at a glance the consequences of this theory, which nullifies the legitimacy of the last Bourbons.

But the career of imagination was not yet to be checked. The legend came into full bloom under the first empire. Pamphlets then appeared in which the version of Baron de Gleichen was revived. Louis XIV. had been only a bastard, the son of foreigners; the lawful heir had been imprisoned at the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite, where he had married the daughter of one of his keepers. Of this marriage was born a child who, as soon as he was weaned, was sent to Corsica, and entrusted to a reliable person, as a child coming of “good stock,” in Italian, Buona-parte. Of that child the Emperor was the direct descendant. The right of Napoleon I. to the throne of France established by the Iron Mask!—there is a discovery which the great Dumas missed. But, incredible as it seems, there were men who actually took these fables seriously. In a Vendéan manifesto circulated among the Chouans,[39] in Nivose of the year IX,[40] we read: “It is not wise for the Royalist party to rely on the assurances given by some emissaries of Napoleon, that he seized the throne only to restore the Bourbons; everything proves that he only awaits the general pacification to declare himself, and that he means to base his right on the birth of the children of the Iron Mask!”

We shall not stay to refute the hypothesis which makes the Iron Mask a brother of Louis XIV. Marius Topin has already done so in the clearest possible manner. The notion, moreover, has long been abandoned. The last writers who adhered to it date from the revolutionary period.

The Successive Incarnations of the Iron Mask.—“Never has an Indian deity,” says Paul de Saint-Victor, speaking of the Iron Mask, “undergone so many metempsychoses and so many avatars.” It would take too long merely to enumerate all the individuals with whom it has been attempted to identify the Iron Mask: even women have not escaped. We shall cite rapidly the theories which have found most credence amongst the public, or those which have been defended in the most serious works, in order to arrive finally at the identification—as will be seen, it is one of those proposed long ago—which is beyond doubt the true one.

The hypothesis which, after that of a brother of Louis XIV., has most powerfully excited public opinion, is that which made the mysterious unknown Louis, Comte de Vermandois, admiral of France, and son of the charming Louise de la Vallière. This was indeed the belief of Father Griffet, chaplain of the Bastille, and even of the officers of the staff. But the conjecture is disproved in a single line: “The Comte de Vermandois died at Courtrai, on November 18, 1683.” A precisely similar fact refutes the theory identifying the Iron Mask with the Duke of Monmouth, the natural son of Charles II. and Lucy Walters. Monmouth perished on the scaffold in 1683. Lagrange-Chancel throws much ardour and talent into a defence of the theory which made the Iron Mask Francis of Vendôme, Duke de Beaufort, who, under the Fronde, was called “King of the Markets.” The Duke de Beaufort died at the siege of Candia, June 25, 1669.

To Lagrange-Chancel succeeds the Chevalier de Taulès. “I have discovered the Man in the Mask,” he cries, “and it is my duty to impart my discovery to Europe and posterity!” This discovery brings forward one Avedick, an Armenian patriarch of Constantinople and Jerusalem, kidnapped in the East at the instigation of the Jesuits, and transported to France. Vergennes, on entering the ministry for foreign affairs, set investigations on foot. They confirmed the statement that Avedick had actually been arrested in the circumstances indicated, but after 1706; and so he could not be identified with the Iron Mask.

Such were the theories of the eighteenth century. We come now to those of our own time. Since mystery and sinister machinations were involved, the Jesuits could not be long left out of the business. We have just seen them at their tricks with the Armenian patriarch. People dreamt of an innocent youth thrown into a dungeon at their instigation for having written a couple of verses against them. But even this fancy was completely cast into the shade in a work published in 1885 under the pseudonym of “Ubalde,” the author of which was unquestionably M. Anatole Loquin. This is his conclusion: “The more I reflect, the more I believe I recognize in the Man in the Iron Mask, without any elaborate theory, without prejudice on my part, no other than J. B. Poquelin de Molière.” The Jesuits have got their revenge for Tartufe!

Let us come now to the conjectures which have almost hit the truth and have been defended by genuine scholars.

Superintendent Fouquet is the solution of the bibliophile Jacob (Paul Lacroix). M. Lair has shown that Fouquet died at Pignerol, of a sort of apoplexy, on March 23, 1680, at the very moment when there was an idea at court of sending him to the waters at Bourbon, as a first step towards his final liberation.

François Ravaisson, the learned and charming keeper of the Arsenal library, whose work in classifying the archives of the Bastille we have had the honour to continue, believed for a moment that the celebrated prisoner might have been the young Count de Kéroualze who had fought at Candia under the orders of Admiral de Beaufort. Ravaisson put forth his theory with much hesitation, and as, in the sequel, he was himself led to abandon it, we need not dwell any longer upon it.