M. Loiseleur, in the course of his brilliant controversy with Marius Topin, suggested “an obscure spy arrested by Catinat in 1681,” and his opponent refuted him in the most piquant manner by discovering Catinat in the very prisoner he was said to have arrested!
General Jung published a large volume in support of the claims of a certain Oldendorf, a native of Lorraine, a spy and poisoner, arrested on March 29, 1673, in a trap laid for him at one of the passages of the Somme. The theory was refuted by M. Loiseleur. As M. Lair pointed out, General Jung did not even succeed in proving that his nominee entered Pignerol, an essential condition to his being the Man in the Mask.
Baron Carutti urged the claims of a mad Jacobin, a prisoner at Pignerol whose name remains unknown; but this Jacobin died at Pignerol towards the close of 1693.’
The recent work of M. Emile Burgaud, written in collaboration with Commandant Bazeries, made a great sensation. He fixes on General Vivien Labbé de Bulonde, whom Louvois arrested for having shown dereliction of a general’s duty before Coni. M. Geoffroy de Grandmaison published in the Univers of January 9, 1895, two receipts signed by General de Bulonde, one in 1699, when the masked man was in rigorous isolation at the Bastille, the other in 1705, when he had been dead for two years.
We come at last to the hypothesis which is the most probable of all—after the true hypothesis, of course. Eustache Dauger, whom M. Lair identifies with the masked prisoner, was a valet, who had been put into jail at Pignerol on July 28, 1669. But it must be noted that the masked prisoner was kept guarded in rigorous secrecy in the early days of his detention, as long as he was at Pignerol and the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite. Now, when Dauger went to Pignerol, his case seemed of such slight importance that Saint-Mars thought of making him into a servant for the other prisoners, and in fact, in 1675, Louvois gave him as a valet to Fouquet, who for some time past had seen the rigour of his confinement sensibly mitigated, receiving visits, walking freely in the courts and purlieus of the fortress, Dauger accompanying him. Further, we know that the masked man was transferred direct from Pignerol to the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite, whilst Dauger was transferred in 1681 to Exiles, whence he only went to the Isles in 1687.
We now come to the correct solution.
3. Mattioli.
To Baron Heiss, once captain in the Alsace regiment, and one of the most distinguished bibliophiles of his time, belongs the honour of being the first, in a letter dated from Phalsbourg, June 28, 1770, and published by the Journal encyclopédique, to identify the masked prisoner with Count Mattioli, secretary of state to the Duke of Mantua. After him, Dutens, in 1783, in his Intercepted Correspondence; Baron de Chambrier, in 1795, in a Memoir presented to the Academy of Berlin; Roux-Fazillac, member of the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, in a remarkable work printed in 1801; then successively, Reth, Delort, Ellis, Carlo Botta, Armand Baschet, Marius Topin, Paul de Saint-Victor, and M. Gallien, in a series of publications more or less important, endeavoured to prove that the Man in the Mask was the Duke of Mantua’s secretary of state. The scholars most intimate with the history of Louis XIV.’s government, Depping, Chéruel, Camille Rousset, have not hesitated to pronounce in favour of the same view; while against them, singlehanded like his D’Artagnan, Alexandre Dumas resisted the efforts of twenty scholars, and the Vicomte de Bragelonne—giving a new lease of life to the legend about the brother of Louis XIV., put in circulation by Voltaire, and reinforced by the Revolution—drove back into their dust among the archives the documents which students had exhumed.
We have no longer to deal with so formidable an adversary, and we hope that the following pages will not leave the shadow of a doubt.
We know how, under the influence of Louvois, the able and insinuating policy directed first by Mazarin, then by Lionne, gave way to a military diplomacy, blunt and aggressive. Louis XIV. was master of Pignerol, acquired in 1632. He was induced by Louvois to cast covetous glances at Casal. In possession of these two places, the French armies could not but dominate Upper Italy, and hold the court of Turin directly at their mercy. The throne of Mantua was then occupied by a young duke, Charles IV. of Gonzago, frivolous, happy-go-lucky, dissipating his wealth at Venice in fêtes and pleasures. In 1677 he had pledged to the Jews the crown revenues for several years. Charles IV. was also Marquis of Montferrat, of which Casal was the capital. Noting with watchful eye the frivolity and financial straits of the young prince, the court of Versailles conceived the bold scheme of buying Casal for hard cash.