Legends of the Bastille

by Frantz Funck-Brentano

At this date, one of the principal personages in Mantua was Count Hercules Antony Mattioli. He was born at Bologna on December 1, 1640, of a distinguished family. A brilliant student, he had barely passed his twentieth year when he was elected a professor at the University of Bologna. Afterwards he established himself at Mantua, where Charles III., whose confidence he had won, made him his secretary of state. Charles IV., continuing the favour of his father, not only maintained Mattioli in his office as minister of state, but appointed him an honorary senator, a dignity which was enhanced by the title of Count.

Louis XIV. was employing at the capital of the Venetian republic a keen-witted and enterprising ambassador, the Abbé d’Estrades. He saw through the ambitious and intriguing nature of Mattioli, and, towards the end of 1677, succeeded in winning over his support for the designs of the French court on Casal.

On January 12, 1678, Louis XIV. with his own hand wrote expressing his thanks to Mattioli, who by-and-by came to Paris. On December 8, the contract was signed, the Duke of Mantua receiving in exchange for Casal 100,000 crowns. In a private audience, Louis XIV. presented Mattioli with a costly diamond and paid him the sum of a hundred double louis.

Scarcely two months after Mattioli’s journey to France, the courts of Vienna, Madrid, Turin, and the Venetian Republic were simultaneously informed of all that had taken place. In order to reap a double harvest of gold, Mattioli had cynically betrayed both his master Charles IV. and the King of France. Like a thunderbolt there came to Versailles the news of the arrest of Baron d’Asfeld, the envoy appointed by Louis XIV. to exchange ratifications with Mattioli. The governor of Milan had caused him to be seized and handed over to the Spaniards. The rage of Louis XIV. and of Louvois, who had urged the opening of negotiations, taken an active part in them, and begun preparations for the occupation of Casal, may well be imagined. The Abbé d’Estrades, not less irritated, conceived a scheme of the most daring kind, proposing to Versailles nothing less than the abduction of the Mantuan minister. But Louis XIV. was determined to have no scandal. Catinat was charged with carrying out the scheme in person. The Abbé d’Estrades, in his dealings with Mattioli, feigned ignorance of the double game the Count was playing. He led him to believe, on the contrary, that the balance of the sums promised at Versailles was about to be paid. A meeting was fixed for May 2, 1679. On that day d’Estrades and Mattioli got into a carriage, the passing of which was awaited by Catinat accompanied by some dozen men. At two o’clock in the afternoon, Mattioli was in the fortress of Pignerol, in the hands of jailer Saint-Mars. When we remember the rank held by the Italian minister, we are confronted with one of the most audacious violations of international law of which history has preserved a record.

Early in the year 1694, Mattioli was transferred to the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite; we have seen that he entered the Bastille on September 18, 1698, and died there on November 19, 1703.

The details that we possess of the imprisonment of Mattioli at Pignerol and afterwards at the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite show that he was at the outset treated with the consideration due to his rank and to the position he occupied at the time of his arrest. Eventually the respect which the prisoner had at first inspired gradually diminished: as years went on the attentions shown him grew less and less until the day when, at the Bastille, he was given a room in common with persons of the basest class. On the other hand, the rigour of his confinement, so far as the secrecy in which he was kept was concerned, was more and more relaxed; what it was material to conceal was the circumstances under which Mattioli had been arrested, and with the lapse of time this secret continually diminished in importance. As to the mask of black velvet which Mattioli had among his possessions when he was arrested, and which he put on, without a doubt, only for the occasion, this in reality constituted a relief to his captivity, for it permitted the prisoner to leave his room, while the other state prisoners were rigorously mewed up in theirs.

It remains to prove that the masked prisoner was really Mattioli.

1. In the despatch sent by Louis XIV. to the Abbé d’Estrades five days before the arrest, the king approves the scheme of his ambassador and authorizes him to secure Mattioli, “since you believe you can get him carried off without the affair giving rise to any scandal.” The prisoner is to be conducted to Pignerol, where “instructions are being sent to receive him and keep him there without anybody having knowledge of it.” The king’s orders close with these words: “You must see to it that no one knows what becomes of this man.” The capture effected, Catinat wrote on his part to Louvois: “It came off without any violence, and no one knows the name of the knave, not even the officers who helped to arrest him.” Finally, we have a very curious pamphlet entitled La Prudenza triomfante di Casale, written in 1682, that is, little more than two years after the event, and—this slight detail is of capital importance—thirty years before there was any talk of the Man in the Mask. In this we read: “The secretary (Mattioli) was surrounded by ten or twelve horsemen, who seized him, disguised him, masked him, and conducted him to Pignerol”—a fact, moreover, confirmed by a tradition which in the eighteenth century was still rife in the district, where scholars succeeded in culling it.

Is there any need to insist on the strength of the proofs afforded by these three documents, taken in connection one with another?

2. We know, from du Junca’s register, that the masked man was shut up at Pignerol under the charge of Saint-Mars. In 1681, Saint-Mars gave up the governorship of Pignerol for that of Exiles. We can determine with absolute precision the number of prisoners Saint-Mars had then in his keeping. It was exactly five. A dispatch from Louvois, dated June 9, is very clear. In the first paragraph, he orders “the two prisoners in the lower tower” to be removed; in the second, he adds: “The rest of the prisoners in your charge.” Here there is a clear indication of the “rest”: what follows settles the number: “The Sieur du Chamoy has orders to pay two crowns a day for the board of these three prisoners.” This account, as clear as arithmetic can make it, is further confirmed by the letter addressed by Saint-Mars to the Abbé d’Estrades on June 25, 1681, when he was setting out for Exiles: “I received yesterday the warrant appointing me governor of Exiles: I am to keep charge of two jailbirds I have here, who have no other name than ‘the gentlemen of the lower tower’; Mattioli will remain here with two other prisoners.”