If different methods of procedure had been adopted by the numerous writers who have attempted the solution of this problem, I should not have had the temerity to have added to their number; but an attentive study of their writings shows that they have all taken the same point of departure, and that they have all given themselves up to a single idea. All have kept fixed in their minds this observation of Voltaire’s:—“What redoubles one’s astonishment is, that at the time when this prisoner was sent to the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, no important personage had disappeared from Europe.”[10]
All have asked themselves if there really did not disappear from Europe some important personage, and they have immediately set themselves to discover some person of consideration, no matter who, that had disappeared during the period extending from 1662 to 1703. When by the aid of the very faintest resemblance they have fancied they have found their hero, they have forthwith adapted the mask of black velvet to him, and have seen in him the famous dead of November 20, 1703. Erecting their conjecture into a theory, they have become ardent propagators of it, and have adopted all that told in its favour with the same readiness with which they have energetically denied all that happened to be opposed to it. When the list of missing illustrious men belonging to this period was exhausted, certain writers, sooner than renounce seeing the Man with the Iron Mask in some person still alive in 1706, have had no other expedient than to delay for several years the death of Saint-Mars’ prisoner, in order not to abandon so dear a discovery.[11]
But many of these ingenious and inventive writers acted in good faith. Not perceiving the defects in their pleading, they only considered its feeblest parts, and in default of making a great number of converts, they invariably ended, as is easy enough, by convincing themselves.
Persuaded of the unsatisfactory nature of a method of procedure which had always produced such ephemeral results, I have thought that, extraordinary means having proved so inefficacious, more simple ones might perhaps lead to a new solution, (yet one hardly dared hope for it, when twenty-five hypotheses had already been put forward)—to a solution at once decisive, to an absolute conviction, to the certainty of not having to apprehend from the reader either doubt or objection. Commencing the study of this question without any fixed opinion, and with the firm resolution of seeking only the truth, I set about collecting from the whole of our archives authentic despatches relating to the State prisoners under Louis XIV. from the year 1660 to 1710. Without pre-occupying myself with the Ministers who signed them, or the prisoners whom they concerned; without limiting my researches to Saint-Mars, Pignerol, the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, or the Bastille, I arranged these despatches, of which more than three hundred are unpublished, in order of their dates. They then lent a material assistance; some explained others, and from this long and minute inquiry, slowly pursued through heaps of documents, has resulted, I hope, a definitive solution.
It was expedient this solution should be obtained.[12] In this century, when the historian’s resources are increased by the progress in certain sciences, by so many spectacles offered as an instruction to his fruitful meditations, by a more complete knowledge of institutions and facts, by the facility afforded of penetrating into collections which it had been believed would remain for ever inaccessible to investigators—in this century, which is literally the century of history, it behoved us not to leave in our annals, without solving it, a problem which had so frequently attracted the attention of foreigners. It is this which determined me to undertake a task which some may consider more curious than important. But to the interest peculiar to this subject has to be added that which is attached to the principal persons in whom by turns people have seen the prisoner of Saint-Mars. Before bringing on the scene the true Man with the Iron Mask, I shall examine rapidly, and with the aid of unpublished documents, the illustrious usurpers of this romantic title, so that this work may serve, not only to satisfy a trivial curiosity, but also to throw a new light upon some of the most singular points of the inner history of our country.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Estat de Prisonnies qui sont envoies par l’Ordre du Roy à la Bastille, à commenser du mescredy honsiesme du mois d’Octobre que je suis entré en possession de la charge de Lieutenant du Roy, en l’année 1690, by Dujonca, fol. 37, verso:—Archives of the Arsenal. Letter from Barbézieux, Minister of War, to Saint-Mars, dated July 19, 1698:—“You can write in advance to His Majesty’s lieutenant of this château to have a chamber ready to receive this prisoner on your arrival.”—Unpublished despatch from the Archives of the Ministry of War. Traditions collected at Villeneuve-le-Roi. Registers of the Secretary’s Office of the King’s Household.
[2] Estat de Prisonnies qui sortet de la Bastille à commenser de honsiesme du mois d’Octobre que je suis entré en possession, en l’année 1690, by Dujonca, fol. 80, verso:—Archives of the Arsenal. Registre des Baptêmes, Mariages, et Sépultures de la Paroisse de Saint-Paul, s. 1703-1705, vol. ii. No. 166:—Archives of the Hôtel de Ville. Registers of the Secretary’s Office of the King’s Household. Imperial Archives.
[3] Souvenirs de la Duchesse d’Abrantès, recueillis par M. Paul Lacroix (Bibliophile Jacob).
[4] I am indebted for this information to the kindness of M. Guizot.