The man with the iron mask

by Marius Topin

CHAPTER XXI.

Period from which the Theory that makes Matthioly the Man with the Iron Mask dates—Numerous Writers who have concerned themselves with the Abduction of this Individual—Arguments of Reth, Roux-Fazillac, and Delort—M. Jules Loiseleur—His Labours—The Supposition that an obscure Spy was arrested in 1681 by Catinat—It cannot be admitted—Grounds on which M. Loiseleur rejects the Theory that makes Matthioly the Man with the Iron Mask—Soundness of his Reasoning and Justness of his Conclusions.

Prisoners have no history; their monotonous and uniform existence cannot be described, their lamentations remain without response, their sufferings have no other witnesses but their gaolers, their confidence is received by nobody. Poets alone imagine and sing the bitter sorrows of captivity.

The story of Matthioly’s imprisonment derives all its interest from the supposition that he may possibly be the Man with the Iron Mask. Of the life of the captive in his prison, we have nothing or almost nothing.[527] Louis XIV. has succeeded in surrounding with uncertainty and mystery the punishment of the audacious man who had deceived him. A single attempt, if not to corrupt, at least to interest in his lot one of his gaolers, the Sieur de Blainvilliers;[528] by turns the calm of the prisoner resigned to the definitive loss of his liberty, or the momentary madness of the wretched being separated for ever from all that is dear to him; a few efforts, renewed after long intervals, to write and make known his name outside the walls within which he is confined: this is all that we know, all that we shall ever know of Matthioly’s captivity. But what prisons did he successively inhabit? Where did he drag out his existence, and, above all things, where did he terminate it? Ought we to behold in him the Man with the Iron Mask?

Roux-Fazillac and Delort are generally considered as having been the first to reveal, the one in 1800, and the other in a more complete manner in 1825, the existence and abduction of Count Matthioly. This is a grave error, and we must go back long before these two writers in order to find the first traces and the first revelations of the diplomatic intrigue relative to Casale. In 1682 there appeared at Cologne a political pamphlet[529] in which the whole negotiation was disclosed, and in which the Abbé d’Estrades and Matthioly, Giuliani and Pinchesne, D’Asfeld, Catinat, and the Duke of Mantua figured. In August, 1687, a work, published at Leyden with the title of Histoire Abrégée de l’Europe,[530] gave, under the head of Mantua, a French translation of an Italian letter which denounced the abduction of Matthioly. In 1749 the famous Muratori related, in his Annali d’Italia,[531] the story of the Casale negotiation, and the abduction of the principal agent in this intrigue. In the part of the Journal Encyclopédique[532] for August 15, 1770, was a letter from Baron d’Heiss, ex-captain in the regiment of Alsace, in which the whole of this affair was made known; and there is a copy of this letter in the number of the Journal de Paris[533] for December 22, 1779. In 1786, the Italian Fantuzzi summarized in his Notizie degli Scrittori Bolognesi,[534] the accounts already published on this subject. A similar opinion that Matthioly was the Man with the Iron Mask, was, in 1789, supported by the Chevalier de B——, in a work with the title of Londres, Correspondance interceptée.[535] On November 26, 1795, M. de Chambrier, ex-Minister of Prussia to the Court of Turin, read, before the Division of Belles-Lettres of the Academy of Berlin,[536] a memoir in which “he endeavoured to establish, by tradition alone, that the Iron Mask and Ercole Matthioly were one and the same person.” Lastly, the 9 Pluviose, Year xi.,[537] the citizen Reth, the commissioner charged with organizing the national lottery in the twenty-seventh military division, addressed a long communication to the Journal de Paris[538] tending towards the same conclusion.[539] Thus we see that neither Roux-Fazillac, nor Delort, nor still less any writer of our own days, can claim to be first to have put forward the theory that Matthioly was the Man with the Iron Mask.

However, Delort had the incontestable advantage over his numerous predecessors of furnishing a portion[540] of the official despatches relating to the negotiation, and also of those which were exchanged between Saint-Mars and the various Ministers after Matthioly’s incarceration. Since then, and in our own days, M. Camille Rousset, in his Histoire de Louvois, has in his turn disclosed the intrigue concocted by D’Estrades, the Duke of Mantua, and Matthioly; and contenting himself with merely giving his opinion on the Iron Mask, in a short note,[541] has declared that he sees in him the faithless Minister who betrayed Louis XIV. Depping, in his Correspondance Administrative sous Louis XIV., also adopts this view. But they have neither of them endeavoured—nor, indeed, did it belong to their subject—to establish what I shall term the perfect agreement and exact correspondence between the individual carried off from near Pignerol, May 2, 1679, and the prisoner who was interred in the Church of Saint Paul, November 20, 1703.

Here is the knot of the question. We have just seen, and this, moreover, has been known since a long time, that Matthioly was carried off in 1679 by a French ambassador and taken violently to Pignerol. But it is no longer a question merely of this intrigue, which is simply a preliminary portion of the problem with which we are occupied. It is necessary to follow the Duke of Mantua’s Minister from prison to prison, and to ascertain, not only if he may not have been, but also if he could have been, any other than the mysterious prisoner conducted in 1698 by Saint-Mars from the Isles Sainte-Marguerite to the Bastille, where he died in 1703. Delort believed he had proved it. His conviction was profound, and to many persons his demonstration seemed irrefutable. On what grounds, then, did it rest, and how has a judicious writer of our own days entirely overthrown it?

On May 2 and 3, 1679, when Matthioly and his valet were incarcerated at Pignerol, this State prison contained, besides Fouquet and Lauzun, four prisoners, incontestably obscure and of very slight importance. One, Eustache d’Auger, brought there August 20, 1669, had for some time acted as Fouquet’s valet.[542] Another, arrived at Pignerol April 7, 1674, was a Jacobin monk; “a finished scoundrel,” wrote Louvois, “who cannot be sufficiently maltreated or made to suffer the punishment he has deserved.” The Minister recommended Saint-Mars “not to give him a fire in his chamber except when great cold or illness obliged it, and not to provide him with any other diet but bread, wine, and water.”[543] Louvois afterwards enjoined Saint-Mars “not to let him be seen by any one, nor to give news of him to any person whatever.” But this order was in some sort a mere form, since a like injunction had been given to Saint-Mars, July 19, 1669, at the time Eustache d’Auger was sent to him.[544] The latter, as well as the Jacobin monk, and Caluzio, brought there in September, 1673,[545] and Dubreuil, imprisoned in June, 1676, were treated in exactly the same manner and without any kind of consideration. The expense for each of them was not to exceed twenty sous a day,[546] and they were so insignificant, that when Saint-Mars was called from the command of the donjon of Pignerol to the government of Exiles, Louvois requested from him “a list of the persons in his charge, begging him to indicate, at the side of each name, what he knew of the reasons for which they had been arrested.”[547] It is certain, and this has never been a matter of doubt to any of those who have occupied themselves with this problem, that the Man with the Iron Mask is not to be sought for amongst these obscure wretches, the causes of whose confinement the Minister himself had forgotten. We have seen that Fouquet, undoubtedly, died at Pignerol during the month of March, 1680; and, with regard to Lauzun, it is not less incontestable that he left the citadel April 22, 1681.

From the moment of his arrest Matthioly received the fictitious name of Lestang, as a despatch of Catinat’s clearly shows.[548] He was sometimes designated by his right name, sometimes by this fictitious one. A letter from Louvois, August 16, 1680, authorises Saint-Mars “to place the Sieur de Lestang with the Jacobin, so as to avoid any intercourse between two priests;” and Saint-Mars’ reply, dated September 7, 1680, shows that Matthioly was confined with the Jacobin monk in the lower tower. In this letter Saint-Mars informs the Minister that Matthioly at first thought that he had been placed with a spy charged to watch him and give an account of his conduct. But the monk, a prisoner since several years, had become mad, of which Matthioly was soon convinced “by seeing him one day get out of bed stark naked and preach, as well as he could, without rhyme or reason.” The same letter shows Saint-Mars to us just as we have always known him, and watching through a hole over the door what his prisoners were doing.[549]

On May 12, 1681, Louvois, when announcing to Saint-Mars his nomination to the governorship of Exiles, rendered vacant by the death of the Duke de Lesdiguières, “orders him to take with him the two prisoners of the lower Tower.” According to Roux-Fazillac, Delort, and all those who have occupied themselves with this question, these two prisoners are undoubtedly Matthioly and the Jacobin monk. On January 20, 1687, Saint-Mars, whose health had been affected by the rigorous climate of Exiles, was appointed to the governorship of the Isles Saint-Honorat and Sainte-Marguerite in the sea of Provence. He took with him one prisoner only. Reth and Delort do not hesitate to admit that, of the two prisoners in question, he who was taken by Saint-Mars to the Isles Sainte-Marguerite was Matthioly. Though unable to furnish a sure proof of it, they have no doubt. Roux-Fazillac, more circumspect and less positive, contents himself with remarking that either the Jacobin monk or Matthioly was the Man with the Iron Mask; and it is by means of general considerations, by proofs drawn from the mysterious manner in which the abduction had been accomplished, from Louis XIV.’s evident interest in concealing such a violation of international law, that Roux-Fazillac endeavours to prove Matthioly’s identity with the Iron Mask.