A Book of the Riviera

by S. Baring-Gould

THE PRISON OF THE MAN WITH THE IRON MASK

The most celebrated of its prisoners, or at least him about whom most has been written, was the Man of the Iron Mask. It was due to Voltaire that the story obtained such currency and excited so keen an interest. In his Age of Louis XIV., published in 1751, he wrote:—

“Some months after the death of Mazarin an event happened which is without a parallel in history. Moreover, and this is not less remarkable, the event has been passed over in silence by every historian. There was sent with the utmost secrecy to the castle of the Isles of Ste. Marguerite, in the Sea of Provence, a prisoner unknown, of a stature above the average, young, and with features of rare nobility and beauty. On the way the prisoner wore a mask, the chin-piece of which was furnished with springs of steel, so that he could eat without removing it. Order had been given to kill him if he ventured to uncover. He remained at the Isles until a trusted officer, Saint Mars by name, Governor of Pignerol, having been appointed in 1690 to the command of the Bastille, came to Ste. Marguerite to fetch him, and bore him thence—always in his mask—to the Bastille. Before his removal he was seen in the isle by the Marquis de Louvois, who remained standing while he spoke to him with a consideration savouring of respect. In the Bastille the unknown was as well bestowed as was possible in that place, and nothing that he asked for was refused him. He had a passion for lace and fine linen; he amused himself with a guitar; and his table was furnished with the best. The governor rarely sat down in his presence. An old doctor of the Bastille, who had often attended this interesting prisoner, said that, although he had examined his tongue and the rest of his body, he had never seen his face. He was admirably made, said the doctor, and his skin was of a brownish tint. He spoke charmingly, with a voice of a deeply impressive quality, never complaining of his lot, and never letting it be guessed who he was. This unknown captive died in 1703, and was buried by night in the parish of S. Paul. What is doubly astonishing is this: that when he was sent to Ste. Marguerite there did not disappear from Europe any personage of note. But observe what happened within a few days of his arrival at the isle. The governor himself laid the prisoner’s table and then withdrew and locked the door. One day the prisoner wrote something with a knife on a silver plate and threw the plate out of the window towards a boat on the shore, almost at the foot of the tower. A fisherman to whom the boat belonged picked up the plate and carried it to the governor, who, surprised beyond measure, asked the man: ‘Have you read what is written on this plate, and has any one seen it in your hands?’ ‘I cannot read,’ answered the fisherman; ‘I have only just found it, and no one else has seen it.’ He was detained until the governor had made sure that he could not read, and that no other person had seen the plate. ‘Go,’ he then said. ‘It is well for you that you cannot read.’”

How Voltaire could describe the prisoner as “with features of rare nobility and beauty,” when he was invariably masked, so that no one could see his face, is certainly remarkable.

When Voltaire found that this story had created a sensation, he vouchsafed a solution to it. “The Iron Mask was without doubt a brother, and an elder brother, of Louis XIV.”

But the mystery has been solved. We know with certainty who the prisoner was—no one of great importance after all, but one against whom Louis XIV. entertained a bitter and implacable resentment—Ercole Antonio Mattioli.

Louis XIV. had a strong desire to obtain the Marquisate of Montferrat, with its capital Cassale; but the marquisate belonged to Charles, Duke of Mantua, a feeble, dissipated, extravagant fool. On the other hand, the Empress and the Spanish party were bitterly hostile to French schemes of aggrandisement. Mattioli acted as a paid agent of the French Government to negotiate in secrecy a sale of Cassale to Louis; and after he had received a good deal of payment for his services, betrayed the whole intrigue to the Austro-Spanish Government. Louis was furious, not only at having failed in this coup d’état, but also at being so fooled. Mattioli was lured near to the frontier, and fallen on upon Piedmontese soil, carried off and thrown into the fortress of Pignerol, which was then in the hands of the French. From Pignerol he was afterwards moved to Lerins, and then finally to the Bastille, where he died. The whole story has been thoroughly thrashed out, and that the Man in the Iron Mask was Mattioli and no one else has been conclusively established.[15]

It would seem that an attempt was made to fabricate for Napoleon a descent from the Iron Mask, who was assumed to be an elder brother to Louis XIV., and by this means to establish for Napoleon a legitimate right to the throne of the Capets. But the attempt was too absurd to obtain credence, if ever proposed to Bonaparte. In the Mémorial de Sainte Hélène allusion is made to this.