The Man in the Iron Mask Page 14
That September, Mme de Montespan made her way south to Bourbon, where she entered into discussions with Lauzun about the terms under which he would surrender Eu. She initially offered him lands worth 40,000 livres a year, but he wanted more. No doubt thinking about adequate compensation for his years in jail, the loss of his posts and the humiliation he had suffered as a result of his disgrace, he asked to be restored as captain of the guards, a gift from the treasury of 200,000 livres, and the back payment of the pension he had missed during his imprisonment. His aim as usual was high, but in this instance, it was to fall short of expectation. His request was never going to be granted and, in the end, he had no choice but to settle for the barony of Thiers, the estate of Saint-Fargeau, and 10,000 livres to be provided by Mademoiselle and Mme de Montespan.10 With the business of the duc du Maine’s inheritance accomplished, Lauzun’s slow journey to freedom began.11 The bright sunlit spa of Bourbon, with its clear air, healing waters, and glamorous clientele, made a sharp contrast to the brooding darkness that clung to the walls of the citadel of Pignerol.
In August 1680, Saint-Mars was granted permission to accommodate Matthioli and Lapierre together in the same cell “in order to avoid the necessity of having two almoners.”12 While Louvois’s comment is sometimes taken to indicate that Matthioli was in holy orders, he simply meant that one chaplain could attend both prisoners, thereby saving Saint-Mars the time and effort of finding one for each of them.
For Matthioli and his Jacobin companion, their already harsh imprisonment had become a living hell. Both of these men were mentally ill, and Matthioli could not understand why Lapierre had been put into his cell beside him. As Saint-Mars writes, Matthioli was “four or five days in the belief that the Jacobin was a man that I had placed with him to watch his actions.”13 It is interesting to note here that Matthioli is referred to by his own name, rather than his prison name, Lestang; Lapierre, on the other hand, is now only ever referred to as “the Jacobin.”
Saint-Mars continues: “Matthioli, who is almost as mad as the Jacobin, walked about with long strides, with his cloak over his nose, crying out that he was not a dupe, but that he knew more than he would say.” For his part, Lapierre remained seated on his bed watching his companion “gravely, without listening to him.” Matthioli was convinced that the monk had been put in his cell to spy on him, but was “one day disabused, by the Jacobin’s getting down from his bed, stark naked, and setting himself to preach, without rhyme or reason, till he was tired.” The sight of these two very disturbed men provided a source of amusement for Saint-Mars and his lieutenants, who watched their “maneuvers” through a hole they had bored over the door.
That autumn also saw the strange affair of the diamond ring, which Matthioli had given to Blainvilliers. The story of its changing hands in Pignerol is somewhat mysterious. As Saint-Mars explains it,14 Matthioli gave it to the lieutenant out of fear. Matthioli, the jailer reminded Louvois, had been using violent language and writing abusive sentences on the walls of his cell with charcoal. In the face of such behavior, Blainvilliers had felt obliged to threaten him with a sound beating if he did not mend his ways. Matthioli was then joined by Lapierre, upon which, following direct orders from Saint-Mars, Blainvilliers showed Matthioli a cudgel and told him that it was the means by which unruly prisoners were rendered manageable. If Matthioli did not behave, Blainvilliers warned him, he would have no choice but to use it. Several days later, Blainvilliers was serving dinner when Matthioli held out the diamond ring to him and said, “Sir, here is a little ring which I wish to give you, and I beg you to accept of it.” Blainvilliers took the ring, but made it clear that he did so only to hand it to Saint-Mars “as he was not allowed receive anything himself from the prisoners.”
Saint-Mars did not know what to do with the ring; while it was not unusual for prisoners to try to bribe their guards, none of them had ever offered anything so valuable. He noted that he thought the ring must be worth fifty or sixty pistoles, and it has been speculated that it might have been the one given to Matthioli by Louis XIV as a reward for his part in the negotiations concerning Casale before his betrayal. Unsure of what to do, Saint-Mars asked Louvois for advice: “I will keep it, till it shall please you, Sir, to give me orders what to do with it.”15 Louvois’s answer arrived several weeks later: “You must keep the ring, which the Sieur Matthioli has given to the Sieur de Blainvilliers,” he said, “in order to restore it to him, if it should ever happen that the King ordered him to be set at liberty.”16
As winter fell, Saint-Mars had little to exercise him. There was some concern about brambles growing in the walls of the citadel, a matter that was taken care of by Louvois, who sent the commissary, Channoy, to see to them. The minister advised Saint-Mars to wait until the spring before he uprooted the brambles, “because that will make them die more certainly, and then at the same time the mortar might be inserted into the fissures.”17
A breach of security broke the monotony when it was discovered that a gentleman named Quadro, who had visited the donjon to explain the fortifications to one of Saint-Mars’s nephews, had drawn up a plan of the donjon and passed it on to the governor of Milan. Louis was alarmed and ordered Louvois to write to Saint-Mars:18 “As it is important for the service of His Majesty, that the Italians should never have any communication with the citadel of Pignerol, nor with the prison there. His Majesty has commanded me to let you know that he wishes you not to allow anyone to enter there, without his express order.” This meant that should anyone wish to enter the donjon, they would not be allowed inside unless they carried the necessary papers issued by the king; alternatively, they would be obliged to wait until a courier carried their application for permission to enter the donjon and to return with the document bearing the king’s approval.
Saint-Mars was commanded to dismiss any Piedmontese, Savoyard, or Italian soldiers and staff working at the citadel and to “get rid of them as quietly as possible, under pretext of their not serving you well.” While Saint-Mars was content to comply in the matter of documentation for visitors to the donjon, he was unhappy with this order. There were three foreign servants on his staff who had served him for seven years, and he could guarantee their fidelity. He appealed to Louis to be allowed to retain them. His request was granted, but Louis was adamant that no Piedmontese, Savoyard, or Italian national should serve in the compagnie-franche.19
During this time, M. de Rissan, the king’s lieutenant in the government of the citadel of Pignerol, was on a lengthy leave of absence due to illness. By May 1681, he was still unable to return to work and Saint-Mars was temporarily promoted to take his place. The post was well rewarded, for he was paid 6,000 livres in addition to the revenues he already received from his regular job and whatever he could make by creaming off funds assigned to subsidize his prisoners. There was a downside to this temporary promotion, however. The new posting placed Saint-Mars under the direct authority of the crabby marquis d’Herleville, and the two men did not get along. It was understandable, therefore, that when Louis offered to make this posting permanent, Saint-Mars was reluctant to accept it. In fact, reluctance was putting it mildly. Louvois wrote of the jailers “extreme repugnance,” in the face of which Louis revised his offer. Instead, Saint-Mars would become governor of Exilles.
Situated on a mountaintop overlooking the splashing white waters of the Dora Riparia, the ancient fortress of Exilles was about ninety kilometers from Pignerol, deeper within the Alps and at a higher elevation. It watched over the road that led from Briançon to Turin, one of the major thoroughfares between France and the duchy of Savoy. Every bit as dark and imposing as the citadel and donjon of Pignerol, the rectangular-shaped fortress of Exilles lay along a roughly east-west axis.
Exilles had been a state prison since the 15th century. It boasted two small towers at its eastern side and two much larger ones at the west, and it was in the largest and strongest of the western towers, the Tour Grosse,20 that Eustache and La Rivière were to be lodged.
Exilles was, at this date, part of the Dauphiné, the governor of which was the duc de Lesdiguières. The duke had recently died at the age of only thirty-six, upon which Louis appointed Saint-Mars to take over his post. The commission was dated May 12, 1681, and Louis required Saint-Mars to take with him only “those of the prisoners who are under your care, whom he shall think it important not to entrust to any other hands but yours.”21
The salary that came with the governorship was less than 4,000 livres, so Louis arranged for Saint-Mars to continue to receive the 500 livres a month that he was paid at Pignerol. This gave him a salary “as considerable as those of the Governors of the great places in Flanders,” that is, those who were in charge of fortresses Louis had captured during his wars, places that were vulnerable to attack.
Before he could transfer his prisoners to Exilles, suitable accommodation had to be prepared for them. Saint-Mars and the Sieur de Channoy traveled to the fortress to assess what repairs should be made in order to render it secure. During his absence from Pignerol, Saint-Mars was required to take every precaution to ensure that the prisoners he left behind met with no accident and that they could have no contact with anyone.
Louvois next asked Saint-Mars to send him a list of all the prisoners under his care, “and to write opposite each name all that you know of the reasons why they were arrested.”22 Considering his position as minister for war, surely Louvois ought to have known who was in his prisons and why. However, it is possible that he was testing Saint-Mars to see if the jailer was interrogating his prisoners, or perhaps he wanted to know if the prisoners had spoken to Saint-Mars about their crimes. Whatever the case, when it came to La Rivière and Eustache, there were special orders. “With regard to the two in the lower part of the tower, you need only designate them by this name without adding anything else.” The messieurs de la tour d’en bas were being pushed deeper into the shadows where, so Louvois appeared to hope, they would be forgotten.
Louvois sent Saint-Mars his grants as governor of Exilles the following month, as well as further instructions for the transfer of the two prisoners. As soon as Saint-Mars judged the chamber at Exilles fit to hold them securely, he was to “send them out of the citadel of Pignerol in a litter, and conduct them there under the escort of your troop”—that is, Saint-Mars’s compagnie-franche. Louvois had enclosed orders for the march, so there would be no further delay.
The minister continued: “Immediately after the departure of the aforesaid prisoners, it is His Majesty’s intention that you should go to Exilles, to take possession of the government, and to make it, for the future, your residence.”23 The journey taken by the prisoners would be slow. The litter was a type of wheel-less chair carried by four men who bore the weight on their shoulders, or perhaps by beasts of burden. In this case, it was men from the compagnie-franche who had the responsibility of carrying the two prisoners through unforgiving mountain terrain in the heat of summer.
With only two prisoners to watch over, Saint-Mars’s compagnie-franche was now reduced to forty-five men. Despite this, Louis still expected him to guard them “with the same exactitude you have made use of hitherto,” and to send Louvois “intelligence respecting them” from time to time.24 As to Matthioli, Saint-Mars was to take his belongings with him to Exilles so that they would be given back to him should Louis decide to set him free.25 This letter has led many to think that Matthioli was one of the two prisoners selected to accompany Saint-Mars to Exilles. However, Saint-Mars wrote to the abbé d’Estrades to tell him about his transfer, adding: “I will have two merles that I have here, who have no other name than the gentlemen of the lower tower; Matthioli will remain here with two other prisoners.”26
Upon the departure of La Rivière and Eustache, therefore, three prisoners were to remain behind at Pignerol: Lapierre the Jacobin monk, Dubreuil the spy, and Matthioli, who had been placed beside Lapierre. There was no mention of Rousseau, Matthioli’s valet, but he was not a prisoner as such, only the servant of a prisoner. They were to be left in the care of the sieur de Villebois, who was promoted to governor of the citadel of Pignerol until such time as M. de Rissan or his permanent replacement should arrive. Channoy, meanwhile, was ordered to arrange for Villebois to be paid two crowns a day for the upkeep of the prisoners.27
The preparations for the transfer were going well. By mid-May, Saint-Mars had completed the list of repairs he wanted to make at Exilles, and Louis granted him one thousand crowns to cover the cost of the work to be done on the tower and his living quarters. Once the money arrived, the work could begin; once it was completed to Saint-Mars’s satisfaction, he could transfer his prisoners, leaving the command of Pignerol to Villebois.28
A letter written by Louvois a month later gave details of the work Saint-Mars wanted to be done. He had proposed furnishing the tower with new doors, which he suggested should be taken from Pignerol. These were the three sets of doors he had been ordered to install in order to isolate Eustache during the early years of his imprisonment. Louvois agreed that secure doors should be installed, but felt it was unnecessary to carry them all the way from Pignerol. He told Saint-Mars to have them made at Exilles instead.29
Saint-Mars was keen to inform Louvois of the measures he intended to take for the security of his prisoners once they were established at Exilles.30 “In order that they would never be seen,” he wrote, “they would not be allowed to leave their chamber when they heard mass.” One of his lieutenants would sleep in the chamber above theirs, while two sentinels would be stationed outside to watch “the whole round of the tower,” but they would be so placed that they would not be able to see or speak to the prisoners and vice versa. These sentinels would be handpicked from the compagnie-franche.
A confessor had already been appointed, although Saint-Mars had his doubts about him. He suggested instead that he engage the curate of Exilles,
who is a good man, and very old, whom I will forbid, on the part of His Majesty, to enquire who these prisoners are, or their names, or what they have been, or to speak to them in any way, or to receive from them by word of mouth, or by writing, either communication or notes.
With such precautions, it must be wondered how the curate would be expected to accomplish his task of confessing the prisoners, if he is not allowed even to speak to them.
Although apparently ready to set off for his new posting, Saint-Mars’s departure was delayed for several weeks because the repairs had not yet been completed. This, however, was less of a problem than it might have seemed. Nicolas de Catinat, who had hidden at Pignerol under the name of Richemont during the negotiation surrounding Louis’s acquisition of Casale, was due to return to the fortress under the same guise. “As the service of the King will perhaps require you to remain [at Pignerol] all the following month, it would be well that you should advance the aforesaid repairs of Exiles [sic] as little as possible.” This way, Saint-Mars had the perfect excuse should anyone inquire why he had not yet left to take up his new posting, and he was told to “act in such a manner, that your continuing to remain there may not appear to be the result of voluntary delay.”31 Catinat, as before, was lodged in an apartment within the citadel. He was met by Saint-Mars, who conducted him to his apartment as though he were a genuine prisoner. His visit this time was expected to last three or four weeks.32 On this occasion he would be successful in purchasing Casale for Louis XIV, and the transaction would be completed by the autumn of 1681.
On September 20, 1681, Louvois wrote a mysterious letter: “The King will not disapprove of your visiting, from time to time, the last prisoner who has been placed in your charge, after he shall have been established in his new prison, and shall have left that where he is at present confined.” The Victorian historian, Ellis, identified this prisoner as Matthioli: “It is rather curious to observe from this document,” he writes, “that St. Mars was permitted to visit his prisoner at Exiles [sic], but not while he continued at Pignerol.”33 Barnes,34 on the other hand, suggests that L
ouvois was referring to Catinat, whom he called a “sham prisoner under the name of De Richemont [sic].” In this case, the “new prison” was Casale, the government of which Catinat would take up upon its secession ten days later.
In fact, the prisoner referred to was a man named Videl, a protestant from the vallée du Queyras, who was guarded by the king’s lieutenant, Du Prat de la Bastie, and of whom neither Ellis nor Barnes were aware.35 Stationed at Exilles for several years, Du Prat de la Bastie, who knew Saint-Mars from the time they had served together in the first company of the musketeers under the command of d’Artagnan, would stay on at Exilles. Nothing further is known about Videl, why he was imprisoned, or even the date of his entry into Exilles. The limited correspondence regarding him reveals only that he had been lodged in the Tour Grosse but was to be moved out to make room for Eustache and La Rivière upon their arrival. Louvois was simply telling Saint-Mars that Louis did not object to his visiting Videl from time to time.
Saint-Mars, his family, his reduced compagnie-franche, and his two prisoners arrived at Exilles in October 1681. The soldiers’ barracks and living quarters sprawled along the northern wall overlooking the paved courtyard. Saint-Mars and his family took up lodgings in a narrow building between the two towers at the western end of the citadel. Here, he was well placed to keep a watchful eye on the prisoners in the towers as well as his men as they went about their maneuvers and duties.