The Man in the Iron Mask Read online

  Once again, it is clear that Saint-Mars was the one making suggestions regarding Eustache’s security, rather than Louis and Barbezieux, both of whom merely approved or amended Saint-Mars’s arrangements. In this case, jailer and prisoner were to stay in ordinary accommodation, for which Saint-Mars was required to pay out of his own pocket. There would be no strongholds or army quarters made available to them, and there was to be no military escort.

  Barbezieux’s letter was placed into Saint-Mars’s hands six days later, and by the beginning of September, he was ready to set out on the long journey northward, passing the governorship of the islands into the care of Jean-François de Johanne, marquis de Saumery.

  Saint-Mars left six prisoners on the island: Gabriel Mathurin, who would be released in 1714; Pierre de Salves; Mathieu de Malzac; Jean de Le Breton; Elisée Girault or Gérault; and Jean Gardien-Givry, all of whom would die on the island.13

  Among those who traveled with Saint-Mars were his nephew, Guillaume de Formanoir de Corbest;14 the sergeant Jacques Rosarges; and Antoine Ru, a turnkey. There were also two prisoners: Jean Herse, who would be dropped off at the prison of Pierre-Encize at Lyon, and Eustache, who would accompany Saint-Mars to his final destination.

  News of the imminent arrival in Paris of Saint-Mars and his party was printed in the August 16 issue of the Gazette,15 but otherwise the event went largely unnoticed. That was until Saint-Mars and his prisoner alighted from his litter on September 18, 1698, at three o’clock in the afternoon. He was met by his new second in command, Etienne Du Junca, the king’s lieutenant at the Bastille.16 As the great gate opened, the cannon on the roof of the château fired a deafening salute to welcome the new governor. As it happened, this tribute should not have taken place, but Du Junca had not received the order to ignore the custom on this occasion, so it went ahead as usual.

  As to the custom regarding the reception of a new prisoner, the usual procedure demanded that all the shops that lined the street outside the main gate should be closed and the soldiers of the Bastille should turn their backs or else cover their faces with their hats as the new prisoner passed through the huge gates and disappeared into the gloomy courtyard beyond. However, on this occasion, the loud cannon salute that greeted Saint-Mars defeated any pretense of secrecy or discretion.

  Again, under normal circumstances, a new prisoner would be met by the governor, who would emerge from his lodgings in the first courtyard to receive him. The prisoner would then be sent to a temporary chamber, there to wait for a period of time ranging from several hours to a few days until the chamber in which he was to reside was ready for him. Because Saint-Mars and Eustache had arrived together, it is probable that Saint-Mars immediately took over the care of the prisoner even before he had settled into his new lodgings. This much can be inferred from a description of the arrival of Saint-Mars and Eustache left by Du Junca.

  Etienne Du Junca, a man in his late fifties and a former adjutant from the Bordeaux region, had been assigned to the Bastille on October 11, 1690, by the king. His main function was to deputize for Besmaux, who had become incapable of fulfilling his duties because of old age. Immediately when he took up his post, Du Junca began to keep two registers: in the first, he recorded the details of all the prisoners who arrived at the Bastille; in the second, he recorded those who left, released either by the king or by death. His entry for Thursday, September 18, 1698, read:

  M. de Saint-Mars, governor of the château of the Bastille, made his first appearance, coming from his governorship of the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite-Honorat, bringing with him in his litter a prisoner whom he had at Pignerol, who was always masked [and] whose name is never spoken. As soon as he got out of the litter, he put him in the first chamber of the Basinière Tower to wait until night for me to take him, at nine o’clock in the evening, with M. de Rosarges one of the sergeants whom monsieur le governor had brought with him, into the third chamber of the Bertaudière Tower, which I had furnished with everything some days before his arrival, having received the order of monsieur de Saint-Mars.17

  Du Junca noted that the prisoner was to be looked after and served by Rosarges and maintained by Saint-Mars.

  The Basinière Tower, in which Eustache spent the first few hours at the Bastille, was named after Macé Bertrand, seigneur de la Bazinière, an officer of the treasury who was arrested in 1661 at the same time as Nicolas Foucquet and spent four years as a prisoner in the tower. The tower’s first chamber was often, but not always, used as a kind of reception area.

  The Bertaudière, or Bretaudière, Tower was named after Berthaud, the mason who had designed it and who had fallen to his death during its construction.18 In common with the other towers, the Bertaudière had chambers that were below ground and were subject to flooding, as well as very unpleasant calottes or vaulted attic chambers. The third chamber, which the prisoner was to occupy, was rather beautiful, comfortable, light, and airy; indeed it was one of the finest in the château, which boasted another three chambers of the same quality. The tower was “double,” which meant that it had chambers on either side, separated by a central staircase.19

  As the clock struck nine, and with the darkness and the chill of the autumn evening lying hard against the stone walls of the château, Du Junca and Rosarges came to collect the prisoner and escort him to his new chamber. Their torches blazed, and the flickering light cast a warm glow in the narrow staircase before the lengthening shadows gathered once again behind them. At last they arrived at the landing of the fourth floor; the large key scraped in the lock of the heavy wooden door. The prisoner stepped inside, the door creaked shut behind him, and the sound of the key turning in the lock echoed into silence.

  The doors of history closed upon Eustache. From that moment, there are few references to him, and where he is mentioned, his name is never given. Instead, he is always referred to as l’ancien prisonnier, the old prisoner. However, he was not to remain in the third chamber of the Bertaudière Tower for long. The next time he is heard of is on April 30, 1701, when two men, Maranville and Tirmon, take up residence in the same tower. Of Tirmon nothing is known, although Hopkins describes him as a servant.20 Du Junca describes Maranville, who is also referred to as Ricarville, as an army officer, “a malcontent who talks too much, a ne’er-do-well, whom I received following the king’s orders.”21 The lieutenant placed him with Tirmon in “the second chamber of the Bertaudière Tower with the ancien prisonnier, both well locked in.”22

  This did not mean that Eustache, whom Saint-Mars believed to be in possession of a dangerous secret, suddenly found himself in the company of others. At Pignerol, his companion in the service of Foucquet, La Rivière, had been made a prisoner because he was believed to have learned what Eustache knew. At Exilles, the two men had shared a chamber, but had been kept strictly separate from the third prisoner, Videl. While on Sainte-Marguerite, Eustache was kept apart from the other prisoners, although he could hear them. At the Bastille, he was also accommodated alone, although, once again, he could hear other prisoners nearby.

  Given his reluctance to betray any information about himself while in the donjon of Pignerol, it is to be wondered whether or not Eustache availed himself of the chance to speak to any of his new prison companions while in the Bastille. Had he done so, he would have incurred the wrath of Du Junca, who was determined that no prisoner should communicate with a neighbor. He saw any breach of this rule as a great crime, which he punished severely.23

  One of Saint-Mars’s prisoners left a vivid description of the governor as he appeared in this period of his life. Sinister and unflattering, it was written by a man who was imprisoned in the Bastille within a few years of Eustache’s arrival. René Auguste Constantin de Renneville entered the Bastille at nine o’clock in the morning of May 16, 1702, and was initially lodged in the second chamber of the Chapel Tower. According to Du Junca, who duly recorded his arrival, Renneville had been employed for a long time abroad in the service of the king and had been falsely accused of spy
ing by the marquis de Torcy.24 He was arrested at Versailles as he was preparing to leave the country and was taken to the Bastille.25 Several years later, he wrote a memoir, in which he described Saint-Mars as “a little old man of very meager appearance; his head, hands and whole body was shaking.” Renneville went on: “He received us very civilly. He presented his trembling hand, which he put into mine; it was as cold as a block of ice; I said to myself: ‘Here is a bad sign, death or his deputy has made an alliance with me.’ ”26

  Shortly after his arrival, Saint-Mars had begun to transform the lenient regime he found at the Bastille into a strict system, and the prison gradually took on the sinister character for which it was to become infamous. Du Junca, no doubt on the orders of his superior, had placed double doors on all the chambers, as well as grills on most of the windows in each chamber. This was to deprive the prisoners a view of the streets of Paris. Now, only one window in each chamber was left open, much to the detriment of the well-being of the occupant.27

  None of this was of any consequence to Eustache, however, for within two years of his having been joined by Maranville and Tirmon in the Bertaudière Tower, he died. Du Junca recorded the passing of the ancien prisonnier in his register:

  Monday 19 November 1703—the prisoner—unknown, always masked with a mask of black velvet, who Monsieur de St Mars governor had brought with him upon coming from the isles St Marguerite whom he had guarded for a long time, the which feeling a little unwell yesterday upon leaving mass, he died today at ten o’clock in the evening without having had a serious illness; it could not have been more slight. M. Giraut our almoner confessed him yesterday is surprised by his death. He did not receive the sacraments, and our almoner exhorted him a moment before he died, and this unknown prisoner kept here for so long, was buried on Tuesday at four o’clock in the afternoon, 20 November in the cemetery of St Paul our parish. On the register of burial he was given a name also unknown; that Monsieur de Rosarges major and Arriel [sic] surgeon who have signed the register.

  In the margin, Du Junca added: “I have since learned that they named him on the register M de Marchiel, [and] that they paid forty livres for the funeral.”28

  The church of Saint-Paul-des-Champs was, as Du Junca wrote, the Bastille’s parish church. It was situated on what is today the corner of the rue Saint-Paul and rue Neuve Saint-Pierre. It closed in 1790.29 Its register was destroyed in a fire set by the Communards in May 1871, but, happily, its contents had already been copied by historians. The section recording the death and burial of the mysterious prisoner read: “On the 19th [November], Marchioly, aged 45 years or thereabouts, died at the Bastille, whose body was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul, his parish, the 20th of the present month, in the presence of M. Reglhe [sic], surgeon major of the Bastille, who signed.” The entry was signed by Rosarges and Reilhe.30

  The ancien prisonnier was dead and buried, and deemed worthy of no further thought. As the darkening chill of the late autumn afternoon descended over the city, the small burial party slowly made its way back toward the Bastille.

  TWELVE Legends of the Iron Mask

  The ancien prisonnier was dead. He was remembered only by those who had served him during his thirty-four years as a state prisoner, men who, one by one, followed their captive to the grave. Rosarges was the first to die, in May 1705; Du Junca came next, in September 1706; Saint-Mars in October 1708. The abbé Honoré Giraut had left his post as almoner at the Bastille shortly after Saint-Mars’s death; his date of death is not known. Only Antoine Ru, the turnkey, was still living; he would die in January 1713.

  With the deaths of these men, Eustache lost his grounding in history; but his story had not yet come to an end. As the sun set over Paris on that November day in 1703, this mysterious man was reborn. He took on a new life, one in which he would eventually find immortality as the Man in the Iron Mask.

  The legend began almost unnoticed. Some eight years after the death of the prisoner, on October 10, 1711, Duchesse Elisabeth-Charlotte sat down at her desk and took up her quill. The second wife of Philippe d’Orléans, brother to Louis XIV, the duchesse was a prolific letter writer, and her entertaining and informative correspondence told the story of her life at court and the people who populated it.

  On this occasion, as so often, the letter was addressed to her aunt, the Electress Sophia of Hanover. In it, Elisabeth-Charlotte spoke about a mysterious prisoner she had heard about, a man who had “remained long years in the Bastille, and has died there, masked.” She went on:

  At his side he had two musketeers ready to kill him if he took off his mask. He ate and slept masked. No doubt there was some reason for this, for otherwise he was well treated and lodged, and given everything he wished for. He went to communion [mass] masked. He was very devout, and read continually. No one has ever been able to learn who he was.

  The prisoner had clearly excited the duchess’s interest, for she made it her business to see what more she could find out about him. Her endeavors were evidently successful, and twelve days later, she wrote once again to her aunt:

  I have just learnt who the masked man was, who died in the Bastille. His wearing a mask was not due to cruelty. He was an English lord who had been mixed up in the affair of the Duke of Berwick against King William. He died there so that the king might never know what became of him.1

  In fact, the prisoner identified by the duchesse d’Orléans was an Englishman named Hunt. He had been implicated in an assassination attempt on William III by the Scotsman George Barclay in 1696.

  The information gleaned by Elisabeth-Charlotte is obviously incorrect, but her letters provide evidence that the now mysterious prisoner who had died at the Bastille in November 1703 was still the subject of speculation even eight years after his death. Yet, while some were reduced to speculating about his identity and why he might have been imprisoned, there were those who retained vivid memories of him.

  One such person was Renneville, who had been a prisoner at the Bastille at the same time as Eustache. He published a memoir of his experience, L’Inquisition françoise ou Histoire de la Bastille, in 1719. In it, he noted that he had entered the Bastille on May 16, 1702, and that, shortly after his arrival, possibly in May 1703,2 he unexpectedly encountered a mysterious prisoner whose name he was never able to learn.

  Renneville recalled being taken into a room by Antoine Ru, only for them to discover that it was already occupied. Ru quickly bundled him into the corridor, and as he accompanied him back to his own chamber, he told the startled Renneville what he knew about his fellow inmate. The man had been a prisoner for thirty-one years, the turnkey explained, and Saint-Mars had brought him to Paris from the Île Sainte-Marguerite when he took up his post as governor of the Bastille. The prisoner had been condemned to perpetual imprisonment when, as a schoolboy of twelve or thirteen years old, he had written two verses against the Jesuits. In time, he had been transferred to the Île Sainte-Marguerite and afterward to the Bastille; during the journey, Saint-Mars had ensured that no one was able to see the mysterious man’s face.

  Ru told Renneville that the prisoner had left the Bastille two or three months after this encounter, adding that when the officers who had charge of him saw Renneville enter the room, they quickly turned their back toward him, thereby preventing Renneville from seeing the prisoner’s face. Nevertheless, Renneville wrote that despite these precautions, he did have time to observe something of the prisoner’s appearance. He recalled that he was of average height and well built; his hair, which he wore in a thick black curl, had not yet begun to turn gray.3

  The basic facts of Ru’s story, as they appeared in Renneville’s memoir, were corroborated and further embellished by the surgeon at the Bastille, Abraham Reilhe. It is certain, however, that while they appear to have believed what they said, neither man had known the truth about the prisoner, and it is possible that they were told this story by Saint-Mars. As has been seen, Saint-Mars put out what he called contes jaunes, or fairy tales, to
mock those curious to learn about the prisoners under his guard.

  In 1745, several years after Renneville published his memoir, a book titled Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de Perse was published, a small volume the author of which is unknown. It tells the story of Cha-Abas I, who was the doting father of a young prince named Giafer. The boy’s mother was Cha-Abas’s beloved mistress, an Indian maiden. One day, Giafer and his half-brother, the heir to the Persian throne, were out playing when Giafer struck the heir. This was a serious offense for which the punishment was death. Cha-Abas was grief-stricken at the thought of handing over his son to be executed, but his ministers proposed a solution. They suggested that the young Giafer should join the army, which was currently on active service on the border of Feldran. After he had been there for a certain length of time, it would be announced that the prince had become ill with plague. This would ensure that he would be kept in isolation, far away from his brothers-in-arms, a sensible precaution designed to ensure that no one else would become infected. After a few days, it would be given out that the young man had died. The whole army would attend the funeral, which would be accompanied by the full honors befitting the young man’s royal birth. Giafer would, however, be spirited away under cover of night and taken in great secrecy to the citadel on the island of Ormus, where he would be placed into the care of the governor. This plan was implemented, and the governor of Ormus was alerted to the imminent arrival of the prince. He was given orders from the king not to allow anyone to see the young man. Giafer was allowed to take one servant with him, but the man died during the long journey. In order to prevent his being recognized, the servant’s clothes were removed and his face was slashed.