The Man in the Iron Mask Page 6

  As though to capitalize on Lauzun’s vulnerability, Louvois chose this moment to authorize Saint-Mars to reveal the details of how Guitry and Nogent, respectively his friend and brother-in-law, had died. They had been involved in a major event in Louis’s ongoing war against Holland: the famous crossing of the Rhine. Under heavy enemy fire, French troops had managed to ford the river, but the maneuver had not been without its casualties. “Monsieur de Guitry and monsieur de Nogent are no more,” wrote Louvois, “having been killed [on] that campaign at the crossing of the Rhine, which the king crossed by swimming four-thousand horses to batter the enemies who were on the other shore.” He was, however, assured that his sister was “very touched by the loss of monsieur her husband, but she is well at present.”61

  As 1672 drew to a close, Saint-Mars was in charge of four prisoners. Nicolas Foucquet, who remained in his apartments with his two valets, where he devoted his time to God, worried about his family, and became increasingly absorbed by the state of his health. The marquis de Lauzun had been the subject of a conspiracy, the aim of which had been to set him free and perhaps to help him smuggle out whatever messages he might have written to people on the outside. Having learned of the deaths of two men to whom he had been very close, and the loss of his cherished post of captain of the royal bodyguard, he was now apparently subdued and rendered obedient by the distress he had suffered over the previous months. One of the conspirators, Plassot, was also imprisoned under Saint-Mars’s care, and was undergoing vigorous interrogation in a bid to make him reveal the details of the plot and who else, if anyone, had been involved. Only Eustache had given Saint-Mars no trouble. Apparently forgotten by the world, he remained alone in his dreary cell, where he was visited once every morning by his jailer.

  FOUR The Fateful Encounter

  Saint-Mars was more than satisfied with the work he was doing at Pignerol. He boasted that, for the ten years he had been guarding Foucquet, he had done his job well and that the few occasions his prisoner had tried to smuggle out messages, he had been caught by the sentinels stationed in front of his windows. As he wrote about his prisoners to Louvois, he confessed that he “much more feared M. Foucquet’s sweetness and his honesty, than M. de Lauzun’s pride and brusqueness.” He was anxious to make it clear that he enjoyed his job, adding that he would not want, for anything in the world, to discontinue his way of doing things. “I answer you with my life, Monseigneur, that as long as I have the custody of these two prisoners, they will know no news except on your orders.” Despite this, Saint-Mars was not entirely content with his lot. “I take the liberty of telling you,” he continued, “that what could make me live here in health would be a little honor; I have been a sergeant for so long that I am the doyen of all.” He explained that if Louvois did not “have the goodness… to point out my seniority to His Majesty, I will die what I am. I am so much submissive to all that pleases him that I want nothing but the honor of serving him well all my life.”1

  As captain of the donjon and keeper of prisoners of state, Saint-Mars felt he ought to be rewarded for his work in more than monetary terms. Certainly, the accumulation of wealth was important to him and he was well paid for his services, but he would also skim off a percentage of the money he received to pay for his prisoners’ food and other items. In the case of low-ranking prisoners like Eustache, this did not amount to very much, but with his high-ranking prisoners, Foucquet and Lauzun, Saint-Mars could supplement his income considerably. In one year alone, 1672, the expenses for Lauzun, which included food, a stipend for his chaplain, items for a chapel, a Bergamo tapestry, items to be used by his valets, and curtains, as well as a mirror, plates, and clothes, amounted to 10,574 livres.2

  Saint-Mars’s motive was to increase his fortune for its own sake, certainly, but he also longed to enjoy the trappings that wealth could bring. Already seigneur of Palteau and governor of Sens, Saint-Mars wanted to be a man of substance, and he was well aware that money was the best means of achieving this aim. His increasing wealth and his standing as a property owner allowed him to apply for letters of nobility. He had begun the process toward the end of the previous year, and on January 10, 1673, Louvois was pleased to inform him that his application had been successful.3

  Two weeks later, on January 25, Saint-Mars received Bernardino Butticari, a bourgeois in the service of the duc de Savoie for the province of Pignerol who had been arrested in the town under suspicion of spying. Having been held and interrogated for two weeks, he was given into Saint-Mars’s care upon the orders of Louis XIV, who required the new prisoner to be held in “good and sure guard,” and cut off from all communication.4 Butticari would not be tried, but he would be held for a lengthy time under harsh conditions.

  Butticari’s detention was so severe that he could not cope with it and fell ill. In contrast to some of those under Saint-Mars’s care, he managed to arouse his jailer’s sympathy. In June, Saint-Mars was writing to Louvois to appeal for leniency. Three months later, having received no satisfactory reply, he interceded once again, asking for the unhappy spy to be pardoned. By December, the prisoner was “still waiting for your grace and your kindness.” It was all to no avail. Louis and Louvois remained unmoved, and Butticari would remain in prison for a further twenty months. It would not be until August 11, 1675, that the letter Saint-Mars had been waiting for finally arrived: “I write you this letter to tell you that my intention is that as soon as you have received it, you will put the said Butticari at full and entire liberty, allowing him this time to leave the said donjon of my citadel without difficulty.”5

  That Butticari had been captured while trying to spy on the goings-on at Pignerol further provoked Saint-Mars’s already suspicious nature, and he began to take note of everyone who came too close to the donjon. Anyone he considered to be paying too much attention would be arrested, held, and questioned.6 He also ordered a list to be compiled of strangers who visited the town of Pignerol; he would then study the names in order to identify anyone who, in his own opinion, visited too frequently.7 In this way, the comte de Donane was captured on suspicion of spying. As it turned out, his only crime had been to gaze up at the windows of the donjon as he walked past Saint-Maurice church. He was detained for two days before being released.8

  At this point, Lauzun decided he wanted to write to Louvois about his captaincy of the king’s bodyguard, which he had been asked to resign. Having received a letter from the minister toward the end of 1672, he had taken several weeks to contemplate his reply. Now, he wrote Louvois a letter in which his utter helplessness in the face of his situation could be read in every line:

  I did not intend to complain of the treatment of Monsieur de Saint-Mars, nor of the amount of the food, nor did I say that the sufferings I endure here are out of the common; I only intended to beg mercy from the King, and to know his will about my office and everything else, which I shall follow blindly, for I should be inconsolable if it were thought that in asking his Majesty for favors I wished to make conditions, for I shall never show anything but prompt obedience.9

  Indeed, despite his insolence and his temper, which had left Louis in a rage on more than one occasion, Lauzun was and would always remain one of Louis’s most devoted servants. Continuing his letter, he begged Louvois to recognize his goodwill and asked what he must do to tender his resignation of his post of captain of the guards, adding that he would be “inconsolable if the King were to think me capable of putting off my immediate obedience to his orders.”

  Louvois replied within a few days. Having read the letter to Louis, he could announce that the king was “very glad to learn from its contents that Monsieur de Saint-Mars has not exceeded [his] orders with regard to you.” In other words, whatever cruel measures Saint-Mars decided to take were considered within the remit of his position as jailer and captain of the donjon of Pignerol.

  Since it had been understood that Lauzun was refusing to tender his resignation, arrangements had been set in train to transfer the captaincy of
the guard to the duc de Luxembourg. However, with Lauzun now apparently willing to cooperate, this process would now be postponed. Instead, Louvois appointed a notary to go to the donjon and receive the formal document from Lauzun, whose signature he would witness. In the event, however, Lauzun could not bring himself to resign a commission that had meant so much to him and of which he had been so proud, and the notary left Pignerol empty-handed.10

  This elicited an immediate response from Louis, who issued a formal order to the officers and men of the royal bodyguard:

  His Majesty being unhappy with the conduct of the Sieur comte de Lauzun, captain of one of the companies of the king’s bodyguards, and not wanting him to perform any function of his charge, His Majesty expressly forbids lieutenants, ensigns, exempts and guards of the said company to recognize him in that capacity, on pain of disobedience.11

  Louvois, too, lost his patience with Lauzun and sent off a furious letter to Pignerol. He had, he said, hoped to please Lauzun by giving him the means by which he could resign his commission as he himself had requested, but given Lauzun’s recalcitrance, no more would now be said about it.12

  While all this was going on, the ex-superintendent Foucquet had been contemplating his situation. He felt useless. He had been a loyal servant to the crown for his entire adult life. Indeed, royal service had always been more than just a job to him, it had long been a way of life. Even now, after so many years in prison, he found it difficult to settle into the idleness that captivity imposed upon him. He was frustrated and resentful at seeing his talents going to waste; frequently ill, he took his mind off his unhappy condition by thinking of ways in which he could be of service to Louis and, hopefully, perhaps secure some alleviation of the conditions of his imprisonment.

  For some while, he had been allowed to receive news of what was going on in the world beyond his prison walls, and Louvois wrote to Saint-Mars to tell him that “it was no great inconvenience that M. Foucquet knows that the king has made war on the Dutch.” Indeed not, for Foucquet’s knowledge of the affairs of state could prove useful to Louvois.

  Following Foucquet’s removal, Louis had abolished the office of surintendant des Finances, and taken control of his fiscal affairs himself, at least nominally. He appointed Foucquet’s rival, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, as contrôleur général des Finances, which was really Foucquet’s old office with a new title. France went on to enjoy a period of prosperity as a result of reforms that had been initiated or continued by Colbert. Now, as France entered the second year of its war against the Dutch, much of this good work began to unravel. Wars were expensive, and as the need for funds was pressing, Colbert began to fall out of favor. Louis distrusted him and often refused to listen to his advice. Although not disgraced, Colbert, his enemies saw, was walking on dangerous ground. This was the perfect time for his rivals to promote their own interests, and when the opportunity arose to be of service to the king, Louvois seized it. When Foucquet sought permission to write a mémoire directly to Louis setting out his thoughts “for the good and interest of the king,” the war minister was only too happy to grant it.13

  What Foucquet set out in this document is not known, but given his former post, it is safe to speculate that suggestions for a further reform of the finances formed at least part of it. The mémoire written, Saint-Mars duly sent it on. Two months later, however, Louvois returned the document, saying that it did not appear to contain what Foucquet had said it would. Instead, it seemed to him to be nothing more than an attempt by Foucquet to obtain some respite from his sentence. Thinking it inappropriate to show it to Louis, Louvois instead ordered Saint-Mars to take the mémoire back to Foucquet, to tell him that it was of no importance to the service of the king, and to burn it in front of him.14

  In his final letter of 1673, Saint-Mars noted that Lauzun was worried about money he owed Antoine le Pautre, the royal architect who had built a house for him at Saint-Germain. As to Foucquet, he was “always very tranquil.” Indeed, Saint-Mars wrote, he “appears to me even very happy.” Nevertheless, Foucquet frequently asked if his news had been passed on to his family and always seemed “very concerned about the health of his wife and his family.”

  As to Eustache, to whom Saint-Mars referred as “the prisoner of the tower, whom M. de Vauroy had brought,” he had nothing to say, but rather “lives content, like a man entirely resigned to the will of God and the King.”15 This point is as mysterious as anything else to do with Eustache’s life and, especially, his imprisonment. He never asked why he had been imprisoned. He never asked, as the other prisoners had done, to be allowed to go home. He never complained about his imprisonment or the conditions in which he was held. Unlike some, particularly Foucquet and Lauzun, he never made a nuisance of himself. While Saint-Mars was under orders to try to make his prisoners speak, this directive was never extended to Eustache. At no time during his imprisonment did Eustache try to bribe the sentries, send or receive news, or escape. Was he simply accepting of his fate, or was being in prison, no matter how harsh the conditions, a more desirable option to whatever might have awaited him had he been free?

  The spring of 1674 saw the imprisonment at Pignerol of a Dominican monk named Lapierre, who is frequently referred to as the Jacobin and, later, as the Mad Jacobin. Louvois felt obliged to warn Saint-Mars not to be deceived by the monk’s fine orations, but rather to regard him as one of the greatest rogues in the world. He warned the jailer that Lapierre would be very difficult to guard.

  Lapierre, who “although obscure, is no less a man of consequence,”16 was taken to Pignerol by the sieur Legrain, provost-general of the Connétable and Maréchaussée of France. Louvois, as always, sent detailed instructions to Saint-Mars, who was required to send ten men of his company, commanded by one his officers, to whom the sieur Legrain would give the necessary instructions for the manner in which the prisoner was to be guarded. “You will recommend the officer conducts him, without creating a scandal, by road, and have him enter Pignerol discreetly and even without anyone seeing that it is a prisoner that your men are leading into the donjon.” The last line of this letter was particularly sinister: “You will treat him in the manner as the prisoner whom M. de Vauroy brought you.” That is to say, Lapierre was to be subject to a harsh imprisonment, as unpleasant as that of Eustache.

  Louvois’s letter, and the commands contained within it, was followed by another, written by Michel Le Tellier.17 This was Louvois’s father and predecessor at the ministry for war, who wrote that Lapierre “should be guarded with the same precautions as were used by the sieur de Vauroy, and as he is an unmitigated rascal who, in very serious matters has abused important persons, he must be treated harshly, and you must give him nothing but the absolute necessities of life, with no other solace whatsoever.”

  Still more instructions followed. Lapierre was not to be allowed a fire in his room unless the weather was extremely cold, and his meals were to consist of nothing more than bread, wine, and water. A fripon achevé (accomplished rascal), the new prisoner could not be treated badly enough, nor suffer the punishment he deserved. Despite this, he should be allowed to hear mass, with the usual caveats regarding his security, and he was to be given a breviary and some books of prayers.18 Later, Lapierre would be allowed better food, and would be permitted to make his confession once a year to the same priest who confessed Foucquet.19

  As for Foucquet, that spring brought a welcome change in the conditions of his imprisonment. In a letter dated April 10, 1674, Louis granted permission for Mme Foucquet to write two letters a year to her husband. The first of these was enclosed within the packet sent by Louvois, with the promise of another to come in six months’ time. Saint-Mars was ordered to give the letter to Foucquet and to allow him two days to think about what he would like to say to his wife, after which he should give his prisoner ink and paper so he could write out his response. He would then take the letter, with the ink and paper, and send it back to Louvois.20 Even though the letters had to pass through the
hands of both Saint-Mars and Louvois, and would be censored if necessary, this regular contact with his wife was a great blessing for Foucquet.

  Most of the letters that were exchanged between husband and wife did not survive, but one, written by Foucquet on February 5, 1675, was widely circulated among his friends in Paris and beyond, with several copies being made.21 In it, Foucquet describes his life in prison, lists his illnesses, and laments that “forced idleness is the mother of despair, continual temptations and agitations.” He found solace in his faith, but added that, since the Day of Our Lady in September, when one of his valets, the man named Champagne, died before his eyes, he had “neither mirth nor health.” He very much missed Champagne, whom he described as “a diligent and affectionate man, whom I loved dearly, of whom I was fond and who comforted me.” Foucquet’s other valet, La Rivière, was constantly ill and more in need of care than his master. “He is sorrowful in temperament,” Foucquet notes, “and thus with only the two of us to talk to each other day and night, judge how I spend my life.”

  Clearly, Foucquet was not being properly served. He was nobleman and one valet was not enough to serve his needs. His remaining valet, La Rivière, was often too unwell to carry out his duties. Also, while Foucquet’s valets were hired primarily to attend to him, they were also expected to spy on him and each other. This could not be accomplished with only one servant living in Foucquet’s prison apartments. Yet, although Foucquet had made no mention of it, a second man had already been appointed to serve him.